Slashdot Mirror
Censored Wikipedia Articles Appear On Protest Site
Gregory Rider writes "According to a recent article in The Guardian, a group of disenchanted Wikipedia administrators has been going through back channels on Wikipedia and retrieving articles deleted by Jimbo Wales or other higher-ups. Now they're putting them back up on a website for everyone to see. This includes articles on Justin Berry, Paul Barresi, and, most strangely, Brian Peppers, which has been solicited for deletion off of Wikipedia 6 times with mixed success and is now banned from being edited on for a whole year."
Who are these people and why should I care? No, really. Who are Justin Perry and Bryan Peppers? You could at least give me a hint so I know what the articles are about before I go read them.
Just because a system allows for changes by anyone doesn't make those changes valid. I don't have any idea about the specific content of the entries, because those are subjects I know nothing about. But SOMEONE has to ultimately make a decision about what is appropriate or legitimate in a piece of written material. It sounds as though the people with ultimate authority at Wikipedia are exercising their functions as editors. It MIGHT be that they're being overly aggressive about editing changes. I don't have an opinion about that. But to say that they're censoring is silly. They're just being editors. Censorship is when someone outside of a publication or organization requires changes. This is NOT censorship.
David
Isn't it getting to be about time for the way project Xanadu approached this? You don't have one perspective on the text base -- you can in essence select your own pope with his cardinals, bishops and priests rather than having them handed to you by the rather thinly-related merit of who came up with the Wiki software in most use.
Seastead this.
For what it's worth, I am an administrator on the English Wikipedia, and I did disagree with the decision to delete Brian Peppers. But there's lots of much more important things to worry about, and I've agreed with Jimbo Wales on a number of other situations, so life goes on. By the way, any Administrator has access to all deleted pages (except ones that have manually been deleted from the database, which are few and far between). And the reason Justin Berry was deleted and rewritten was because it was originally written by self-identified pedophiles and could've potentially gotten Wikimedia into trouble because it was a biography of a living person and did not cite everything properly, thus possibly leaving Wikipedia open to libel lawsuits.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I don't know that those pages were censored so much as they violated policy (Wikipedia articles are only written about topics already covered by reliable sources), or they were the subject of a lawsuit threat.
If that Seigenthaler dude hadn't assasinated Kennedy, our world would be a very different place.
How hard would it be to fork wikipedia?
Thank God the Brian Peppers article is now available. I don't know how I could have lived for another minute without being able to read about him. Damn those Wikipedia editors for deleting this article about the most famous Brian Peppers, whom I hear about every day, and simply live for to hear about. Famous people like Brian Peppers NEED to have their own Wikipedia articles, don't you see? It's a requirement.
Could somebody explain to me why I should care about this "issue"?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Personally, I think the best part is how Wikipedia has aimed to delete , on grounds of notability, of course, any references to this group of rogue administrators.
The uncensored and unspoiled Wikipedia-spinoff is available here. Truth and facts, at last!!
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
Its no big secret. Jimbo deletes articles all the time.
Why should these people have articles dedicated to them in an encyclopedia? Knowledge of these people amount to pretty much internet trivia. Why do these, or half of Wikipedia's articles exist? Well, because the internet says so and the internet is what fills Wikipedia's pages. This is why "real" encyclopedias say Wikipedia will never be a "real" encyclopedia: because it has too many fluff/worthless pieces that are of no encyclopedic merit like the three mentioned in the blurb.
Opinions are like assholes everyone has one. There are actually poeple who still maintain that the earth is flat, so even objectively varifiable facts that are not widely disputed will be targets for this kind of defacement. The idea behind taking some articles down (or labeling them as potentially misleading) is a good one, but the implemention is something only M$ could love. Given this poor implementation, It is good to see that someone is standing up and making this "information" available. I hope that they will take steps to have provide both acurate and free information.
Linux : Hotrod
Both the MediaWiki software as well as the database itself are freely available.
Hyperlinks: Don't rewrite the manual on the wheel. RTFA. That lets you know what they're about. In this case the articles are presumably about . . .Justin Perry and Brian Peppers.
Ok, there's this Slashdot effect thingy to take into account . . .
KFG
What can I say but "wow"?
Apparently the person who submitted this story thinks "delete" and "censor" are synonomous - they are not. Things get deleted from Wikipedia all the time; that doesn't mean it was censored.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
So:
.info domain and fill the site with violently uninteresting second-hand information, while dressing themselves as rebels. Good for them. /. community would treat this non-event as they do other non-events: that is, by composing witty comments. ./ crowd undaunted, because who clicks those blue underlined words anyway - all they do is undercut the wittiness.
/. effect is not caused by any conscious action, it just happens.
1. People with too much time on their hands get an
2. Someone thinks that
3. The site is slahdotted, so the initial problem (if it was that) solves itself;
This leaves only one question: who did click on the links? And the answer: it was not necessary;
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
The Wikipedia is not a glorified message board. It does indeed have standards. When those standards are violated, they edit the content such that the basic standards are met. The standards that fit in these three cases is that bio articles must be on 'known' people, and they must have been covered by reliable sources. This is just a basic bare bones standard.
Now, can it be argued that these three articles might have met those criteria? Sure. They are subjective criteria for sure. Does it matter? Not really. The fact that these three people have had their bios deleted isn't going to cause me to lose any sleep at night. If these are the worst examples of editorial abuse that the Wikipedia has to offer, I consider that pretty damn good.
Look, the Wikipedia is good at what it does. The Wikipedia is a great place to start if you want to get an overview of a particular subject without too much pain. The Wikipeida is NOT something to cite in a scientific journal or to get detailed and exact information that is critical to some endeavor simply because that information could be wrong. Nor is the Wikipedia trying to achieve all information in exists. Wikipedia isn't Google, it isn't a hard scientific reference, it isn't even an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is its own beast, and trashing a few irrelevant articles that might or might not have met their guidelines is no great tragedy.
Someone give me a call when the editor's rewrite the Bush page with their own personal opinion and lock it, then I'll take note.
That's just great. Not only is the latest "pick on the ugly guy" meme picked up by every forum I can think of, now it's been brought to slashdot. Why was that necessary? Honestly.
Sorry about that everyone. Dumps are available. See the, er... 'uncle' post for details.
but they violate it's license.
