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,Are you sure you don't know Beta command?

Same AC here. "I am unfamiliar with this person" is just about as unambiguous as it gets. I really have no idea how I could have been more clear on the matter.

As an aside... I use Wikipedia occasionally and I enjoy it. I can sometimes get lost reading the more technical pages, one topic leading to several related topics, making me feel like I've actually learned something and expanded my bredth of knowledge. I've always enjoyed reading and learning and Wikipedia has more content than I could hope to read in my remaining lifetime. On the occasions when I have time to kill, this feels more constructive to me than playing a video game or watching a show, though I enjoy those things as well. Of course, if the subject matter is truly important and/or controversial, then I check references and seek other independent sources (this can be filed under "not being a moron") but most technical subjects I read are well-established and not controversial in nature. If I were to read a Wikipedia article about abortion or gun control or history or politics or anything of the sort, I would maintain a healthy skepticism about every claimed fact presented and (especially) every fact omitted.

Having said all of that ... I really enjoy Wikipedia for what it is. It helps that I don't try to make it something it is not. Yet, if I ever found myself caring about edit-wars or internal Wikipedia politics ... well, honestly, at that point I would question why I have nothing better to do and try my best to remember what it was to have a life. I have a career, a family, and meatspace hobbies like martial arts so I'm in little danger of ever being in that position, but I think it's healthy to maintain an awareness that such a condition is possible.

,Are you sure you don't know Beta command?

Everyone has their own political opinions, as does Jimmy Wales. He used to run a mailing list devoted to Ayn Rand. Speaking of Wikipedia and conservative economist Friedrich Hayek, Wales has said "Hayek's work...is central to my own thinking about how to manage the Wikipedia project. One can't understand my ideas about Wikipedia without understanding Hayek." Thus, his opinions on politics, and what used to be called political economy, have bearing on Wikipedia's structure.

Of course, a project which gets large enough can't be run as an absolute dictatorship, or it falls apart (or everyone moved on to a split). The official Wikipedia explanation page for the 2005 Elections is laughable. First of all, if you read the mailing lists and Wikipedia posts, Jimbo didn't even want a binding election, he wanted to appoint everyone himself. There was such resistance to this he backed off. Then fanatical Point of View pusher JayJG ran in the 2005 election for the Arbitration Committee. By any measure, he lost the election, partly due to such an overwhelming number of no votes, because so many people thought he lacked fair-mindedness and balance. So Jimbo ignored the election votes and appointed JayJG to the Arbitration Committee. Because they were ideological allies. This is all glossed over in the official entry on the elections above.

Nowadays, it probably seems silly to have been so involved in it, but when Larry Sanger's Wikipedia came out (another person thrown under the bus by Jimbo, once Sanger's Wikipedia idea started taking off, Wales took over and tried to write Sanger out of history) it had a lot of potential. So much of what happened is despite Wales, not because of him. I think it could have been even better, but it was not meant to be, not in this iteration of the wiki encyclopedia idea any how.

Speaking of neutral point of view, the recognized systemic bias etc., let's take a look at the opening two paragraphs of the Abu Nidal biography and see if sounds encyclopedic or not:

"Abu Nidal...born Sabri Khalil al-Banna...was the founder of Fatah–The Revolutionary Council. At the height of his power in the 1970s and 1980s, Abu Nidal, or "father of [the] struggle," was widely regarded as the most ruthless of the Palestinian political leaders. He told Der Spiegel in a rare interview in 1985: 'I am the evil spirit which moves around only at night causing ... nightmares.' Part of the secular Palestinian rejectionist front, so called because they reject proposals for a peaceful settlement with Israel, the ANO was formed after a split in 1974 between Abu Nidal and Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)...Patrick Seale, Abu Nidal's biographer, wrote of the attacks that their 'random cruelty marked them as typical Abu Nidal operations.'"

