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Threaded media are useless for political debate, for exactly the reason you suggest: any worthwhile question will be crapflooded by those who consider it against their interests to discuss.

The kind of post-by-post deletion or moderation you have to do for a debate thread necessarily becomes censorship when you have to decide if a post that contains a few relevant sentences and a few irrelevant, can be retained or not.

Accordingly, you need third person statements and the kind of contract that prevails in a wiki: version control is sacred and attribution is strict, but no one has sole control of any sequence of words that will appear to the reader, that's only collective.

In other words: absolutely no one other than the administrators who create the buttons, frames, form prompts, has sole control of even so much as a full sentence on any topic/issue page, even if they created it and solely authored it. All they have a right to is accurate attribution and quoting, just as they would if a third party journalist had written a story about the topic.

So the wags who say "impossible" are correct that it's impossible with slash or civicspace or yahoogroups or opengroups or newsgroups or mailing lists. If it is possible at all (not saying it is) it would have to be on a wiki base. And that's borne out by all the good meaty political stuff that's on wikis now: dkosopedia, sourcewatch, wikocracy, anarchopedia, openpolitics, Living Platform, consumerium. And quasi political wikiscience like embodimentwiki and administrative gurudom like let.sysops.be.

Threaded media are useless for political debate, for exactly the reason you suggest: any worthwhile question will be crapflooded by those who consider it against their interests to discuss.

The kind of post-by-post deletion or moderation you have to do for a debate thread necessarily becomes censorship when you have to decide if a post that contains a few relevant sentences and a few irrelevant, can be retained or not.

Accordingly, you need third person statements and the kind of contract that prevails in a wiki: version control is sacred and attribution is strict, but no one has sole control of any sequence of words that will appear to the reader, that's only collective.

In other words: absolutely no one other than the administrators who create the buttons, frames, form prompts, has sole control of even so much as a full sentence on any topic/issue page, even if they created it and solely authored it. All they have a right to is accurate attribution and quoting, just as they would if a third party journalist had written a story about the topic.

So the wags who say "impossible" are correct that it's impossible with slash or civicspace or yahoogroups or opengroups or newsgroups or mailing lists. If it is possible at all (not saying it is) it would have to be on a wiki base. And that's borne out by all the good meaty political stuff that's on wikis now: dkosopedia, sourcewatch, wikocracy, anarchopedia, openpolitics, Living Platform, consumerium. And quasi political wikiscience like embodimentwiki and administrative gurudom like let.sysops.be.

Yes. See Wikipedia (Reds) (and other pages at the same site), Wikipedia Watch, English Wikipedia User Richardchilton, English Wikipedia User Secretlondon, etc.

Articles like "Measuring progress", "Genuine Progress Indicator" or "State services" are regularly sysop-vandalized or deleted, and activist groups like the "Legion of Trolls" or the "Wikipedia Red Faction" have been totally censored.

How is the data that constitutes thousands of man hours work by volunteers protected?

Read it, it's all good. Enjoy.

When China banned Wikipedia, however, the usual happy NPOV talk was invoked:

Last week, for about 48 hours, Wikipedia.com, a multilingual online open-content encyclopedia, was inaccessible to users throughout China. On June 17, around 6:30PM Beijing time, the site opened up to users in China.

Though it is still unclear why the site was blocked, the ban does come on the heels of a new circular issued by the Chinese government asking for Internet Service Providers to show patriotism and refrain from "inappropriate material", which includes contentious political and social commentary. James Wales, in an interview with ChinaTechNews.com, claimed "By policy, Wikipedia is not a political site in any way. We are a general reference encyclopedia with a strong neutrality policy. Articles are carefully researched and reviewed by Chinese people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as mainland China. Therefore, Wikipedia is an excellent test case. When Wikipedia is blocked, it can not be claimed that only lies or propaganda are blocked, because we are neither. When we are blocked, it is information itself that is being blocked."

The new government circular issued last week recommends that Internet Service Providers only allow "wholesome online information" and news that conforms to "fairness and trustworthiness". Apparently Wikipedia doesn't conform.