They don't provide attribution (I.e. article history), they claim the content is under CC-By-SA-2.5 rather than the GFDL.
Whomever is an administrator has abused their position by providing content which increases Wikipedia's effective legal liablity.
All for the sake of creating drama.
It's shameful.
How does Wikipedia's new "WP:OFFICE" censorship policy intermesh with the GFDL?
For example, if they outright delete a long list of libellous or potentially actionable edits to an article, but also deleted some keep-worthy edits along the way, is this still compatible with their licensing scheme?
Make the "WikiWeb"(actually just directory portal) hosted on servers worldwide.
Each server of WikiSPhere will be Liable for its domain of KNowledge Only.
Ye,si'm aware of WIki competition and special purpose wiki.
I suggest this be done for Main Wikipedia as it most Important.
Each Server/hosts will be hosted independently.Links will take people from any poitn of WikiSphere to another.
ex: Server : Communism,Contains every entry related to communism.
and Server : Fish. Contains all fish species and articles on fish.
You can move fish articles to another servers if its too much(which is likely if subject directory expands to Gigabytes).
And no,jokign about google searching the data instead is silly.Web doesn't have the structure,web is chaotic.Resources vary in formats and form of presence.
This will reduce server load,make all of them independent,and you can split server usage just by assigning half of
articles to new server.
Each server will have it own admin
and they all can argue on forums for their cause.The purpose of Wikiweb will be providing maximum knowledge.
Disputed stories can be hosted on many servers,If parties decide so.Each of LInks will have alternatives.
While the referenced Guardian article does mention wikitruth.info, it says absolutely nothing about administrators "going through back channels on Wikipedia and retrieving articles deleted by Jimbo Wales or other higher-ups", as claimed by the submission. Slashdot's accuracy here is looking, well, Wikipedian. This is a creative interpretation at the least and an absolute fallacy at the most. While the statement may well be correct, the reference clearly is not.
So why is this on Slashdot now, instead of several months ago, when the Justin Berry flame war was going on in full force, when Jimbo and his drones were actively deleting all article content and were banning anyone who questioned their motives? Why did Slashdot ignore the situation at the time, when Slashdot readers could actually have made some noise about Jimbo's concessions to a whiny camwhore who didn't like reading the truth about himself? I know for a fact it was submitted several times.
Typical Slashdot style of late, I'm afraid... Totally drop the ball when a story is relevant, only to pick it up a few months later and post it... and then probably dupe it.
Why does it matter that the writers were self-identified pedophiles?
Because if you think fucking kids is ok, then we can't exactly trust anything else you feel the need to say. Really, who gives a shit? Maybe someday minds will be changed and the world will be ushered into a new era, a kid-fucking utopia if you will! One free of guilt, one where they are free to roam and be themselves!
Meh. I'm all for freedom of speech. Let them say what they want. But if they're saying it on community websites and not on their own, they shouldn't be suprised when it gets deleted. They can use their own megaphone, not ours. They aren't trusted and they aren't welcome...and for damn good reason.
So if this hasn't been linked 50 times already, the office protection policy is ehre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OFFICE So, I'm a Wikipedia admin, and a volunteer for the mail room, and here's a semi-rant. It is neither Jimbo Wales's interest, nor the Foundation's interest, nor any other decent editor's, to damage an article or to abandon the openness of Wikipedia. And I can speak with complete confidence that for every WP:OFFICE protection, there are loads upon loads of "sorry you're unhappy with this article, can you tell us what's incorrect to help us fix it?" mails that no one gets much bothered about and most of the community never hears about. Sometimes they are very angry, sometimes they are from wealthy and powerful people, and we don't get too fussed about them until there is a serious concern that we may be doing wrong, and something needs to change, and that something hasn't happened via the usual community processes. That's what office actions are for. Wikipedia is huge; one of the top 20 websites, and publishing there is like publishing in the '''New York Times''. Except that we're on the web and searchable without registration. There is actually serious damage to be done by having false information and rumors up on articles, and if our community processes have failed to get that right then it's clear some intervention is needed. It's done to save the project, not to destroy it, and I imagine that Jimbo would rather chew his own toenails off than face the resulting shitstorm without good cause. When it happens, everyone who ''does'' have good, verifiable, neutral, cited information to add, should be writing temp versions. And they are replaced, though without the blog rumors or anything we can't verify. (Except for Brian Peppers, which, face it, was more trouble than it was worth. The year holding off on that? Big deal. It's one year, in a project that will be around... well, as long as anyone wants to keep it around, Wikimedia Foundation or no, thank you copyleft licensing.) Complaining on the talk page doesn't help do that. Bitching and moaning on other sites doesn't help do that. Researching does. Without whitewashing, contrary to some opinions, without censoring, ''with'' the neutral and verifiable truth, but nothing that isn't, no matter how much you may be dying to share the nasty email you got from Jack Thompson. Sorry. We like criticism. We invite criticism. And when we see *good* criticism we take it to heart and respond to it (see our responses to The Guardian's analysis of a few articles, or to the errors the Nature study found). But there's nothing to respond to here. If "wikitruth" wants to take the liability of having libel up on the site, well, that's their problem, though it's IMO not a bright move. (Especially if they're trying to draw publicity to themselves.) Wikipedia will continue to attempt to be neutral and accurate... and, you know, maybe try to be decent and work with people, too, who have every right to be upset about false information published about them. Way past my two cents now, Kat (User:Mindspillage)
Now Jimbo Wales is censoring the articles by Slashdotting them!
So, I'm a Wikipedia admin, and a volunteer for the mail room, and here's a semi-rant. It is neither Jimbo Wales's interest, nor the Foundation's interest, nor any other decent editor's, to damage an article or to abandon the openness of Wikipedia. And I can speak with complete confidence that for every WP:OFFICE protection, there are loads upon loads of "sorry you're unhappy with this article, can you tell us what's incorrect to help us fix it?" mails that no one gets much bothered about and most of the community never hears about. Sometimes they are very angry, sometimes they are from wealthy and powerful people, and we don't get too fussed about them until there is a serious concern that we may be doing wrong, and something needs to change, and that something hasn't happened via the usual community processes. That's what office actions are for.