I doubt even Haaretz would publish something like this. Yet it's an encyclopedia entry on Wikipedia. Whether you like Nidal or not, this is not neutral and encyclopedic writing. If you don't think this is biased or unencyclopedic enough, it gets worse as the article goes on. And there are worse examples, this one just comes to my mind. If your answer is "It's Wikipedia, just change it yourself", you've missed the point of this post. Go to Wikipedia Review to really get an answer to that question.

And I'm sure you can do some research and find cases where some such power-editors had strange reasons to veto some articles/changes/people.

If that is true then you must ask yourself why those who criticize wikipedia and make wild claims regarding prepotent administrators never manage to point out a single case where that took place.(...)

Sigh. I've already checked, you could have done it too. That's what I meant with my original statement. Here. One interesting example.

The most important thing to retain is that this kind of problem should not be a surprise. As I said before, nothing is perfect. Abuse of power exists wherever there is power. But if this kind of problem only affects a fairly small percentage of articles/people, it's far from being a reason to discredit the whole system.

Here are some more interesting reading.

....that I started a thread about it on Wikipedia Review.

Mr. Malda, you're not as smart as you think you are.

Just like to point out that most people on WP consider Kelly Martin (qtd in The Register) to be a raving lunatic and/or a pathological liar. Apparently, this view is shared by people on WR as well ("...given my interactions with you, it's hard for me to believe you about anything.").

If you bother to read the link, you'll notice that Newyorkbrad got involved, and he's currently an arbitrator on WP (his post count in that thread is over 500, which surprises me since WR alleges that WP/Jimbo bans people who read/post on WR, or at least that reading/posting is a bad idea if you "wish to remain" in good standing.).

Posting anonymously since my view is unpopular, and I don't want the -1, Disagree moderation to stick to my real account.

Just like to point out that most people on WP consider Kelly Martin (qtd in The Register) to be a raving lunatic and/or a pathological liar. Apparently, this view is shared by people on WR as well ("...given my interactions with you, it's hard for me to believe you about anything.").

If you bother to read the link, you'll notice that Newyorkbrad got involved, and he's currently an arbitrator on WP (his post count in that thread is over 500, which surprises me since WR alleges that WP/Jimbo bans people who read/post on WR, or at least that reading/posting is a bad idea if you "wish to remain" in good standing.).

Posting anonymously since my view is unpopular, and I don't want the -1, Disagree moderation to stick to my real account.

What he's essentially saying is that like so many Wikipedia quality studies, the methodology is fundamentally flawed by its attempt to quantify an inconsistent, arbitrary, and easily-gamed system.

Articles are actually scored using a point system, which is even more arcane than the above post to which you refer. The points an article needs to move up this game-like hierarchy are at the very bottom of that page - Class C is 225 points, Class B is 300 points, A and "GA" (Good Article) are both 400 points, and "FA" (Featured Article) is 500 points. The actual formula for this is too complicated for humans to calculate on an ongoing basis, so they programmed bots to do it.

The problem (in terms of evaluating articles for statistical purposes) is that the points are assigned by groups of people in different topic areas, working separately from each other, each with different sets of quality criteria. So, the people assigning points for mathematics articles have a completely different set of standards from the people assigning points for Pokemon articles. The study doesn't account for this, because it cannot account for it. It isn't a particularly large sample, either, and since it doesn't include any of the enormous number of articles that obviously suck, it should be almost immediately dismissible by anyone who's actually paying attention.

Wikipedia is one of those things that resists statistical evaluation by its very nature - it can only be properly evaluated by ongoing observation and analysis. Wikipedians will never admit that, though, because it leads to people concluding that Wikipedia is a failure, and it also gives credence to the more "involved" critics, such as those that are to be found on sites like WikipediaReview.com, Akahele.org, and so on. They would rather people only criticized them over problems like "accuracy" and "reliability," because they can argue that the solutions to those problems all, by necessity, involve obtaining more manpower. Inaccuracy thus becomes a recruiting tool; recruitment is essential to Wikipedia's continued popularity; popularity equals "success."

The most annoying bit is that Wikipedia has latched onto this... it had nothing to do with Wikipedia... but was in fact "WikiHow", completely independent.

