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Way to look up the wrong domain - it's scroogle.org.

Operated by Daniel Brandt of NameBase, Google Watch and Wikipedia Watch

And the privacy policy is simple enough - no cookies, no search term records and access logs deleted within 48hr. Of course, whether you trust them to respect that is another issue altogether.

The guy who runs it, Daniel Brandt, is completely nuts. An article appeared on Wikipedia about him. What was his solution to this, when it became clear that he couldn't delete it himself and he couldn't get the Wikipedia grand panjandrums to delete it? He put together a huge list of the personal info of every Wikipedia person he could find, including pictures and identifying information for several Wiki-administrators who are children. Brandt pretty much matches the definition of evil.

Why has the WMF gone after WikipediaArt but not Wikipedia Review or Wikipedia Watch? These two websites have been notorious for "outing" the real identities of editors and encouraging vote-stacking etc.

I happened upon this site, after being rather disappointed by a Wikipedia article. The objectivity of the particular article that inspired this search was warped.

This is about Essjay and how they have removed edits from the history:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/piggy.html

Essjay even publically blamed Stacy Schiff after his fall, saying she offered him money. Of course the words of a known liar aren't worth much, but those words appear on Wikipedia as recently as yesterday.

This is about a USA Today reporter and some libel:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/usatoday.html

I would like to see a return to a less centralized internet. I don't care for the disinformation that Wikipedia provides, and there has been a lot. I have also edited an article that was just plain wrong (regarding an OpenBSD feature), and several other things over the years.

That said, donate to Wikipedia now! I'm sure they could use the money for some public relations spin.

I happened upon this site, after being rather disappointed by a Wikipedia article. The objectivity of the particular article that inspired this search was warped.

This is about Essjay and how they have removed edits from the history:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/piggy.html

Essjay even publically blamed Stacy Schiff after his fall, saying she offered him money. Of course the words of a known liar aren't worth much, but those words appear on Wikipedia as recently as yesterday.

This is about a USA Today reporter and some libel:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/usatoday.html

I would like to see a return to a less centralized internet. I don't care for the disinformation that Wikipedia provides, and there has been a lot. I have also edited an article that was just plain wrong (regarding an OpenBSD feature), and several other things over the years.

That said, donate to Wikipedia now! I'm sure they could use the money for some public relations spin.

Well I wonder if Linda Mack aka Sarah McEwan aka Slimvirgin the MI-6 and Mossad propaganda operative that runs Wikipedia will send over a hit team? You think I'm joking? http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/russmag.html

Linda, 9-11 was an inside job. Tell that one to your keepers you dirty covetous apartheid'ist baby killing bitch.

So obviously written by the "privacy advocate" Daniel Brandt, or one of his cronies (but really, he has no life, so he probably wrote it). Name me another "privacy advocate" who meticulously compiles a list of personal information (names, photos, DOB, contact, sexual orientation, friends, family) of Wikipedia editors, and then posts it online.

"Use www.scroogle.org for privacy"

Ahh yes, I'm going to use a privacy service run by Daniel Brandt, who is well known around Wikipedia for collecting intimate personal information on editors (name, address, DOB, occupation, relatives, sexual orientation, etc) and posting it online, regardless of the user's age or other demographics (posting personal info on kids online? fucktard). That's the epitome of privacy, right there!

"http://www.scroogle.org/"

Ahh yes, I'm going to use a privacy service run by Daniel Brandt, who is well known around Wikipedia for collecting intimate personal information on editors (name, address, DOB, occupation, relatives, sexual orientation, etc) and posting it online, regardless of the user's age or other demographics (posting personal info on 12 year-olds online? fucktard). That's the epitome of privacy, right there!

Fucking idiot. Burn in hell.

Well, I had my reasons.
God knows what reasons others have had...

[Please realize that this IS a nickname]

Roger Waters was born on Sept. 6, 1944. According to this Pink Floyd FAQ this is an error, and the correct birth date is September 6, 1943, as confirmed by Mark Fenwick, Roger Waters' manager. That is the date found in the wikipedia article Roger Waters.

