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Usenet Psychic Wars With Wikipedia
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.
At the moment, the article is blank. This version, however, is quite informative.
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.
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.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
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.
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.
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!
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