From what it sounds like (looking at the comment timeline) , the article itself originally said Wikipedia ...then was corrected to say Wikihow. I don't know that this was a case of Wikipedia trying to get credit so much as the journalist getting his facts wrong.

The most annoying bit is that Wikipedia has latched onto this... it had nothing to do with Wikipedia... but was in fact "WikiHow", completely independent.

When I saw the summary title, I immediately thought of paypalsucks.com. However, this is different. Nobody would think that paypalsucks.com was run by Paypal (*), and it is a commentary on paypal, so it is not infringing trademark. Wikipediaart.org sounds like something run by Wikipedia.

Note that Wikipedia Review has never been asked to change their name, for exactly this reason. Nobody could read it for more than about thirty seconds without realizing it's not affiliated with Wikipedia.

Agreed. There is a reason why many refer to some of these people as "those who have drunk the Kool-aid". Who believe wholeheartedly in the Wiki-way, and hold whole conversations in TLAs. "NLT!", "NPA!", "POINT!", "DICK!", "NPOV!". Almost sounds like you could be listening to scientologists. Wikipedia Review, although inhabited by cranks of its own, was a very revealing look "under the rug" for me.

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.

This is, of course, when he's not maintaining his circle jerk of shock sites, like 'lemonparty.org', 'jarsquatter.org', 'yourmom.org', 'yellaface.com', and many others, not linked for your protection. What a scary, sad way to make a living.

Then again, he is a scary, sad "guy".

This is, of course, when he's not maintaining his circle jerk of shock sites, like 'lemonparty.org', 'jarsquatter.org', 'yourmom.org', 'yellaface.com', and many others, not linked for your protection. What a scary, sad way to make a living.

Then again, he is a scary, sad "guy".

And it's a David Gerard article - the guy is a professional Internet troll (responsible for such classy internet sites as lemonparty.org, yourmom.org, and k-k-k.com - don't visit), and part time Wikipedia admin/Wikimedia UK spokesperson (where his favorite pastimes are blocking entire US states for being sockpuppets of banned user, and so forth, this makes an amusing read). Why am I unsurprised?

So, you say? "People will find and edit, no problem! That's why we have vandalism patrol, RC patrol etc! The system works!" - does it? No, it don't. Apparently, Ms Tavares "preferred color of vibrator" sat, untouched, through such measures, and according to statistics, had over 1,000 visitors. The vandalism was only reverted after being pointed out in Wikipedia Review, a site that goes to great lengths to expose a lot of the more nefarious back-room manoeuvrings that plague "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit" (and thus has garnered such a great deal of spite from certain factions at Wikipedia (uncoincidentally, many of whom are exposed for their part in said manoeuvrings), that there have been times when WR was added to spam blacklists to prevent linking to it from WP, and proposals, one called "BADSITES"(!) were raised to curtail any mention of sites which said negative things of WP (and yet, here people are screaming "NO CENSORSHIP! Except for the things WE don't like!"). Even now, if you find yourself caught up in the WP TLA bureacracy, (RFC, RFArb, MED, AN, ANI, etc, etc, et al, et al), or trying to gain, say, Administrator status, it's a nice way to poison the well by having someone point out that "Gasp. Such-and-such is a KNOWN WR CONTRIBUTOR!".

Flagged revisions do no more, and no less, than allow people to tag revisions which have been reviewed to be vandalism-free. They don't prevent anyone editing. They don't censor information.

I find it highly telling that the "anonymous reader" trying to rouse support for the "end of Wikipedia as we know it" has not the courage of their convictions to name themselves.

After reading some of Wikipedia's happenings on Wikipedia Review, it appears Wikipedia is worse than what I had heard about it. For great examples, check out the "Notable Editors" section.

The BADSITES pseudo-policy, which for a time led Wikipedia editors to be threatened with being blocked or banned for daring to link to antisocialmedia.net or Wikipedia Review (among other things), was a sterling example of Wikipedia's concept of "openness".

http://wikipediareview.com/?showtopic=20558 ^ This is kinda old news. The censors keep removing the link futilely, banning isn't going to help you honest ;)

No Wikipedia Review link??? Disgrace! http://wikipediareview.com/?showtopic=20558 ^ Where the info originally came from.