One dubious source swapped with another. I think I'll stick to Britannica, which has an excellent track record, better than Wikipedia's dubious history of plagiarism, forgery, slander and editorializing.

Essjay brags about how he fooled The New Yorker:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/essjay.html

I wouldn't exactly call it "bragging", especially in light of the other sections on that page wherein he explains quite thoroughly the wikistalker element that no one has yet mentioned. I've been active on WP for 2.5 years now, and I remember Essjay from way back. I wouldn't say we've ever had much interaction, but I remember the username, and while I'm nowhere near as active as he is, I don't recall him ever using his fake credentials as an argument in support of a decision of any kind. The credentials appear to have been used entirely as a cover for real life so that the crazy stalker portion of society (which seems to be more prominent online; go figure!) wouldn't be able to track him down.

Do I agree with hiding your identity in the way that he did? Not really -- why not just claim you're a 24-year-old living in your parents' basement in Nevada? It's no less believable than saying the same about Kentucky. ;)

Do I have a problem with what he did? Not really.

Slashdot is, as usual, blowing this WAY out of proportion. The only thing that's even remotely "wrong" about this is that he claimed academic credentials he didn't have. If nothing else, it shows a lack of respect for the effort required to gain a PhD, but that's hardly worthy of a story on Slashdot (or any other news site).

p

Some screen-shot links for those who want more information. (Wikipedia sometimes makes controversial pages disappear):

Essjay's user page at Wikia, where he "outed" himself:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/wmessjay.png

Previous details from an old user page at Wikipedia:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/essjay5.png

Essjay brags about how he fooled The New Yorker:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/essjay.html

Some screen-shot links for those who want more information. (Wikipedia sometimes makes controversial pages disappear):

Essjay's user page at Wikia, where he "outed" himself:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/wmessjay.png

Previous details from an old user page at Wikipedia:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/essjay5.png

Essjay brags about how he fooled The New Yorker:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/essjay.html

Some screen-shot links for those who want more information. (Wikipedia sometimes makes controversial pages disappear):

Essjay's user page at Wikia, where he "outed" himself:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/wmessjay.png

Previous details from an old user page at Wikipedia:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/essjay5.png

Essjay brags about how he fooled The New Yorker:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/essjay.html

Zoeller was libeled, and it appears that it was done by an employee at work. The company doesn't deserve to take the rap for this any more than Zoeller should have to put with it. The vandal should be identified for the record. Wikipedia has hidden the evidence, but some of it was captured before they did this. It is linked at the top of http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/

Actually, Essjay is high-enough up in the administration so that he can alter his history and no one dares criticize him for it. He's been shoving the earlier stuff down the memory hole.

But there's a screen shot of some of his previous user information that was captured last month before he took it down. It's at http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/mtessjay.png

Here is a new devesating vandal technique which all ex-wikipedians should know.

1. Go to any page
2. Click edit this page
3. Scroll down to the bottom to the list of templates used
4. Open each template that is not protect in a new tab on your browser
5. Paste in lots of image code of your "favorite" picture (eg [[Image:Willys-Knight1920.jpg]]) into themplate.
6. Repeat for each tab.
7. Enjoy the multi-page vandalism
8. Repeat over multiple projects and wikis
9. Help Reclaim Wikimedia for the vandals.

Willy on Wheels, Pelican Shit, CPLOT and all other vandals unite to get revenge on the deletion of the so-called "Not-Notable" GNAA.

http://www.wikitruth.info/
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/
http://www.wikipediareview.com/
http://www.gnaa.us/
http://willy.on.whee.ls/

For 14 months I've tried to get my bio taken down because I'm not notable. They just laugh at me, and by now there are six long "Talk" pages associated with my bio that are full of insults. It all gets indexed in Google. I'm so non-notable that they cannot find a picture of me anywhere on the web. It doesn't make any difference. When the teen-age admins on Wikipedia decide that someone needs to be punished for challenging their right to be anonymously obnoxious and invade my privacy, nothing stands in their way. There are 142,766 biographies of living people in the English edition of Wikipedia, and I promose you that this figure includes a lot of people who would rather not have to watch their biographies get vandalized for the rest of their lives. http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/

Let's leave aside "doesn't like what they write", that's your subjective description.

what exactly is your argument for anonymity and freedom to defame and libel someone?

