Usenet Psychic Wars With Wikipedia

rlandmann writes "John Patrick Ennis, whose nutty predictions as Sollog (Son of Light, Light of God) are familiar to many usenetters, may have bitten off more than he could chew when he picked Wikipedia as his latest vehicle for spamvertising." Click through for the rest of rlandmann's story.

Early last week an anonymous editor with a posting style remarkably like the one widely believed to be that of Sollog himself contributed this article to the encyclopedia, boasting of Sollog's prophesizing prowess and mathematical genius. Less than twenty-four hours later, the article was looking a little more balanced and encyclopedic. Along with Sollog's claims, it now carried the revelation that not everyone is as convinced of the accuracy of Sollog's power of prediction as he himself is, along with links to some rather unflattering appraisals of his work.

A week of spectacular net.kookery has since transpired, replete with vandalism of the article, bizarre legal threats, long semi-coherent rants with LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS, a rich bounty of links to Ennis-run sites, and a legion of anonymous posters with exactly the same writing style as one another all strenuously affirming that they are individual and distinct "fans" of Sollog and not the man himself. Unable to accept that Wikipedia's policy of presenting a Neutral Point of View means that an article on Sollog would have to include both pro- and anti-Sollog material, and unable to force other Wikipedia editors to accept his version of reality, Ennis has taken instead to making hostile phone calls to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales at his home, and setting up his very own Wikipedia and Wales hate site.

Whether or not Sollog really did predict Princess Diana's death, the Oklahoma bombing, 9/11, the crash of TWA flight 800, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, and most of the natural disasters in the US over the last few years, he doesn't seem to have foreseen his inability to control the picture that Wikipedia presents of him to the world.

See here for the current revision of the article, which may or may not be currently in a vandalized state.

Comments

SOLLOG Predicts

[Anonymous Coward]

That he will get first post on Slashdot.

Re:SOLLOG Predicts

[.Chndru]

While you are at this *mind-blogging stuff*... Have you seen him play?

Re:SOLLOG Predicts

[Anonymous Coward]

Linky to edit history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:So llog&action=history&limit=500&offset=0

I love netkooks

[October_30th]

Expect Slashdot and Taco hatesites soon after...

Sollog the "Varnisher" is not someone to be messed with. ;-)

Re:I love netkooks

[rednip]

Expect Slashdot and Taco hatesites soon after...

Where have you been, that's already a cottage industry. Post date your prediction to 1996 an you can call your self 'god' as well!.

Re:I love netkooks

[October_30th]

Well, yes. I should have said "expect Slashdot and Taco hate sites by Sollog soon after...". Maybe I would have been spared from the troll mod. Then again, the mod probably doesn't even read the netkook groups and didn't get the varnisher joke anyway.

Re:I love netkooks

[PriceIke]

I like how he pisses and moans about being "slandered" by everybody under the sun, and then sets up a hate site slandering Wikipedia.

Re:I love netkooks

[October_30th]

Well, that is how the kooks think and operate.

Raymond Karczewski and Edmond Wollman are two other kooks of the same calibre. Both are worth googling - just for fun.

Re:I love netkooks

[me at werk]

With this kind of line in wikipediasucks.com?

SLASHDOT.ORG RULES

It's a shoe-in.

Re:I love netkooks

[Astrobirdr]

Well, that is how the kooks think and operate.

I hearby nominate the above "kooks think" for the award of Slashdot OXYMORON of the DAY!

Re:I love netkooks

[tigersha]

Well, according to Google Wollman was caught sodomizing a dolphin! Pretty impressive work there!

Re:I love netkooks

[Anonymous Coward]

give up, Ennis, it's pretty obvious who's posting this

Re:I love netkooks

[gjcamann]

Do I work with you? I swear you're in my department. Your that guy that said "we could save alot of money if we just ported everything to C." If it weren't for people like you, i'd have nothing to tell my wife in the evening.

Re:I love netkooks

[rutledjw]

I want you guys to stop harrassing SOLLOG!!!

He is GREAT! Just read this stuff. They just don't grow wackos like this anymore. And h3ll, without the Internet, he'd just be another wierdo talking to himself on the street.

SOLLOG predicts: Being weird is KEWL!

Re:I love netkooks

[Short Circuit]

No...it's going to be the new one-line +5 funny phrase. Right up with the plastic-wielding overlords and other cliches.

Well, that is how the kooks think and operate, you see...

Re:I love netkooks

[MysteriousPreacher]

Hey, kooks do think! The problem is their tendency to think they are God or that sinister government agencies are actually interested in monitoring them.

Re:I love netkooks

[tbannist]

Maybe he's short on cash, he seems to be rolling Slashdot hating into his Wikipedia hate site. The injustice! Slashdot obviously deserves it's own unique hate site. Of course, www.slashdotsucks.com is already registered...

Uh

[Neil Blender]

What? I don't get it, what's the story here?

Re:Uh

[geoffspear]

It's a gripping revert war. Expect CNN to pick up the story by 8PM.

Re:Uh

[JawzX]

It's a Wikipedia story about how the open-source user built encyclopedia is self-correcting and verifying and isn't that great, and isn't this SOLLOG guy an irritating nitwit, and oh yeah, isn't open-source great! ...hey! atleast it's more interesting than reports of problems with what essentialy ammount to beta hardware on the PSP.

Re:Uh

[Chmarr]

8PM? Is that enough time for the story and all the embelishments to bounce around the Media Echo Chamber enough?

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people that think Wikipedia are /. nitwits that need to corroborate some half assed idea they have.

"It is correct, because 9the article that I wrote in) wikipdedia says it is."

Re:Uh

[Angostura]

No, it is because Wikipedia is a pretty credible source (and no, I'm not claiming it is perfect) that 'crap like this' is newsworthy.

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

its basically a "ATTENTION! DUMBASS ALERT! Point and laught at will" type of thing

Re:Uh

[tomhudson]

I can't believe Wikipedia still considers itself a credible source of anything

The "self-correcting" worked, didn't it? This is further proof that self-organizing systems of all types are viable, with implications for, among other things, p2p networking and other evolving systems.

Re:Uh

[generic-man]

Let's say I walked into the library and marked up their encyclopedias with red ink (making legitimate corrections, in my opinion). Would you consider that credible?

Having a bunch of self-proclaimed "experts" write the encyclopedia (or the news, god forbid) is a commendable hobby. I just wouldn't believe a word of it until it passes through some kind of editorial review. "A bunch of people on the Internet think it's good" does not constitute an editorial review.

Wikipedia can be exploited for all sorts of reasons -- to make a political statement, to self-aggrandize, and to impart personal bias (whether intentionally or otherwise) in lightly-trafficked areas. This article explores just how successful one troll can be in disrupting the flow of things for a while -- and how the entire world can witness it.

Re:Uh

[generic-man]

Self-correcting systems will work as long as you have enough participants.

Low-lifes have turned thousands of pages on wikis, blogs, and other such collaborative instruments into link farms and troll fests. Not every site has enough collective free time to weed out the bad from the good.

Re:Uh

[gowen]

just how successful one troll can be in disrupting the flow of things for a while

And how succesful is that? Almost completely and utterly unsuccesful. His self-aggrandizement lastest about 2 hours.

Re:Uh

[tomhudson]

Self-correcting systems will work as long as you have enough participants.

Low-lifes have turned thousands of pages on wikis, blogs, and other such collaborative instruments into link farms and troll fests. Not every site has enough collective free time to weed out the bad from the good.

... which is, again, part of the evolutionary mechanism - survival of the fittest.

those that can attract and hold a critical mass of intelligent, active users will continue to survive, while those that can't will die off.

As I pointed out, the wiki in question did self-correct, so it continues to survive and evolve, whereas wikis that don't self-correct will either die off or just hang on the fringes.

We've seen the same thing before in the newspaper world. Newspapers that develop a core readership and that don't post reams of crap continue to survive, while the ones that are little more than paid advertising and "editorial content" dictated by their advertisers aren't doing so hot.

Re:Uh

[user9918277462]

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Browse through the featured articles and you will be hard-pressed to find anything worse than that which appears in commercial encyclopedias. In fact, most of it will be vastly better and more up to date.

Experts are part of the public too. I suggest you edit an article that deals with a subject you are expert in, that's what Wikipedians do.

Re:Uh

[Hans Lehmann]

Having a bunch of self-proclaimed "experts" write the encyclopedia...

Which is exactly how every encyclopedia ever written was created. The writers of the Encyclopedia Brittanica weren't voted into office, They were simply the self-proclaimed "experts" of the time. Also, Wikipedia does go through many editorial reviews by its users.
I don't see Wikipedia as being any better or any worse then printed encyclopedias. I wouldn't necessarily trust the very first version of any given Wikipedia page, just like I wouldn't trust a printed encyclopedia until it's been given a once-over by editors.

The argument that only paid writers should be trusted to give credible information sounds too much like a similar creed that only paid programmers, working on closed source, can be trusted to write secure software.

Re:Uh

[kevin lyda]

um, that is done to libraries. gluing pages together, cutting them out, destroying books and stealing them. that's done to libraries around america to censor views and ideas people disagree with.

Re:Uh

[hgcrpd]

Would you rather have one "expert" running that editorial review, exploiting your trust in him or her to make a political statement, etc. etc...?

Re:Uh

[Jugalator]

I just wouldn't believe a word of it until it passes through some kind of editorial review.

It has now, and no more flaming there:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sollog

Wikipedia can be exploited for all sorts of reasons

Yes, but not for very long. Again, see link above.

This article explores just how successful one troll can be

Exactly.

Re:Uh

[generic-man]

You know, the

what I said

Smarmy, dismissive comment.

another sentence fragment

Smarmy, dismissive comment.

style of discourse just seems pompous and USENET-troll-like to me. I don't like it, and I don't like your reply. Don't even bother quoting my words if you're just going to skewer them like that.

Re:Uh

[AndyL]

You are correct. But who cares? You're just saying that the world can't support thousands of encyclopedias regardless of whether they're open or closed.

So What? How many do we need?

Certainly no one is suggesting that every collaborative site on the Internet is interesting, useful, and accurate. But Wikipedia is.

Re:Uh

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Let's say I walked into the library and marked up their encyclopedias with red ink (making legitimate corrections, in my opinion). Would you consider that credible?

Before I respond, I'll call straw-man, since you're assuming that one person's edits are analogous to a community of hundreds of committed editors and thousands more of casual editors. Think about it - the encyclopedia came from draft articles, marked up with red ink by a few people, and published nicely.

Then I'll answer: yes, I would consider this credible, if I see the corrections as worthwhile. If you wrote "LOL PWNED" and "BUSH SUXXORZ" on the book, of course not. If you corrected an article that I see is definitely flawed or lacking information, I would assume that you are probably more correct than the encyclopedia.

"A bunch of people on the Internet think it's good" does not constitute an editorial review.

"A bunch of people in a corporation" does? What is your definition of editorial review? How does it differ from a definition of WP's review where the wording is equally biased to the other side (given that the editors have shown themselves to be committed, and that several are quite accomplished in their subject)? WP is not reviewed by random people on the Internet, as you suggest.

This article explores just how successful one troll can be in disrupting the flow of things for a while -- and how the entire world can witness it.

No; this article suggests how even the most determined troll cannot stand up to Wikipedia, whose community knows how to write an unbiased article and remove personal attacks or self-praise.

Re:Uh

[x3ro]

I agree with the majority of your comments, Geoffreyerffoeg. However, I would argue that a distinction should be drawn between a corporation and an educational institution; while the former has no greater legitimacy than the latter, as a reader, I'd rather trust a reference book written and edited by staff at a university than a corporation (and probably, more so than I would Wikipaedia too, although it would depend on which university). That's just a very unscientific rule of thumb, but I think it makes common sense.

I'd also like to point out that there neutrality, or lack of bias, is an illusory goal. The best you can do is to present all arguments, but even then, this system can tend to magnify the arguments of a kooky minority, especially if those views coincide with those of a powerful group (witness all the exposure received by those tiny subset of climatologists that don't believe in global warming; or Creationists); or to marginalise valid points of view on the basis that less people hold them than those that don't, or that oppose them (impossible to think of an uncontroversial example).

The article on this freaky guy is a case in point. It's actually a very negative article, although it is trying hard to be objective. I totally agree with it; the guy is clearly a dickhead. But it's not really unbiased .. fair enough, considering his aggressive behaviour. But there always comes a time when the writer is personally involved .. and I would argue that happens every time s/he picks up a pen, though to a greater or a lesser degree.

I guess at the end of the day, no single source - or even a set of sources - can be definitive or comprehensive, unless you happen to have access to all the viewpoints of all the beings ever in the universe (i.e. you are God or some equivelant); and I suspect that, with all that information, whatever it was you wanted to learn about would seem kind of trivial anyway.

The best way to get a good handle on a subject is the old fashioned way: refinement by debate. This works better for some subject than others though: great for science but less useful for more subjective debates like humanities or politics, say.

Re:Uh

[chriso11]

Good post, but I would just like to add two points - there are some 'educational institutions' that exist solely to spread some particular viewpoint (e.g. ICR).

The second point is on refinement by debate. I can't buy that - Aristotle believed men had more teeth than women, but that is not true...
You need to use logic combined with facts and experiments to resolve a matter. Arguing often leads nowhere.

Re:Uh

[x3ro]

I had never heard of the ICR. Looks more of a propaganda institution than educational though :) Similarly a white paper by one of those 'universities' where you can buy a degree online would be less credible than a reputable corporation's.

I see where you're going with your second point, but I'd say that only works with scientific discussion. Logic, facts and experiments can't reconcile, for instance, two opposing political persuations where it gets down to philosophy rather than just bare facts. Even within science, where there is controversy, different viewpoints are presented, along with the evidence, and eventually the scientific community will come to some kind of consensus. I'd say the clash of egos involved is necessary to further the dialectic process of distilling the dross from the truth.

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

He just shot down the so called points you made. If you can't stand that, don't join the discussion to begin with.

Re:Uh

[decepty]

Just when you thought the internets were safe... A new breed of hate sites have spawned, quietly masquerading as "collaborative encyclopedias" and "Information Technology news portals", leaving angry, slandered victims in their wake. Don't be victimized. Find out how in our special investigative report at 11.

Sollog?

[Folmer]

The discussion is pretty big, and i really wont trust his own site in explaining it, so can anyone here tell me who he is, and what he has done (with proof)?

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy has accurately predicted the 9/11 attacks and several earthquakes and has posted his predictions on Google. His 9/11 prediction was posted to Google in 1998 (he even mentioned that it would occur in the US on Sept 11). Truly an interesting fellow.

Re:Sollog?

[Refrag]

Link?

And by "Google" do you mean Usenet?

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

posted to Google in 1998

Uh, how can you post to Google? It's a search engine?

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does one "post to Google". Are you ignorant of the concept of Usenet, Sollog?

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah sorry. I meant Usenet. I was looking up some of his previous posts on Google Groups. This is why I said "google"

Re:Sollog?

[sangreal66]

That wasn't Sollog, it was one of his followers. Sollog claimed Elizabeth Smart's kidnapping was an act of terrorism and that she would turn up dead. I wouldn't put too much weight in his predictions.

Re:Sollog?

[learn fast]

He's a troll who succeeded in getting a entire slashdot story about him.

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you SOLLOG?

Re:Sollog?

[silicon-pyro]

can anyone here tell me who he is, and what he has done (with proof)?

I would ask that any fabricated proof be so well done that the /. discussion of it continue for days. Also, proof presented in a neutral voice is much more likely to be accepted as fact. Just a helpful hint...

Re:Sollog?

[sangreal66]

Oh, and he also believes that Mars is going to crash into earth but only people living near the coast will die. Though, I might be mistaking him with the other guy now..

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

The proof is in the history of the article. Sollog created an article all about Sollog which was basically spam for his highly dubious resume on Wikipedia. Then he got affronted that anyone dare flag it for removal, removed the flag, had it flagged again, removed it, etc. Then he started to melt down, vandalizing other pages on Wikipedia, exhorting others to and even producing a defamatory site about Wiki's founder. So Wikipedians decided to do a real article on the loser, sticking strictly to the known facts and still maintaining a neutral POV. But even a neutral article shows what a complete arsehole he is. Every time he tries to deface it, it gets reverted in minutes.

So all of this is self-inflicted. The harder he pushes, the harder the site pushed back. It's quite funny really.

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I am not. I am just interested in his predictions. He has been accurate in the past (especially in regards to high magnitude earthquake events). I think he has some type of insight that most people dont possess.

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a link to a NYT article (reprinted in the St Petersburg Times for direct linking):

http://www.sptimes.com/News/091501/Worldandnatio n/ FBI_looks_for_terror_.shtml

It demonstrates that Sollog and his followers made the prediction 9/11 accurately. Look up the Usenet posts in google too.

Re:Sollog?

[Poltras]

I will attempt to give you some hint and ressources to understand the topic :) Hope it will be enough (note that I don't care to be moded down as troll by TOH followers).

Read the Wikipedia article as well as its history for a start.

Then what may interest you is that WikiPediA Sucks is run by himself (as said in article), but also that most of the proofs that is said against wikipedia comes from a single source, that is, Adoni Corporation.

you shall note too, that The E undergroud, which sells "SEX and DEATH video" (cited from the website), is also owned by the same company, as said here and here, with sollog.com proof here. THIS IS THE SAME CORPORATION, if you read whois carefully. So he accuses a guy of being associated with BOMIS (which is true or false, i dunno, whatever) and is HIMSELF SELLING porn and death videos over the net. That kills all credibility he might have before.

This is just the peak of the iceberg, though, but I'm too lazy to write much more, but it gives you a general picture of the guy (actually, I'm against him, so maybe some member of TOH would want to reply, and I'll appreciate the opened discussion with him/her).

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not Found
The requested object does not exist on this server. The link you followed is either outdated, inaccurate, or the server has been instructed not to let you have it."

Also, just looking at the tag, the date is 091501. I'm assuming that there's more in the content that I can't get to?

Re:Sollog?

[spleck]

Why wasn't there a link to Sollog's websites in the original post? Afraid of the /. effect?

Re:Sollog?

[rjelks]

From what I've heard, there are no members of the TOH...it's all this Sollog guy.

Re:Sollog?

[Gamaliel]

The "author" of most (all?) of the "news" on the 247news site, David Alexander, is Sollog himself. No doubt all of you are shocked and surprised by this news. Here's one reporter's amusing tale of dealing with Sollog and Alexander: http://www.citypaper.net/articles/022102/sl.howcol .shtml

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I hope he sees this and starts posting..

Re:Sollog?

[snooo53]

He's a troll who succeeded in getting a entire slashdot story about him

And that is exactly what the wikipedia article should say IMO.

Re:Sollog?

[halfelven]

Ever heard of "don't feed the troll"? ;-)

Re:Sollog?

[danila]

As you may have noted, he now links to one of these sites from wikipediasucks using "SOLLOG SAYS SLASHDOT.ORG RULES" text for the link. :) Clever troll.

Re:Sollog?

[swmccracken]

Yeah, Jimbo's associated with Bomis, that's true.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomis.

Re:Sollog?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you lack some type of insight that most people do possess.

Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Skyshadow]

An edit war on Wikipedia, you say? Full of frothing ranting and biased opinions and juvenile behavior? My God, who could have forseen such a thing!

There was a once upon a time when I figured that Wikipedia could work, become a sort of collection of the intelligence and expertise of the masses on the internet. I've run across enough blatent inacurracies over the last year or so, however, that I can't look at it as anything but a basic starting place for research now. Two main problems as I see it (this is hardly new revelation):

(1) Everyone's viewpoint tends to get reflected, even it's just plain wrong. For instance, look at the entry on the Children's Crusade of 1212 -- it presents three versions of what happened, but only one (the last one) is "right", meaning that it's the version backed by modern research. The ability to site sources or research or present an authoratative case is outclassed by the ability to have the time on one's hands to hit the "edit" button a lot.
(2) Not all articles get many eyeballs. The Wiki tends to work best when there are a lot of people looking at the article, so little-travelled articles can have downright bizarre inaccuracies. They fall victim to either misunderstanding, bad source information or the maliciousness of those few anti-social morons who think wrecking the Wiki makes them cool.

While this is an interesting model of the internet at large, it's not a good thing in terms of being a useful resource.

Just as Linux and other open source projects aren't really "open" in terms of accepting everything anyone throws at them, so must Wikipedia find a way to become more selective in what it accepts. The Wiki itself is such a good idea that there's just got to be a way to make it work, but frankly I can't work out a paradigm that will save it from the issues it has now.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like wikipedia. Not for the important things but the fun triva things like warp speed (how much is warp 3? ), stardate, chewabaca defense etc. I find them very accuarate

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Zocalo]

An edit war on Wikipedia, you say? Full of frothing ranting and biased opinions and juvenile behavior? My God, who could have forseen such a thing!

Apparently not "Sollog", which kind of lends credence to his detractor's arguments that he can't predict jack, does it not?

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Rotund Prickpull]

I've run across enough blatent inacurracies

So have I, mainly in you're speling.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've run across enough blatent inacurracies

Hey. Science boy, that's BLATANT. B-L-A-T-A-N-T. OK?