Check the Wikipedia Review, http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=d01485c8496311bed70a496d551a3f81&showforum=5 and see what I mean. I have to make clear, I have no relation with or to WP, nor have I ever had such. I'm just yer average geek user of said site.

Anyone who wants is welcome to discuss this issue at The Wikipedia Review, a forum dedicated to discussion of Wikipedia while remaining totally independent of the controlling establishment there: www.wikipediareview.com

And if people are dumb enough to believe that this story is really that simple, then they're probably dumb enough to believe this version of it, I suppose.

It's a little longer, but how about this one: Enemy of Overstock.com spams Wikipedia, writes article about himself, and allies himself with corrupt admins to protect said article after indie web journalist who is not (yet) an Overstock employee attempts to add info about a lawsuit against enemy, which is reverted. Indie web journalist sends an e-mail to one of the WP admins with an offsite-linked .GIF file (last I checked, .GIF files aren't necessarily considered "infections") to determine who actually reads the e-mail. E-mail is not read by the WP admin at all, but is in fact read by enemy. Indie web journalist is then hired by Overstock.com.

But the part about Wikipedia blocking him is accurate, at least! I guess one out of four isn't so bad, considering the source...

And the moral of the story: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=14446&pid=65149&st=0&#entry65149

* http://www.wikipediareview.com/ WR is a forum that is populated by a mix of Wikipedia administrators posting openly, regular users, and a few "banned" users. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia 'elite' routinely badmouth the holy hell out of the WR forums because of the fact that "banned" users are allowed. Also, the Wikipedia "BADSITES" final solution (which is still active--disregard that rejected notice, its just been implemented anyway), was a direct revenge response against Wikipedia Review and similar sites that the Wikipedia leaders have no ability to silence or control in any way.

1. "BADSITES" was not, and never was aimed at WR. BADSITES was primarily intended as a tool against Encyclopedia Dramatica, which included quite a lot of openly hostile and very personal criticism against a number of regular wikipedia editors, including real names of editors who wished to remain anonymous. Nevertheless, the proposed policy is not in place, and attempts to enforce it WRT sites other than ED have failed (e.g. ).

2. I'd dispute any suggestion that WR presents an unbiased view of wikipedia. Note that WR was started and is run by an editor who had been banned from editing Wikipedia. There is a lot of comment on the site from people who don't know the whole story involved (e.g. they covered the lawsuit by Barbara Bauer and subsequent out-of-process deletion of the article about her as a good thing, which anybody who knows anything about the subject would say is not the case: that wikipedia article should have existed, and didn't say anything that shouldn't have been said).

* http://www.wikipediareview.com WR is a forum that is populated by a mix of Wikipedia administrators posting openly, regular users, and a few "banned" users. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia 'elite' routinely badmouth the holy hell out of the WR forums because of the fact that "banned" users are allowed. Also, the Wikipedia "BADSITES" final solution (which is still active--disregard that rejected notice, its just been implemented anyway), was a direct revenge response against Wikipedia Review and similar sites that the Wikipedia leaders have no ability to silence or control in any way.

* http://www.wikitruth.info Wikitruth is a private Wiki, which is ran by a variety of actual Wikipedia administrators, who post deleted content from Wikipedia and other insider information. Wikipedia HATES Wikitruth, almost as much as they hate Wikipedia Review, but are both helpless and powerless against them. Why? Because anything posted to Wikipedia is posted under the GFDL, and you can't de-GFDL Wikipedia content. Wikipedia just "chooses" not to display deleted content as an editorial decision. Oops.

Go to Wikipedia Review for frank and uncensored discussion about Wikipedia. Yes, some lunatics and social and/or mental defectives live there; the same as on the Slashdot comments. But a frightening number of smart and eloquent people post there. Those are the ones that Wikipedia is truly frightened of, because they can't be controlled or stopped. Go to Wikitruth for the best insider dirt.