Wikipedia is huge; one of the top 20 websites, and publishing there is like publishing in the '''New York Times''. Except that we're on the web and searchable without registration. There is actually serious damage to be done by having false information and rumors up on articles, and if our community processes have failed to get that right then it's clear some intervention is needed. It's done to save the project, not to destroy it, and I imagine that Jimbo would rather chew his own toenails off than face the resulting shitstorm without good cause.
When it happens, everyone who ''does'' have good, verifiable, neutral, cited information to add, should be writing temp versions. And they are replaced, though without the blog rumors or anything we can't verify. (Except for Brian Peppers, which, face it, was more trouble than it was worth. The year holding off on that? Big deal. It's one year, in a project that will be around... well, as long as anyone wants to keep it around, Wikimedia Foundation or no, thank you copyleft licensing.) Complaining on the talk page doesn't help do that. Bitching and moaning on other sites doesn't help do that. Researching does. Without whitewashing, contrary to some opinions, without censoring, ''with'' the neutral and verifiable truth, but nothing that isn't, no matter how much you may be dying to share the nasty email you got from Jack Thompson. Sorry.
We like criticism. We invite criticism. And when we see *good* criticism we take it to heart and respond to it (see our responses to The Guardian's analysis of a few articles, or to the errors the Nature study found). But there's nothing to respond to here. If "wikitruth" wants to take the liability of having libel up on the site, well, that's their problem, though it's IMO not a bright move. (Especially if they're trying to draw publicity to themselves.) Wikipedia will continue to attempt to be neutral and accurate... and, you know, maybe try to be decent and work with people, too, who have every right to be upset about false information published about them.
Way past my two cents now, Kat (User:Mindspillage)
This comes as no surprise to any of us who edit in Wikipedia land. As of late, I've been focusing on the negative systemic bias introduced on articles covering topics related to Islam and Muslims. For months, editors of Islam related Wikipedia articles have been driven out if any of their edits, while based upon academic journal articles, resulted in anything positive being said about the faith. There have been many discussions and articles written amongst students and professors of Islam over the past few months regarding the fact that Wikipedia's articles on Islam are tainted with negative propoganda at the behest of the same set of editors. These articles cannot be considered reliable sources of information and an open-letter is set to be released criticizing Wikipedia's policies of letting editors with negative agendas litter articles on Islam with what "feels right" instead of the facts. One of the biggest battlegrounds right now is the Islamism article. A look at the talk page shows a particular editor by the name of Timothy Usher has censored comments on the talk page critical of his position. So much so that the Islamism article's talk page earned Protection status! This is unheard of in Wikipedia where contested articles generally earn protection status. The battle continues on. Now any editor echoing negative sentiments against this band of anti-Islam editors is erroneously labeled a sockputtet in the hopes of having the account banned. So far, one editor has been banned on these grounds. Other editors have complained but not much is being done even when Administrators are alerted.
This development of creating another Wiki shouldn't surprise anyone. Wikipedia goes against its own policies of not being a democracy regularly. Users regularly violate policies of civility, no personal attacks, and trolling but are usually not met with a harsh response as long as editors agree ideologically with these attacks. The only way to balance this out is to start a Wikipedia where censorship of opinions doesn't take place and this is exactly what these editors have done.
The other problem is Wikipedia's pervasive presence online. Multiple sites mirror Wikipedia's database so any unsubstantiated "fact" quickly spreads around the internet. For example, the Prophets of Islam article mentioned Islam had 313 messengers. As a Jewish scholar of Islam, I found this fact strange. Most Wikipedia editors tend to erroneously regard Google as a great source of unbiased information so I began my search there. The phrase 313 messengers returned results mostly pointing to mirrors of Wikipedia's article. Searching the Qur'an netted nothing. However, it was only when I went to our campus library did I discover cryptic Sufi texts mentioning the number 313. A bunch of my schoolmates working on their doctorates and I had a discussion on this and one of them made the changes. This illustrates that an editor of Wikipedia can have their information disseminated far and wide. Anyone seeking to abuse this power could easily do so.
The idea of collaboration works great when every fact can be backed up with the scientific process but it breaks down whenever social com
censorship |?sens?r? sh ip|
noun
the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts : details of the visit were subject to military censorship.
At the time the article was originally published, I read that it says "It's a pseudonym the 30-year-old Silicon Valley IT professional uses as he documents the inner machinations of the project, along with a dozen other Wikipedia administrators, on a site called WikiTruth (www.wikitruth.info)." So I went over to the wikitruth site and called up the Special:Listusers page. Surprise surprise, there were only 8 registered accounts on the wiki, only one or two of which were active. I would be genuinely surprised to find more than one "Wikipedia administrator" on the entire site, rather than a group of disgruntled trolls and banned Wikipedia users (the makeup of every other anti-Wikipedia site to date).
This is a facet of the WP:OFFICE policy. I think it's just something where you have to trust Wikimedia. Obviously they're getting a lot of legal threats, so they have to make some controls on the encyclopedia so that the whole thing doesn't get shut down due to a slashdotting of lawsuits. It's not transparent, and I wish they would say exactly what's happening, but they say that they can't say, so...oh well.
Good luck to Wikitruth. Keep these pages up for as long as you can without being sued. (I'm not being sarcastic. There needs to be a refuge for these banished pages. But Wikitruth shouldn't expect not to get sued.)
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I'll probably be modded down for this...
Wikipedia is licenced under the GFDL, removing any possibility of a copyright complaint, and the critics have the safe harbor of protected free speech (commentation about a corporate entity) for libel. Please stop screaming LAWSUIT! at every intersection and learn about the legal system of your country. Thanks.
If they are doing this actions it's cause they have a good reason for. I hate censorship.
I'm suprised that there is no Wikipedia entry for wikitruth.
but then again it seems wikipedia has gone over to the darkside.
One is essentially a full article, one a stub, and (as mentioned) Brian Peppers is WP:OFFICEd. If Wikipedia is "censoring" stuff, they're not doing a very good job, apparently?
Wikipedia is a source that should be used with distinct caution but I'd say it is possible to use it on occasion, and within context. Thomas Vander Wal makes an interesting suggestion: that wiki articles used should indicated the revision number in the reference, so it is clear which version of an article is being referred to. I'm aware of several articles that are worked on by academics and respected within their field, e.g. the Community Informatics article (though as with any paper bias has to be taken into account). By indicating the reference number this makes it clear that a particular version is respected rather than the latest one which is currently hacked.