Wales says, "By policy, representatives of the Chinese government would be welcome to edit our articles in conformance with our [Wikipedia] neutrality policy." He said nothing about how to deal with an influx of millions of such funded trolls. But most telling was this comment by Wales:

"It is one thing to block gambling sites, or pornography, or political opinions, but it is another thing altogether to admit that it is information itself that is the enemy. I doubt if they will continue that. Probably some administrator will be reprimanded." So, according to Wales, political opinions are like pornography or gambling, and only his own methods lead to fairness or trustworthiness. This is literally self-worship, unsurprising in a GodKing.

"Wikipedia's founders hope that by 2025, Wikipedia will be a standard reference work used by children and adults all over China, in both paper and electronic editions." This is of course naive. Whatever happens to the GFDL corpus by then, it will require other GFDL corpus access providers to be running things, as Wikipedia will be destroyed by its own stupid self-worshipping ideology.

When China banned Wikipedia, however, the usual happy NPOV talk was invoked:

Last week, for about 48 hours, Wikipedia.com, a multilingual online open-content encyclopedia, was inaccessible to users throughout China. On June 17, around 6:30PM Beijing time, the site opened up to users in China.

Though it is still unclear why the site was blocked, the ban does come on the heels of a new circular issued by the Chinese government asking for Internet Service Providers to show patriotism and refrain from "inappropriate material", which includes contentious political and social commentary. James Wales, in an interview with ChinaTechNews.com, claimed "By policy, Wikipedia is not a political site in any way. We are a general reference encyclopedia with a strong neutrality policy. Articles are carefully researched and reviewed by Chinese people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as mainland China. Therefore, Wikipedia is an excellent test case. When Wikipedia is blocked, it can not be claimed that only lies or propaganda are blocked, because we are neither. When we are blocked, it is information itself that is being blocked."

The new government circular issued last week recommends that Internet Service Providers only allow "wholesome online information" and news that conforms to "fairness and trustworthiness". Apparently Wikipedia doesn't conform.

Wales says, "By policy, representatives of the Chinese government would be welcome to edit our articles in conformance with our [Wikipedia] neutrality policy." He said nothing about how to deal with an influx of millions of such funded trolls. But most telling was this comment by Wales:

"It is one thing to block gambling sites, or pornography, or political opinions, but it is another thing altogether to admit that it is information itself that is the enemy. I doubt if they will continue that. Probably some administrator will be reprimanded." So, according to Wales, political opinions are like pornography or gambling, and only his own methods lead to fairness or trustworthiness. This is literally self-worship, unsurprising in a GodKing.

"Wikipedia's founders hope that by 2025, Wikipedia will be a standard reference work used by children and adults all over China, in both paper and electronic editions." This is of course naive. Whatever happens to the GFDL corpus by then, it will require other GFDL corpus access providers to be running things, as Wikipedia will be destroyed by its own stupid self-worshipping ideology.

When China banned Wikipedia, however, the usual happy NPOV talk was invoked:

Last week, for about 48 hours, Wikipedia.com, a multilingual online open-content encyclopedia, was inaccessible to users throughout China. On June 17, around 6:30PM Beijing time, the site opened up to users in China.

Though it is still unclear why the site was blocked, the ban does come on the heels of a new circular issued by the Chinese government asking for Internet Service Providers to show patriotism and refrain from "inappropriate material", which includes contentious political and social commentary. James Wales, in an interview with ChinaTechNews.com, claimed "By policy, Wikipedia is not a political site in any way. We are a general reference encyclopedia with a strong neutrality policy. Articles are carefully researched and reviewed by Chinese people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as mainland China. Therefore, Wikipedia is an excellent test case. When Wikipedia is blocked, it can not be claimed that only lies or propaganda are blocked, because we are neither. When we are blocked, it is information itself that is being blocked."

The new government circular issued last week recommends that Internet Service Providers only allow "wholesome online information" and news that conforms to "fairness and trustworthiness". Apparently Wikipedia doesn't conform.