I'm sure someone will mod me down as flame bait, or trolling, or someone who edits Wikipedia will be along to troll me. However, isn't it funny how whenever this sort of thing happens, you *cannot* get a straight answer out of the Wikipedia "executives"? It's always spin control, and damage control, sadly. Irresponsible.

Sadly, to get the real story, you need to read external sources such as:
* http://www.wikipediareview.com/
* http://www.wikitruth.info/

And to get the real story about THOSE sites, you need sources like:
* http://www.wikipediareviewtruth.com/
* http://www.wikitruthreview.com/
* http://www.wikipediareviewtruthreview.info/
* http://www.whocaresaboutyourpissingcontestsijustwanttolooksomethingupquickly.com/

It appears that Durova, aka Lise Diane Broer, who can be seen in this YouTube interview about Wikipedia, leaked the name of a Congressional staffer that edited Wikipedia, and the man was fired. Lise Diane Broer, aka Durova, is the admin that was part of the secret list that was used to harass and cyber-stalk real people, and was the main admin in the linked

Full disclosure here.

It appears that Durova, aka Lise Diane Broer, who can be seen in this YouTube interview about Wikipedia, leaked the name of a Congressional staffer that edited Wikipedia, and the man was fired. Lise Diane Broer, aka Durova, is the admin that was part of the secret list that was used to harass and cyber-stalk real people, and was the main admin in the linked

Full disclosure here.

* http://www.wikipediareview.com/
* http://www.wikitruth.info/

"On-Wiki" they are already in spin control. The best thing about the secret mail list is that it is hosted on Wikia.com servers, the private for-profit company owned by Jimbo Wales, which is legally supposed to be seperate from registered charity the Wikimedia Foundation. Various people have already informed the IRS.

http://www.wikipediareview.com/ is the site that started the entire investigation. Read the entire thing here.

http://www.wikipediareview.com/ is the site that started the entire investigation. Read the entire thing here.

There is a clique in Wikipedia that has tried to censor links to sites they think are "evil". Some people don't like this.

Jayjg was even banned from the Italian Wikipedia for abusively deleting edits. The problem on English Wikipedia is that it is the co- founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, himself who personally approved the controversial appointment of Jayjg to the powerful Oversight Committee for English Wikipedia despite numerous objections from other editors about Jayjg's abusive edit-warring. This is hardly surprising given that much of Wikimedia Foundation's funding comes as anonymous donations often from dubious political foundations.

Some very revealing studies of Wikipedia from the outside:

wikipediareview.com

wikitruth.info

antisocialmedia.net

I think that accounts for some of them -- there is little question that a significant number of those anon ids are from previous users who choose not to use their login id for whatever reason. I think there are also users who have been regular contributors in the past under a login id who got sick of the endless back-and-forth from users they have disagreements with. Some of the fights get vicious and even when they don't, there is a lot of tedious "lawyering" that goes back and forth between users about all of the rules (whether or not they're relevant to the particular situations). It's easy to get sucked into and if you take a strong position on anything (even questions of basic fact), there is another user somewhere who thinks you are wrong and is just as stubborn .... The argument can go on ad infinitum and it's easy to see why some people withdraw from it; read this article for some examples of the kind of thing that can happen.

1. Supplying inaccurate, misleading or biased information on the basis of research that was clearly from Wikipedia and following only Wikipedia's links on a particular subject.
   
2. His penchant for what I think is called (though forgive me if I'm not up on the terms) "loli anime", and his desire to constantly make references and occasionally provide me with links.
   

...but allows them through for Wikia, the for-profit firm that Wales owns?