Where were we? Oh, wait, you were just telling everyone how smart you are...

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[letdinosaursdie]

Bias and innaccuracy reflected clearly in arguments on the talk page still beat bias on behalf of a corporation, because it is clearly visible to anyone with interest. Some pages may be victims of controversy, but the vast majority presend the most coherent and well balanced information available on the Internet. So long as individuals are aware that Wikipedia is a work in progress, they can avoid the pitfalls of collaboration. Bias isn't the problem... invisible bias is.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[gowen]

it presents three versions of what happened, but only one (the last one) is "right",

I think its pretty clear that the final version is the one with the most modern evidence. (It's still dubious that it's "right" in any meaningful.) And there is still doubt over the children's crusade, despite your contention that its basically a settled issue that it never happened.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Kallahar]

Perhaps something akin to tying Wiki to Snopes. Even if people post bunk information, also post the cites to substantiated info. It would also help quell urban legends.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Perl-Pusher]

S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[a whoabot]

Look at it like this.

It's released under the GPL, and all revision are stored. There is correct information on Wikipeida, and lots of it.

In the future, someone could easily compile all of it, do quality assurance and fact checking, choose the best revisions, etc. and then release that with their name behind it with the tag "as correct as any other encyclopedia, but with a whole lot more."

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Moderatbastard]

Just as Linux and other open source projects aren't really "open" in terms of accepting everything anyone throws at them, so must Wikipedia find a way to become more selective in what it accepts. The Wiki itself is such a good idea that there's just got to be a way to make it work, but frankly I can't work out a paradigm that will save it from the issues it has now.

You could have a system where there's the substantive body of the text, and a separate section for comments, proposed amendments etc. People could even suggest amendments to the amendments and comment on the comments. Of course you'd need some way to choose which comments & amendments get incorporated into the main text; and this is the really innovative part (maybe I should patent it) so listen up - readers could give points to the comments that are good or take them away from those that are whack. Even better - maybe if people make 'good' comments, they should get more points to give to (or take from) other comments as they see fit.

Nah, it would never work.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

but frankly I can't work out a paradigm that will save it from the issues it has now.

Just display the edits between the last version blessed by some group (like the kernel maintainers for linux) on the 'current' page. Then people get to see that the changes that haven't been vetted yet

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Rotund Prickpull]

1) (ROFLMAO) you missed that it's also Y-O-U-R.
2) whoooooosh!
3) Are you a German, by any chance?

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[generic-man]

If you stop listening to someone when they misspell a word, what are you doing on Slashdot? You should have tuned out years ago.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[a whoabot]

To add.

There could be like two sites. Wikipedia as it is now, is like a Beta, and then you have the assured Release version. When articles are deemed to be correct and of acceptable quality they can be thrown into the Release version, which is not editable.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[CFTM]

I never felt that Wikipedia was meant to be used more as a starting point for information. I think that's exactly why it's such a wonderful resource. It gives me the opportunity to have access to a bunch of different perspectives on a topic, some of which may be wrong, and then have a starting point for my own research and knowledge. If, for instance, I was writing a paper on how Kirkegaard (Sorry I was a philosophy major) along with World War I and World War II, layed the foundation for existentialism. I'd use Wikipedia to learn more about Kirkegaard's life and his work and to find various perspectives on what he was about but I would not use it as even a secondary source. It'd merely be a starting point, in the end I'd want to go to peer-reviewed articles and the work of Kirkegaard and existentialists to make that connection.

Wikipedia just wasn't meant to be one-stop shopping, it's designed to show you some paths and let you run down them. And I think that's really good because what is the modern research behind the Children's Crusade of 1212 is wrong and one of the alternative perspectives is right (No I'm not suggesting this, I'm just presenting a hypothetical situation) then wikipedia would be promoting people to persue other potential avenues of truth.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[happyemoticon]

Hey. Science boy, that's BLATANT. B-L-A-T-A-N-T. OK?

Awkward use of the vocative. Should be, "Hey, science boy . . ."

OK is not a word; should be "okay."

Oh, wait, you were just telling everyone how smart you are...

Need a semicolon (;) after "wait." "Oh, wait" is more of an imperative than a preposition.

Improper style: ellipses should be . . .

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Randolpho]

Edit war off -- they've locked the main page and created a Talk:Sollog section.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[silicon-pyro]

What wikipedia needs is to implement /. style moderation! Then every point of view will be represented fairly! Ni!

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[abertoll]

" An edit war on Wikipedia, you say? Full of frothing ranting and biased opinions and juvenile behavior? My God, who could have forseen such a thing!"

Sollog

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[rednip]

For instance, look at the entry on the Children's Crusade of 1212 -- it presents three versions of what happened, but only one (the last one) is "right", meaning that it's the version backed by modern research.

Thanks for the interesting read. I have heard of it, but had no idea of the rich legends and the possible historical reality. Wikipedia aims at giving complete and neutral explanations, and I believe that in this case (as many others) they have achieved it. If you had final editorial control, what you have have printed, perhaps something like...The Children's crusade was a blantent misrepresentation of the facts! and list the Theory about the wandering paupers being the children. However much you disrespect a legend told for nearly a thousand years, it still needs to be recalled or else readers not familiar with the story would be confused upon seeing other references.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

What wikipedia needs is to implement /. style moderation! Then every point of view will be represented fairly! Ni!

lol :) wish I had mod points

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Deadstick]

(1) Everyone's viewpoint tends to get reflected, even it's just plain wrong. For instance, look at the entry on the Children's Crusade of 1212 [wikipedia.org] -- it presents three versions of what happened, but only one (the last one) is "right", meaning that it's the version backed by modern research.

I'm gonna have to call "missing the point" on that one. I'd say the text quite clearly favors the third version, and gives it the last word. You can't very well debunk without telling what you're debunking...

rj

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

OK is not a word

English can be a tricky language, but keep trying and eventually you'll get the hang of it, OK?

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

'O.K.' begat 'OK', 'OK' begat 'okay'...

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Azghoul]

One wonders why you'd ever expect Wikipedia to be an "end point" to research rather than a beginning... or who claimed Wikipedia would ever be such a thing.

For what it is - A starting point to research - it's an incredible tool.

Anyone who uses the 'net, hits one source and stops, believing it to be absolute truth, is a fool (see Pierre Salinger).

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[igrp]

In the future, someone could easily compile all of it, do quality assurance and fact checking, choose the best revisions, etc. and then release that with their name behind it with the tag "as correct as any other encyclopedia, but with a whole lot more."

Yes, in theory that's possible. But you would need to have a lot of people with expertise in a lot of fields to do that. I guess a big company could that do.

The problem here is that doing so is "economically expensive".

Let me explain what I mean by that: yes, it's expensive to actually employ people to do your fact checking, at least if you hire people who know what they're doing.

That's not what I'm getting at though. There are two factors:

• Your whole business model is based on your reputation. A few bad apples will kill your business unless you're one of the big guys. That makes it economically expensive. You screw up just a few times and nobody will pay for your content. And since your providing an online service and not selling volumes of a real world paper encyclopedia, people will just take their business elsewhere or use one of the free alternatives.
• Wikipedia is awesome if your looking for a definition or a quick explanation. In the pre-Wikipedia days, when you came across some term or concept that you weren't familiar with you had basically two options: a) write it down and look it up later, or b) forget about it.

  These days, you can just check Wikipedia and chances are you'll find some information. And that's really the beauty of it. Stuff that most people would have ignored is right there, at your fingertips. Hell, you can load the Wikipedia bookmarklet into Firefox (ie. the search dialog in the upper right corner) and you literally have millions of pages of encyclopedia information at your fingertips.

  Sadly, Wikipedia sucks for doing scientific research though. Yes, you cannot cite any encyclopedia in a scientific paper anyway. But commercial encyclopedias usually reference sources that you can cite. And those are the sources your professor will expect to see in your footnotes.

Wikipedia won't be able to compete with commercial encyclopedias anytime soon. And, personally, I don't think that's something we should even attempt to do. Wikipedia is fine as it is. If I want details about nuclear physics, I'll read a book or ask someone who knows about that sort of thing.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sex: Never had any.
Talking to a woman: Only with a credit card in hand.
Loneliness: Refined this art in your Mom's basement.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Skyshadow]

History (as it pertains to historical events) is the search for fact. Not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.

I agree with you that the historical phenomenon of the misunderstanding surrounding the Children's Crusade is interesting. Indeed, especially since it's most likely a misunderstanding rather than a purposeful misrepresentation, it's a useful tool for understanding the mindsets of the people who originally wrote about it.

Historical events are things that happened, however. At a given time and in a given place, a given thing occurred -- you can draw various conclusions the why and how, but those discussions must be fundementally rooted in the "what", and the *what* requires facts and research. In this case, the research is compelling: I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty what happened in 1212, and I can also tell you who originally misunderstood it. Why or how they ended up misreporting the event is that bit that's open to debate.

Disproving a legend or a commonly-held belief should not be viewed as "disrespect" -- that path leads only to ignorance.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[olevy]

I just read the Childrens Crusade article, and I think it is great!

Here is how it starts:

The Children's Crusade (1212) is the name given to a possibly fictional and curious attempt to 'free' the Holy Land inspired by the 12-year old French boy Stephen de Cloyes. Several conflicting accounts of this event exist, and the facts of the situation continue to be a subject of debate among historians

If that is not a clear enough warning, I don't know what is. The text made it clear to me anyways that the first stories are very likely to be just a legend. Ironically, the beauty of a wikipedia is that anytime you point out a flaw saying, "see it doesn't work!", will just mean that particular flaw is quickly fixed.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Tofino]

F-U-N-N-A-Y

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Auraveda]

That's a very good idea.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[gtkuhn]

I keep reloading the ever-changingwiki page as I'm reading this. A few minutes ago all it said was "Sollog eats his nuts. And likes it." Now it has an actual article. Can't wait to see what's next.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[PriceIke]

I agree. That's Wiki's strength .. mountains and mountains of information you wouldn't otherwise have a source for. If the "information" you're looking for is not particularly important, Wikipedia can be highly amusing and informative.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Chilltowner]

Worth noting, if you read the Children's Crusade article, it does seem reasonably clear that the final version is the more accepted version and does provide arguments and evidence supporting the correct interpretation.

Frankly, no disrespect to the parent poster, I get a little annoyed when people site inaccuracies on non-controversial Wikipedia topics as evidence of its inherent failure. The whole point of Wikis is to make the change once you see an error and back it up with links and other evidence! No sense complaining about it if you do go ahead and make the change!

For controversial entries, though, like the Sollog article, there is a definitely a problem. I just don't think it renders Wikipedia useless. With regard to the comparison to open source, check this recent article on Linux bugs vs. commercial software.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[happyemoticon]

You're right, dictionary.com has a pretty interesting excerpt on that. Hmm. I guess I've never used it in a professional context. My bad.

He was still being a troll though:)

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Have Blue]

Wikipedia could [...] become a sort of collection of the intelligence and expertise of the masses on the internet.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Angst Badger]

I've run across enough blatent inacurracies over the last year or so, however, that I can't look at it as anything but a basic starting place for research now.

This is pretty much true for any encyclopedia if you're writing for anything other than a high school class.

The ability to site sources or research or present an authoratative case is...

...greatly bolstered by knowing the difference between "site" and "cite", and being able to spell "authoritative" correctly.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as the not true open sourceness o flinux you are wrong. There is strict administration of the code that goes in a project but the open souce gives you the ability to fork and project and add your patches even if the devel. team does not agree with you.
You are however, right that wikipedia is of a dire need of some stricter administration. It is a great dream that people would be wise enough not to garbage but it still remains just a dream.

Oh yeah and this guy Sollog or whever he calls himself is of need of some profesional help so if any doctor need probono cases here is your chance...

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[jshaft]

Excellent idea. Something along the lines of Debian's stable, testing, unstable. Does kind of defeat the purpose of wikipedia though.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is absolutely wrong idea.
I understand that accuracy of the information suffer with this system, however, it at least allows every side to be heard, while non-editable version will have information deemed right by someone. Obviously, if this is historical information, someone will winner of the war.

To avoid such thing we need system were everyone is allowed to edit.

However, adding strict rules would improve process.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[justins]

The whole point of Wikis is to make the change once you see an error and back it up with links and other evidence!

And wait until someone else comes around and fucks the article up again.

For controversial entries, though, like the Sollog article, there is a definitely a problem.

Anything remotely interesting is controversial to someone.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

1) LOGOMGROXXORWOOTLOLOLOLLOLOLOL
2) BAM!
3) Are you an Eskimo, by any chance?

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[julesh]

My understanding is that this in fact a planned feature of wikipedia for the near future; it is intended to get around the "inability to cite" problem by allowing people to reference an article in, say, "Wikipedia 1.0", which will be available with prominent links, whereas general visitors to the site will see "Wikipedia Current" unless they request otherwise.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[rednip]

In this case, the research is compelling: I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty what happened in 1212, and I can also tell you who originally misunderstood it.

Well then edit the page with your information. Unfortunately, I fear that you'll stray just far enough from the NPOV (while insisting that you're not) to start an edit war. In your top level reply, you said...

Everyone's viewpoint tends to get reflected, even it's just plain wrong. For instance, look at the entry on the Children's Crusade of 1212 [wikipedia.org] -- it presents three versions of what happened, but only one (the last one) is "right", meaning that it's the version backed by modern research.

You seem to insist that the other POVs shouldn't be included at all. Legend apparently has no place in your wikipedia.

Disproving a legend or a commonly-held belief should not be viewed as "disrespect" -- that path leads only to ignorance.

Very, Very True. But I believe that you must know the history in order to properly learn from it. The complete history includes legend (BTW, that is what I believe I was stating in my first reply; JFTR I did not state anything saying disproving a legend was bad). It's not just about the fact in the Children's Crusade, but the lesson about how far from the truth a story can go, and where it might lead. Even then, what apperently is the truth, may not be, facts from one era sometimes become fiction in another era. Besides, some people are more interested in what they can learn from history, than a perfect understanding of it. For example I am fairly certain that there is not a god named Zeus, but I am still willing to read stories about his exploits.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[MilenCent]

That's essentially the model that h2g2 uses, it has a vast "unedited" Guide that's quirky and idiosyncratic and funny and sometimes untrustworthy, and an "edited" guide that contains articles that have been looked over by staff and been approved. Articles are plainly marked by whether they're in the Edited or Unedited sections.

For this to work in Wikipedia, they'd probably have to introduce a flag that will identify a page as Edited. Searches would probably have to turn up Edited first, or prominently in some way, maybe with a little icon by their titles. Anyone would be able to modify an Edited page, but the result would be an unedited version of that page. Each pages' last approval would be the "official" one for that page.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

"There could be like two sites. Wikipedia as it is now, is like a Beta, and then you have the assured Release version. When articles are deemed to be correct and of acceptable quality they can be thrown into the Release version, which is not editable."

And several hundred unofficial versions, which are scraped from wikipedia at intervals, with varying degrees of out-of-dateness

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[discHead]

So the issue is whether people can link to a fixed revision of a Wikipedia article? Seems already possible to me.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[stdarg]

" never felt that Wikipedia was meant to be used more as a starting point for information. I think that's exactly why it's such a wonderful resource. "

Exactly. I'm sure everyone has had the experience of doing a random web search on a topic of interest and finding absolutely nothing. At least with Wikipedia you're guaranteed a few facts and leads if nothing else, and quite often a pretty good article.

Anyway, when people talk about how useless Wikipedia is in terms of how "citable" it is when writing a college paper or something... how many serious papers cite Britannica as a source? I mean, that's what encyclopedias are for...good starting points for reading more about something you know absolutely nothing or very little about.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Chilltowner]

"And wait until someone else comes around and fucks the article up again."

True, if everything was tit-for-tat. On the whole, though, I've seen articles tend toward greater accuracy or, at least, present a set of views with corresponding evidence that allows the reader to make up their own mind, as in the case of the Children's Crusade.

"Anything remotely interesting is controversial to someone."

There are degrees of controversy. One case is more like the Children's Crusade article, which essentially resolves itself by inclusion of more evidence. This is more aligned to the wabisabi principles of Wikis. Another case, however, is more heated and more destructive, where editors find themselves unable to accept another's point for view (rightly or wrongly,) like in the Sollog article. It's this latter case that is the real cause for concern. It's more like the burning of the Great Library than academic disagreement.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

He did correctly predict that it was an efficent way for him to get his name out there did he not?

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

The less disputed a topic, the better the quality. Articles on science, tech (sic), and geography are pretty acurate, while controversial stuff (like the mentioned cruisade) has the many-opinions problem. Basically, it's a good get-a-clue place.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Solog]

I predict a new Zocalo hate site in the near future....muhaaaamuhaaaaamuhaaaaa!

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[JChris]

... I can't look at it as anything but a basic starting place for research now ...

It seems to me that this is exactly how one should view any encyclopedia.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[giantsfan89]

and then you could name the revisions after Toy Story characters!!

(laugh. it's funny)

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[femto]

That was the idea of Nupedia. To quote wikipedia (oh the irony! ;-)

As Nupedia dwindled into inactivity, the idea of converting it into a stable version of approved Wikipedia articles was occasionally broached, but never implemented. The Nupedia website shut down on September 26, 2003, and much of Nupedia's content has since been assimilated into Wikipedia.

So far (given a sample size of one), it seems that the information tends to flow the other way.

Perhaps it comes down to a question of "What is truth?" In my experience, Wikipedia is okay but has its flaws. At least wikipedia's flaws are open. It's worth noting that 'reliable' sources aren't always correct either. To detect errors in a 'reliable' source one has to consult multiple other 'reliable' sources. Rather than looking at wikipedia as a single source, perhaps view it as an amalgamation of sources. Uncertainty or inconsistency in wikipedia often seems to be accompanied by uncertainty or controversy among the 'reliable' sources (of which each is internally consistent).

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Mr. Slippery]

'O.K.' begat 'OK', 'OK' begat 'okay'...

And somewhere along the line it was "okey". I just finished re-reading Chandler's The Big Sleep, and everybody keeps saying "okey" (and not following it up with "dokey"). That's the only place I've seen it, though.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap!

There goes my entire senior thesis down the bit bucket.

Now I guess I'll have to spend days at the library copying Encyclopedia Britannica.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Trogre]

Yeah, we could do it Debian-style!

We could have Wikipedia/stable and the current version as Wikipedia/testing.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[benzapp]

Just as Linux and other open source projects aren't really "open" in terms of accepting everything anyone throws at them, so must Wikipedia find a way to become more selective in what it accepts. The Wiki itself is such a good idea that there's just got to be a way to make it work, but frankly I can't work out a paradigm that will save it from the issues it has now.

So you have chosen Sparta over Athens as your model of choice.

We should selectively breed certain individuals to perform the functions of Wikipedia Researchers.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean "your" and "spelling", mkay? - and "blatant" for the parent post.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[westlake]

Bias and innaccuracy reflected clearly in arguments on the talk page still beat bias on behalf of a corporation, because it is clearly visible to anyone with interest.

This assumes the talk page attracts readers with greater knowledge and detachment. The self-selected contributors to a Wiki form a corporation of their own and there is no reason to assume they are free of institutional biases.

Some pages may be victims of controversy, but the vast majority presend the most coherent and well balanced information available on the Internet.

Whenever I read a sweeping generalization like this, my first instinct is to demand proof.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[jayloden]

Maybe it's only me, but I'm pretty sure that Wikipedia is a collaborative project with goals more along the lines of "Hey Joe, what's a blog" "I dont know Frank, let's find out" type of research.

It's not, to my mind, really intended to be a legitimate source for academic research, because that's just absurd. Give credit where it is due, that this is a really neat project with lots of interesting information, some of which has more value purely as social commentary than as actual fact. You're absolutely right that it's not a useful resource for scholastic, but I think you're wrong in thinking that it was ever truly intended to 'replace' factual scientific secondary or primary research.

-Jay

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the inaccuracies in "official" sources can be just as bad. In fact offical sources can be worse because we know enough to be cautious with wikipedia information but often take "doctors" and such for granted. Not only are official sources fallible, they can also be influenced by any monetary systems supporting the research (just look at UN versus US on climate change).

I think it is a testament to the STRENGTH of wikipedia that even a serious kook, or a contentious article, can still converge to something generally accurate.

Note also that many official sources are still not aware of wikipedia -- once it becomes mainstream we can expect foremost experts will make sure to review their domain on wikipedia.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[fbform]

Just an addendum: *some* of the articles on more serious topics are fairly informative too. A good rule of thumb is that if an article is in the featured articles list, it is usually worth reading.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at that Children's Crusade article, it's clear that if you were researching it (perhaps to write a report), you would need to know all three stories. What if the article just said

"The Children's Crusade is a myth. It never happened."

Do you want that? I think it's better to have more information than less. Wikipedia isn't definative, but it's a good place to start.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[DunbarTheInept]

The problem is that that leads to the concept that objective reality doesn't exist - facts are a democratic subjective thing - if more people believe it then it's more true.

And of course, that's bullcrap.