Some have expressed an interest in reading what Wikipedia called a "good article," the NPA personality theory article. Here it is, grabbed by Wikipedia-Watch from Google's cache, and stripped of junk added by Google: http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/npa.html

Am I the only one who finds it vaguely humorous that the same Daniel Brandt who wants to bust Google's balls has to use Google in his campaign to bust Wikipedia's balls?

Where are you getting this 1% plagiarism from? This was not a random sample as the author clearly states on his site http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/psamples.html/ but "a partial list of Wikipedia biographies of persons born before 1890". Very likely there is plagiarism on Wikipedia, but this was not a legitimate statistical analysis and should be treated as such.

Source of story here:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/psamples.html

Even there I don't think there's enough information to actually make a judgement on this. What algorithm did he use. Where are they plagerised from? How can you tell who copied who (there's a LOT of plagerism FROM wikipedia)? Where's the data? How did he select the articles?

In short... show me the evidence.

Brandt's original paper is here, explaining his methodology and giving the complete list of articles he found. Wikipedia's response is here, where people go through the list one by one and also check the other contributions of users who have added copyrighted content. Wikipedia also has a bot which aims to detect newly added copyright violations by searching Google.

Why is this news? Maybe because the Associated Press says it's news, and it's in hundreds of newspapers?

Why should Slashdotters care? Because while AP doesn't use links, Slashdot should have the courtesy of linking to the original sources that AP used to generate the report. (Plus AP also checked with Jimmy Wales for a reply, which is expected from professional reporters.)

The report is at http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/psamples.html

Wikipedia's own newsletter reports on it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_S ignpost/2006-10-30/Plagiarism_cleanup

The efforts of Wikipedia administrators to clean up the mess are chronicled here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:W.marsh/list

Of course, Slashdotters may continue shooting from the hip if they choose. It's what they do best.

Plagiarism by Wikipedia editors

The difference is that the Library of Alexandria contained knowledge, facts and scholarship from learned people. Wikipedia contains second, third or fourth hand facts, half-truths, quarter truths and out-and-out lies.

Wikipedia is not a repository of learning or human knowledge - it's a Marxist propagandist's wet dream, and its incredible to me how many Slashdotters can blithely tell us that Wikipedia can be compared to real scholarship, when its not allowed to have any scholarship - it's called WP:OR in Wikispeak.

Oh and the other thing Wikipedia has lots of: plagiarism

Now we can play our regular game on slashdot: Censorship by the mob.

Mild agreement that Wikipedia is basically OK +5 interesting
Strong agreement that Wikipedia is basically sound and scholars should join +5 informative
Criticism of Wikipedia in any form -10 Troll
Informed criticism of Wikipedia's lack of scholarship -25 offtopic
Detailed criticism of above plus abusive admins, arcane rulesets, Marxist philosophy and endless fancruft -1000 Burn in Hell

Get 'em while they're hot.

Most Wikipedia criticisms can be answered the same way. It is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, which is its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. That needs to be kept in mind when using it as a reference (and particularly so with controversial subjects). If people do not the solution is not to slam the entire idea and write it off as a disaster -- the solution is to simply make sure it is more clear to people that Wikipedia is not authoritative and at any particular moment the version of the article you are viewing might be an inaccurate one. For most purposes, the risk of that happening is far outweighed by the strong likelihood that you are getting an article so high in quality that it leaves Britannica and Encarta in the dust (assuming they even cover that topic).

One person who is causing real headaches for Wikipedia is Daniel Brandt, who is upset that there is an article about him that may potentially contain untruths about him. His response is to wage war against the encyclopedia and its administrators and most prominent users. A better idea for him and everybody, one that wouldn't be futile and one that would save everybody a lot of trouble, would be to use your soapbox to recognize the extraordinarily high quality product the Wikipedia project makes available to web users for free, while being very vocal and clear about its weaknesses that most people might not understand.

Wikipedia has no business creating biographies of living persons without their permission. A case might be made for doing this to a public person such as Kenneth Lay, but when it comes to someone like me, who is not notable, it can be distressing.