Out of curiousity, I googled these three. In each case, the Wikipedia article was in the top 10 results. I followed these links. In the case of Brian Peppers, the article had been replaced by a note indicating that the article had been taken down. However, the other two (Justin Berry and Paul Barresi) seemed to be valid articles.
I used to love Star Wars until I heard one of the key grips endorses slavery now I refuse to watch that abomination, and if anyones want to keep on watch that racist, intolerant, mocker of everything we've come to respect about the inherent dignity of humans than I hope they greeted in their nazi supremicist white power Forced-Labor-Topia! If they want to express their apprecitation on any community forum that isn't there own they better expect to have it deleted.
This is such a repetitive theme these days. It's so easy to imagine this guy trying to think up a story where there is none and doing such a lousy job of it.
Hmm, let's see. Wikipedia is going to fail any minute now. The results are going to be catastrophic when the great failure of Wikipedia happens. It's emminent ya see, looming. It's ominous. The disastrous doomful failure of Wikipedia is really scarry. Is everybody scared about this yet? Don't be the last one on your block to be scared about the great catastrophic failure of Wikipedia. If you're not scared you don't know what you're missing. You heard it here first. Remember, it's really a big deal and very scarry.
What's next? The failure of free software? Whoo, that sounds really scarry as well. Boy I'm on the edge of my seat here.
Wikipedia's process for weeding out bad articles and information could use some work. The main problem I have is that pages are, by default, considered authoritative. Only when someone comes along and finds inaccuracies or disagrees is anything questioned. To compound the problem, the mechanisms for removing bad information or articles are themselves subject to abuse and ignorance. As an example, the article for the web "sitcom" Pure Pwnage was recently put on the chopping block, despite the fact that it has been around for over two years and will probably reach a tier of popularity similar to something like Red vs. Blue. I believe part of the complaint was that the article contained "fancruft", yet instead of trying to remedy the situation, someone unfamiliar with the subject matter decided they knew what was best and started yelling "delete!".
This isn't informative. This guy is getting his information off of a YTMND site. There are a series of other YTMND sites that discredit the Allen Peppers page. The Allen Peppers page is quite unconvincing.
All that's known is that he might be handicapped (his infamous picture shows the handle of what looks like a wheelchair) and that he's a sex offender.
You know, I always wondered why the handful of disgruntled WP people out there are so incredibly vocal.
Then I thought about their characteristics:
*) They probably are literate and write well, or they wouldn't be working on WP.
*) They probably have lots of free time, or they wouldn't be working on WP.
*) They probably like politics, or they'd do what I do and just contribute a little to the occasional article and have nothing to do with any of the politics in WP's running.
*) They are probably willing to go to a good deal of effort to support things that they feel strongly about (or they wouldn't have been trying to build policy on WP in the first place).
So you have a group of people with plenty of time to be bitter about WP, and proclaim that it is going to collapse, who are good about writing things about it.
I don't really have any sympathy for them. WP is entirely free content. If your ideas are correct, you are capable of expressing them, and you want to produce something rather than garner attention by complaining and spearing people, great. You can just fork WP to "myWP" *today*, and most folks will come with you, and the problem will be resolved. If you're just engaging in groundless whining, then the folks won't come with you. Linus Torvalds has said this about himself many times -- that he doesn't have any authority but that which the contributors give him. They choose to work with him. If everyone decides that they want different decisions made, then they'll go with someone else, on a different fork. Nobody is forcing you to work on the Torvalds tree, except for the fact that he does a good job, and people are happy with the situation.
Heck, a couple of forks might even be a good thing. They'd let some alternate ideas be tried out.
As far as I can tell, Jimbo Wales got fed up with all the organizational problems the Pepper article was causing -- far out of proportion to the value of the article. This is not JFK assassination theory. Rather, it's a particularly ugly picture that will probably float around the Internet for a month and then vanish. There are *hordes* of Web fads like this, and while someone writing a book on Web fads might still find this useful in a couple of years, I personally doubt that most people will ever think about it again after two years. So you have a not-particularly-valuable article that is causing problems for people trying to get work done. Solution? Just put a block on it for long enough for everyone to cool down, and possibly for the fad to go away. Is that the best fix? No, but any kind of administrative action is going to piss someone off. And people can Google for it, or put up webpages about it, or if it turns out that the Peppers article really matters in a couple of years, someone can re-add it.
I think that Jimbo Wales was less interested in making a judgement about whether something was valuable or not and more interested in keeping WP functioning. So he made the call that he felt resolved the WP organizational issue and caused the least damage. I can't personally think of a better solution to the problem. If someone does come up with a better solution that hasn't been proposed yet, doubtless it can be adopted instead.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
The 'cult of amateur will fail' reference reminded me of discussions I've had with a few journalists lately. Incredibly bitter about the change in information flow. Typesetting as a skill is no longer in demand. With access devalued everyone's a blogger and everyones opinion is equal. There is a near-luddite resentment to the death of their old media model, job skills and way of life.
I point out to them that, as a musician, 2006 is better for me than 1996. If I were a music biz lawyer, a recording engineer, a touring soundman, a publicist, a music critic, a record store clerk/owner, I'm looking at the end of my industry. As someone who actually plays a few instruments and writes my own music - selling downloads, paypal, p2p and home proTools have radically improved my outlook.
Is there an equivalent potential advantage for 'information filters'? adsense? blogging? Forecast cloudy, ask later.
wikipedia is such a change that, like digital music, it will intitially destroy jobs and wealth. Like myspace, it seems destined to mutate. However, like p2p, paypal, ebay, mapquest(sort of) and google, wikipedia was inevitable. If it didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent it.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
"Forever Rachel" from Final Fantasy VI
Now, just for sake of completeness (and a demonstration of the power of hyperlinking), an instructional example (thanks to Google!)
Andrew "tempests? in MY teacup?" Orlowski. Go read a couple of his articles on The Register. You'll see what particular subtype of blog whor^H^H^Hanker this person is. (People on The Other Site may recognize the term link whore.)