More details of this fiscal conflict of interest, that pads Wikia's pockets with each public relations brouhaha like this:

http://wikipediareview.com/blog/category/wikia/

At the top of the wired blog comments right now is this one: Wikimedia Foundation employee removes source about Wiki Scanner funding by Anonymous Vishal-WMF, an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, has removed evidence from a news story that uncovered that Virgil, the scanner's creator, was HIRED by the Wikimedia Foundation! News story that was removed by Wikipedia Employee (not admin, EMPLOYEE): http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?at_code=428814 Backup archive link in case the WMF 'vanishes' the evidence: http://www.webcitation.org/5RAEP2kAl Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virgil_G riffith&diff=prev&oldid=151814656 Yet Wired has claimed that this is a "false claim": "Update: 8/17/2007 A Wikimedia Foundation employee really did edit Virgil Griffith's entry today, but only to cut a false claim that Griffith was employed by the foundation to create the scanner. " So what makes Wired assume that it is a false claim? This is the same guy that brought us Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services, and he is stating something as fact, not as an opinion. "On July 26, OhmyNews alleged that Wikipedia may have been infiltrated by Intelligence Agencies. The story attracted more than 50,000 readers in just three days, was highly debated on the Web, and translated in several languages. Wikipedia quickly reacted to the news and hired Virgil Griffith, one of the best known American hacker, to investigate the matter." Yet Wikipedia claims its "unreliable". Wikipedia has used ohmynews as a source in 192 of their articles: and has been used in Google news 460 times: http://news.google.com.au/news?hl=en&ned=au&q=ohmy news&btnG=Search+News Virgil Griffith does claim that he wasn't paid by Wikipedia: http://virgil.gr/31.html and the Wikipedia staff went so far as to remove the links, and then ban the IP address of the person who had inserted them: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special: Log&type=block&page=User:123.2.168.215 Daniel Brandt claims that it is far too expensive for him to have done it himself: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic= 11853&view=findpost&p=43697 But perhaps he really did do all of this just to make himself popular. Spend a few thousand dollars, including the $349 to do the reverse IP lookups: http://www.ip2location.com/ip-country-region-city- isp.aspx , saved presumably through his time as an unemployed student and spent several hundred hours creating something that does nothing more than make him well-known. Perhaps it'll help him to get a job sometime in the future? And perhaps its all one almighty coincidence that all this has happened just a week after Wikipedia was reeling after the massive censorship about the SlimVirgin scandal. Oh, and also note that another IP that reverted edits to the article belonged to Jayjg, the person most closely related to SlimVirgin: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic= 11853&view=findpost&p=43641 Coincidence, coincidence, coincidence. And this over an issue in which we've proven that the CIA edits Wikipedia with a definite aim, as have many other industr

At the top of the wired blog comments right now is this one: Wikimedia Foundation employee removes source about Wiki Scanner funding by Anonymous Vishal-WMF, an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, has removed evidence from a news story that uncovered that Virgil, the scanner's creator, was HIRED by the Wikimedia Foundation! News story that was removed by Wikipedia Employee (not admin, EMPLOYEE): http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_vi ew.asp?at_code=428814 Backup archive link in case the WMF 'vanishes' the evidence: http://www.webcitation.org/5RAEP2kAl Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virgil_G riffith&diff=prev&oldid=151814656 Yet Wired has claimed that this is a "false claim": "Update: 8/17/2007 A Wikimedia Foundation employee really did edit Virgil Griffith's entry today, but only to cut a false claim that Griffith was employed by the foundation to create the scanner. " So what makes Wired assume that it is a false claim? This is the same guy that brought us Wikipedia and the Intelligence Services, and he is stating something as fact, not as an opinion. "On July 26, OhmyNews alleged that Wikipedia may have been infiltrated by Intelligence Agencies. The story attracted more than 50,000 readers in just three days, was highly debated on the Web, and translated in several languages. Wikipedia quickly reacted to the news and hired Virgil Griffith, one of the best known American hacker, to investigate the matter." Yet Wikipedia claims its "unreliable". Wikipedia has used ohmynews as a source in 192 of their articles: and has been used in Google news 460 times: http://news.google.com.au/news?hl=en&ned=au&q=ohmy news&btnG=Search+News Virgil Griffith does claim that he wasn't paid by Wikipedia: http://virgil.gr/31.html and the Wikipedia staff went so far as to remove the links, and then ban the IP address of the person who had inserted them: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special: Log&type=block&page=User:123.2.168.215 Daniel Brandt claims that it is far too expensive for him to have done it himself: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic= 11853&view=findpost&p=43697 But perhaps he really did do all of this just to make himself popular. Spend a few thousand dollars, including the $349 to do the reverse IP lookups: http://www.ip2location.com/ip-country-region-city- isp.aspx , saved presumably through his time as an unemployed student and spent several hundred hours creating something that does nothing more than make him well-known. Perhaps it'll help him to get a job sometime in the future? And perhaps its all one almighty coincidence that all this has happened just a week after Wikipedia was reeling after the massive censorship about the SlimVirgin scandal. Oh, and also note that another IP that reverted edits to the article belonged to Jayjg, the person most closely related to SlimVirgin: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic= 11853&view=findpost&p=43641 Coincidence, coincidence, coincidence. And this over an issue in which we've proven that the CIA edits Wikipedia with a definite aim, as have many other industr