Wales says, "By policy, representatives of the Chinese government would be welcome to edit our articles in conformance with our [Wikipedia] neutrality policy." He said nothing about how to deal with an influx of millions of such funded trolls. But most telling was this comment by Wales:

"It is one thing to block gambling sites, or pornography, or political opinions, but it is another thing altogether to admit that it is information itself that is the enemy. I doubt if they will continue that. Probably some administrator will be reprimanded." So, according to Wales, political opinions are like pornography or gambling, and only his own methods lead to fairness or trustworthiness. This is literally self-worship, unsurprising in a GodKing.

"Wikipedia's founders hope that by 2025, Wikipedia will be a standard reference work used by children and adults all over China, in both paper and electronic editions." This is of course naive. Whatever happens to the GFDL corpus by then, it will require other GFDL corpus access providers to be running things, as Wikipedia will be destroyed by its own stupid self-worshipping ideology.

When China banned Wikipedia, however, the usual happy NPOV talk was invoked:

Last week, for about 48 hours, Wikipedia.com, a multilingual online open-content encyclopedia, was inaccessible to users throughout China. On June 17, around 6:30PM Beijing time, the site opened up to users in China.

Though it is still unclear why the site was blocked, the ban does come on the heels of a new circular issued by the Chinese government asking for Internet Service Providers to show patriotism and refrain from "inappropriate material", which includes contentious political and social commentary. James Wales, in an interview with ChinaTechNews.com, claimed "By policy, Wikipedia is not a political site in any way. We are a general reference encyclopedia with a strong neutrality policy. Articles are carefully researched and reviewed by Chinese people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as mainland China. Therefore, Wikipedia is an excellent test case. When Wikipedia is blocked, it can not be claimed that only lies or propaganda are blocked, because we are neither. When we are blocked, it is information itself that is being blocked."

The new government circular issued last week recommends that Internet Service Providers only allow "wholesome online information" and news that conforms to "fairness and trustworthiness". Apparently Wikipedia doesn't conform.

Wales says, "By policy, representatives of the Chinese government would be welcome to edit our articles in conformance with our [Wikipedia] neutrality policy." He said nothing about how to deal with an influx of millions of such funded trolls. But most telling was this comment by Wales:

"It is one thing to block gambling sites, or pornography, or political opinions, but it is another thing altogether to admit that it is information itself that is the enemy. I doubt if they will continue that. Probably some administrator will be reprimanded." So, according to Wales, political opinions are like pornography or gambling, and only his own methods lead to fairness or trustworthiness. This is literally self-worship, unsurprising in a GodKing.

"Wikipedia's founders hope that by 2025, Wikipedia will be a standard reference work used by children and adults all over China, in both paper and electronic editions." This is of course naive. Whatever happens to the GFDL corpus by then, it will require other GFDL corpus access providers to be running things, as Wikipedia will be destroyed by its own stupid self-worshipping ideology.

When China banned Wikipedia, however, the usual happy NPOV talk was invoked:

Last week, for about 48 hours, Wikipedia.com, a multilingual online open-content encyclopedia, was inaccessible to users throughout China. On June 17, around 6:30PM Beijing time, the site opened up to users in China.

Though it is still unclear why the site was blocked, the ban does come on the heels of a new circular issued by the Chinese government asking for Internet Service Providers to show patriotism and refrain from "inappropriate material", which includes contentious political and social commentary. James Wales, in an interview with ChinaTechNews.com, claimed "By policy, Wikipedia is not a political site in any way. We are a general reference encyclopedia with a strong neutrality policy. Articles are carefully researched and reviewed by Chinese people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as mainland China. Therefore, Wikipedia is an excellent test case. When Wikipedia is blocked, it can not be claimed that only lies or propaganda are blocked, because we are neither. When we are blocked, it is information itself that is being blocked."

The new government circular issued last week recommends that Internet Service Providers only allow "wholesome online information" and news that conforms to "fairness and trustworthiness". Apparently Wikipedia doesn't conform.

Wales says, "By policy, representatives of the Chinese government would be welcome to edit our articles in conformance with our [Wikipedia] neutrality policy." He said nothing about how to deal with an influx of millions of such funded trolls. But most telling was this comment by Wales:

"It is one thing to block gambling sites, or pornography, or political opinions, but it is another thing altogether to admit that it is information itself that is the enemy. I doubt if they will continue that. Probably some administrator will be reprimanded." So, according to Wales, political opinions are like pornography or gambling, and only his own methods lead to fairness or trustworthiness. This is literally self-worship, unsurprising in a GodKing.

