Something must be wrong with me as I haven’t had a bit of a rant recently, so here’s one I’m sure we can all relate to.

There is an increasing amount of cars on the road nowadays that are using HID (High Intensity Discharge) lights. To me, they are the most dangerous form of vehicle lighting you can get. While they are superior in the light they give out compared to standard bulbs, they cause a ridiculous amount of glare and dazzling effects which is very disorientating and dangerous as another driver.

Here is an example of what I mean. The HID lights are on the left, with standard halogen on the right.

You can very clearly see the amount of excessive glare these HID lights give off compared to halogens. Now picture yourself on a pitch black motorway (something I frequent this time of year travelling home from work on an evening). Although you’re on the other side of the motorway the glare from the cars going the other way can be extremely overwhelming if the vehicle has HID lights. You can very easily tell the difference if you were to look.

There is no need for HID lights on any vehicle except for specialised vehicles that require brighter lights (police, coast guard, etc). Standard halogens will light the road up perfectly well for normal road driving at no more than 80mph. If you need to see further ahead of you, you’re going too fast for the type of road, it’s that simple.

I wish HID lights were made illegal except on specialised vehicles because they’re so dangerous it’s stupid. The number of times I’ve been going down the road only to be blinded by HID lights and being unable to see on my own side of the road I can’t even begin to count. They’re also very sensitive to differences in road surface because they’re highly focused so one little bump in the road and they double if not triple in brightness in your view.

There have been numerous petitions to Downing Street over the last few years but they’re always dismissed or never make it far enough. We need to get HID lights banned. There have no doubt been accidents caused by HID lights but you just don’t seem hear about them. Why, I don’t know. I have plenty of friends who share the same opinions as I do and who have had close calls because of HID lights themselves so I know I’m not alone.

Image Source: keyboardmilitia.com

OK here’s the story… My website, BetaArchive, has recently had a Wikipedia page set up for it by some members. I thought this was a great idea at first since lots of other sites out there have their own Wikipedia page (not quite sure why I bothered linking it…). With that I set about adding some nice useful content to it. After a couple of hours work I was happy with the result. I sent the link to the page to a few friends who found what I had wrote there some-what interesting, since it’s not the sort of information that was readily available elsewhere.

A few days went by and then suddenly I got a message saying that my username had been suspended because it represents a company rather than an individual. What?! Since when could you not represent a company? Well under Wikipedia rules, forever it seems. I never bother reading rules as common sense is usually enough. It seems stupid that I cannot represent my own company (or website in this case). I had to register under a real name or an alias. But what if I wanted to remain anonymous but have an account to make my changes on? It seems you can’t. Relentlessly, I accepted this fact and simply started editing without an account.

A few more days later and I get another notification that some things have been changed on the page. “Oooh!”, I thought, “someone has added more information”. I log onto the page and see that information has not been added, but it has in fact been removed. My first call of action was the history tab to see what has been changed. Various bits of information had been removed. The confusing part was that it was removed by a Wikipedia moderator. What gives them the right to change an article on a site they know nothing about? They had removed various pieces of information that without it, make the article read as unreliable and factually incorrect. This is against mine and others free speech.

Suffice to say I was quite annoyed at finding this out, so I reverted the page back to it’s previous state. 2 minutes later, the page had been reverted again to exclude the information I just put  back. Outraged, I removed all of the content and replaced it with a message stating I did not want this article on Wikipedia any more. Given that I own the site the article is about, I should have every possible right to remove it, yes? No. At least that’s how the moderators saw it, so a few minutes later the article was again reverted back to the original article, minus the important parts the moderator removed.

Seriously pissed off now I simply kept reverting it back to my message. I did this 6 times in the space of about 10 minutes, and each time it was reverted by a moderator. Eventually, my IP was banned and I was no longer able to edit the page. To me this screams “NO FREE SPEECH HERE”. I own the website this article is about, I should be able to control whether or not the facts or opinions shown on this page stay or go, and I should also be able to to choose to remove the page should I choose. However it seems this is completely against Wikipedia’s methods and ethics. You can request a removal but there is no guarantee at all that it will ever be removed, as it has to go through a “public vote”. What’s more now I am banned I can’t actually edit the article to include such a removal request.

My ban expires in a few days. Perhaps then I will go on and request the removal in the method they explain you should use. I am by no means happy about having to do it this way. I find it unrealistic that they have this much control over a page about someone else’s website/company, etc. Wikipedia was supposed to be unbiased and allow free speech. However it seems in the politic controlled society we live in now (and the dicks at the other end of a computer with the super powers we call “moderation”) it seems this is no longer true.

Please leave your thoughts and opinions on this one.