My opinion? He's become so enamored with the idea of blogging and personal fame that he is willing to whip and spank up any controversy as long as it results in his name being pasted everywhichwhere. Many of his latest articles in the reg, ordinarily a halfway respectable tech site (though not as much as the inquirer), are based wholesale on blog entries scratched from out of the Debian planet aggregator for crying out loud!
Yeah, I'm gonna stop this here. Anything that gets advertised by Andy O. is most likely crap, until I hear from it again from a non-slashdot influenced source.
At the Illinois Institute of Technology, where I go to school, you can't use Wikipedia as a reference for any class. It isn't a "formal" rule, but nonetheless I don't know of any teacher that allows it to be used. It is considered to be potentially incorrect since it can be edited by anybody. And by not allowed, I do mean that we are specifically told at the beginning of class that we can't use it in any way in our papers.
The tv-series Gilligan Island was, to my knowledge, never aired in Holland. Yet it is constantly referenced in more recent, american, media. Off course when I was young the internet did not yet exist so I couldn't just google it.
I think I learned what the series was about by having seen parodies off it in other series along with the occasional clip in tv history programs.
Nowadays I could simple google it or look it up in wikipedia and I will know what the hell that obscure (to a dutchman) reference is about.
Remember the movie Rainman? It had a reference to an Abbet and Costello sketch with the rainman not getting the joke.
Well neither did I. Never having heard of the sketch before I had no idea what the fuck he was on about and just presumed he was rambling some script that made no sense. (he wasn't all that audible and the subber was apperently as confused as I was)
It is only years later when I learned about the sketch and heard it in full that I got "it". He was trying to really work out who was on first when it was clear too any normal person "who" was a joke name.
Does it matter that I didn't know this? No. Is it nice to be able to look things like this up nowadays. Yes.
This is the information age kiddo. That doesn't just mean info vital to our survival.
It can be just info that makes it easier to know what the fuck someone else is talking about. When you talk to people throughout the world it is very handy to have a place where you can simply look up trivial information as it saves a lot of time.
This is exactly what encyclopedia are for. Not for detailed info for researching complex chemical process but for getting quick lowdown on simple info that you just don't know.
Saying that an encyclopedia does not to need to include certain trivial articles is like saying a dictionary does not need to include trivial words.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"pick on the ugly guy" is not an internet meme, you pathetic retard, it's a goddamn fact of life. Ugly people get made fun of. With luck, nobody fucks them -- that way a generation later, there'd be fewer ugly people.
Deal with it, pussy.
I'm certainly no expert, but I would have to assume that even encyclopedias like Britannica have had their share of articles which deliberately left information out or included something that others disagreed with.
In fact, such a process has probably been going on for hundreds of years. We know it happens with mainstream media, why do some assume that encyclopedias are not prone to the same editorialization?
What about all the history textbooks that we read as children and later learned the truth?
It's for that reason why I think Wikipedia is great. Sure, you occasionally get someone filling an article for their own gain or beliefs, but at least the majority of those edits are made public and the audience can decide what they believe.
In the cast of the "real" books -- that is hardly the case.
-David
An infamous radio host who currently dates a listener who had relations with the host's intern has been the subject of many edit wars. There's simply too many "censor for our hosts" people online for the legitimate info to stay in place. Not to mention the removal of links to all other message boards other than the show's preferred board (which of course censors the topic).
Oddly enough, there are many unsigned comments about this:
I would like it if all references to this alleged incident with anthony's girlfriend be removed and all people(s) that mention said alleged incident not be premitted to edit or talk in the Opie_and_Anthony page or any page with similar topics in the future. The allegations come from disgruntled fans that have audio of some girl back in the past at WNEW 4 plus years ago and claim it is somehow Anthony's girlfriend but the true identity of the person is unkown. Due to current relations with the Howard Stern show, many persons who consider themselves 'fans', 'listeners', or 'members of the 'Disciples of Stern have been encouraging so said disgruntled fans. Simply this is not verifiable and might be consider liabel in any reasonable court of law. I consider what has to be done not 'blanking' or any sort of censorship.
How important topics stay grounded in reality while this is going on I'll never know.
For every word you say, you piss off some group. Censorship IMO is stupid, people in this world have a hard time dealing with reality, so they have to make up words and such to cover up reality and make everything sound nice and neutral.
As for the lawsuits; most people have no heart in this world. They can careless what the topic really is, they're just focused on getting the money from the lawsuit. They want money and will do anything to make a quick buck, some will even kill. I have no respect for these type of people. It's called greed, I can do without it. If you're one of them type of people, you can kiss my ass. I'm one of the few, sorry, scold me all you want.
Peace
Can't get to the new links now, guess they really WERE supposed to be deleted. ;-)
-jls
Techno-pagan
Hitler did like the fire of the Firewood jews books.
Bush did like the fire of the Oil people e-papers.
I've got no mod points today.
No, but having protection under the law does not imply that you cannot be sued, or that you will have to incur the expense fighting the lawsuit in court, or settling out of court. That is a reality of the American legal system that any organization in public view must face. Even if a court rules that yes, your activities are in fact protected and the suit against you is dismissed, you still have to pay legal expenses. The mere threat of a lawsuit can have a significant effect, just look at the RIAA's antics in that regard.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
A big problem with Wikipedia itself is that fixing vandalism and keeping out junk is incredibly labor-intensive. It takes a large, active volunteer staff to clean up the junk, and the cleanup backlog is increasing.
Much of the junk is fancruft; articles bands, albums, movies, and games. Most of that stuff is in databases elsewhere, and in better forms. For movie info, go to IMDB, not Wikipedia. Wikipedia is the wrong tool for database-like material; all those album to song to band to performer links have to be updated manually, and many of the links are missing or inconsistent. This is a job for a database, not people.
Of the "million articles", a sizable fraction fall into those categories. Games generate vast numbers of entries; there are individual Wikipedia articles for each and every Pokemon character from #1 to #386. Just about every character, location, and object in Star [Wars|Trek|Gate] has an article. Most of them start life badly formatted and without verifiable information, again increasing the cleanup backlog. Really, in any given day, very few new articles about serious subjects are added to Wikipedia.
On serious subjects, the problem is length and lack of coherency. Someone writes something reasonable, others add to it, with or without enough knowledge to do so, and over time the article becomes long and repetitive. On subjects where books can be, and have been, written, this is a real problem.