Last October I started http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/ because an anonymous administrator at Wikipedia, SlimVirgin, started a biographical article on me without asking, and with a preconceived notion that I was someone that needed to be put in his place because I had political views that were incompatible with hers.

There are more anonymous teenagers who are administrators at Wikipedia than you can believe. The subject of a biography is not allowed to contribute to his own article, and if he tries, they ban him like they banned me, and they also start getting downright nasty.

Wikipedia is okay on pop culture, on high-tech and scientific topics, and also on trivia that no one cares about. But when it comes to social and political issues, and biographies of living persons, what they need is a big fat libel and invasion-of-privacy lawsuit to stop them in their tracks.

It's not an encyclopedia. Instead, it's more like a video game that escaped from its box. It can be devastating to the victim, because all the search engines rank Wikipedia near the top. Human Relations departments are increasingly googling applicants before they call them for interviews.

The entire situation of some anonymous teenager having the power to ruin someone's life because it's fun and interesting, is something that has to stop. I don't mind a newspaper reporter writing about me because reporters and newspapers are identifiable and accountable. More importantly, when they write about me it's generally within a very narrow context, and several days later the same newspaper is used to wrap fish. The short shelf life makes a newspaper article, even if it is negative, a non-issue for me.

Wikipedia, by comparison, stays at the top of the engines forever. I have to watch my biography every day, because I never know who might have vandalized or distorted it last night. John Seigenthaler's biography is still getting vandalized, and it's taking three hours before some of them are reverted. His article is one of the most-watched by the vandal patrol of all Wikipedia articles. What about someone like me? If I don't watch it, who will?

I want them to take my biography down, period. I've been trying for nine months. They just laugh at me.

`... I tried to add that some people believed that Bomis is in fact not "glamour photography" but "pornography", and found myself accused of vandalism and given the boot. ...`[1]

I saw this doing a quick check on the history of Bomis. Here is the reference to the changes [2].

There are real problems in the way wikipedia allow rewrites on articles. Wikipedia itself doesn`t take any responsibility for inaccuracies, when there are technical measures that could be implemented to do this. Wikipedia does not identify who makes the changes. Making it difficult to verify if a change was malicious or valid.

It would not be difficult for users to gain XP [3] through group validated approvals to information, like in perlmonks. [4]

Btw if you think your having problems, check wikipedia-watch.org. [5]

Reference
[1] slashdot, `William Randolph Hearst - not forgotten`:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171739&cid=143 04794
[Accessed Wednesday, 21 December 2005]

[2] wikipedia, `bomis edit history`:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bomis&ac tion=history
[Accessed Wednesday, 21 December 2005]

[3] XP or experience points are gained by group validation of posts. They are rewarded for good or acceptable behaviour and removed for the converse.

[4] perlmonks, `Perlmonks is a place where you can discuss Perl intelligently. Users start off as novices and work their way to Master gaining experience points gained through intelligent posts, articles etc.`:
http://www.perlmonks.org/
[Accessed Wednesday, 21 December 2005]

[5] wikipedia watch, `We are interested in them because they have a massive, unearned influence on what passes for reliable information.`:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/
[Accessed Wednesday, 21 December 2005]

`... I tried to add that some people believed that Bomis is in fact not "glamour photography" but "pornography", and found myself accused of vandalism and given the boot. ...`[1]

I saw this doing a quick check on the history of Bomis. Here is the reference to the changes [2].

There are real problems in the way wikipedia allow rewrites on articles. Wikipedia itself doesn`t take any responsibility for inaccuracies, when there are technical measures that could be implemented to do this. Wikipedia does not identify who makes the changes. Making it difficult to verify if a change was malicious or valid.

It would not be difficult for users to gain XP [3] through group validated approvals to information, like in perlmonks. [4]

Btw if you think your having problems, check wikipedia-watch.org. [5]

Reference
[1] slashdot, `William Randolph Hearst - not forgotten`:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171739&cid=143 04794
[Accessed Wednesday, 21 December 2005]

[2] wikipedia, `bomis edit history`:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bomis&ac tion=history
[Accessed Wednesday, 21 December 2005]

[3] XP or experience points are gained by group validation of posts. They are rewarded for good or acceptable behaviour and removed for the converse.