Anyone worth their salt uses private proxies now. Either get a collocated machine at an ISP anywhere in the world or more simply, buy a webhosting package anywhere in the world that supports PHP (most do) and then install one of the many PHP proxies (such as this one) and you are set.

A webhosting package is the best way to go as you can get those monthly and thus you can switch IPs/locals quite rapidly (or have many on the go at a cost of less than $10/month each), where as a collocated machine is much more costly and more time consuming to setup.

One of the individuals that first perfected this technique was a Wall Street message board addict Gary Weiss who brought the technique to Wikipedia a couple years ago. It's fairly common knowledge within some communities (such as WikipediaReview.com) and is understood as the preferred way to get around Wikipedia administrator hassles.

Consider yourself warned. This may have been an accidental momentarily lapse of non anti MAFIAA babble. But if this happens again, and be noted that this applies to non anti Microsoft, Bush and Big Oil babble too, the consequences will be dire. And remember that I have a history of changing history.

--
You will be assimilated

Wikipedia Review has compiled a comprehensive research in to issues related to this scandal: http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20070802/comprehen sive-coverage-of-the-slimvirgin-scandal/

This is now being discussed openly (ish) on the Wikipedia mailing list. After an investigation uncovered that some of SlimVirgin's edits to Pan Am 103 had been oversighted: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078241.html and that there was a Wikipedia Review topic that thoroughly investigated the oversighting at the time: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078266.html http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=186 4&hl= http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=113 5&hl= Wikipedia has been forced to admit fault here (after dozens of deleted edits from Crum375, ElinorD, Jayjg and SlimVirgin, including many blocks to people who linked to Slashdot). They have now added it to the Wikipedia Signpost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_S ignpost/2007-07-30/In_the_news The speculation about whether this issue is true or not should end now. It is true, confirmed by Jimbo himself. The only question now is what we should do about it.

This is now being discussed openly (ish) on the Wikipedia mailing list. After an investigation uncovered that some of SlimVirgin's edits to Pan Am 103 had been oversighted: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078241.html and that there was a Wikipedia Review topic that thoroughly investigated the oversighting at the time: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078266.html http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=186 4&hl= http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=113 5&hl= Wikipedia has been forced to admit fault here (after dozens of deleted edits from Crum375, ElinorD, Jayjg and SlimVirgin, including many blocks to people who linked to Slashdot). They have now added it to the Wikipedia Signpost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_S ignpost/2007-07-30/In_the_news The speculation about whether this issue is true or not should end now. It is true, confirmed by Jimbo himself. The only question now is what we should do about it.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=fe0aed1f75c 97449f83f7c37d4a85e37&showtopic=10991&view=findpos t&p=39104

I doubt that Linda Mack is currently working directly for any intelligence agencies. They might use her, as needed, but she's too screwy for any reasonable organization to rely on her. Nor is SlimVirgin's real identity an indication of any wrongdoing on Wikipedia. SlimVirgin's wrongdoing on Wikipedia is in her abuse of Admin authority, her thoroughly uncivil behavior, and her use of these transgressions in controlling content. That she is in fact discredited former journalist Linda Mack only adds some background to her misbehavior, as well as dispelling the cloak of anonymity behind which she has operated.