It's amazing that the Wikipedia process works as well as it does.
I thought grips _were_ often treated like slaves by the Hollywood establishment - do they want official recognition now?
It's A record is so 404 DNS can't find it . Is this the first case of the /. effect crashing the Authoritative DNS servers, or something more sinister?
Original poster here.
The summary made me irritated enough to comment. I of course clicked through the links and found out who the people were (though the article itself is slashdotted and I never did get to read it). It's not that I'm incapable of finding this information myself. Though on another day I might have passed it over completely if I didn't have the time.
My point was that the whole purpose of a summary is to make me want to read the article. If the submitter wants me to read the article, he or she would presumably want to make the summary sound interesting, and contain enough information for me to make a decision to read further. The W5 - who what when where why - fit in well here. Hence, journalism 101. Maybe it is an interesting issue but one that I don't think is relevant to me. I would appreciate knowing this before I decide to read further so there is less chance of me wasting time.
After reading the summary and not recognizing any of the names, my best inference was that Justin Perry and Bryan Peppers were Wikipedia authors (like Jimbo Wales perhaps) who had removed articles about themselves and that this whole thing was some sort of internal spat. This is clearly way off base, but that's what happens when you don't provide enough information. The most interesting part about this debate, namely the source of the dispute over censorship, is missing. If the summary had said that the censored articles were all about internet memes, and that there is a continuing debate at wikipedia about whether such memes should have articles, then I would have been sufficiently intrigued to read the article. And that is the point of the summary.
EOM
According to this article, it was written by Andrew Orlowski of The Register. Why do we take Andrew Orlowski seriously when he has complained(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/23 /britannica_wikipedia_nature_study/), trolled(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/17/ji mmy_wales_shot_dead_says_wikipedia/), taken things out of context(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/06/wi kipedia_bio/) and just generally spouted idiocy(http://www.google.com/search?as_q=Wikipedia &num=10&hs=Znz&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozi lla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=& as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all& as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=www.theregister. co.uk&as_rights=&safe=off) regarding anything related to Wikipedia and supporters. If WikiTruth is run by "dozens" of Wikipedia administrators, then tell me why there are only a few user accounts there? Besides, if they want to gripe, fine. Perhaps they should first voice their complaints on Wikipedia FIRST, though.
Compare it with Forever Rachael, here: http://www.vgmusic.com/music/console/nintendo/snes /index-af.html
Just what does this have to do with my rights? Wikipedia is a joke where anybody can enter what they want. Nobody has a right to that website. :)
You got the touch!
Oh, I understand fully getting irritated at a blurb that doesn't provide the needed information. There are too many here that simply state the stupid and unintuitive name of someone's pet OSS project followed by a string of undefined acronyms, without a link in sight, leaving you without the slightest notion of what the article is about, or even how to find out what the article is about, because even Google can't tell you certainly (Hint: Don't name your software project "My pet fish Eric").
However, I still see this particular example as a reasonably good example of the way things should be done on the web. The main story was well described, it was about editorial conduct at Wikipedia, not about Brian Peppers, who was only raised as an example and a link to whatever relavant biographical material was already available on him was the appropriate way to handle providing that information.
It was perfectly clear from context that his name was raised because he was a person at the center of some controversy for some reason and that's all you really needed to know to unstand the article; about removing pages from Wikipedia.
I'd go so far as to say this is a reasonably good example of what hyperlinks are for.
KFG
"Britannica said Nature cited passages not in the encyclopedia and criticised it for refusing to publish the referees' reports."
u ll/440582b.html
l
from Nature's response: (not mentioned above)
"The company has, for example, claimed that in one case we sent a reviewer material that did not come from any Britannica publication. When the company made this point to us in private we asked for details, but it provided none. Now Britannica has identified the review in question as being on ethanol. We have checked the original e-mail that we sent to the reviewer who looked at the Britannica article on ethanol, and it is clear to us that all the reviewer's comments refer to specific paragraphs from Britannica."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7084/f
No where did Nature claim they were reviewing material strictly from Britannica encyclopedia, but rather material published in print or online by Britannica. Additionaly, Nature did actually release a lot of the information on the details of the study, including each error identified,etc and that can be viewed online as well:
http://www.nature.com/nature/britannica/index.htm
Don't just listen to what some Guardian article, or what I tell you for that matter. Go look for yourselves and decide. All of the information to the claims by both Britannica and Nature can be found from the link above.
Keith
is why are they censoring this information? It's not a big deal that they're censoring, other than a possible 1st amendment violation, but why theses 3 articles?
I don't understand what's so wrong about these articles, except being that Peppers will scare the hell out of you.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
The one thing that I didn't see in the comments so far (I didn't finish reading them all) was that maybe Wikipedia should haev a CVS/SVN type system where changes to the site can be viewed post-mortem. If the site was changed so that you could see previous-revisions always, then nothing could truly be deleted from it. One could require that the person be registered to use that functionality (effectively leaving out 99% of the visitors to Wikipedia who don't care about this feature from realizing that the feature even exists). I personally prefer systems where nothing can be deleted and reasoning is forced to be given for why the changes where made to the system. For being technology whores, you others at ./ seem to have forgotten something we use constantly. Version control systems, when properly implemented, will show the changes to the system, and the reasons why the changes where made in the first place.
The paradigm might have to be redone a little for Wikipedia (a branch would consist of an article needing to be split into two other articles); the methodology and abilities gained in the incorporation of a versioning system would benefit wikipedia and the world. That would put it over the top of any resource.
Put yourself in Brian Peppers' shoes. Does the world really need to know about these things...even if they're true? If Wikipedia doesn't "censor" this content, it will become the sludge of the internet.
In order to prevent ourselves from contributing to the sludge, I say we try to help folks like Brian and wikitruth...for Brian to see he is is not a circus side-show and for wikitruth to find some other meaningful aspirations in life.
Wrong again. Jimbo is a flagrant violator of his own policies, and pushes his own opinionated agenda every chance he gets (as is evidenced on several Iraq-related wiki pages). He's also particularly bombastic and confrontational with other editors - he plays the role of God-King on Wikipedia, and is known to throw his heavy hand down on many issues for virtually no reason at all. In short, Jimbo is a tyrant.