And that's what's wrong with using Wikipedia as anything more than a feeler for what other people think. It's useful as a survey of public opinion, but not as a storehouse of facts.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[DunbarTheInept]

The problems with Christianity and D&D are essentially the same: too many people RTFM, but don't comprehend it.

Actually, the problem with both of them is the ones who *do* read it, and try to treat every rule literally even though they contradict.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[bbc]

Having some form of quality control has been tried. Nupedia was actually a predecessor of Wikipedia, and the last one to leave it turned the light out. The problem as they described it was that they weren't getting enough contributions, but I think they had a much bigger problem; their articles were easily worse than the corresponding entries in Wikipedia.

At one point, information from the Nupedia article on the BASIC programming language got merged on Wikipedia with the local entry. Within weeks the Wikipedia article had become bigger, better and badder. For the same thing to have happened to the Nupedia article, the whole review process would have had to be started up again.

There are indeed problems with Wikipedia if you wish to see the thing as an impartial ressource. One that has been mentioned is that some subjects get less attention than others. Another that has been mentioned is that if an urban legend has ten believers and one debunker, the believers have a louder voice than the debunker. A further problem is that it is easy to write down what you believe to be true in the hope that some fact-checker will come along to prove you wrong; this leads to sloppy editing.

However, these problems need to be attacked one by one and on their own merits. Installing an authority, whose verdict can be trusted, invites much bigger problems; authorities' verdicts cannot be trusted. The reason we have authorities, is because we can trace and verify the process that lead to their verdicts. However, people tend to trust authorities no matter what, which leads to sloppy encyclopaedias.

Wikipedia is a third tier source. It condenses reports on observations. No third tier source, including all other encyclopaedias, should ever be trusted.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

brilliant

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[danila]

Especially since you can't ignore the myth when writing an article about the myth. That would be the same as writing an artice about The Twelve Labors of Heracles by saying "according to modern science, there was no Heracles" and all his "labors" are a physical impossibility. :)

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[bbc]

"And of course, that's bullcrap."

Ah, and the belief in the theory of objective reality is not? Sure...

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Binary Boy]

Thank you, Dr. Jones.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

Three sites. Wackopedia for the nutcases.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[waynemcdougall]

Yeah I made a 50 page submission to h2g2 all about /.

But after it had been looked over by staff all the
article said was:

Harmless.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[tverbeek]

Have you checked it lately?

Mostly harmless.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Froboz23]

The solution for wikipedia is to make it more like perlmonks.com. On perlmonks, and similar experienced-based sites, you need to gain experience points to get advandced powers. So, in wikipedia's case, a noob could submit an edit request, but it would have to be validated by a more experienced user. Once the noob has a few validated edits to his name, he no longer needs to have his edits verfied or moderated. If it takes an investment of a couple hours of work to get a validated account, the odds of that account being used for abuse goes down considerablly, and respawning vandal accounts like what Trollog used would be useless, because the edit requests would be ignored.

The fundamental problem with wikipedia is that it allows a person to alter an article with a brand new account. This begs for abuse, and wikipedia will have trouble until this is changed.

As for this Trollog character, the best thing to do with him is completely ignore him. If the wikipedia article offends him so much, the wikipedia folks should just delete it, and all references to Trollog. That's the worst punishment for this attention-starved goof.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[DunbarTheInept]

Ah, and the belief in the theory of objective reality is not?

If you believe I exist and am not a figment of your imagination, then there exists an objective reality. There is no inbetween state dividing solipsism and objective reality. As soon as you admit that your perception about the world is not guaranteed to be correct, then that means there MUST exist an objective reality. If yesterday you believed the moon was made of cheese and today you believe it is made of rocks, then in a 100% subjective reality, that would mean that yesterday the moon really was made of cheese and it suddenly changed to rock when your opinion of it changed it into rock - at no time before or after your change of mind were you ever incorrect.

Saying there is no objective reality is synonymous with solipsism, in which case why are you bothering to post to a forum read only by what you believe to be figments of your imagination?

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[julesh]

Not linking. Citing in offline sources. It's too difficult for most users with the current process, first you have to find a version of the page that seems authoritative (thus introducing your own bias into the selection process), then quote it with its version ID; they want to make a collection of vetted pages that would be suitable as a base to make citations from, and which anyone can easily access by clicking a big "citable version" link near the top of the page.

It's a use of the already existing features of wikis in general, yes, but a desirable one.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[The Grassy Knoll]

This is pretty much true for any encyclopedia if you're writing for anything other than a high school class

Yeah, but I removed the reference to a "Mexican Staring Frog" from the "Southern Sri Lanka" Wikipedia page, so I guess errors can creep into the Wikipedia if they're on obscure enough pages!

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Rotund Prickpull]

Wel, at laest soembody got it. Puting only too speling erorrs is obvioslie to suptle.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[edittard]

Even better - maybe if people make 'good' comments, they should get more points to give to (or take from) other comments as they see fit. Nah, it would never work.

You're right, it would never work.

Actually what would happen is that the owners/editors of the site would decide that their opinion is more worthy that anyone and everyone else's. They might (pulls an idea out of the air) give themselves the power to award a very large number of rating points or something - they could then practically outvote the world. They might even come up with an automated way to distribute said points.

But now we're getting into fantasy - that would never ever work, even downhill with a following wind.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

My god! Space 1999 not important! You don't say!

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't disagree more with the criticism of Wikipedia leveled by Skyshadow (508) above.

How jaded and cynical you seem.

I stumbled on Wikipedia the other day and was astonished at how good it is - both in breadth and quality.

Bias? You will see some bias in the NYTimes or on Fox News. So what.

After using Wikipedia for a day or so I began to think *THIS* is what the web should be all about!

Wikipedia is one of the few really good things I have stumbled onto in recent years.

I found the quality of the matirel on Wikipedia outrageously good give the openness of the model.

Re:Wow, an edit war on Wiki. Be still my heart.

[WhiteDragon]

Still, it would be cool if someone like google or the government (yeah, yeah, I know) or even (gasp) the Gates Foundation gave a huge grant to Wikimedia to pay several full time wikipedia editors, to spend all day just hitting the random article button, and fixing any mistakes in it. They wouldn't have to have too many people, and they would probably not need special status. Just their existence would be a statistically significant push in the direction of accuracy. I do think that having a static version of pages, and a wiki version would be a good idea as well though.

Okay..

[brilinux]

Ten bucks says that in the next 10 minutes, it is modified about 1200 more times.

Re:Okay..

[slavemowgli]

I'll bet against you.

Re:Okay..

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been locked for the time being. You win.

Re:Okay..

[kuwan]

This is what it said when I clicked on it:

Sollog is stuck in a failed marriage with a marmot

After a refresh though it appears to be the normal article.

Re:Okay..

[slavemowgli]

Yup. Now, where's my ten bucks? ^^

Re:Okay..

[mzwaterski]

Ten bucks says that in the next 10 minutes, it is modified about 1200 more times.

You can send my ten bucks by check, cash, or money order...the article has been locked due to vandalism.

Re:Okay..

[Angostura]

same here. Made me splutter tea.

Re:Okay..

[brilinux]

Now, where's my ten bucks?

We never shook on it.

Re:Okay..

[slavemowgli]

Damn. :)

Re:Okay..

[carpe_noctem]

The article is locked. Perhaps you'd like to join Mr. Sollog in predicting the [next] end of the world event?

Acid test

[Anonymous Coward]

An offer for Solog: join me and let's invest in stocks. We'll split the gains or losses as the case may be. Is he ready to put his money where his mouth is? Doubt it.

Wikipedia doing its job...

[qw0ntum]

This actually really great considering that this is one of the few instances of someone abusing Wikipedia. It says a lot for the whole Wikipedia idea that within such a short time frame the whole abuse problem started to be fixed.

Re:Wikipedia doing its job...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a wacky libertarian could construe this as supporting their Laissez-Faire model of everything. The whole point is that the model is completely unable to deal with this kind of thing. Wikipedia has no mnechanism to say that one editor is better than another. You can't just use a rating system either because then you just have a class of editors that write articles that suit the particular whims of the people with points to award (karma whores anyone?). The model is broken. Laissez-Faire anything doesn't work. Get over it. Move along.

I predict...

[rackhamh]

... that the top-rated comment in this thread will be +5, funny.

Re:I predict...

[Freon115]

unless Sollog himself graces us with a +6 insightful

Re:I predict...

[nadadogg]

Nah, man, his goes up to 11!

Re:I predict...

[Eccles]

Fortunately, you see me now, a veteran
Of a thousand psychic wars.

Re:I predict...

[sconeu]

+1 Heavy Metal reference
+1 *ONLY* BOC reference I could find here

Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[kmmatthews]

I'm thinking this motherfucker bit off more than he can chew with this one.

http://www.wikipediasucks.com/ probably qualifies as libel. Anyone want to set up a donation fund to take him out? (If Mr. Wales is interested in filing suit, that is. Unlikely, but we can hope?)

Beyond that:

TOH c/o AIS
Domain Register (dnr@theasi.net)
+1.3863165425
Fax: +1.5555555555
4613 University Dr Number 311
Coral Springs, ST 33067
US

Wanna slashdot his phone?

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Sollog]

I'm thinking this motherfucker bit off more than he can chew with this one.

You talking to me bitch? I predict my foot up yo' ass.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[blogtim]

Is that picture of Jimbo and the gals real? What do the t-shirts say?

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[m0rph3us0]

The problem with libel laws is that it is not libel if you aren't lying. Saying that something sucks is an opinion.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[stupidfoo]

nice try, you just made that account

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[kmmatthews]

Not the existence of the site, the comments on the site. :)

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[jcostantino]

I used to live near that area, from the suite number it sounds like it's a business address because it's mostly single family homes in that area with mixed commercial.

It is a pretty decent (upper middle class) part of town about 30 minutes south of Boca Raton.

Google shows a UPS store in the same address (different suite, obviously) so it's a business address. Anyone feel like driving there? I'm quite a ways further down the road now.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[secretsquirel]

Am I ever gonna bang ms. september? Miss Cleo said I would last week but I think the bitch lied to me.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[slavemowgli]

Maybe we could make and distribute a "make love not sollog" screensaver that DDOSes that site. ^_~

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[StalinsNotDead]

The parent shouldn't be modded offtopic. The poster has the same name as the prognosticator of which the article speaks. Therefore his prediction combined with the name make the comment at least on topic.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[blogtim]

Steven Pressman has a great piece on libel laws in the United States.

For the United States, the laws that control libel and slander first began to take shape even before the colonies gained their independence from Britain. One of the most famous American cases involved New York publisher John Peter Zenger, who was imprisoned in 1734 for printing political attacks against the colonial governor of New York. Zenger's lawyer established a legal precedent by arguing successfully that truth is an absolute defense in libel cases. Up until then, it had never mattered much whether the allegedly libelous statements about someone were true or false. Since the Zenger case, however, someone can sue successfully for libel only if the defamatory information is proven to be false. [emphasis mine]

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[kmmatthews]

Not me..

Although it does make me suspicious that Sollog submitted this story - how else would he know exactly when to create the account to troll in the comments? Of course, it's entirely possible it's another troll...

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Captain Nitpick]

Is that picture of Jimbo and the gals real? What do the t-shirts say?

It's the Bomis.com logo. I think the boat is the same one as in the photo on Jimbo's site, but with that U-shaped piece moved downward.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[cornjones]

He has a lower UID than you, I would guess that he didn't "just make that account"

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[stupidfoo]

He has a lower UID than you, I would guess that he didn't "just make that account"

Really?
Sollog (840257)
stupidfoo (836212)

And I did just make this account fairly recently (my karma was shot on my old account due to one post (a funny yet very offensive post that kept getting modded funny and troll/overrated) and slashdot's crap karma system deep sixed me)

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Big_Al_B]

Odd, I've always thought 840,000 was higher than 836,000.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[mzwaterski]

I think he might have been referring to the comments about Jim Wales being a self-admitted pornographer etc...

I did like how all of the "articles" linked to either wikipediasucks.com templeofhayah.com or 247news.net. The first two sites are Sollog sites and I'm guessing the last is either Sollog site or rather disreputable site.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[dubl-u]

http://www.wikipediasucks.com/ probably qualifies as libel. Anyone want to set up a donation fund to take him out? (If Mr. Wales is interested in filing suit, that is. Unlikely, but we can hope?)

I don't know that it's libel, but it's certainly a vile piece of work. It certainly seems like Sollog has too much time on his hands; perhaps a lawsuit would help to better occupy his time. I'm in for a few hundred bucks.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, I'd say the rlandmann who submitted this story is the same as the Rlandmann who's an editor on Wikipedia and kept S0ll0g in check over there.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Anonymous Coward]

Wanna slashdot his phone?

Why do you even care about this shit? Your a tard if you let an anti-meme about this kook infect your head...

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[aggieben]

Even more interesting (because it has a name, not just TOH or AIS):

Registrant:
AIS
4613 University Dr Number 311
Coral Springs, Florida 33067
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: JESUSISNOTGOD.COM
Created on: 09-Apr-03
Expires on: 09-Apr-05
Last Updated on: 09-Apr-04

Administrative Contact:
Ensley, N dnr@theasi.net
AIS
4613 University Dr Number 311
Coral Springs, Florida 33067
United States
3863165425 Fax --
Technical Contact:
Ensley, N dnr@theasi.net
AIS
4613 University Dr Number 311
Coral Springs, Florida 33067
United States
3863165425 Fax --

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Ilgaz]

looks like guy an his followers dos'ed their own brains long before.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[abertoll]

yes, the last one is his site AND a disreputable site (redundant?)

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Lehk228]

pretty pathetic how he made several fake sites to carry his articles.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[the_pooh_experience]

No... you have it right. THis address is a UPS store, and the "suite" is simply his PO box (or UPS equivalent). Drive there all you like. The guy behind the counter would love it if you buy a box...

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[l4m3z0r]

The problem with libel laws is that it is not libel if you aren't lying.

No thats whats good about libel laws. This stemmed from the fact that in the 1770's in england libel was still libel even if what was said was true. So if you were a nanny and you molested children and I told your clients that you molested children and they fired you, you could claim libel against me and that was acceptable to the court I'd be paying you for lost wages even though you had no right to there services.

The founding fathers realized however that this is crap, newspapers and citizens need to be able to report the truth no matter how damaging it is to public figures.

If you want, go back to a society where you are afraid to speak the truth about public figures for fear of getting sued. I sure as hell won't.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[prockcore]

Saying that something sucks is an opinion.

On that site, he claims that the creator of wikipedia is a "self-admitted pornographer" and his daughter has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

Maybe those are both true, but I doubt it.. sounds like grounds for libel to me.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[jcostantino]

The UPS store is #333 or something like that, probably a few doors down. This is most likely a storefront in a stripmall. Wether or not it's his address is entirely different though.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[morcheeba]

Saying that something sucks is an opinion

If you measure the internal pressure of wikipedia, you could factually determine if it sucks or if it blows. My guess is that is a true statement -- if it is always getting bigger, it must be sucking in more than it expels.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[suwain_2]

The first claim may, in fact, be true.

The second one is posed as a question: "Is she a FAS Baby?"

I'm sure somewhere on that site there's something that could be classified as libel. I just don't think either of these things are.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Cellshade]

Holy crap, this guy lives down the street from me. The state is Florida, btw.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, howabout the website:

"The owner of Wikipedia is a self admitted pornographer who is attacking Sollog, TOH and all TOH Members with lies and harassing remarks.
You need to email and call the owner Jim Wales so he stops harassing TOH, Sollog and you!
Tell Jim Wales by Phone you want him to REMOVE the Sollog and TOH page. His number is [snip number]
You can also email Jim Wales at this link to have him REMOVE his biased pages about Sollog and TOH
[snip email]"

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[corbettw]

Coral Springs, ST

What? Which state uses "ST" as its postal code? And the ZIP, 33067, goes to Pompano Beach, FL. Also, the phone number is a cell phone based in Daytona Beach. So he must be somewhere in FL.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's not, fool. And I can prove it!

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

someone can sue successfully for libel only if the defamatory information is proven to be false.

That should read as follows:

"someone can sue successfully for libel only if they can trick, bamboozle or bribe a court into ruling that the defamatory information is false."

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[BobPaul]

The founding fathers realized however that this is crap, newspapers and citizens need to be able to report the truth no matter how damaging it is to public figures.

Are you saying, then, that in America it's not libel if it isn't lying? Or, what exactly does this last line imply?

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying, then, that in America it's not libel if it isn't lying?

You're closer to defamation in such case.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[The Wicked Priest]

No. But I might be willing to donate to the creation of "sollogsucks.com".

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Anonymous Coward]

However, if you say something that is true, but the courts find it was deliberately malicious and injurious to the victim's reputation, you can be found guilty of defamation and lose the case.

Telling the truth is no defence in this modern world - people have been successfully sued for merely telling the truth, and it all comes down to whether the person you pissed off can afford better lawyers than you.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Anonymous Coward]

Now instead of being sued you can be sent on an all-expenses vacation to Cuba courtesy of the U.S. government. (All torture inclusive!!).

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[l4m3z0r]

In America, it is not libel if its true(or not lying as you say).

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[l4m3z0r]

Also, in america it isnt libel if its a claim that no one would reasonably believe(which is why the onion can say what is does, also parody is protected. Also because of Americas libel laws it is EXTREMELY hard for public figures to win a libel suit. A good example is the Falwell vs Flynt case which everyone should be familiar with if not here is some info on it Falwell v Flint.

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[Alsee]

TOH c/o AIS
Domain Register (dnr@theasi.net)
+1.3863165425
Fax: +1.5555555555
4613 University Dr Number 311
Coral Springs, ST 33067
US

Even better, how about we Slashdot his fax?

-

Re:Say "Goodbye, Sollog"

[srleffler]

It would be pretty stupid if you could sue someone for libel for publishing things that are true, wouldn't it?

personal attacks on his family?

[Anonymous Coward]

very much not cool... I can see him attacking the wikipedia founder out of ignorance to how the system works but putting up photos of wife and child and attacking them - not kosher...

Wikipediasucks.com

[kevin_conaway]

Stooping to such levels as to make fun of a mans wife and child publicly on the internet lends ZERO credibility to an argument and makes me lose all respect for a person that would do such a thing.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[Anonymous Coward]

If any site deserves a DDOS is this. Real men don't mess with people's family.

M.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[chiph]

Like the old Usenet rule -- The first one to compare the other to a Nazi, automatically loses the argument.

Seriously, posting someone's home address along with photos of their family (not to mention numerous phone calls), could easily be interpreted as stalking. Should Mr. Wales decide to file charges, it might get interesting -- is he obstructing free speech? Or is he protecting his family from a known kook?

Chip H.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[Anonymous Coward]

A known kook with a history of violence. I
hope for his sake he does file charges.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[Lehk228]

you say that like Sollog has credibility to lose.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[gronofer]

Wikipedia itself contains better criticisms of Wikipedia than this guy's pathetic efforts. E.g. Wikipedia Criticisms and Why Wikipedia is so great

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that like the old addage: "the one who smelt it, dealt it."?

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[gronofer]

I suck too, and meant to link: Why Wikipedia is not so great

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[dcigary]

And the "exit" popup page when you leave his Wikipediasucks.org page advertises Princess Diana car crash pictures, beheading pictures, and Pr0n. Hmmm.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[Anonymous Coward]

more like "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/g/GodwinsLaw.ht ml

Godwin's Law.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[zulux]

I like Wikipediasucks.com so much I downloaded the website... 10,203 times.... and counting!

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[ErikTheRed]

And the "exit" popup page when you leave his Wikipediasucks.org page advertises...

What, precisely, are these "'exit' popup" pages of which you speak?

(Of course, I'm running Firefox)

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[_narf_]

No kidding, that site he's setup probably borders on slander, and if nothing else, is extremely creepy.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

I for one would like to see Mr. Wales put Sollog in jail for stalking.

Apart from simply being really cool, it would be a nice threat against anyone else who dare vandalize Wikipedia in the future.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[DunbarTheInept]

That was never a usenet rule. The rule was that every argument will eventually devolve into an argument about mentioning Hitler or Nazis. It said nothing about who has won or lost at that point.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[chiph]

See above reply wrt: Godwins Law

Chip H.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you, some kind of Nazi authority? That sounds exactly like something Hitler would say...

D'oh!

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[DunbarTheInept]

The tradition was not the rule. The rule was just that "this is going to happen" The tradition was due to a misinterpretation of that rule.

Re:Wikipediasucks.com

[shadowbearer]

My version of Firefox doesn't seem to be able to deal with that one, I still get the popup. I'm not sure whether it's settings or just another trick (haven't had time to look into it)

SB
(1.0 Preview Release)

Ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

His name is John P. Ennis? Yeah right.

Re:Ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

No. His first name is actually Dick.

My latest prediction

[Sollog]

Every single one of you will be dead by 2152.

Re:My latest prediction

[I don't want to spen]

I'm okay then. I'm married!

Re:My latest prediction

[youngerpants]

OMFG

You didnt just run off and sign up a new slashdot id so you could make that post

you did didn't you

I pity for humanity

Re:My latest prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

According to which calendar???