[4] perlmonks, `Perlmonks is a place where you can discuss Perl intelligently. Users start off as novices and work their way to Master gaining experience points gained through intelligent posts, articles etc.`:
http://www.perlmonks.org/
[Accessed Wednesday, 21 December 2005]

[5] wikipedia watch, `We are interested in them because they have a massive, unearned influence on what passes for reliable information.`:
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/
[Accessed Wednesday, 21 December 2005]

bashing Wikipedia is the cool thing to do at the moment.

Yup, as this thread shows. But when you look at some of the kooks^Wpeople who are doing it, is makes you think...

The truth is, though, that any good idea that is successful is going to get bashed by the spiteful, the petty, the self-obsessed, and the paranoid. Wikipedia has to show that it's doing something positive about the vandalism/sabotage issue, but apart from that it would be better to just ignore the idiots.

Considering me personally checking articles for accuracy is not a valid way of concluding anything about the accuracy of Wikipedia as a whole, no I have not.

As far as your conclusions, they are flawed. What about the process encourages neutral points of view? Simply because anybody can contribute? This assumes quite a bit about the demographics of the people using Wikipedia. It also assumes that intentional lies are caught more often than they are missed.

Many of the same unsupported assertions used to trumpted certain aspects of open source are made when defending Wikipedia. Just because more eyes can catch and correct mistakes does not mean that they actually do. Add to that the fact that there is basically nobody responsible for the content (unlike Britannica, which could be sued for knowingly publishing lies in one of its articles), I think people using Wikipedia as a resource need to be that much more careful.

More interesting nuggets are here. Mr Brandt fell for a hoax, he has the user Splash "Daniel Atta Benzona". This actually apparently means "Daniel you are a son of a whore" in Hebrew, though don't quote me on that one.

Watch it while you still can: he's liable to take down such slanderous accusations pretty soon.

TBSDY

Well, that makes some of your older comments entertaining.

"It's primarily Google's fault, according to http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/"
  becomes
"It's primarily Google's fault, according to me."

et cetera...

I am no genius.

That much is readily apparent.

Oh please! Give me a break, Mr. Brandt... what you did was nothing more than a traceroute along with a social engineering twist. And besides, if it wasn't for the fact that you didn't like your own entry on Wikipedia with such a flaming hatred for anyone who spoke against you, you would probably have tried to defend the hoaxer instead of tracking him down.

I'm sorry, Mr. Brandt. I am not impressed with your actions at all. I personally used to think of you as a privacy advocate; now with http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html and additionally this I think you no longer qualify as a privacy advocate. I think you're more like a shark who smells blood in the water.

There is a chronology of how it was traced at the bottom of this page.

I am no genius. There was one chance in 10,000 that there would be a server on that IP address, and that it would be up when I tried it on impulse (it timed out during nightime hours during all of last week).

Mr. Seigenthaler is very gracious in complimenting me, but I am no genius. Anyone who knows the difference between an IP address and a hot-dog with mustard could have done the same thing. That includes dozens, or maybe hundreds, of Wikipedians. But they didn't bother now, did they?

It was a pleasure to work with Mr. Seigenthaler on this trace. He is an amazing, accomplished person, and I have a huge amount of respect for him. Before his Wikipedia story came out, I wasn't aware of him.

He's the genius, although it is true that I know more about Internet infrastructure than he does. But I know nothing that would impress all the clever Slashdotters reading this, I'm sure.

Yes, exposing every user's IP address is a *great* idea. After all, nobody (cough*Daniel Brandt*cough) has ever wanted to persecute any wikipedia editors or publish personal information like name, age, birthdate, address etc. online (cough*http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.htm l*cough), so there are no downsides to this, ahem. Please pardon my coughing, I'm afraid I came down with a cold.

Wikipedia, the most-scraped site on the planet, indirectly generates massive numbers of ads. It is inevitable that Jimmy Wales, already a rich man, will want to get richer.

It's primarily Google's fault, according to http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/