Linuxbeak is an admin and he support pedophilia on wikipedia. Linuxbeak is considered to be a Wikipedo.
Of course, Wikipedia is Wikipedia, and the ArbCom is going to do what they are going to do, but I think it should be generally known how people are unhappy with Wikipedia. A recent poll on Wikipedia Review showed the majority of users there were left-leaning. Wikipedia is run by an Ayn Rand devoted millionaire, who says he runs Wikipedia on a Ludwig von Mises model, so this is not much of a surprise. I hope that Wikipedia Review will build an alternative to Wikipedia, especially in the abysmal categories like History and Culture.
Everyone likes to say Wikipedia is great because of a survey from Nature on its scientific articles but no one ever talks about the many other categories of knowledge that Wikipedia contains and the quality associated with them.
One of the things I have found distressing about Wikipedia is its obsession with popularity. An article can be instantly and arbitariliy deleted by an administrator if he or she feels it is "non-notable". The single qualifier for this tends to be how many links to the subject are found in Google.
One of the more interesting and puzzling cases is how Wikipedia has been treating the American Nihilist Underground Society as a "non-notable" organization, despite it being one of the most important and oldest icons (and dating back several years as a popular local BBS) in the online metal and hessian community. I see various different people keep on trying to create a page for it but it always gets deleted for no good reason other than its alleged non-notability (which is completely false, especially when you consider one major contributors to the site is documented in that BBS documentary that came out about a year or two ago).
Wikipedia seems to have a double standard for what is notable and is not notable. If a group of people express a philosophy that leans towards National Socialism, eugenics, racalism, or anything that is not PC, the Wikipedia admins (who are undeniably left-leaning) will show no mercy in scrutinizing and deleting something if they can. I showed several admins many articles about topics that were far less notable but all non-controversial to highlight the blatant hypocrisy.
What is even more interesting is that Wikipedia will keep an article about the "Gay Nigger Association of America" (go look it up) but not one of the net's oldest (and arguably best) sources of nihilist and metal writings.
Wikipedia would be a great place if it was truly comitted to objectivity, recruited experts instead of trying to hype "crowd wisdom" in editing articles, and dropped the idea of popularity to determine anything.
I express no feelings towards this encyclopedia because its just that, an encyclopedia. However, I will not let the double speak and hypocrisy go on unmentioned.
You're trying to appeal to popular emotion, use ad-hominems (calling him a troll, saying he "spouts idiocy"), makes incorrect generalizations (saying he does those things to anything wikipedia related), and make assumptions that all of the alleged wikipedia admins he has HAVE to have accounts in order for their statement to be true.
So, again, tell me why I should take YOU seriously when you are doing things that make you sound as bad as the guy you are trying to smear?
Because if you think fucking kids is ok, then we can't exactly trust anything else you feel the need to say.
Being a pedophile does not mean "you think fucking kids is ok". It's just an orientation and doesn't imply any attitudes, opinions, actions, agenda, or conspiracy. You are crazy if you think anyone chooses their orientation; especially such a universally hated one. You discover it and try to live with it as best you can. If you think you can't trust anything some person says if he happens to have a certain sexual orientation, well I got a label for you, pal: an ugly little word called "prejudice".
In this case, anyone who self-identifies as a pedophile was asked not to edit the article (regardless of whether they followed style and guidelines, which they did), and one was even permanently blocked since he didn't obey. This is just one example of the horrible emerging "anything Jimbo says at any point automatically becomes Wikipedia policy". The rules change and become fluid, so it becomes hard to know if you follow them or not.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
The general standard for wikipedia has been that the topic needs to be well enough known that there is reliable verifiable information available on the subject. All the articles in Wikipedia should at least have the potential to only contain true and researched information. Otherwise it isn't an encyclopedia.
wah wah wah im linuxbeak someone toss me a cuddly tux stuffed animal so i may cry into it
JUSTIN BERRY COME BACK TO WEBCAMS ILL PAY YOU IN PESOS SLOB ON MY SPICY TACO
He is also a defender of pedophiles' rights to express their twisted viewpoints on the Wikipedia. What a relativist schmuck. Seriously, people like Alex are the reason Wikipedia is such a watered-down crowdist institution - a collection of what's "popular" and "meets consensus" (i.e. is inoffensive, including to child molesters).
With recent events like bloggers stooping to murder, rape, and cannibalism, it would appear that the detachment from judgment and community standards which represents the average internet addict, following in the ways of relativist scum like Linuxbeak, leads to the darkest corners of a human soul.
Google Cache
The Admin and the Engineer
Perhaps if you hadn't tried to derail the discussion here with something totall off topic it would have not been moderated down.
I've got to wonder *who* paid VA Linux (LNUX) for this going on 6+ hours of exposure this article has gotten; all the while all direct links (and the site itself) being unreachable.
What kind of hoax is this? Do we all really need to know who Brian Peppers is?
Sounds like they'd better delete the entry on Lewis Carroll then, doesn't it? Famously a pedophile, but as far as anybody knows he didn't practice it and didn't think it was "ok."
Probably best if we burn all the copies of Alice in Wonderland, too. He did write it to make a little girl happy.
Or maybe, just maybe, somebody can make a positive contribution to our society despite being physically attracted to children or cucumbers or whatever, as long as they aren't actually committing crimes? I dunno. Sounds sketchy.
I grabbed a copy of the Brian Peppers article just after the index.php disapeared and rehosted it at
http://brickballs.net/censored/wikitruth_brian_pep pers.htm
but, i didnt have the others.. the good news is that mirrordot got everything:
Gregory Rider ? writes "According to a recent article in The Guardian, a group of disenchanted Wikipedia administrators ? has been going through back channels on Wikipedia and retrieving articles deleted by Jimbo Wales or other higher-ups ? . Now they're putting them back up on a website for everyone to see. This includes articles on Justin Berry ? , Paul Barresi ? , and, most strangely, Brian Peppers ? , which has been solicited for deletion off of Wikipedia 6 times
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
Have you ever loaded a Wikipedia page before? I guess not. Go open one. Now click history. Tada.
The issue here is that the history sometimes contains material which is libelous or just in extremely bad taste... so that material is hidden ('deleted', but admins can see it) from the history, because simply being in an old version doesn't remove the harm caused by the content.