Re:My latest prediction

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The year is 2678, and I am using the greatest invention of the millenium to post to slashdot from the future!

HAHAHA!

And I *still* can only get a damn ~500,000 uid. Must be something with slashdot.org rejecting my 512bit IPv19 address...

Re:My latest prediction

[shepd]

I don't know about you, but I definately do find the irony in this funny.

Re:My latest prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's the idiot that modded the parent offtopic? The worst it could be is -1 Stupid; the best it could be is +0 Not Quite Funny. Either way... it's incredibly ON topic

Re:My latest prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

Not me... I"m going to live to be 1000.

Re:My latest prediction

[10000000000000000000]

Every single one of you will be dead by 2152.
We'll just see about that Mr. crackpot!

Re:My latest prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even have a Slashdot account -- do you know how hard it is to find a good web browser for the IBM 5100?

Re:My latest prediction

[Cabriel]

Every single one of you will be dead by 2152.

I'm gonna live forever! Don't believe me? Prove me wrong.

Re:My latest prediction

[Silentnite]

I'm gonna live forever! Don't believe me? Prove me wrong.

I'm gonna live forever! OR DIE TRYING!!!!

Re:A supprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can still read a few Usenet messages, like this one:

Hi there, you anus-slurping moron. When will you learn to write at a third grade level?

or this interesting one:

you're a fucking moron

I didn't knew who Sollog was, but its followers are quite angry sometimes! (well, it's usenet litterature after all...)

You don't have to be...

[techstar25]

You don't have to be psychic to have seen this coming.

Sollog...

[ackthpt]

Sollog... the latest progeny of Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel?

i only worship at bob's discount church (if you get your prayers in early, you get a 5% discount on your sins.)

Re:Sollog...

[Cmdr TECO]

More like the progeny of Ted Holden and Robert McElwaine. Once upon a time there were no spammers, but there have always been kooks.

Don't trust his site?...

[kmmatthews]

http://www.wikipediasucks.com/ - check out the slant on his site, and you'll immediately have a good idea of his creditability...

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[MrLint]

sollog claims that wales is a pornographer.. I have to wonder if sollog thinks that will sway the hordes of /. unwashed to his side.

Im thinking the opposite:)

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[TiggertheMad]

sollog claims that wales is a pornographer...

REALLY? That is soooo sweet! I knew the guy was cool, but man oh man! Wales started Wikipedia AND shoots pictures of nudie girls, how awesome. I am deffinitely paypalling him some cash...

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[julesh]

I note that he has linked to a site "247news.net" that looks at first glance like an at least vaguely official news site, but if you look more closely is run by Sollog himself. He has links back to his other sites at the top.

D'oh!

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[Krimszon]

Even more, you can easily recognize sites he made, they all have the same style (centered, usually two column, sometimes the left column has 1 or more pictures). So he has a review of his 'book' on a different site, which is obviously his own site as well (it also only carries reviews of his books).

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[connorbd]

"vaguely official"? Are you sure your glasses prescription is correct? Yes it's obviously written by Sollog, but it in no way looks even professional.

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[pjay_dml]

Besides that....

...since when do news organisations use the (beautiful) abbreviation "BS"

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[anthony_dipierro]

sollog claims that wales is a pornographer.

Here's one of his sites. You decide whether or not to call it "pornography".

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[raju1kabir]

Here's one of his sites [babes.bomis.com]. You decide whether or not to call it "pornography".

That's a little disingenuous. Bomis (which goes way back, wow, I haven't thought about it in years) is a web-ring operator. They provide the infrastructure for similar-themed sites to find each other and provide links that help with mutual traffic generation. Click around bomis.com and you'll see rings for various types of aircraft, turkey recipes, stuffed animals, tips for pregnant mothers, woodworking, and everything else under the sun. One of the many subject categories is fan sites for nude models (and, I'm sure, the "fan" sites are largely dominated by pay porn operators). I could give you a link in google or yahoo that would do the same thing. Is Yahoo a pornographer?

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[Natlaw]

Check out some of Sollog's art: http://www.sollog.com/art/abstractnudes/

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[AndyChrist]

I could give you a link in google or yahoo that would do the same thing. Is Yahoo a pornographer?

Yes, but not as good a pornographer as Bomis. :P

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[baker_tony]

Hmm, he says that there are thousands of sites in google that come up if you search for "wikipedia sucks" - Actually there are only 152 pages when I search.

There are 505 sites that come up if you search for "wikipedia rules", however.

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[anthony_dipierro]

Here's one of his sites [babes.bomis.com]. You decide whether or not to call it "pornography".

That's a little disingenuous.

I think you've read more into it than I intended. I simply provided the link so that you could decide for yourself whether or not to call Bomis pornography. Considering that the "Bomis Premium Pic of the Day" is a topless woman pushing her boobs together, I'd say yes, it is (not that there's anything wrong with that).

They provide the infrastructure for similar-themed sites to find each other and provide links that help with mutual traffic generation.

This was more than just links. Take a look at http://premium.bomis.com/. " This is your chance to see top-notch models bare it all for the incredible price of only $2.95! Yes, Bomis Premium offers a 3 day trial for only $2.95. Don't miss out on any of the great things Bomis Premium has to offer. We are adding more new galleries every day, including pictures that you won't be able to find anywhere else." Are you saying those galleries aren't being run by Bomis?

One of the many subject categories is fan sites for nude models (and, I'm sure, the "fan" sites are largely dominated by pay porn operators).

So premium.bomis.com is a fan site? It doesn't seem that way, not at all.

I could give you a link in google or yahoo that would do the same thing. Is Yahoo a pornographer?

I dunno, Yahoo isn't directly engaged in selling pornography. Bomis, it appears, is.

Re:Don't trust his site?...

[anthony_dipierro]

Why?

Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[the talented rmg]

There's always the perennial objection that Wikipedia lacks credibility, but stories like this should show the skeptics how an open system like this actually works. In time, the thousands of eyes approach weeds out questionable content, leaving only publication quality articles.

It's hard to say what impact netizens like SOLLOG will have in the end. On one level, you might say his predictions would provide Wikipedia with yet another dimension of informative content -- the fourth dimension: time. That is, while Wikipedia can say something about the past, and now with Wikinews, the present, maybe SOLLOG will provide needed insight into the future.

On the other hand, such atrocious formatting can only damage the credibility and readability of Wikimedia. Editors will have to handle this issue carefully and balance these considerations. In the end, I'm confident the open model of editing will strike the right compromise between compelling content and responsible formatting.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it is "content" all right, but informative?

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[harrkev]

There's always the perennial objection that Wikipedia lacks credibility, but stories like this should show the skeptics how an open system like this actually works. In time, the thousands of eyes approach weeds out questionable content, leaving only publication quality articles.

OK. I know that this is slightly off-topic, but I have to respond to this comment. This whole fiasco is a demonstration of why Wikipedia is NOT reliable. It could be 100% accurate today, but somebody will screw with it tomorrow and mess it up. Yes, I know that it can be changed back. But then you can get into silly little wars like this. Also, the many eyes theory works great for simple stuff. If sombody missed the date of birth of George Washington, it would likely be caught. If somebody missed the mass of Tungsten by 2%, it might slip by.

In my opinion, Wikipedia needs cement. A new article would be like wet cement. You can change it any way that you want. But, as it ages, it becomes harder and harder to change.

One possible solution would be to have a "trustability" number associated with each article. As the article ages, or gets read, the "trustability" increases. Then, only people who have a high enough trustability rating themselves can change it.

Sounds like a neat idea, right? Maybe not. People can be experts in a very narrow field. A PhD student might be studying molecular biology, and perfectly qualified to change an entery on chemistry. But he might not (and probably would not) know jack about Russian Literature.

So, in short, the system is subtly broken in a sense that will always allow people to question its content. How do you allow only qualified people to make changes? The "many-eyes" has only produced an article that changes every five minutes, at least in this case.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[jd]

The biggest impact SOLLOG will have on Wikipedia is that people will find social methods of implementing screening processes. Either that, or they will be drowned in a sea of bullshit.

So far, the latter hasn't happened. Maybe not enough nuts have considered the potential for causing harm through it, so far, but they're more likely to now.

There are only two ways of ensuring a good ratio of signal to noise - filter by externally imposed rules, or filter by cooperatively accepted principles. You're going to have filters there, one way or another. It's just a matter of the form.

Provided there's enough cooperation on Wikipedia, that cooperation will be solidified by these events and the subculture of individuals who contribute will be the stronger for it. What you survive makes you stronger... ...provided you really do survive.

Spam, as a major problem, started with a single lawyer, who then wrote a book on how to Get Rich Quick on the Internet. Online Collaborative Works Poisoning has been around for a while, but it too might become a major problem, for the same reason. It's a low-risk means of attacking whatever you care to hate, and it's just been massively publicised.

Doing nothing, as the online community did with spam, will be as disasterous for this as it was for that. This time, there needs to be some action, and the only action I can see that will do any good is to work towards protecting the integrity of those projects we choose to be involved in.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the "thousands of eyes" idea behind keeping track of things in Wikipedia only means that popular knowledge or sentiment will be in Wikipedia. Maybe that's ok. Maybe you can't do any better.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[justins]

There's always the perennial objection that Wikipedia lacks credibility, but stories like this should show the skeptics how an open system like this actually works. In time, the thousands of eyes approach weeds out questionable content, leaving only publication quality articles.

Nonsense. The ability to weed out the obviously absurd was never in question.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[RealAlaskan]

This whole fiasco is a demonstration of why Wikipedia is NOT reliable.

Well, you never know whether you're reading defacement by a troll or a well-reasoned, insightful article. Sort of like Slashdot.

The purpose of an encyclopedia is to give you a brief overview of many subjects, and enough information to dig deeper. I think that Wikipedia is about there, for most things, most of the time. It's not Britannica yet, but it's about 150 years younger, so we should give it another few decades to catch up.

A new article would be like wet cement. You can change it any way that you want. But, as it ages, it becomes harder and harder to change.

That's a sensible idea. Giving ownership of established pages to somebody (anybody!) would do the same thing. The quality of the articles might or might not go up, but the number of troll articles should fall way off.

Here's another idea: why not take a snapshot of the contents, perhaps yearly, and do some proofreading for the troll stuff, then put it up (with no way to change it) as ``Best of Wikipedia 20XX'' or so? That would be plenty current, and would keep little Johnny from looking up ``Nazi'' and getting an article denying the Holocaust. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the trolls and the scholars and the flamers could keep on doing their respective things to the mutable Wikipedia, in preparation for next year's snapshot.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[Politburo]

A PhD student might be studying molecular biology, and perfectly qualified to change an entery on chemistry. But he might not (and probably would not) know jack about Russian Literature.

Why not? What if they're Russian?

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[Teun]

This whole fiasco is a demonstration of why Wikipedia is NOT reliable.

But it still is Informative.

Only a fool would take the word of a wiki for the absolute truth but the smart will and can use it for their benefit.
Considering the wealth of articles and subjects Wikipedia is now carrying (and in many languages) there are only few of these 'Fiasco's' as you chose to name it.
But your idea for a 'Trustability' rating could be a solution, in my view possibly better than splitting up in 'Edited' vs. 'Undetited' as an other sugested.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[thelenm]

If sombody missed the date of birth of George Washington, it would likely be caught.

On a completely tangential note, it's interesting that you picked this particular example. It's not necessarily clear whether Washington's birthday should be known as February 11 or February 22, since he was born in 1732, before the colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, in short, the system is subtly broken in a sence that will always allow people to question its content.

That's not broken, that's good! People shouldn't believe what they read without independent verification anyway. It's a bad habit.

Wikipedia is the most comprehensive encyclopedia in the world, and it is getting more and more comprehensive by the hour. It accurate enough, that it is worth one's time to read the wikipedia version of most articles.

There may be inaccuracies and changing articles. So what? Wikipedia is not for citing. It's for learning. It's a place to start. If your editorial standards are higher than what a wikipedia article can promise ( which is nothing ), then read the article, get aquainted with the subject, and find the original sources to check against. Many articles even have a helpful bibliography attached.

But if you're reading a news article about an unfamiliar subject, that you suspect is slanted, by all means check out the wikipedia article on that topic. You will probably discover any relevant facts that were selectively left out, and some perspective and background that will make you less vulnerable to the slant in the article you are reading.

Sure, the wikipedia article COULD be slanted the same way, but it could just as easily be slanted the other way, or it could be neutral. You've cut your odds of being fooled by using wikipedia to crosscheck something.

The more sources you crosscheck, the better, but since sources rehash each other, the original sources are where you have to go to be 100% sure you are getting the best possible information.

If after reading a random article off the web that you *feel* 60% sure is telling you at least some of the truth, you form a picture in your mind after crosschecking against and reading deeper into a few wikipedia articles that your indespensible horse sense tells you is 90% likely to be fairly close to the objective truth, and that likelyhood raises to 95% after reading some more articles that you were inspired to search for from the background on wikipedia, then you are better off than someone
who gives up on reading about post Soviet Union Ukraine because their dusty encyclopedia was published in 1985. And the CIA factbook is pretty good for the bare stats on stuff like that too.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[DunbarTheInept]

Wikipedia is based on the premise that truth is democratic. Maybe the argument could be made for that with some subjective matters, but much of Wikipedia's topics are objective. I'd trust a single physicist's explanation of Einstiens' theory of relativity over ten thousand randomly chosen people.

It's a useful tool for surveying what the general public (or at least the general public of people who use Wikipedia) think. It shouldn't be taken as anything more authoritative than that, though.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[bbc]

"This whole fiasco is a demonstration of why Wikipedia is NOT reliable."

That is a beautiful straw man you have got there. Did it come with a free caps lock key? Kudos to you for demonstrating that you know how to use it.

You probably did not mean "reliable" though. Wikipedia is very reliable for its purpose, namely to be a starting point for further exploration. You see, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia.

As for whether the "facts" in Wikipedia are "true", for any sensible meaning of that word, no-one can tell, of course.

Re:Speaks to the robustness of Wikipedia.

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, in short, the system is subtly broken in a sense that will always allow people to question its content."

You look at this as a bad thing. It isn't. That is how it should be, even if it were supposedly more authoritative. People doing research should be constantly reminded that they should evaluate *all* sources of information, even ones that are supposedly more authoritative.

"How do you allow only qualified people to make changes? The "many-eyes" has only produced an article that changes every five minutes, at least in this case."

To allow only qualified people would not work, because it is impossible to reliably identify a "qualified" person. As you mention, even if you have a Ph.D. in the subject and many years experience, there will always be things you don't know, and there will always be differences of opinion within the field of study. It does not matter if you are talking about nuclear physics or literature, or someone with a high-school education versus multiple university degrees. You can still be expert in something with no formal training, and still be incompetant with plenty of training.

The only system I can think of would be something analogous to /. moderation points tracked on a per-user basis and awarded for writing that other people regarded as useful and accurate. Points applied to an article could be aggraded from all users, which would give some sense of the "trustability" of the article -- i.e. how many people had "spent" their points endorsing the content. People might even try browsing at +5 for the more highly-regarded (but still not authoritative) stuff.

Even that would be open to all sorts of creative abuses. For example, people could set up sock puppets to award themselves points, or build up points in a topic were they are knowledgeable, and blow them on modifying something stupid elsewhere. Finally, there is the obvious problem of the tyranny of the majority. I'm all for democracy, but a simple majority should not be sufficient to eliminate a minority view.

Donate to WikiPedia

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a great testament to wikipedia's power to create a true fair and balanced source of information. Imagine what would happen if we got our news this way too, where when you read some bullsh*t spin you could correct it and present the information with a neutral viewpoint.

The media is not going to do this, only the people can. So if you are not going to edit articles please donate some money to wikimedia so this neutral source of information can flourish.

Psychic wars?

[Atario]

Then let this be our final battle!

Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh...

Dih-dih-dih-dih-dih...

Shu-shu-shu-shu-shu...

Re:Psychic wars?

[PetiePooo]

LOL!
That's the first thing that popped into my head too when I saw the title. Of course, it helps that my TiVo captured it just last week...

Re:Psychic wars?

[21mhz]

My first thoughts when I saw the headline in my RSS bookmark were: "Psychic Wars? Wikipedia? Boohoo!"
Boy was I disappointed when I read what the entry was about.

Here's the goods

[alexburke]

At the moment, the article is blank. This version, however, is quite informative.

Re:Here's the goods

[alexburke]

I know, replying to your own post is bad form, but I just couldn't help it.

For more information from Sollog's point of view, check this out.

Re:Here's the goods

[julesh]

His second postscript is headed "PSS". And incites people to file a blatantly false accusation of criminal behaviour. I suspect this is a crime in itself.

Re:Here's the goods

[Jugalator]

At the moment, the article is blank.

At this moment, the article is pretty complete, and protected against vandalism, like they use to do when these kind of things happen. Yes, they have routines they apply for these kind of articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sollog

Re:Here's the goods

[Dzerzhinski]

PS - It has come to my attention that Jim Wales is harassing TOH Members with return phone calls if you call him. His phone number is the listed phone number as the contact number for his business. You have every right to call him at least once if you are offended by his libelous material about me and TOH. If you have been called and threatened by Jim Wales contact legal@templeofhayah.com

From the site in the parent post. Is he claiming that its harrassment when Mr. Wales returns the phone calls of TOH members?

The Fibonacci Algorithm

[Refrag]

If one of Sollog's most famous "math discoveries" is The Fibonacci Algorithm, then why isn't it called "The Sollog Algorithm?"

Re:The Fibonacci Algorithm

[slavemowgli]

Must be a conspiracy. :)

Re:The Fibonacci Algorithm

[JPelorat]

For all values of 'conspir' == 'lun', maybe yeah.

Re:The Fibonacci Algorithm

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't focus group well.

Re:The Fibonacci Algorithm

[elmegil]

I think it's actually supposed to be a reference to a supposed 24 number sequence somehow in the bowels of the sequence. Which apparently has actually been mentioned in a journal of mathematics; unfortunately by someone else who could actually be bothered to supply discussion and proof, unlike Sollog.

Re:The Fibonacci Algorithm

[Anonymous Coward]

If one of Sollog's most famous "math discoveries" is The Fibonacci Algorithm, then why isn't it called "The Sollog Algorithm?"

I guess the Fibonacci Algorithm references the Fibonacci Sequence and not the Sollog Sequence

Um, shouldn't he have seen this coming?

[hambonewilkins]

Shouldn't he have registered wikipediasucks.com in advance as his psychic powers would have allowed him to see the impact of his actions. Further, shouldn't he already have a slashdotsucks.com already? And, shouldn't I already have a reply to this message from him telling me I'm a fool?

Re:Um, shouldn't he have seen this coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps he did. slashdotsucks.com is still available, but slashdotsucks.org has been registered for some time now. Who knows--perhaps he DID forsee your comment...

Domain ID:D11293979-LROR
Domain Name:SLASHDOTSUCKS.ORG
Created On:13-Oct-1999 23:21:51 UTC
Last Updated On:14-Nov-2004 00:02:58 UTC
Expiration Date:13-Oct-2005 23:21:51 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:CSL Computer Service Langenbach GmbH (R25-LROR)
Status:INACTIVE
Status:PENDING DELETE SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE
Registrant ID:CORG-14638
Registrant Name:Clay Johnson
Registrant Organization:Slashdotsucks.org

Re:Um, shouldn't he have seen this coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

slashdotsucks.com has been taken for 4 years, dude.

Re:Um, shouldn't he have seen this coming?

[WizardRahl]

He seems like some ten year old that watched too much power rangers and X-files when he was little.

Re:Um, shouldn't he have seen this coming?

[hambonewilkins]

After reading all the Wikipedia stuff - you are correct.

The guy is such a tool.

Re:Um, shouldn't he have seen this coming?

[stevo3232]

http://slashdotsucks.com/ is already registered. He should have seen that coming too!

Right Now

[Todd Fisher]

As of 11:58 EST: Sollog eats his nuts And liked it.

This Sollog is a sham!

[Anonymous Coward]

Time Cube is the only answer!

Re:This Sollog is a sham!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so simple - if you can't get it, you're stupid, and will burn in hell... Time cube rules!

My prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

For the year 2005, I predict Sollig:
Won't gamble in Las Vegas
Won't win the lottery
Won't save a famous person from death
Won't discover the location of a wanted criminal
Won't be believed by anyone with an IQ over 60
Will make "predictions" after the fact

Now, let's compare success rates at the end of 2005

(Since I don't care about publicity, I'll remain an AC prophet)

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

another shitty, boring "wikipedia-got-vandalized, holy shit!" story. this is not stuff that matters.

Re:wow

[JollyFinn]

another shitty, boring "wikipedia-got-vandalized, holy shit!" story. this is not stuff that matters.
Hows that different from a normal slashdot article?

Once again news that doesn't matter...

[plastic.person]

... yet I found this SOLLOG guy hilarious and this entertainment brightened up my day.

Nuts

[cyocum]

When I visited it, Wikipedia read "Sollog eats his nuts." I would assume that Sollog eats nuts since eating nuts is part of a balanced healthy diet. Whether they are his or not is a matter of speculation unless you are Sollog (prognostication may or may not be included).