"Wikipedia's founders hope that by 2025, Wikipedia will be a standard reference work used by children and adults all over China, in both paper and electronic editions." This is of course naive. Whatever happens to the GFDL corpus by then, it will require other GFDL corpus access providers to be running things, as Wikipedia will be destroyed by its own stupid self-worshipping ideology.

When China banned Wikipedia, however, the usual happy NPOV talk was invoked:

Last week, for about 48 hours, Wikipedia.com, a multilingual online open-content encyclopedia, was inaccessible to users throughout China. On June 17, around 6:30PM Beijing time, the site opened up to users in China.

Though it is still unclear why the site was blocked, the ban does come on the heels of a new circular issued by the Chinese government asking for Internet Service Providers to show patriotism and refrain from "inappropriate material", which includes contentious political and social commentary. James Wales, in an interview with ChinaTechNews.com, claimed "By policy, Wikipedia is not a political site in any way. We are a general reference encyclopedia with a strong neutrality policy. Articles are carefully researched and reviewed by Chinese people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as mainland China. Therefore, Wikipedia is an excellent test case. When Wikipedia is blocked, it can not be claimed that only lies or propaganda are blocked, because we are neither. When we are blocked, it is information itself that is being blocked."

The new government circular issued last week recommends that Internet Service Providers only allow "wholesome online information" and news that conforms to "fairness and trustworthiness". Apparently Wikipedia doesn't conform.

Wales says, "By policy, representatives of the Chinese government would be welcome to edit our articles in conformance with our [Wikipedia] neutrality policy." He said nothing about how to deal with an influx of millions of such funded trolls. But most telling was this comment by Wales:

"It is one thing to block gambling sites, or pornography, or political opinions, but it is another thing altogether to admit that it is information itself that is the enemy. I doubt if they will continue that. Probably some administrator will be reprimanded." So, according to Wales, political opinions are like pornography or gambling, and only his own methods lead to fairness or trustworthiness. This is literally self-worship, unsurprising in a GodKing.

"Wikipedia's founders hope that by 2025, Wikipedia will be a standard reference work used by children and adults all over China, in both paper and electronic editions." This is of course naive. Whatever happens to the GFDL corpus by then, it will require other GFDL corpus access providers to be running things, as Wikipedia will be destroyed by its own stupid self-worshipping ideology.

When China banned Wikipedia, however, the usual happy NPOV talk was invoked:

Last week, for about 48 hours, Wikipedia.com, a multilingual online open-content encyclopedia, was inaccessible to users throughout China. On June 17, around 6:30PM Beijing time, the site opened up to users in China.

Though it is still unclear why the site was blocked, the ban does come on the heels of a new circular issued by the Chinese government asking for Internet Service Providers to show patriotism and refrain from "inappropriate material", which includes contentious political and social commentary. James Wales, in an interview with ChinaTechNews.com, claimed "By policy, Wikipedia is not a political site in any way. We are a general reference encyclopedia with a strong neutrality policy. Articles are carefully researched and reviewed by Chinese people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as mainland China. Therefore, Wikipedia is an excellent test case. When Wikipedia is blocked, it can not be claimed that only lies or propaganda are blocked, because we are neither. When we are blocked, it is information itself that is being blocked."

The new government circular issued last week recommends that Internet Service Providers only allow "wholesome online information" and news that conforms to "fairness and trustworthiness". Apparently Wikipedia doesn't conform.

Wales says, "By policy, representatives of the Chinese government would be welcome to edit our articles in conformance with our [Wikipedia] neutrality policy." He said nothing about how to deal with an influx of millions of such funded trolls. But most telling was this comment by Wales:

"It is one thing to block gambling sites, or pornography, or political opinions, but it is another thing altogether to admit that it is information itself that is the enemy. I doubt if they will continue that. Probably some administrator will be reprimanded." So, according to Wales, political opinions are like pornography or gambling, and only his own methods lead to fairness or trustworthiness. This is literally self-worship, unsurprising in a GodKing.