That Jimbo Wales has overlooked the many, many complaints about SlimVirgin and others is probably due to him pursuing his own secret agenda: figuring out how to get some coin out of the contraption that is Wikipedia. Had he really believed in the hippy-ish notions of free information that he so often parrots (notions probably contrary to his self-professed following of Ayn Rand's sophistry), he would likely have been very alarmed at suggestions that his "encyclopedia" was being manipulated to promote outside agendas; instead, he apparently was more worried about collecting receipts somehow after the early idea of selling advertising on Wikipedia was shot down by editors. Sadly, when Wikipedia could have used a principled leader, it instead had a human cash register.

The last time I checked, Wikipedia sysops had no more ability to see deleted revisions of articles than anyone else (that is, they can't even see that they were deleted). Viewing deleted revisions required oversight powers. As an example of a deleted revision, Daniel Brandt claims that SlimVirgin's first edit to Wikipedia was an edit relating to her allaged real-workd identity and that it has since vanished. The edit in question now shows up as part of a later edit by CanisRufus with an unrelated edit summary, which is what exactly what we'd see if the revision in question had existed and had been oversighted.

Bullshit. Just like with Essjay, you have known that Slimvirgin is Linda Mack, and you have also known that SV has been instrumental in the falsification of history, especially in relation to PanAm 103.

You have knowingly harbored and cossetted a person very strongly suspected of spying on behalf of a foreign government and should never have been allowed to touch Wikipedia never mind be one of the most powerful and thoroughly abusive admins.

Now all that's happened is that SV's user pages (and that of her sock Crum375) have been locked and at least one editor has been banned for the heinous crime of asking Crum375 whether she was Linda Mack and has she spied for MI5.

Just like with Essjay, you're in denial of reality. The only person trolling is you.

For anyone else who would like to see what lies beneath, see Wikipedia Review here

I respectfully disagree with you.

SlimVirgin along Jayjg, Crum375, Mantimoreland and a few others do effectively operate as a powerful and unaccountable clique on Wikipedia controlling the content of numerous articles and quickly banishing and/or abusing those that disagree with them. SlimVirgin is a very abuse character, although she is also great at playing the victim and ingratiating herself with those who hold power.

There is an essay I wrote about the tactics that they use to effectively control articles on Wikipedia here:
-> Cabals on Wikipedia: Prerequisites, Characteristics and Tactics of Effective Partisan Groups

Another honest account of the situation is provided on this web page, also written by experienced long-time Wikipedians:
-> WikiTruth.Org: SlimVirgin

There is an elite class on Wikipedia that colludes together and is effectively unaccountable. You can continue to ignore this issue but it isn't about to go away, its just going to grow.

Where you look - well there's that blog, there's Holkins' commentary, there's Wikitruth, Wikipedia Review, WCityMike's leaving message.

There was Ikkyu's classic discussion - unfortunately, overly censorious admins much like yourself wiped and locked it - again to hide their own abuses.

You have admins like SlimVirgin, who run around abusing the admin tools to hide things (she's also one of the most prolific liars and frauds when it comes to banning anyone she disagrees with for any reason).

There's another classic by Professor Gann, an academic who gave up on wikipedia here: again, someone who was abused by the system and sees the system for what it is.

You refuse to see that Wikipedia has a major problem - therefore, you are part of the problem. Can I give you a precise number of times the system has been abused? No. Can I point you to key cases, key cases in which to this day the reigning clique of Wikipedia refuse to admit they were wrong and that people were, in fact, abused? PLENTY.

Look at the evidence, rather than the lies and deception the clique and abusers throw around. You'll see quite clearly what Wikipedia is really about.

Be sure to check out: http://www.wikipediareview.com/ http://www.wikitruth.info/ For uncensored information on Wikipedia.