Sollogs Predictions Disasters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did he predict the Bush Re-election?

I guess SOLLOG couldnt forsee

[hax0r_par]

the slashdotting of his lil wikipedia sucks site!! does this mean he's not so much a prophet after all, or that even the GODS are not safe from the slashdot effect?

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia announces new Darpa research grant. Go taxpayers!

Hmmm.

[RaZ0r]

Crazy religious fanatics... When will they learn that their 'truth' is only one of the many 'truths' out there.

Why is it that some people can not accept that there are other beliefs out there? Why do they have to try any discredit anyone that disagrees?

Nothing new I guess...

Re:Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Crazy relativists.... When will they learn that their 'truth' that their 'truth' is only one of the many 'truths' out there is only one of the many 'truths' out there?

Re:Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't decide whether your post exhibits cognitive dissonance, irony, or both.

Re:Hmmm.

[Eric119]

Crazy religious fanatics... When will they learn that their 'truth' is only one of the many 'truths' out there.

I'm confused. Are you saying that all different religions are true? They contradict one another, so they can't be. Or are you saying that the multiplicity of beliefs means none of them are really true? Since truth does not depend on what people think, that does not make sense.

Why is it that some people can not accept that there are other beliefs out there? Why do they have to try any discredit anyone that disagrees?

If they are indeed trying to argue, then they are acknowledging that there are other beliefs, which makes your complaint that they do not odd.

Page is now locked

[Thunderstruck]

As of this post, the Wikipedia page has been "locked to deal with vandalism." In the time between reading the article and scrolling through about 40 posts it was edited at least 3 times.

Solog should learn how to spell

[Anonymous Coward]

Taken from Solog's google group page ...

"It is the fastes growing religion on Earth"

Perhaps Solog's vast mental powers in nearly every field diminish its ability to spell properly, or learn how to use a spell checker.

Re:Solog should learn how to spell

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I think there are two "L"s in "Sollog".

Re:Solog should learn how to spell

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

Don't be ridiculous. He spells it that way in silent protest of the letter "t," which resembles the cross where Jesus died - because as Sollog pointed out to us, www.jesusisnotgod.com. You'd know that if you'd just open up your eyes to the the truth that Sollog brings us. Sollog is the way, the truth, and the light, and in the way of his truthful light he will show us the true light way of wayward lightly truth.

Also, Princess Diana masterminded 9/11 with the Illuminati, the aliens, and the Masons.

And you people call him crazy...

Re:Solog should learn how to spell

[Ilgaz]

He calls Der Spiegel magazine from Germany a NEWSPAPER.

I have no clue how Der Spiegel mentioned him, at Oddly enough page or something? Er, germans?

Der Spiegel is one of the most respected news mags in entire Europe.

Re:Solog should learn how to spell

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why does he use the evil letter 't' all over his website, rather than inventing a new letter or something. I predict this sollog crap will be coming to an end soon as we are all tiring of hearing about this boring crack-pot. Sounds like sollog needs to go back home to his kingdom in the sky (or wherever) and leave us silly inferior humans alone once and for all. Just buzz to a different planet where his swill will be appreciated more. I find it hard to belive this simpleton is a programmer; maybe an administrator or some other lower level form of life, but as a programmer myself, I find any relation to me and he offensive.

If he is a psychic -

[Anonymous Coward]

how come he didn't foresee the slashdotting of his site?

And i predict

[Striker770S]

in AD2101 war was beginning...

Yawn

[BadDoggie]

You would think he might've learned the lesson that Scientology did about a decade ago. I reverted the page once after he cleared it. It's locked right no since the /.ers are being especially stupid today ("Sollog eats his nuts." -- yes, rapier wit).

He'll keep trying to edit the page and the rest of the Net will point out what a lying sack of shit he is, just as we've been doing with Scientology. woof.

Re:Yawn

[zangdesign]

Oh, come on. You have to admit that "Sollog eats his nuts" is somewhat grinworthy.

Re:Yawn

[SharpFang]

[quote] It's locked right no since the /.ers are being especially stupid today[/quote]

You definitely underestimate the average daily stupidity of slashdotters.

I am so jealous

[Profane MuthaFucka]

That Wales guy has his own personal troll, and a hate site just for him. Will someone please register profanemuthafuckasucks.com and build a hate site just for me? I'd really like that, thanks.

Re:I am so jealous

[theMerovingian]

Trust me, it's not all that great :)

Stuff I never knew about the founder of Wikipedia:

[WizardRahl]

He's a pornographer AND an objectivist??? This guy is my new hero!

So he can predict the future,

[Anonymous Coward]

But can he see why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

What? No FA?

[Pflipp]

Wah? An Original Slashdot story?

Who could've preditcted that...

Re:What? No FA?

[Spudley]

Wah? An Original Slashdot story?

Who could've preditcted that...

Nah - it was featured on Wikipedia first. ;)

The stuff of Lore..

[Sir Pallas]

..is being written before you.

You missed your chance

[cosmo_the_third]

Well, you missed your chance put that on Wikipedia. The page has been locked, and just when the vandal-wars were getting interesting.

Re:You missed your chance

[fbform]

You know that a Wikipedia edit war is interesting when its history page has a line like this:

(cur) (last) 17:03, 13 Dec 2004 JamesMLane (rm "first rate nutter" to forestall objections from genuine first-rate nutters who consider Sollog second-rate)

Re:You missed your chance

[sadomikeyism]

He's shifting from usenet to Wiki? Why, so he'll be read by even fewer people?

I AM THE ALLMIGHTY SOLLOG

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict that wikipediasucks.com is about to be slashdotted.

Just because he can't spell blatent

[mandrake*rpgdx]

Doesn't mean jack shit. He can still point out innacuracies in an all-encompassing wikipedia. He never said he was smart, or that he knew everything, he just claimed that he noticed some errors in it. Big deal.

Moist and tasty

[alexburke]

For those of you wanting fruitcake this Christmas, may I recommend Collin Street Bakery?

If Collin Street Bakery is a bit too expensive for your liking, however, then you may wish to try Sollog's folks. They look well-stocked.

Re:Moist and tasty

[Thuktun]

I especially like the "TOH Members Are Tax Exempt" screed.

Sue?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just sue the guy?

Sollog who?

[toxickiwi]

Sorry guys never heard of Sollog, but a quick read and I can confirm he is a NUT JOB... his sucks page and the links from it are pretty odd to say the least. My prediction is this post will get modded fu.. int.. umm, Sollog help me I just don't know.

John P Ennis

[Phidoux]

I bet he had a rough time at school.

Re:John P Ennis

[Swamii]

John P Ennis
I bet he had a rough time at school.

I heard he got his head skinned once. Despite that, he apparently like being stroked on his head, so much that he eventually spewed out with joy. He often hid from others, until we played ball that is; throwing two of them back in forth until he would finally come out to play with orgasmic enthusiasm.

TROLL. Cited article is NOT INACCURATE.

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster seriously mis-represents the "Child Crusade" article. It seems to be a VERY GOOD article on the subject and NOT fraught with competing viewpoints. The several "viewpoints" are important to the topic and should be
mentioned.

He criticizes Wikipedia as "inaccurate" but provides no evidence.

Though he does mention Linux. That should give hima a "+4 insightful". Too bad hed didn't mention Apple, then it'd be "+5, informative".

Does this mean that Wikipedia is a

[wiredog]

Veteran of the Psychic Wars?

I've never heard of the guy, but

[Enigma_Man]

Does anybody else picture "Dr. Orpheus" from the Venture Bros. cartoon when you read about this guy? Complete with the methods of speaking and all? I sure do, and it's funny.

-Jesse

Re:I've never heard of the guy, but

[PenGun]

14 years 2 months and 12 days, from a 44 magnum.

Re:I've never heard of the guy, but

[ewhac]

Does anybody else picture "Dr. Orpheus" from the Venture Bros. cartoon when you read about this guy? [ ... ]

I think that's a disservice to Dr. Orpheus. Sollog just flails incoherently, whereas Orpheus actually delivers the paranormal goods (and has a kick-ass wardrobe as well).

(For those who have no idea what we're talking about, fire up your TiVo or equivalent and start recording The Venture Bros. , part of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup.)

Schwab

MPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny shit

He's can predict the future?!?!

[feloneous cat]

As someone whose father is one of the survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing, it really pisses me off when someone sez "I predicted the whole thing".

Bullshit.

It's easy to sit around on your ass and "predict" after the event happens. But had he known one GODDAMN thing about OKC, he MIGHT have warned everyone ahead of time.

Last I checked, Dad never got a phone call.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Seahawk]

But - if your dad SURVIVED - why would he have needed a warning?!? :)

(Yes yes - sorry - bad joke - mod me down!)

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[zx75]

A person who can predict future disasters will only ever receive my respect for doing so if their prediction turns out false because they did something tangible to prevent it!

Anyone can sit on their ass and say that they predicted the Oklahoma bombing or the World Trade Centre, but they are only kooks and despicable scum if what they claim is true and did nothing to prevent it.

I will keep my sympathy for the survivors, my respects for the dead, and my honours for the people who risked their lives to help.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[zx75]

This is where the disclaimer word *tangible* came into play...

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Iphtashu Fitz]

As someone whose father is one of the survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing

I'm glad to hear your father survived that horrible event. I knew two people on board Pan Am 103 and one who came very close to being on one of the 9/11 airplanes, so these sorts of events have a huge impact on me. Oklahoma also hit me fairly hard, not because I knew anybody there but just from seeing some of the results in person.

I had a Coast Guard related trip to Oklahoma a couple years after the bombing and it was an experience I'll never forget. The CO of the Coast Guard Institute (located near the airport) invited me out to his place for dinner, which was about an hour from downtown. He said that when the bomb detonated he thought they were having an earthquake. That's one hell of a shockwave to feel it 50+ miles away. The night before I left he took me downtown, and I can still recall it like it was yesterday. The remains of the Murrah building had been torn down and the lot was surrounded by a chain link fence. A number of surrounding buildings still had scars & other visible damage, as did some of the trees that had survived. What I recall the most vividly, however, were all the flowers, photos, etc. that people had hung on the fence as tributes to the victims. I clearly recall one beautifully framed photograph of one of the children with a "happy birthday" sign and other birthday cards with it. Ever since then any time I think of Oklahoma I remember that picture. Some day I'd like to come back and visit the memorial & museum.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see a nick called LORDGODALMIGHTY created today with 9 posts all saying how great Sollog is. Guess it doesn't take much to guess who you are. Welcome to the discussion Mr. Ennis. How about actually contributing something valuable?

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Maltheus]

The ATF got the tipoff though. They all got pager messages not to go in that morning. Maybe it was Sollog who called them. You should be more pissed off at them then at him since they didn't warn anybody.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Account created today: check
User name in all caps: check
Ranting/incoherent post: check
Spelling errors galore: check
Doesn't know how to embed links: check
Links to insane posts: check
Feels persecuted for "telling the truth": check
It's "the media's fault": check

Hi, Mr. Ennis! How ya doin'?

My prediction: You'll feel forced to respond to my post. You'll deny you're "Sollog", asshole and scam artist extrordinaire. You'll respond to your own post using another user account that you've created today.

BTW, pulling in the Wikipedia guy's wife and kid, and alleging what you do on your "wikipediasucks" website, is beyond the pale. You're a fucking asshole for doing that.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you also recall how goddamn soon they demolished the remains of the building? They were obviously destroying evidence because they didn't want anyone to see how the building really came down so easily.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Roadkills-R-Us]

It probably came in teh next day while the phone system was down. I hate those temporal whirlpools.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The building was demolished before it could be examined because every day it stood was another day that community had to be reminded of the horror. The same reason why the twin towers were removed from Spiderman movie. Peoples feelings count for a lot you jackass.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Iphtashu Fitz]

They were obviously destroying evidence because they didn't want anyone to see how the building really came down so easily.

Bullshit. It's common knowledge why the building came down so quickly despite all the conspiracy theories that have run rampant ever since that fateful day. The bomb was parked almost immediately next to one of 5 major supporting beams along the front of the building. The beam vaporized the instant the shockwave hit it. The shockwave then lifted two or three of the floors above it. When they dropped back down the fact that the support was gone caused a domino effect that pulled the floors above down with them.

If you get the National Geographic tv channel check out their new series "Seconds from Disaster". They do an excellent job of debunking the conspiracy theories and demonstrating exactly how the bomb did all the damage that it did.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Matt Perry]

But had he known one GODDAMN thing about OKC, he MIGHT have warned everyone ahead of time.

Isn't there a law in the US that if you know that a voilent crime, such as murder, is going to take place and do not warn the appropriate authorities that you can be held accountable? If so since this guy says that he predicted it, he should be arrested.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Lost Race]

No, if you do notify the authorities then you are held accountable. After all, how could you have known it was going to happen unless you had something to do with it?

Rule #1: Don't talk to cops.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

But - if your dad SURVIVED - why would he have needed a warning?!? :)

So his father could've saved those who didn't?

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, the next thing we'd see is people claiming "there would've been a disaster, but I prevented it!"

What would convince me would be if the person tried to do something to prevent the disaster (and could prove it) but failed.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[Threni]

It was predicted long, long ago that people would attack the US. It doesn't mean it's obvious which target and when, but clearly in an environment where people strongly dislike the US government it's likely that US government buildings are going to be at risk. Not just from foreign "terrorists" but from locals - militant anarchists, survivalists, ex-convicts, people who've had their children taken from them by the state. Whether someone's father received a personal tip-off is neither here nor there.

Re:He's can predict the future?!?!

[feloneous cat]

The ATF got the tipoff though...

Oh, yeah, and that has to do with this guy in what way?

Asshole...

Personal Home Page on WikiPedia

[Dystopian Rebel]

I think I too will set up a personal home page on WikiPedia just like this Sollog cornflake.

Of course, my only achievement in life is positive karma on /. and a page full of rejected submissions.

Don't uderstand this one

[bblazer]

It must be a really slow news day when /. decides that posting articles about usenet kooks and the ensuing flamewars is appropriate. Gee, I can't wait for the great reports we will be seeing about Ken Pangborn, Stacy Alexander and David Moore! Their epic battles have been raging on USENET since 1995. They make this guy look like an amateur.

Re:Don't uderstand this one

[fuzzybunny]

Oh come on, don't be so uptight. Most slashdot readers are probably to young to have experienced the glory of real, balls-out usenet flame wars.

Blog comments and various chat angryfests ("I r0x0r j00 teh GAY D00D!!!111") just don't do it.

Things like this are hilarious in their own right, and give today's impressionable youth at least an introduction to the righteous sort of group abuse for which the Internet was invented!

Re:Don't uderstand this one

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss Mark Ethan Smith.

Re:Don't uderstand this one

[mink]

How about good ol "I'll destroy usenet" via my "Usenet Freedom Front" John Grubor

Psychic Wars

[Rotund Prickpull]

I'm a vetern of a thousand of those, you insensitive clod!

Ah, but....

[jd]

The one psychic who walketh the world did not... :)

Re:Sollog and Butthead

[Rotund Prickpull]

I am the great Sol log-holio!

huh huh. heh heh. huh huh. You said "log".

As usual...

[Skiron]

...with all the 'priedictionists', nothing is forcast until after an event when then mysteriously evidence is produced to prove otherwise...

...otherwise he would have known the trouble with world writable Wiki's years ago.

Overload the forums

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's put all happy good things about wikipedia and bash Sollog in these forums.
http://www.wikipediasucks.com/forum/

The ball is rolling now...

[chowdmouse]

Only 999 more psychic wars to go.

This again?

[Otter]

Look, this guy is mentally ill. I'm sorry he's creating a headache for Wikipedia, but making him into a freak show for the amusement of the nerd mob is at least as distasteful anything he's doing.

Geez, Roblimo is probably going to start soliciting questions for his Slashdot Interview by the end of the week...

Good grief..

[Anonymous Coward]

The only insight that comes from visiting Sollig's site is the certainty that this individual is one unsavoury little shit. Verbally attacking a wife and daughter, how low can you go, water buffalo..?

interesting guy

[Karma Sucks]

And to think I would have never heard of Sollog if it wasn't for this advertisement on Slashdot.

I found this Usenet post on Sollog and it's very interesting. It actually has links to time-stamped "predictions" on 911, etc.

Re:interesting guy

[Anonymous Coward]

And it was written by a sollog sock puppet.

Re:interesting guy

[ocelotbob]

Yeah, but the guy is so vague as to be worthless. Wow, Something's going to happen on a day with two ones and a three in the date. As the great Sollog says, even admits, himself, there are shitloads of dates with these numbers. Without specific years, the predictions are pretty much guaranteed to happen simply due to the broad scope of the predictions. If he stated on March 11, 2004, there will be a train bombing, that would be one thing, but he said that on a date with two ones and a three, something bad is going to happen.

coral cache of wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah lets abuse wikipedia's bandwidth while talking about abusing wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org.nyud.net:8090/wiki/Sollog

Can we come up with a more confusing title?

[rsborg]

How many ways can I parse thee? Let me count... 1) (Usenet Psychic) Wars With Wikipedia 2) (Usenet Psychic) ... (Wars With Wikipedia) 3) (Usenet): Psychic Wars with Wikipedia 4) Usenet Psychic Wars (now)... with (more) Wikipedia! 5) (Usenet Psychic): Wars with Wikipedia ... Couldn't the title be more clear like:

Self-proclaimed Psychic in spamwar with Wikipedia

Of course, then the editors couldn't sound as inane as the general media who seem all exhibit this disease...

err.

[Pwned]

Wikipediasucks.com links to /.
http://www.247news.net/2004/20041211-wikipedia.sht ml
as one of "the more popular Wikipedia Sucks sites" (there are three of them in all)

Wrong!

[Weaselmancer]

It's Sollog's brother Kellogg, who eats his nuts as part of a balanced breakfast.

Re:Wrong!

[RM6f9]

As long as either or both of them are only eating nuts belonging to themselves, or possibly those of others with prior consent on all involved parts, why would any clear-thinking folk direct our awarenesses towards their dietary, masticatory, or other oral habits? (Let alone waste further time speculating on such reasons?)

There are people who don't believe in Sollog?!?

[Lothsahn]

What? I posted about Sollog on A PUBLIC FORUM that has obvious logical and rational holes in it, and people dare to post on Wikipedia that it might be wrong?

Lemme just go make my own web page that only I can control and bash the creator of Wikipedia.

(assumes calm, psychic voice) This is not the wikipedia page you are looking for.

Sollog and JREF

[RvLeshrac]

If Sollog is who I think he is, he was banned from the JREF forums quite some time ago for making absurd assertions about various "abilities" he posesses.

http://www.randi.org/

The JREF promises a US$1m reward for anyone demonstrating, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any supernatural, paranormal, or occult power or event.

To this date, no one has passed the preliminary testing - Sollog included.

Re:Sollog and JREF

[Teknogeek]

I see I wasn't the only one to think "James Randi will get a kick out of this for his weekly commentary".

Re:Sollog and JREF

[LORDGODALMIGHTY]

Randi has refused to test Sollog http://www.247news.net/2000/20001011-randi.shtml Look at the links in his FAQ http://www.sollog.com/faq He even has the balls to put up his skeptics articles http://www.sollog.com/skeptics/ That takes balls to link to your skeptics on your own site laughing at them hehehe Sollog is the man

Re:Sollog and JREF

[Anonymous Coward]

lol - keep telling yourself that!

The vows.

[Vvornth]

Derek Smart will you take John Ennis to be your lawful husband, will you love him, honor and keep her in sickness and in health and forsaking all others keep only unto her until death do you apart?

I'd say it speaks to the failure of Wikipedia.

[dave-fu]

Pages outside the explicit protection of the editors like this one is now can be edited (vandalized, whatever) at any point in time and immediately become canonical: at that discrete point in time, they're published.
It's well and good to declaim "oh but all that will be sorted out soon enough" but is an indeterminate point in the future really soon enough? And who am I counting on for vetting these "thousands of eyes" and how do I know that there really are thousands of clueful eyes paying the pages a visit (on a very regular basis)? Editors who may or may not know the subject matter vetting writers who may or may not know their subject matter?

The Reply is...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fool.

-Sollog

Re:The Reply is...

[hambonewilkins]

Thanks. I had set up the alley-oop and was waiting for the oop.

Here's one for you!

[silicon-pyro]

Here's a great site, and don't even think about modding this offtopic. Kooks have run amok!
thepeacock.com

I wonder if his utopian server can survive a slasdot frenzy!

Re:Here's one for you!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's awesome, I remember this site from back in the day when his flyers appeared on my car windshield.

Re:Here's one for you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anybody even take a link like thepeacock.com seriously, I was hesitant to click at first with such a dumbass name... glad I had a look, show all your friends. Make sure they have at least Microsoft Word 97 (LOL), and that they don't mind when people make up their own rules for capitilization.

Re:Here's one for you!

[Tassach]

Just when I thought the kooks couldn't get any kookier, you pull this out.

NO EGO!!!!

[soloport]

He's taken his Ennis enlargement pills again, I see.

Re:NO EGO!!!!