"Wikipedia's founders hope that by 2025, Wikipedia will be a standard reference work used by children and adults all over China, in both paper and electronic editions." This is of course naive. Whatever happens to the GFDL corpus by then, it will require other GFDL corpus access providers to be running things, as Wikipedia will be destroyed by its own stupid self-worshipping ideology.

When China banned Wikipedia, however, the usual happy NPOV talk was invoked:

Last week, for about 48 hours, Wikipedia.com, a multilingual online open-content encyclopedia, was inaccessible to users throughout China. On June 17, around 6:30PM Beijing time, the site opened up to users in China.

Though it is still unclear why the site was blocked, the ban does come on the heels of a new circular issued by the Chinese government asking for Internet Service Providers to show patriotism and refrain from "inappropriate material", which includes contentious political and social commentary. James Wales, in an interview with ChinaTechNews.com, claimed "By policy, Wikipedia is not a political site in any way. We are a general reference encyclopedia with a strong neutrality policy. Articles are carefully researched and reviewed by Chinese people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, as well as mainland China. Therefore, Wikipedia is an excellent test case. When Wikipedia is blocked, it can not be claimed that only lies or propaganda are blocked, because we are neither. When we are blocked, it is information itself that is being blocked."

The new government circular issued last week recommends that Internet Service Providers only allow "wholesome online information" and news that conforms to "fairness and trustworthiness". Apparently Wikipedia doesn't conform.

Wales says, "By policy, representatives of the Chinese government would be welcome to edit our articles in conformance with our [Wikipedia] neutrality policy." He said nothing about how to deal with an influx of millions of such funded trolls. But most telling was this comment by Wales:

"It is one thing to block gambling sites, or pornography, or political opinions, but it is another thing altogether to admit that it is information itself that is the enemy. I doubt if they will continue that. Probably some administrator will be reprimanded." So, according to Wales, political opinions are like pornography or gambling, and only his own methods lead to fairness or trustworthiness. This is literally self-worship, unsurprising in a GodKing.

"Wikipedia's founders hope that by 2025, Wikipedia will be a standard reference work used by children and adults all over China, in both paper and electronic editions." This is of course naive. Whatever happens to the GFDL corpus by then, it will require other GFDL corpus access providers to be running things, as Wikipedia will be destroyed by its own stupid self-worshipping ideology.

Isn't it a bit hypocrite for the most active Wikipedia developer vigilante to make such comments? For the record, Tim Starling used his developer powers to block thousands of Halifax, Nova Scotia citizens from editing the Wikipedia, in order to censor specific "trolls" whose opinions some Wikipedians found troubling.

Wikipedia has a policy of banning all HTTP proxies from editing, citing "no legitimate use", even if whole IP ranges are blocked. Of course, this plays in the hands of technocrats. There are reputedly many private proxies on dialup IP ranges, supposedly used by trolls. Wise Wikipedia sysops, of course, know that "these are all one person", similar to medieval scholastics attributing all evil to just one "Devil", and accusing all that sympathize with that one as "heretics". Obviously, the implications of the Chinese block are quite huge for the current technological escalation warfare between Wikipedia sysops and "trolls".

Wikipedia has a policy of banning all HTTP proxies from editing, citing "no legitimate use", even if whole IP ranges are blocked. Of course, this plays in the hands of technocrats. There are reputedly many private proxies on dialup IP ranges, supposedly used by trolls. Wise Wikipedia sysops, of course, know that "these are all one person", similar to medieval scholastics attributing all evil to just one "Devil", and accusing all that sympathize with that one as "heretics". Obviously, the implications of the Chinese block are quite huge for the current technological escalation warfare between Wikipedia sysops and "trolls".

Because even though Google or Wikipedia and, well, the entire internet, are nice and/or useful, the information they carry is hardly worthy of trust.

But to be honest, my encyclopedia (Britannica, paper edition) is circa 1975 and I don't really take what it says at face value anymore when it comes to high-technologies and the latest and greatest in science. But for 99.9% of its content, it's just fine, which it just as well because it cost me over $1000 when I bought it!