If you want the article summed up, read no further than this line;<p>>But those users didn’t find much information about mass shootings or political efforts. In fact, the Colt AR-15 page made no mention of gun control at all, instead spending over a thousand words describing the technical details of the gun’s various parts.<p>The Wikipedia userbase is anal across the board when it comes to information being in the relevant location. There are entire pages dedicated to the politics of gun control, and the author of this article seems to think that an article that has always been a technical description of an influential design would be the perfect political soapbox. Although the author's complaints about the NRA article on Wikipedia have a lot more weight, I am still under the impression that he may be misinterpreting what was being said or done, because he obviously seems to have some trouble understanding Wikipedia's (sometimes absurdly) strict scope policies.<p>It's also worth noting that the author seems to claim that Wikipedia and its user groups are a fairly neutral source in important political conversations. Powerful (in the sense of editorship) far-left user groups have publicly and genuinely suggested withholding information out of concern for the political stance of articles shifting out of their favor. Wikipedia is <i>not</i> "balanced, but only when I agree with it." It is human, and not infallible.
Why exactly should an encyclopedia article about a specific gun model include "gun control, mass shootings, or political efforts"? I can see that sort of content being applicable for the "Gun" or "Firearm" article, but not for a specific model's article.
> In fact, the Colt AR-15 page made no mention of gun control at all, instead spending over a thousand words describing the technical details of the gun’s various parts.<p>As it should be. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. The whole point is to provide information about the particular thing at hand.
I don't think that it's particularly honest to use the term "took over" to describe the actions of a group of people who essentially built the page to begin with.