[SoSueMe]

Acronym fun:
GOSLOL
Good Old Sollog-LOL

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

+5 insightful seems more likely.

Been discussed before

[SmallFurryCreature]

Because not every expert reads wikipedia and not everyone who considers themselve an expert is an expert and because facts are often just plain wrong even if 99% of people think they are true.

So what does this mean for wikipedia? Well at best it can contain nothing more then a grey goo of widely accepted facts hopefully most of wich are "true". Group think.

At worst it will contain a complety random mix of hard facts, accepted facts and plain errors. Anybodies guess as to wich is wich.

Usually with "facts" we are given some info on the person claiming that the facts are true. Call me weird but I am more likely to take facts about space from an NASA engineer then from a farmer BUT I wouldn't trust a NASA engineer to tell one end of a cow from another.

A good example is the TV program "myth" busters. It airs on discovery in europe right now. It has two movie special effects makers trying to recreate urban myths and prove or disprove them.

Some of the "experiments" are valid enough but just a few of them are plain bad research. The biggest problem seems to be they consider themselves pretty hot stuff. While they might be able to fit some rockets to a car and disprove the jato myth but disproving the 'ice bullet' myth by freezing water in liqued nitrogen and noticing how brittle ice is is slightly less convincing. Anyone who knows anything about freezing knows that different speeds of freezing results in different ice crystals. Note I am not claiming that ice bullets exist. Just that there research to disprove it was lacking.

An earlier /. article had someone noting that 1 article about a person had the wrong birthdate. It turns out that this is a common mistake with all kinds of works listing 1 of 2 dates. The only correct way to handle this is to list both dates and clearly states that it is unknown wich is correct perhaps with theory as to why.

Sadly there is no way to stop anyone from then thinking "oh I know the right date" and remove the second date.

Wikipedie at the moment is a nice "lightweight" reference especially for "modern" stuff. For depth almost anything else is better but just perhaps you might find a good link to start at wikipedia.

Relying on wikipedia is like getting your medical advice from a guy down the pub. He might just be a doctor, he might just be a big mouth or you might just be talking to a quak doctor.

Re:Been discussed before

[Raunch]

(cur) (last) 11:27, 15 Dec 2004 Raunch (wich -> which)

what a pile of crap.

[ssand]

I looked at that "wikepediasucks" site, and its a heaping pile of crap. The source for "Jimmy Wales is a pornographer" looks very much like a false information site. If you look in the http://www.247news.net/2004 directory, and look through some of the other "articles" they are all about Sollog.

I don't care if he puts "Slash dot rules" on the wikepedia sucks site, this "Solog" is scum of the earth.

Re:what a pile of crap.

[mentatchris]

Totally. I've met Jimmy Wales, he's a good guy.
Sollog, on the other hand, is a pile of crap. Who puts pictures up of someone's daughter with nasty comments like that? A coward, that's who.

Sollogsucks.com

[davidmcn]

Is a completely available domain name. Now, who is going to buy it up?

Re:Sollogsucks.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, P.Ennis, I'm so happy you have to shell out cash to pick up all those domain names. Guess what? Sollog still sucks.

Where's the pornography part?

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw the part about objectivism on his wiki page...

I saw no mention of pornography that I could see. Any sources?

Re:Where's the pornography part?

[WizardRahl]

It's from the hate site that crazy guy made (http://www.wikipediasucks.com/). If I were Jimmy Wales I would laugh so hard I would vomit. :)

Re:Where's the pornography part?

[lommer]

Heh, thats probably coming from sollog's site http://www.wikipediasucks.com/.

Go look at it, it's pretty funny.

Wow, what a jerk

[abertoll]

His website: http://www.wikipediasucks.com/ is the epitome of hypocrisy. He links to a news article on a site (247news.net) which is infact another one of his sites. Besides the factit's full of articles about UFO's and how Sollog can predict the future, it's registered to the same email contact.

It is "created by" http://www.adonidesigns.com/ which is another one of his sites. (Also linked to by sollog.com)

You get the picture.

So here's the question: is there ANY evidence of his predictions at all besides sites he's put up on the web himself?

Gee, I wonder why Wikipedia didn't want that garbage in their publication. (Wikipedia is sold hard copy too.)

I think Jim Wales may have some legal action against this guy.

Re:Wow, what a jerk

[mentatchris]

I totally agree. I actually interviewed with Wales and received a job offer from him. I also met his wife when I was at the office. They are some of the nicest people I've ever met. In fact, I was really impressed with Wales when I met him. The fact that this sollog bozo has pictures up of his wife and his daughter really pisses me off. Jimbo Wales is a good man.
If you want to attack Wales or Bomis or Wikipedia, fine, but don't say nasty things about his wife and children.
That's totally ridiculous. Sollog is a coward.

Re:Wow, what a jerk

[LocalH]

Coward? He's pure evil.

If I saw him on the street, I would have no qualms with kicking his face in.

Anyone who attacks family of people they disagree with are instantly discredited in my eyes. Even if they did have some validity before.

Wales should sue for unauthorized use of copyrighted images, and libel towards his family.

We're filtering you

[FreeUser]

The year is 2678, and I am using the greatest invention of the millenium to post to slashdot from the future!

HAHAHA!

And I *still* can only get a damn ~500,000 uid. Must be something with slashdot.org rejecting my 512bit IPv19 address...

Nope, sorry. There's nothing wrong with your ipv19 to ipv4 gateway. At the request of several prestigious software archaeological societies and organizations, we in the 37th century set up a temporal filter rejecting all registration requests to slashdot from the 27th century prior to the issuance of slashdot id 516229, ipv19 or otherwise.

Of course, I would have had a slashdot ID of #1, but those rat bastards in the 43rd are blocking all packets temporally synced to all timeframes prior to slashdot ID #11483.

Re:We're filtering you

[spoonyfork]

I'm posting from sub-dimension 11. We've mastered routing posts from your future through our present into your past but some punk named Wesley Crusher has been filtering out all transdimension/transtemporal posts to Slashdot expect those IDs with a prime factor of 457. Even those get synchronized to "now" in any dimension of origin. We've created several projects in sourceforge seeded with experimental code than can be cross compiled into subspace autotrolls. We should have a beta in your 2043. Check back then.

Re:We're filtering you

[DavidTC]

Hi from 2603, and I'm actually doing some research on this, those of you from further in the future should be able to locate it.

Basically, like 98% of the people at Woodstock were time travellers, almost everyone here is a crosstemporal poster. (And all but two fark readers are from another time.)

It's one of those historical paradoxes. All time travellers realize they can't affect history if they're just one face in the crowd, and, throughout history, there have been a few really big crowds, so that's when the time travellers go...and end up being the entire crowd. They all think 'one more won't matter', but it does when it happens every single year of the 32,042,394 years of human history. (Minus the few thousand without time travel.)

For every time traveller, there is one native who was assumed to be there, but actually wasn't. The crowds can't just get larger. (For Woodstock, this causes quite a lot of confusion for us historians, because while you can find a lot of people who claim to have been there, and presumably, 'should' have been there, but were not, in fact, there. I suspect this is something to do with the drugs they took, or, rather, failed to take. Only forty-six natives have actually been located who went there, minus the bands and crew. (And at least three of the bands were non-native, as everyone knows.))

And, thanks to all this having actually happened in the first place, there's a rather unanswerable question: How large would the crowds have been without the time travellers knowing the crowds were large and showing up there? That's basically what I'm attempting to answer. I'm begining to think all large crowds are composed of time travellers, and that is the sole reason they happened, and that human history basically happens because time travellers read about it and showed up to play their part. (Like the Jack the Ripper lunatic they caught in 2574.)

And I'm still trying to track down those guys who managed to break through the temporal barrier around the Kennedy assassination and wandered up on the grassy knoll for an out-of-the-way view, if anyone can help with that, but I can't seem to figure out who's running that barrier or why it will have gone down in 2918 for six days.

Re:We're filtering you

[Anonymous Coward]

ugh so familiar sounding... I wish my scifi anthology was searchable.

Re:We're filtering you

[focitrixilous P]

I'll see you at the next (only) time travel convention.

Re:We're filtering you

[Alsee]

Obviously Taco obtained the lock on ID #1 from the Restuarant At The End Of The Universe.

-

Re:We're filtering you

[shadowbearer]

Awesome wifi kit :)

SB

Do you know Who Sollog really is?

[Prophetic_Truth]

Sollog's real name is John Patrick Ennis (Born born July 14, 1960). Thats right folks, Sollog is John P. Ennis.

he is a total dick..

Re:Do you know Who Sollog really is?

[Anonymous Coward]

IMO, he's CIA.

I predict there's a puzzled look on your face. But I'm completely serious.

New brilliant idea

[Jaeger]

I'm going to post a bunch of line noise to Usenet and wait for news to happen. Then I'll "discover" a one-time pad that will "decrypt" my line noise to reveal an account of the event. Then I can declare myself to be a great psychic and attract followers world-wide.

(Note to the cryptologically challenged: given an arbitrary cyphertext, a one-time pad can be constructed to make the "decrypted" plaintext read whatever one pleases.)

Time cube to music...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wesley Willis should have done a song about time cube... It would make for more universal appeal and understanding.

Come On Guys!

[Tibor the Hun]

What is wrong with ./?
His name is John P.Ennis and no one is cracking jokes about it?
Did I miss a memo or something?

te-hee

Re:I PREDICT AN EXPLOSION OF SEMEN ONTO MY GIRLFRI

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding! Everybody *knows* slashdotters don't have girlfriends.

I knew you were...

[Chembryl]

... gonna say that *groan*.

I'm excited.

[DigiDigi]

'bout time the psychics in Usenet focused their powers into a greater scheme of things. I'd like to see how the wiki-hivemind will resist to their righteous tele-kinetic fury! It can't get much more epic than this.

Carasso!

[meehawl]

Usenet? It's just a shadow of its former glory. I was there for the heady days of the Carasso Wars. Later on I worked with him and found him to be just as intriguingly infuriatingly trollish in person. For more info see alt.sex.carasso. You can also check out

alt.flame.hairy-douchebag.roger-david-carasso

Sollog ate my balls!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Sollog's brother Kellogg, who eats his nuts as part of a balanced breakfast.

Nah, Sollog does it himself too. I believe his followers (cough) call themselves "Sollog's Porn Flakes".

Anyhow, if there's ball-eating to be done, Mr.T's gonna be the guy to do it; though I think he pities the fool Sollog.

I don't think he's a troll

[Tibor the Hun]

His real name is John P.Ennis.
No troll would pick a name as obvious as that.

Re:I don't think he's a troll

[lbmouse]

Moe: Yeah, Moe's Tavern, Moe speaking.
Bart: Is John there?
Moe: Who?
Bart: John, last name Ennis, middle initial P.
Moe: Uh, hold on. Uh, John... P... Ennis... Hey guys I'm looking for a John P. Ennis.
[laughs from all]
Moe: Oh... wait a minute... John Pennis... It's you isn't it ya cowardly little runt? When I catch you, I'm gonna pull out your eyes and stick 'em down your pants, so you can watch me kick the crap outta you, okay? Then I'm gonna use your tongue to paint my boat.

Sollog Predicts Disasters?

[abb3w]

More interestingly, why didn't he predict this fiasco before putting up this Wikipedia page?

Re:Sollog Predicts Disasters?

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably did. It got him on the front page of Slashdot.Before this happened I had never even heard of him. Any publicity is good publicity

Re:Sollog Predicts Disasters?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You HAVE heard of negative attention, right?"

MOD PARENT UP

[The Ape With No Name]

you beat me to the user name and I will admit that I couldn't have used it better. Well met...

From sollog.com

[abertoll]

"It has come to my attention that Jim Wales is harassing TOH Members with return phone calls if you call him."

What a fair assessment of "harassment"

I Have It!

[bhima]

This SOLLOG is simply the sum of /.

Re:I Have It!

[LORDGODALMIGHTY]

Sollog did a paper on /. it's 47 the universal number SOLLOG IS THE SHIT http://www.sollog.com/pointcreation.shtml

Re:I Have It!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Sollog: there's a typo in your post. You said "SOLLOG IS THE SHIT" where you should have said "Sollog is SHIT".

Newsflash!

[TomorrowPlusX]

Newsflash: Insane, opinionated crank on the internet. News at 11.

This is not news. It's funny, his wikipediasucks site is distressing, for making fun of the guy's daughter, but this is not news.

Nothing to see here, move along. My guess is that if this hadn't involved wikipedia, but instead one of the many, many other wikkis out there, this would never have been "news".

Sounds a lot like cultic behavior.

[Spy der Mann]

As a cult researcher, I've seen similar events regarding cults. i.e. cult members suing anti-cult websites for millions of dollars, or sending hate letters... etc.

I wonder how many followers Sollog Has. But I PREDICT that the majority will sooner or later abandon him. It happens in all cults.

BOC

[karlandtanya]

Awesome Tune! Didn't know they had a wiki about it, though...

You see me now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars
Ive been living on the edge so long
Where the winds of limbo roar
And Im young enough to look at
And far too old to see
All the scars are on the inside
Im not sure if theres anything left of me

Dont let these shakes go on
Its time we had a break from it
Its time we had some leave
Weve been living in the flames
Weve been eating up our brains
Oh, please dont let theses shakes go on

You ask me why Im weary, why I cant speak to you
You blame me for my silence
Say its time I changed and grew
But the wars still going on dear
And theres no end that I know
And I cant say if were ever...
I cant say if were ever gonna to be free

Dont let these shakes go on
Its time we had a break from it
Its time we had some leave
Weve been living in the flames
Weve been eating out our brains
Oh, please dont let theses shakes go on

You see me now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars
My energys spent at last
And my armor is destroyed
I have used up all my weapons and Im helpless and bereaved
Wounds are all Im made of
Did I hear you say that this is victory?

Dont let these shakes go on
Its time we had a break from it
Send me to the rear
Where the tides of madness swell
And been sliding into hell
Oh, please dont let shakes go on
Dont let these shakes go on
Dont let these shakes go on

Sollog on Wikipedia - Nostradumbass

[Anne_Nonymous]

Just the other day Nostradumbass pointed out to me that:

"Sollog on Wikipedia"

contains the anagram

"I poo on Law. I skid gel."

Ol' Nostra (as I like to call him) seemed to think this was some sort of reference to a sexual-scatological fetish of some sort on the part of Sollog himself. I doubt this, but who am I to question the great one.

"goofball" Poster Gets Lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

I added the emphasis.

FBI looks for terror's tracks online

©New York Times

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 15, 2001

The online posting on Aug. 30 sounded like the rantings of a crank: The subject was "911," and it warned "Something is going to happen tomorrow . . . REPENT!"

On Sept. 4, the author of the first message, "Xinoehpoel," was back: "Wait 7 days," he wrote.

The few people reading the obscure Internet discussion over the prophesies of Nostradamus dismissed it. But seven days after the message, on Sept. 11, the towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked. Xinoehpoel quickly returned to the discussion to gloat that he had predicted the disaster.

And that was when the FBI and anti-terrorism investigators in 10 cities started calling the offices of O1.com, a Sacramento, Calif., company that sells Internet access to smaller Internet service providers. Xinoehpoel's messages could be traced back to one of the company's clients, said Brad Jenkins, the company's president.

When the subpoenas came, Jenkins said that he acted personally to make the process of handing over information go quickly and smoothly: "With this one, we said, "Don't send 'em through the hoops."'

As investigators pieced together clues from every possible source after the Sept. 11 attack, it is no surprise that they would look heavily within the online world, said James X. Dempsey, the deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington. "All of us live in that world, including the terrorists."

Other providers of Internet services, including such giants as America Online and Earthlink, confirmed that they too have been approached with requests to help conduct online wiretaps as part of the investigations following this week's attacks. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Online service providers have grown accustomed to requests for information as part of criminal investigations and civil lawsuits; an AOL spokesman, Nicholas Graham said the company deals with hundreds of the requests each year.

Some online advocates have suggested that law enforcement has gone further in the current investigation, demanding that companies attach the "Carnivore" Internet wiretap system to their networks. Carnivore has been controversial, in part, because the technology could be used to listen in on a multitude of online interactions for certain words like "hijack" or "bin Laden." But its intended use is to gather only the source and destination of a criminal suspect's e-mail.

Graham of AOL said that his company, like many of the larger service providers, does not need to attach the Carnivore system, which is formally known as DCS-1000, on its networks to provide information to the government.

Jenkins, the Sacramento Internet entrepreneur, said that his view of government surveillance has shifted -- especially in the last week. "Certainly it appears that one of the ways these guys communicate is electronically," he said. "I think everybody would say, "Let 'em watch it."'

And Xinoehpoel? Jenkins said he thinks it was a false lead -- a "goofball" who got a prediction right.

Re:"goofball" Poster Gets Lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

"Jenkins said he thinks..."

Well, HE THINKS WRONG. What Xinoehpoel just happened to say "wait 7 more days" on a post dated Sept4 with the subject "911" and with the content "Something is going to happen tomorrow . . . REPENT!" and he got lucky? How much more evidence do you need? There are plenty of other examples where his predictions have come correct.

Re:"goofball" Poster Gets Lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict something bad is going to happen in the world in the next seven days.

Time passes...

[what do I win?]

WRT the usefulness of psychics

[Adam Heine]

Theoretically, the usefulness of a psychic is determined by what one can do to prepare for an event, that one knows is coming, based on the psychic's prediction. But if I have to do vector calculus and word jumbles to figure out what a prophecy might mean (and even after doing that, it could mean a number of things) what good is that to me? I'll take my chances with blind fate, it's statistically about as predictive as what Sollog seems to be doing.

The Wikipedia article currently mentions a Sollog follower who said "something" would happen "tomorrow" - supposedly referencing 9/11. Even if his prediction *did* mean 9/11 was coming, if I read that post on 8/31 what good would it do me? Even if I assume "something" means "something big", how do I use such a vague prediction for my benefit? If a prediction cannot benefit those who hear it, what's the purpose of making the prediction at all?

The answer I'm dancing around is that I think Sollog is just in it for his own ego and publicity. If that's true, then this whole Wikipedia mess is actually benefitting him by giving him *more* publicity. The answer here is to probably just ignore him completely.

MORBO Demands!

[Kenshin]

Answers to the following questions...

I love this passage

[Agrippa]

from http://www.247news.net/2004/20041211-wikipedia.sht ml

"I sat in an office of AIS and saw three different people on one high speed connection post about Sollog. They were all called the same person and Sollog. Then I went to local Starbucks and saw another person post to Wikipedia pro Sollog statements and they too were called Sollog."

.agrippa.

Sollog site says SLASH DOT.ORG RULES

[LORDGODALMIGHTY]

No shit www.wikipediasucks.com now says /. RULES haha

Re:Sollog site says SLASH DOT.ORG RULES

[Anonymous Coward]

...now we know hes crazy!

Cut the guy some SLACK

[monsterzero2002]

http://www.subgenius.com/ All of the worlds great religions started in much the same way. Believe or you are doomed!

Psychic Schmichic

[eomnimedia]

If Sollog is so psychic, then why doesn't he call his mom? Doesn't he know she wants to talk to him?

Not much porn.

[abb3w]

The Wired article mentions that Wales searched Google for "Liv Tyler Nude". Of course, that standard would make an awful lot of teenage boys "pornagraphers", too.

However, the Wikipedia article on Bomis, Wales' company, mentions that they also sell "erotic images" over the internet. Several non-WorkSafe links off the article to computers off Bomis.com are persuasive evidence.

Who is this John P. Enis?

[corngrower]

How accurate have his predictions been?

Be sure to hit reload a few times...

[Anonymous Coward]

Be sure to visit Sollog's Site and hit reload a few times. Just to make sure you're getting a consistent copy of the site, of course.

Re:Be sure to hit reload a few times...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've refreshed 30-40 times so far, but nobody's edited it.

Site blocked from work...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. I get "Cults/Occult Site Banned" when clicking through that link at work. Gotta love it.

Problem taken care of?

[$eth31]

If you go to the page now, you'll see that they've thrown up an edit protection to the article...the article, as it exists now, actually DOES seem to represent that happy middle, presenting both the pro-Sollog "facts", and the (IMO) closer-to-fact "He's a Kook", as well as listing some of the various harrasments he's made. Article actually looks fine in this frozen version, if you ask me.

Re:Problem taken care of?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, the article looks pretty balanced to me. Sure, it doesn't paint a very flattering picture, but what does that guy expect based on his past misdeeds? Even the article about the psychic-debunker Randi mentions some of Randi's errors and strategic mistakes. Compare the current version of the Sollog page with the very first one from the edit history: the initial version was pure advertising and, depending on how you look at it, shilling or self-promotion.

If you dig a bit deeper through the edit history, it looks like a Sollog supporter put up the first version, then there was a vote about whether it should be deleted, and the Sollog supporters wanted to keep it. Then when the article started to turn into something more substantive than uncritical Sollog ads, the Sollog fans started to vandalize and oppose it. So not only does he want an article about himself, he also wants to dictate what it can say, and when he can't have his way he wants the article pulled.

In the infamous words of Douglas Adams: There's no such thing as a free launch.

Let me try...

[Anonymous Coward]

I predict you will read this post.

If you give a mouse a cookie...

[Houkster]

...he's gonna want a glass of milk...

Further proof that not everyone deserves to be given freedom of speech using someone else's printing press.

SOLLOG SAYS!

[Southpaw018]

From the wikipediasucks site: SOLLOG SAYS SLASHDOT.ORG RULES

The man's stupidity is good and true to believe that legions of /.ers are going to his site to discover his truth and not laughing hysterically at him. :p

website

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparentley, he wants all viewers of wikipediasucks.com to Wikipedi A Sucks. What is a Sucks, and how do I Wikipedi it?

How to make Wikipedia more credible

[gearspring]

Here is my suggestion for improvement. Make a color coded viewing mode which has a different
background color depending on

how long ago that part of the page had been added

and how many unique visitors have seen the new part of the page.
Call the mode "peer review" or "credibility rating"
Red might mean just added, so beware!

Maybe the parameters could be saved in your personal preferences.

Jeff V. Merkey's lost twin?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet Merkey and Sollog would get along wonderfully!

re: ice bullets

[bani]

they redid the ice bullets test using about 10 different permutations including different ice freezing speeds, different freezing methods, different liquids, etc.

basically a bunch of people complained about their first ice bullet test and suggested different ways to test, and they did them all.

in any case it's not the brittleness of ice that was the issue, it's that the ice melted. what you got out of the barrel of the gun was steam. every time. no matter what.

sorry if they challenged your sacred cow. that's what they do.

You educated stupid

[KingEomer]

Does Sollog's style not remind you of Gene Ray (http://www.timecube.com/)?
For example, Sollog seems to like using RANDOM captilized words to EMPHASISE certain things. Gene Ray has lots of underlining and colour-usage reminsicent of some kid's personal webpage back in 1998.

Meh, I don't know... Maybe I'm crazy. Probably less so than those two, however.

Re:You educated stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED!

LORDGODALMIGHTY

[Anonymous Coward]

...seems mighty 'Sollogish' to me....

Re:LORDGODALMIGHTY

[Anonymous Coward]

Err...make that LORDGODALMIGHTY seems awfully 'Sollogish' to me...

Re:SOLLOG DID HIT 911

[Anonymous Coward]

NOT!

He's mentioned by Doug Adams... (bad joke warning)

[wasted]

The discussion is pretty big, and i really wont trust his own site in explaining it, so can anyone here tell me who he is, and what he has done (with proof)?

He's the guy from the fourth book of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker Trilogy - you know, Sollog, and Thanks for All the Fish.

I know that was bad, but I couldn't help myself.

Re:SOLLOG Predicts (He's for REAL)

[Lobo93]

Looks like Choronzon is dancing the jitterbug inside your head; may he be damned like a dog!

BTW, how can I get a hold of your Book of Toth, err..., I mean Book of TOH?

I predict...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that people that believe this sollog fool, will think themselves the fool later in life!

(ya, you can print this out, and keep it in your sock if you dont belive me!)

Children's Crusade... Why Wikipedia Works!

[sampson7]

Hang with me for a little while, this may seem disjointed -- but the parent posting actually has far more to teach us about Wikipedia and the nature of internet research than the actual article does. So here are a few observations that might bring my response to this post into context:

A couple days ago I got into a long debate with a PhD candidate/teaching assistant about how to teach an introductory college course on sourcing and reliance on internet materials in an introductory research course. Having taught something similar, I was surprised when she suggested that there is little (perhaps even nothing?) on the internet that can be reliably cited to. Or, to give her more credit (the actual argument was far more nuanced... or at least it seemed so after a couple of beers), her point is that there is always a more authoritative source available than the internet. And since students should be required to cite the most authoritative source they can find, it is extremely rare that the internet copy of a source should be cited to. Citing to the internet, in her opinion, is a crutch for citing to "real" paper publications (or even proprietary internet databases, CD-ROM compilations, etc.)

So while I clicked on the article more out of amusement value then anything else, the parent poster provides an awesome example of the strengths and weaknesses of both arguments. Coming into this thread, I'd heard of the "Children's Crusade" before, but it was just a historical tidbit that I'd picked up somewhere and really knew nothing about.

I was intrigued by the parent post's rather categorical dismissal of two of the three explanations -- and not know what those explanations were -- I clicked through and read the article.

The first paragraph of the article states that "Several conflicting accounts of this event exist, and the facts of the situation continue to be a subject of debate among historians."

Okay. So from the very beginning we know we are dealing with an "event" where the facts are not entirely clear. But scanning the rest of the article, it seems clear that whatever happened happened in the early 13th century.

The first two versions are then laid out. It's a real tear jerker -- young children coming together in a spontaneous uprising to fight the forces of evil -- who then meet a gruesome end. (Sound familiar?.) And it's this version of the story that this painter was thinking about when he put ink-to-canvas or what Kurt Vonnegut was thinking when he subtitled Slaughterhouse-Five "Or, the Children's Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death", or why the term was incorporated into the title of the classic submarine movie Das Boot or why the incomparable Neil Gainman used it as a title for one of his comics.

History is not just comprised of facts. Myths and legands sometimes have a far greater impact on our physche than do Cold Hard Facts. This is a perfect example. This significance of the Children's Crusade is not whether it actually ever happened. The historical "fact" is an interesting academic question that makes for a fun historical sluething exercise.

So, back to the article. After depicting the historically and culturally significant version of the Children's Crusade, the article goes on to say "Some historians speculate that the entire crusade is fiction, as there is no real evidence that any such event occurred, in the 13th or in any other century. Research done in the early 1980s indicates that the Children's Crusade began as a misinterpretation of a 1212 religious movement among the landless poor...

Re:Children's Crusade... Why Wikipedia Works!

[multimed]

Wow, that was fantastic. I've struggled with the question of whether Wikipedia should be cited or not. Ultimately, for me it serves a much greater purpose than being authoritative--it just scratches me when I itch. I know of no other place to go where I can get broad explanation of a general knowledge topic I just need to learn about. Certainly there are points and even entire articles that are incorrect. But on the whole, I find the articles try earnestly to be fair and present multiple valid points of view even though not all of them can be right. Most often, I'm able to decide for myself, or follow the links to further information.

Re:Children's Crusade... Why Wikipedia Works!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is a little late, but I found the thread that developed off sampson7's post quite interesting. Personally I have found some pretty fascinating articles there. But then I have no way of verifying their accuracy.

But as to the Children's Crusade example - guess it's now clear that was a poor example. Someone posted that Wikipedia was just a bunch of anonymous people to which others replied both that experts are amongst those masses and that commercial encyclopedia's are also just a bunch of anonymous people. What was left unsaid is that theoretically, those folks are also supposed to be experts in their field.

Well I happen to own an older CD only edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and their article on the Childrens Crusade is quite weak in comparison to Wikipedia's, especially if the general accepted view nowadays is that it never happened (something Britt never mentions). Anyhow here is their short explanation:

"Children's Crusade,
a religious movement in Europe during the summer of 1212 in which thousands of children set out to conquer the Holy Land from the Muslims by love instead of by force. The movement ended in disaster, but the religious fervour it excited helped to initiate the Fifth Crusade (1218).

The first group of children was led by a French shepherd boy named Stephen, from Cloyes-sur-le-Loir, a town near Vendôme, who had a vision in which Jesus appeared to him disguised as a pilgrim and gave him a letter for the French king. On his way to deliver the letter, Stephen attracted hundreds of followers, some of whom decided to go to the Holy Land. An estimated 30,000 made their way to Marseille, where they fell victim to disreputable merchants who shipped them to slave markets in North Africa.

A 10-year-old boy named Nicholas, from Cologne, led a second group. He preached the Children's Crusade in the Rhineland, attracting an estimated 20,000 children. After crossing the Alps into Italy, they split into groups: some were dispersed among various Lombard towns; others continued on to Genoa, where they were refused transport across the Mediterranean. A few then traveled to Rome, where Innocent III (pope from 1198 to 1216) took pity on them and released them from their crusade vows. The fate of their leader, Nicholas, is unknown, but many of these children, like the French group, were sold in the East as slaves."

Also the lack of references is kind of frustrating. Anyhow thought I'd post late when no one is reading this thread....

BM

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had the first really good bowel movement in days. I feel much better now. Sollag predicted that I would today. Thank you Sollag! I'm a believer now.

Godwin

[Scrameustache]

Like the old Usenet rule -- The first one to compare the other to a Nazi, automatically loses the argument.

And Son of Godwin: Terrorists.

Showing /. Trolls How It's Done!

[Austerity Empowers]

Congrats to Sollog, he's really showing /. trolls what it MEANS to troll. Forget the GNAA, forget Fr1st Ps0t and Hot Grits. Sollog has developed a religion and a following (ok, maybe a virtual following) around his trolling capabilities.

Truly an American icon!

Re:Showing /. Trolls How It's Done!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, f'n frankenstein had a 'following' too, dumbass.

Re:Showing /. Trolls How It's Done!

[Anonymous Coward]

Um. You do know that Frankenstein was a fictional character, right?

Troll is not a strong enough word.

[njfuzzy]

Sollog, or "whoever made the WikipediA Sucks site" is far worse than a troll. This is clearly just a deeply bad person. I can't find words strong enough.

This person posted pictures of Wales' wife and child, insinuating that they were, respectively, a Fetal Alcohol Syndrome baby, and a porn model.

What justification could possibly made for such personal attacks on his family?

On an unrelated note, I find this story disappointing. The title clearly promises a "Psychic War" but in fact, it's just some psychic waging a virtual war.

Re:Troll is not a strong enough word.

[clap_hands]

This person posted pictures of Wales' wife and child, insinuating that they were, respectively, a Fetal Alcohol Syndrome baby, and a porn model.

Almost certainly you meant "...respectively, a porn model and a Fetal Alchohol Syndrome baby" ;-)

But yes, resorting to these kinds of tactics is about as low as you can get on the Internet. However, there is the consolation that 99.9% of people are sane, and will realise that anyone who engages in this sort of campaign has very little credibility.

Re:SOLLOG DID HIT 911

[CoffeeJedi]

hey SOLLOG, why don't you... you know... learn how to put FREAKING LINE BREAKS BETWEEN YOUR URL'S!?!?!
betcha didn't predict i'd say that, did ya?.. cuz... if ya did... then ya would've... and i wouldn't have had to say it

Heh, so true.

[Trimda]

Yes, I totally concur on that. The fact that the entire site is filled with useless rederict, and furthermore, all his supporting links are from his own websites, I file this guy under F**KTARD. Sollog dude, sure, you may have a problem with James, as you used his webstie to make yourself look like an a**, but leave his family out of it. It just justifies everyone in treating you like an a**hat.

Too see all of the iterations, just view the histo

[soybean]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Sollog& action=history

Re:SOLLOG Predicts (He's for REAL)

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter if he's right or wrong. An unchecked ego will destroy anyone.

Re:Sollog? PROOF he hit 911 and 311

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent TROLL, he's a TROLLOG, ahem, SOLLOG - just look at his posting history

Tom Brokaw predicts...

[Anonymous Coward]

From Saturday Night Live, with Dana Carvey palying Tom Brokaw.
Full transcript here

Tom Brokaw: Okay, who are we up to?

Voice of Producer: Uh.. we're still on Presidents. Gerald Ford.

Tom Brokaw: Gerald Ford? Well, he's in good shape..

Voice of Producer: Just covering our bases, Tom. You never know..

Tom Brokaw: Alright, alright.. [ graphic of Gerald Ford, "1913-1996" appears over Tom's left shoulder ] "Gerald Ford dead today at the age of 83."

Voice of Producer: Okay, good. Annd, one for next year.

Tom Brokaw: Alright.. [ graphic of Gerald Ford, "1913-1997" ] "Gerald Ford dead today, at age 84."

Voice of Producer: Uh.. a little sadder.

Tom Brokaw: Alright. [ sad ] "Gerald Ford dead today.. at age 84.."

Voice of Producer: That was good. Good.

Tom Brokaw: Okay, what now?

Voice of Producer: Now let's do one for if he's shot.

Tom Brokaw: Well, what are the chances of that?

Voice of Producer: We're just covering contingencies.

Thank you

[Anonymous Coward]

I just modded you up because I wanted to post the exact same thing. The notion that suing for things that ARE true but unpleasant would be a good think makes me cry.

I re-read the post a number of times hoping they were jsut being sarcastic or something...if they were,i totally missed it....

Nupedia

[tepples]

Nupedia was supposed to be the Release version of Wikipedia.

I'm with you

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sollog eats his nuts." -- yes, rapier wit

That is so lame. I agree with your decision.

That would have been a perfect time to talk about the GNAA. What's wrong with trolls these days?

either a troll or a troll...

[the-build-chicken]

...by sheer logic of his own claims:

1) Either he predicted that his post would cause all these problems through his amazing powers of prediction...and posted anyway...making him a troll.....or

2) He didn't predict these problems and hence is a fake...knowing himself that he's a fake (as he must if scenario 2 holds), and posting anyway make him a troll.

So, troll if you do, troll if you don't...mod -1 sollog

If social ostracisim doesn't work, then what?

[Bequita]

You know, guys, this whole thing really isn't funny. Okay it's a little funny from the sheer surrealness of it all, but still it ultimately damages the internet as a whole. Look at the Wikipedia editing wars, and some of the posts here - the worst of human nature in evidence.

And when we lash out at this sort of lunacy, we reinforce that lunacy. I would say "ignore him and maybe he'll go away" except I don't think that will work.

It's frustrating, but part of the nature of the internet is that it's harder to make someone go away by ignoring him. Even if everyone else on the internet did ignore him, he'd still be able to create the illusion of popularity and support the same way he does now: multiple websites, emails, identities. It doesn't seem to matter to him, how many of his supporters are fictional, and this leads us to the crux of the matter:

How can the internet as a community continue to function effectively without a way to combat this type of behavior, and the damage it causes? Public opinion has no effect - a user can create his own publich opinion. Invective doesn't work. Is the internet doomed to a slow slide into anarchy?

There was a poll last week on what would kill the internet - patent law won, but ultimately I think that users will kill the internet, because we can effect change in our laws, but we cannot effect change in a person's behavior, even when that behavior is detrimental to the community.

Usenet Psychic Wars?

[RomulusNR]

And here I thought /. was going to teach me how to attack people's minds via Wikipedia.

247news.net

[Deimios]

If you go to wikipediasucks.com, he has links to "news articles" to back up his argument, but the funny part is that they link to a site called "247news.net" which is obviously a phony site created by himself...if you go to the main page all of the "headlines" on this "news site" talk about how Wikipedia sucks, and promote his church.

Re:247news.net

[fvckyou]

there is no church (it's a temple) www.adoninet.com operates over 300 content sites looks like www.wikisucks.com is the busiest one yes they own www.wikisucks.com and www.wikipediasucks.com

Re:247news.net

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Ennis, you old sockpuppet.

Re:247news.net

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong - actaully www.SollogSockPuppet.com is growing the fastest!

Usenet "Psychic Wars" With Wikipedia...

[WizardRahl]

I imagine John Patrick Ennis and Jimmy Wales trying to out-tune each other Dark City style.

Re:SOLLOG DID HIT 911

[Anonymous Coward]

parent == Sollog

Account was created today and only used to make pro-Sollag posts.

This is a different twist on it

[IInventedTheInternet]

But every establishing (self-appraised) "religion" needs an enemy, something to stop people from reasoning and commit to action.

But this whole thing is pretty sad as far as Holy wars go. They need the Spanish Inquisition.(no one expects the spanish inquisiton...)

Re: Many sites repeat Wikipedia data

[Ralconte]

Many sites take Wikipedia articles and repost them. You can find them by googling for a topic and Wikipedia. The text will appear under numerous links other than Wikipedia. The articles are sometimes credited, sometimes not. Presumably, people update their copy of the Wikipedia article whenever they feel like it, so they don't end up repeating bogus stories. You can tell because the article matches something from the history on Wikipedia.

WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM, MORON?

[NDC777]

What a load of pricks. Sollog predicted Oklahoma, Diana, 9/11, Madrid, Bam, and numerous hurricanes and quakes. Do some research, morons!. You'll be sorry when the nukes go off and you're nowhere near a safe zone - hahaha FUCK YOU ALL

Re:WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM, MORON?

[fvckyou]

they can't read This is the famous Sollog 911 Warning, Sollog simply stated MAJOR EMERGENCY IN DC ON 911, it was made on 9/11/1998 three years to the EXACT DATE of 911 http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8 &oe=UTF-8&selm=6tb7rp%24gvr%241%40winter.news.erol s.com/ Sollog warned of Train Terrorism on March 11th, two years later the Madrid Massacre struck on March 11th http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8 &oe=UTF-8&selm=9dca61bc.0203072305.28bb8518%40post ing.google.com/

Re:WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM, MORON?

[Anonymous Coward]

note: parent is another sollog sockpuppet

Re:WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM, MORON?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look through the edit history on Wikipedia, you'll see that NDC777 (parent poster) was banned for vandalizing the Sollog page. Now someone calling himself NDC777 shows up on /. to defend Sollog. Coincidence?

Re:WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM, MORON?

[Anonymous Coward]

...I believe the first nuke victim was your brain.

After the nukes fall, and you've moved out of your mother's "safe zone" (btw, we call it a basement), please come back and post to say you were right!

Re:WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM, MORON?

[Anonymous Coward]

SOLLOG is a drunken coward.

Re:WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM, MORON?

[rlandmann]

No coincidence. NDC777 is a sock that Sollog's been using on usenet for about a month. Note also the posting style identical to LORDGODALMIGHTY

Has any mod actually checked that?

[SharpFang]

I mean...

Forum - Articles - Donate - Banners

WikipediA SUCKS .com
In no way is this site connected to Wikipedia.org

SOLLOG SAYS SLASHDOT.ORG RULES

If you think Wikipedia Sucks email the owner jwales@wikia.com

Did you know the founder of wikipedia is a self admitted pornographer?

Wikipedia.org is now one of the top 300 sites in the world for traffic as ranked by Alexa. Reporters from around the world are starting to cite Wikipedia as a 'source'. Academia is starting to cite wikipedia as a 'source'.

I don't know... maybe just some slashdotter hacked his site???

But if Sollog wanted to show "how cool he is" to slashdotters, he failed miserably. A true prophet should know most of slashdotters loathe slashdot dearly and that slashdot sucks a big time... :)
(just compare the number of pro-slashdot opinions and anti-slashdot ones, found on slashdot... uh, unless you read at +1)

Proof Sollog predicted 911 and 311

[fvckyou]

This is the famous Sollog 911 Warning, Sollog simply stated MAJOR EMERGENCY IN DC ON 911, it was made on 9/11/1998 three years to the EXACT DATE of 911 http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8 &oe=UTF-8&selm=6tb7rp%24gvr%241%40winter.news.erol s.com/ Sollog warned of Train Terrorism on March 11th, two years later the Madrid Massacre struck on March 11th http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8 &oe=UTF-8&selm=9dca61bc.0203072305.28bb8518%40post ing.google.com/

Re:Proof Sollog predicted 911 and 311

[Anonymous Coward]

mod parent -1 Sollog

Re:Proof Sollog predicted 911 and 311

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Ennis.

Re:Proof Sollog predicted 911 and 311

[britneys 9th husband]

Am I the only one that thinks Sollog made, oh, about 365 or so of these "predictions?"

Re:Proof Sollog predicted 911 and 311

[rlandmann]

He didn't need to - Sollog has economies of scale on his side. Apparently, 311 can mean any of:

13 January
31 January
11 March
13 October
31 October
3 November
30 November
31 December

...that's eight dates for the price of one!

And what was meant to happen on one or all of those dates? Any and all of

PLANE CRASHES
TRAIN CRASHES
TERRORISM
FAMOUS DEATHS
MASSACRES
SCHOOL SHOOTINGS
EARTHQUAKES
HURRICANES
ASSASSINATIONS

So naturally, when the 113th Shuttle flight ended in disaster, this was a "direct hit" for Sollog, since 113 is 311 backwards...

Shouldn't it be SOOLLOG?

[stuffduff]

Shouldn't it be SOOLLOG?

Sollog on wikipedia's "HATE CRIME"

[Suddenly_Dead]

I will now present for your consumption, the contents of this page, linked from wikipdiasucks.com where good old SOLLOG says that wikipedia's neutral point of view is a hate crime against his "religion". I hope that from this, the people who do not know can aquire an idea about how insane this all is.

Wikipedia (see www.Wikipedia.org) the on-line encyclopedia has been accused of RELIGIOUS HATE CRIMES by a religious movement known as TOH (Temple Of Hayah) see www.TempleOfHayah.com

TOH members are being actively recruited to file HATE CRIME complaints against Wikipedia and it's owner Jim Wales who is a self admitted pornographer see http://www.247news.net/2004/20041211-wikipedia.sht ml

Many do not like the way Wikipedia imposes what many view as a bias in their articles that are promoted as "a neutral point of view". There's thousands of web hits in search engines on the Net declaring 'Wikipedia Sucks', a new web site was just created the other day www.WikipediaSucks.com due to how Jim Wales and his group are harassing and defaming the religious leader Sollog. Sollog is he founder of TOH the same group that is now accusing Wikipedia of HATE CRIMES.

If you look at the edit history of the Wikipedia Sollog pages, you will see dozens of Sollog fans complaining about how Wikipedia is editing the Sollog pages. 'Pro' Sollog edits are immediately purged and then the poster is called Sollog or a Sollog sockpuppet (a bogus poster who is the same person).

See the Sollog Discussion page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sollog

Massive editing of Sollog Discussion Page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:So llog&action=history&limit=500&offset=0

Here is the article page about Sollog at Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sollog it calls Sollog amongst many negative things a 'wacko'. It also says there are no members in TOH his religious movement. So now members of TOH are asking the FBI to charge Wikipedia and its Pornographer owner Jim Wales with RELIGIOUS HATE CRIMES for the false and harassing information about Sollog and TOH that is now on Wikipedia.

Here is Wikipedia admitting what is not well known in the media, that a porn site is the funding for Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomis

(insert talk of Bomis, how the site rips your money off, etc)

Wikipedia is now a top 300 site at Alexa see http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=wikipedia.o rg

I hear a major class action civil suit is being prepared by lawyers for TOH against Wikipedia for defaming and harassing Sollog with false and libelous information.

Why is there so much interest in Sollog?

(insert links to sollog's predictions)

Vandalism

[idolcrash]

I've seen a lot of vandalism on Wikipedia recently, although it isn't too difficult to labor through. For example, the History of Djibouti article gives us some gems such as:
During the Satanic invasion of monkeys and occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s and during World War II
Members of the executive council were responsible for one or more of the territorial services and carried the title of God. The Lord advised the French-appointed governor general. In a September 1958 constitutional referendum, Gay Somaliland opted to join the French gheto as an overseas territory. This act entitled the region to representation by one God and one senator in the French Parliament, and one counselor in the French Union Assembly.
French President Charles de Pussy August 1966
In July of that year, a directive from Hell formally changed the name of the region to the French Territory of Afairs and Asses.
In addition, the executive council was redesignated as the council of government, with nine cows.

Political Activism? Doubtful. Entertaining? I'd say so (at least temporarily).

I simply cannot resist a good sollog-bash

[halcyon1234]

Hey, Sollog. Guess what number I'm thinking of.

Give up?

The answer is "screw you". Hehe.

Ah, that was fun. Back to work.

He's Trying to Suck up to Us

[CybrGuyRSB]

Looks like he updated his hate site recently to add
SOLLOG SAYS SLASHDOT.ORG RULES
If you click on it, it links to his "temple" site.

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'll definitely join any religion that's pro-slashdot, no matter how made up it is.

nonsense isnt debate

[SubtleNuance]

Unable to accept that Wikipedia's policy of presenting a Neutral Point of View means that an article on Sollog would have to include both pro- and anti-Sollog material.

A "neutral pov" isnt necessarily one that includes a PRO opinion and a CON opinion. This false duality is a result of political correctness and unending tolerance of opinion.

This fellow sollog claiming all this obvious nonsense, a 'neutral pov' doesnt require equal and oposite support material. Why? Because it is obviously false.

So, in today's media landscape, all kinds of nonsense is 'tolerated' in the debate simply because people have a belief that they 'are entitled to their opinion' - and that is a defense of their ridiculous opinions.

I wont bother to cite some popular held beliefs that are not worth entertaining. There are many.

Big whoop

[brundlefly]

He claims to have discovered the 137 sequence in mathematics.

Big whoop... I discovered the 1337 sequence!

link here

[Anonymous Coward]

now with clickedyclick userfriendliness ->

http://www.citypaper.net/articles/022102/sl.howcol .shtml

Re: ice bullets

[Seekerofknowledge]

That's not true. I watched the episode you are referring to, where they redid the test.

They still missed the point, and still froze the water using liquid nitrogen. They did not try numerous speeds or liquids. What they did change, was that they didn't let the ice come in direct contact with the liquid nitrogen, and also let it sit overnight before using the ice bullets.

However, this was a waste as the ice still came out brittle and *very* cloudy the next day (you can see this when they go and load the gun), indicating the prescence of massive air bubbles trapped inside. Leaving the ice sit overnight was worthless as the liquid nitrogen would still have frozen it within a matter of minutes -- after which no amount of time would fix the ice.

Regarding your point about the ice melting... A harder ice without air bubbles would be propelled faster and farther away from the gun blast quicker, making less time for the ice to absorb the heat and melt. Also, the melting may have been caused by the brittle ice disintregating from the force and therefore melting faster due to the higher surface-area to mass ratio (melting as from the outside as one block vs. melting as a fine mist all at once).

I agree with the grandparent post. The two on Mythbusters are capable as far as welding metal and concocting ways to make an entertainig show via blowing things up, but they are almost completely ignorant of any knowledge of real science and physics. Their experiments sometimes are just plain wrong.

What do you mean by a child?

[westlake]

"The point which Raedts did not consider enough is that many landless farm-laborers in those times actually were very young (age 7 to 14). In the rural society of the 13th century children left the house of their parents very early, usually when they were able to work (at about age 7). This is particularly true for poor families...Therefore, the evidence that poor farm-workers of both sexes made up a big part of the so-called "Children's Crusade'' does not disprove the notion that the movement included a noticeable, even prevalent, group of very young people (under age 14)...We have similar problems concerning many other, sometimes mysterious, migrations under the probable participation of children in the Middle Ages, for instance the crusades of the pastors in France in 1251 and 1320."

Did The Children's Crusade Of 1212 Really Consist Of Children? Problems Of Writing Childhood History (The Digital Archive of Psychohistory)

Artist Too!

[dynamo]

I found a link to this on the wikipedia discussion pages, it was just too funny not to share some of Solog the artist's abstract nudes.

Re:Artist Too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Beautiful you should see his NUDE JESUS'

They were banned on ebay

haha

http://www.sollog.com/art/abstractjesus/thumbs_1 .s html

www.SollogIsGod.com

OT: Linking to #HEAD

[JLCdjinn]

I know this is off-topic, but it is still relevant: is there any way to acquire the ID number for the current version of a Wikimedia article? I've thought about this in the past, and with the root article I thought I might pose it to the /. community. The parent's post with a version URL pushed me over the edge. I have looked high and low for that little tidbit of information, and while the Wikipedia URLs entry provides a lot of information about how to productively construct Wikipedia URLs, I can't figure out how to permalink to the current version of the article I'm viewing. Any tips?

Stealing W. Buffet's quote

[tacokill]

In the short term, Wiki's are a voting machine. Unfortunately, in the long term, things generally evolve to a weighing machine.

Right now, ppl are voting. I don't think the weighing has started taking place except for those Wiki's that use editors.

The Pie Code

[Positive Charge]

Yum Pie!

I think it's time to write that book I've been meaning to write about God's secret messages in pi. I am convinced that if you express pi in binary and then print it out, you can search it for not only all knowledge previously known, but images of virtually anything.

In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a picture of a picture of a grilled cheese with Michelle Pfeiffer on it at index 3,444,738,956,368,665,431,233. And not only that, Jesus is a mere three billion and 6 away from that!

That means something. God put those pictures in pi in order to tell us he loves us.

Wikipedia is very useful.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia has been recently reviewed by experts and they have found that Wikipedia is on average higher quality than both Brockhaus and Encarta. How do you explain that? I also suggest you read this.

Due to this Sollog incidents, I have more trust for Wikipedia than any other encyclopedia! I hope you too will trust more.

Re:Wikipedia is very useful.

[DunbarTheInept]

None of those things listed in the objection FAQ covered my point - that reality is not subject to a vote. That a Wikipedia entry has one expert looking at it doesn't change the fact that other people edit it too.

My only contribution ...

[BorgCopyeditor]

... is Blue Oyster Cult!

You see me now, a veteran
Of a thousand psychic wars
I've been living on the edge so long
Where the winds of limbo roar
And I'm young enough to look at
And far too old to see
All the scars are on the inside
I'm not sure that there's anything left of me

Re: ice bullets

[bani]

no ice will ever survive the incredible forces from the rifling. it's enough to groove metal bullets, think about what that does to ice.

ice is also very "hard", but brittle. there is no ice which will survive the extreme acceleration of your typical rifle (10,000 - 20,000 g's iirc). your ice will be completely pulverized, then vaporized in the hot exhaust gases (if it isnt' outright vaporized by the exhaust gases alone).

mythbusters showed us ice bullets which don't work. please feel free to go ahead and demonstrate an ice bullet which does work.

People trust WIkipedia enoguh to cite it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at this page you will see plenty of examples of Wikipedia being cited as a source. It shows that people regard Wikipedia authoritive enough to cite it.

Re:People trust WIkipedia enoguh to cite it.

[DunbarTheInept]

There are lots of sources that people cite as authoritative. That people do so doesn't automatically make them correct to do so. People also cite the bible.

Faith-based versus Reality-based

[jafac]

This is the great struggle of our Age.

When it is finished, we will see if the Age of Reason continues, or is undone.

Re:Faith-based versus Reality-based

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's less of a struggle of faith vs. reality so much as a struggle of conforming to what an authority tells you is right vs. trying to find and understand what it is on your own. Keep in mind it's not a clear cut situation, since there are situations where someone may be more of an authority than you are on a subject (hiring an engineer as opposed to fixing your school's computer network yourself). This can be considered the same for a moral code, since someone may know more than you about what is right or wrong. What we aren't doing enough is critically viewing those who tell us what to do, we either renounce it or believe it.

Wikipedia and /. style moderation

[JimLane]

Wikipedians have devoted a lot of thought to the idea of creating a "validated" version of Wikipedia, with article versions that pass some kind of test. Anyone could still edit the current version but the validated version would be frozen. How to validate? One possibility is to designate experts, but another that's been mentioned is indeed /. style moderation. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Validation.

Bad edits can be reverted.

[Anonymous Coward]

And in the next version of MediaWiki, the software there will be special features for editor review. Yes, other people can edit it, but bad edits can be reverted. Try vandalizing WIkipedia, you won't get far! Trust me I've tried it and I failed. Now I am one of Wikipedias top 400 contributors. I revert several incidents of bad edits everyday. Once vandals find themselves reverted they usually help with contructive edits. I know others do the same and thats why I trust the integrity of the Wikipedia.

If you really think your objection wan't covered state your objection in the talk page so it can be covered.

Try reading today's featured article, if you see mistakes, follow the Wiki philosophy of being bold and correcting them. Thats why Wikipedia is succesful, as mistakes can be corrected when spotted. In a traditional encyclopedia you can't do that!

I have faith in Wikipedia. If you don't you are missing out on a great resource.

Re:Bad edits can be reverted.

[DunbarTheInept]

You have just made the claim that at least some Wikipedia editors, including yourself, are people who had the desire to vandalize the site in the past and now are contributors. Why you think saying this would make me trust it more is a mystery to me.

Re:SOLLOG DID HIT 911

[Anonymous Coward]

That's no way for a Jedi to act, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Re:Proof Solame predicted 911 and 311

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that what your PEnnis tells you these days?

Proof Sollog should be in jail

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.citypaper.net/articles/050996/article01 6.shtml

Sollog's getting out of hand

[internetdarwin]

I found this response posted on his website after linking to it from wiki: http://www.sollog.com/wiki.shtml
Here is a small exerpt, this is getting out of hand:

"PSS - TOH believes the actions of Wikipedia and Jim Wales is a "RELIGIOUS HATE CRIME" and violation of the Civil Rights of TOH members. If you wish to file a HATE CRIME REPORT against Jim Wales and Wikipedia you can on-line at https://tips.fbi.gov/"

He also goes on to call on his members to call Jim Wales and harras him by phone.

He(?) can be define as an Attention Whore

[fmobus]

How can someone be THAT problematic? He should get a fuckin' life. Yeah... does he know what `to fuck' is? maybe that's just the problem... which leads us to `math and sex' article. Apropos... he is a self-declared mathematician, ergo, he has no sex. Right?

Predictions...

[smartdreamer]

Predictions are no big deal...
I can predict everything that happens... if it has happened.

This guy is not a psychic, he is a psychotic freak!
There is another religious freak around Quebec you probably have heard with cloned babies fake story : Rael.

hah!

[OtakuHawk]

He says wikipedia sucks, but at the top of his site slandering wikipedia, he says slashdot.org

The Fibonacci algorithm?

[PurpleFloyd]

First, I'm not quite sure what this Sollog fellow was referring to in the original article by the "Fibonacci algorithm" (under "Sollog's most famous math discoveries"). However, one might assume that something with Fibonacci's name attached to it was discovered by, say, Fibonacci.

Why didn't anyone say we could just take dead people's math discoveries as our own? In that case, I'm going to go "discover" Newton's method, Boolean logic, and the Pythagorean theorem! I'll be rich!

Re:The Fibonacci algorithm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sollog revealed a hidden number sequence in primes that is 24 numbers deep (sequence repeats every 24th prime) he showed this same pattern is also hidden within the famous Fibonacci sequence, he also showed other hidden sequences within exponents, twin primes and mersenne primes.

Interesting that 7 years later some mathematician ripped off the Sollog Fibonacci sequence and is not getting credit for a major discovery when Sollog fans all know Sollog discovered it in 1995

Sollog Rules http://www.sollog.com

Temple of Sollog http://www.templeofhayah.com

Wikipedia Sucks http://www.wikipediasucks.com

Isn't that the age old question?

[Anonymous Coward]

If we do not already know the correct answer, how will we know when we have found it? If we already know the correct answer, why would we be looking for it?

It appears there is no independent means of verification. It appears instead that it is all power and rhetoric, and that it is power and rhetoric all the way down.

If I am fed misinformation about the matings habbits about the the African Springfoot, the risk is very little. I am not a member of a club the chief interest of which is to discuss African rodents. The respect of my community and my peers is not dependent upon my views of the mating habits of African rodents. If I read an entertaining article about African rodents, I am likely to be satisfied whether or not it is correct. I am unlikely to ever encounter a situation in which my beliefs about this rodent are a source of conflict.

If I am fed misinformation about the nature of the universe, the risk is still very little so long as the information is consistent with the predominate views of the community against which I assess risk. If I am a creationist and I read an article describing the triumphs of creationism, I am very likely to find that article satisfying. So long as I am not interested in the standing of my beliefs among non-creationists, and in so far as non-creationists are not members of my community or among my peers, it is very unlikely that my beliefs about creationism will ever become a source of conflict.

If you are a member of academia, then I suggest it is exceedingly likely that beliefs about history garnered from Wikipedia will be a source of conflict in your community and among your peers. If you are a member of academia, I suggest, you should not garner beliefs from Wikipedia articles unless those beliefs are later found to be consistent with beliefs represented in the corresponding literature in academia.

But if you are a student of mathematics and do not frequent communities of which students of psychology are members, then the risk of using Wikipedia as a source of beliefs about pyschology is likely to be low. It is not likely that your beliefs about psychology garnered from Wikipedia will be a source of conflict in the circles you frequent.

It appears we never know that we know. Rather we guess, lie, and appropriate beliefs from others. Whether we consider the risk/reward of professing a belief to be satisfactory depends upon the circles we frequent.

Psychic wars?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I saw the title I thought at first that it was a Blue Oyster Cult reference.

No fair

[anthony_dipierro]

That bastard Sollog gets a slashdot article for creating Wikipediasucks.com, but I don't get one for creating slashdotsucks.com? I guess I gotta start making fun of Taco's daughter or something.

Re:No fair

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a moron dipshit.

winkipedia sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Its plain and simple.wikipedia is biased and you only have to look at the disscussions to prove it.

Look at the articles,a clear bias is shown.

NO ENCYLOPEDIA should show a bias.NOT ONCE
is a hit of sollog discussed,and dont say that there hasnt been one because there has been.

WINKIPEDIA SUCKS AND ITS OWNER IS PORNOGRAPHER

DOWN WITH WINKIPEDIA

www.wikipediasucks.com

Wikipedia is biased and offensive against...

[Wikipediasucks]

against those who follow the TOH. Any Text that calls itself an encyclopedia and shows any Form of bias is not worthy enough to be considered a encylopedia. PEOPLE SHOULD STOP SPREADING LIES about sollog www.wikipediasucks.com

Personality Disorders

[gtoomey]

Many of the neetkooks have symptoms of personality disorders, particulary the B cluster of symptoms - antisocial/psychopath, borderline(psychosis/neurosis), histrionic and narcissistic symptoms.

Sollog seems to be running a borderline personality distortion campaign
"BP Distortion Campaign - when a BP deliberately tries to convince family, friends, community members or business associates that the Non is the one who is sick, was abusive, lied, was violent, etc. May involve false accusations of domestic or child abuse. May involve ' setting up' the Non to be charged with almost any crime."

I have a relative who works in a psych hospital who deals with these people every day. Theres a whole ward of people who think they're God/Jesus.

Trollog

[Froboz23]

Speaking of abusing pubilic knowlege databases, there's a new entry on http://www.urbandictionary.com/.

Trollog - A specialized type of Internet Troll. These attention-craving creatures are convinced they have psychic powers, and spend most of their time trying to convince humans that their powers are real. Humans generally respond by discrediting and ridiculing the Trollog, which triggers the Trollog's innate troll behaviors. The Trollog will respond by SHOUTING at seemingly RANDOM intervals, to the POINT that the shouting is MEANINGLESS. When they strike, they prefer to target the human's family, rather than attacking the human directly, as Trollogs have a cowardly disposition. Trollogs insist that they are allied with an army of civil lawyers. However, the only time a lawyer has ever been spotted with a Trollog is in criminal court. The Trollog also has the magical power to create mirror images of itself. The Trollog uses this power to unleash a cacophony of arguments, all claiming support of its desperate belief that it has psychic powers. Trollogs have no psychic powers.

A textbook example of a Trollog can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sollog

Sollog Books WOW over 30 titles

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia Sucks they say he has no books

See

www.1ebooks.com/sollog

Over 30 titles

HAHAHA

Sollog Rules

http://www.sollog.com

AGE OF IGNORANCE

[MATREX911]

Whether it was or wasn't doesn't really matter. The only thing that matters when all is said and done is that the link is real, the prediction was extremely accurate, (in fact uncanningly accurate if you're objective), it has never been proven to have failed, and if so, then it may be the most important prediction ever made. All I see on this site are a bunch of ignorant spammers with no intelligence whatsoever to actually present a well thought out argument against evidence supporters have archived. Anyone that takes the time to do an objective investigation will see the evidence validates Sollog as perhaps the most accurate and only true modern prophet whose warning about nuke terrorism was once laughed at by the very people and news media who are just now admitting nuke terrorism is probably going to happen any day now. When nuke terror hits where sollog has warned of, every person here attacking sollog will look back and feel like fools for not helping warn people and loved ones because you were too lazy to do some basic research that would clearly prove the warning is real. What then do your immature attacks and behaviour disprove? Certainly not the evidence and facts. I haven't seen anyone including wiki or slash offer any intelligent balanced discourse on the literally thousands of pages of material available one can find to see Sollogs message and writings are real and irrefutably true. Its really sad to see the amount of ignorance abound on this forum and just about everywhere on the internet. In the age of information, this has to be the most ignorant age in history and each one attacking sollog without doing any research contribute to the deterioration of today's society and exactly why only an almost complete annihilation of modern man can save the planet. I can totally see how future generations will look back on this time period as the age of ignorance and want to hunt down all those who had the opportunity to spread his warning that could have saved many lives but instead chose to mock and ignore the evidence which could have helped avert nuclear terrorism. I don't think any of you fully realize whats about to happen or whats at stake in respect to nuke terror. But I'm sure if more of you did some real research on the evidence itself or thought more about the effects of a nuclear detonation on a US city, not only would you see how accurate sollog has been amidst the lies and propoganda people have been spewing to distract and confuse people on the truth, but you'd be taking this issue far more seriously and see the imminent danger the world is in. Sollog is basically just the messenger. You all just hate and fear the message or are just too stupid to understand it. -Ja Hero

Slash Dot Org named in Libel Suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the article?

http://www.247news.net/2004/20041215-lnux.shtml

Sollog must have some bad ass lawyers to get the article yanked that fast.

hahaha

Re:Slash Dot Org named in Libel Suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Article is still here....must say something about those "ass laywers" ya got there.

SOLLOG PREDICTS: /. caves in to legal threats

[rlandmann]

Apparently unable to comprehend that articles don't stay on the front page forever and ever, a Sollog sockpuppet claims that the article's been deleted because of a class action that Sollog's "followers" are threatening against VA Software.

Sollog vs. Slashdot!

[jdavidb]

Despite the fact that his site said slashdot rules the other day, Sollog has now declared slashdot guilty of religious hate crimes. :)

True

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen it.

Re:True

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too.

Re:He's mentioned by Doug Adams... (bad joke warni

[Anonymous Coward]

boom boom chhhhh

I'm right.

[Anonymous Coward]

The lurkers support me in E-mail.

Re:Sollog? PROOF he hit 911 and 311

[Anonymous Coward]

"LORD GOD ALMIGHTY" is a troll? Well, I guess that explains the weather.