Next time before you post a Great Idea (tm), why not check to see if it's already being done?
Jimbo's creation isn't anywhere near as freewheeling as he would have people believe. There are bills to pay, (hardware upgrades, bandwidth costs, and so on) and he doesn't want to alienate those who might otherwise be willing to pay them. That includes members of such groups as Amway, and there is also a particularly strict group of thought police attached to the article about Richard Stallman. When the slogan talks about a free encyclopedia which anyone can edit, they should really clarify it by saying that anyone can edit it so long as their edits don't include anything politically incorrect, or which might offend people who would otherwise possibly donate.
The other thing to realise is that the neutral point of view policy is generally applied *extremely* inconsistently. There are very often miniature communities which will attach themselves to various articles, (the GNU/Stallman articles are probably the best example of this that I know of) and they generally have a consensus about what they will or will not allow in an article. Said consensus also doesn't necessarily have anything to do with genuinely factual information, although one hopes that it normally does. I personally believe that the entire idea behind the NPOV policy is broken, simply because it isn't realistically possible. The only real reason why they attempt to maintain it is because they want to try and achieve a level of encyclopedic legitimacy which again, isn't really possible. I also don't believe that not having encyclopedic legitimacy in certain people's minds doesn't detract from Wikipedia's genuine usefulness; especially given that the people who are skeptical about the idea are likely to remain so, and it therefore makes a lot more sense to be realistic about what is or is not possible, rather than maintain something unworkable in order to try and impress people whose opinion is unfavourable anyway.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Although Wikipedia genuinely is extremely valuable when it comes to many topics, politics and people are the two main areas where it is severely flawed, and where given human nature, it probably can't help being flawed.
Wikipedia is as much subject to the Golden Rule as anything else these days; that is, that whoever has the gold makes the rules.
I point out to them that, as a musician, 2006 is better for me than 1996. If I were a music biz lawyer, a recording engineer, a touring soundman, a publicist, a music critic, a record store clerk/owner, I'm looking at the end of my industry. As someone who actually plays a few instruments and writes my own music - selling downloads, paypal, p2p and home proTools have radically improved my outlook.
O rly? What happens once the established music publishers come knocking on your door alleging subconscious copying?
But all of your examples are greater known things since they're being referenced in movies and television. When have you had to go look up and see who Brian Peppers was or another obscure thing that only existed on the internet? I'm not saying things like those you've listed should be cut out because those are large parts of the general culture, what I'm saying is that things that are small parts of the internet culture (a culture already smaller than the general culture) should be cut out because those, to an encyclopedia, are completely worthless.
I recommend looking over the list of "uncensored" articles and compare some of them to the current versions on wikipedia. Several of the articles contain similar information to their supposed predecessors and you might find quite a few of the current versions contain more information, have better quality and some are actually NPOV unlike the supposedly censored or removed articles.
This seems like little more then a few people crying. Hell, read their "article" on Jimbo Wales and you'll notice they do nothing but complain about him and then mention the Brian Peppers article at the end and even insult him while their at it. Seriously, would these guys like a little cheese with that whine...
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
I used to be a major contributor to Wikipedia, having made over ten thousand edits via several accounts. The reason i quit is because of so many crazy deletion decisions. For example there is over 100 articles dedicated to individual pricing games from the quiz show "the price is right", yet the articles for centimeter and the recent solar eclipse were almost deleted.
Schools and Userboxes are a common sore point in Wikipedia's deletion system. The toruble is that Wikipedia is reaching saturation point. With over a million articles most major topics are covered, but there is an increasing desire to add even more, burt with subjects of questionable "notability". This subject comes with a load of questions and basically if you can get enough geeks to support you , anything goes, read some of the culture categories some time.
This is why there are articles about obscure harry potter characters yet articles about less geeky subjects get censored. Wikipedia is likely to be crushed under it's own weight soon, the number of cleanup tags are increasing, more of it's editors are quiting or becoming vandals. By the time the Peppers ban is over Wikipedia is going to be in total quagmire.
Do yourself a favor, download the customize google extention and filter out Wikipedia.org. Learn to use other sources and find out how much Wikipedia is sapping the internet of its life.
Wikipeida is a troll and flamebaiter's dream. I can't stop remembering the awful flamewars I had with this asshat, who has a fetish for randomly vandalizing music related articles by reducing long articles into stubs for so called music guidelines which are total rubbish. Twits such as Astrotrain, Radiant and Morwen have also ruined my Wikipedia experience.
I have stopped using the site this month, I recommend others to do the same, it is only a matter of time before the wikiball gets incinerated by its own flamewars and ripping a goatse sized whole on the internet and the whole academic community.
To all the people who have made useful contributions, be smart, take your talent and run before you get it up the ass like I have.
Linked on Fark.com, a discussion about the Ric Romero article.
There is no reason for these articles to be censored at all. They're no different from the other biographical articles on Wikipedia. These individuals made a choice to do things that many find distasteful but it is their right to do so and is not ground to censor them from Wikipedia. Either it's OK to write bios on everybody or it's not OK to write bios on anybody.
Under Susan Hildreth the San Francisco Public Library became an abysmal mess. She played politics to get where she is today-- but she was not wanted here by people who really love books.
She embraced technology because of its glamour-- not for its usefulness. This is a big subject-- and I simply do not have the energy to rehash what many San Franciscans know: the Public Library here is an over-politicized place that cheats its benefactors, employees, and the public-- largely thanks to Hildreth's past leadership and her continuing influence.
Hildreth's actions bespeak subservience to technology interests-- especially RFID interests.
Of course she would say her efforts are a rsounding success! For her to prove it is another matter.
Jimbo deletes articles all the time.
Sorry, couldn't resist...
Facts:
1. Jimbo Wales is a mammal.
2. Jimbo deletes articles ALL the time.
3. The purpose of Jimbo to flip out and nominate articles for speedy deletion.
I heard that Jimbo was eating at a diner. And when some dude dropped a spoon Jimbo deleted the 'Justin Berry' article. My friend Mark said that he saw Jimbo totally delete the article on Brian Peppers just because some kid opened a window. And that's what I call REAL Ultimate Power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
But a face instead of a butt. It could of been anyone's face. There are a lot of faces out there, anyone could of been chosen. This is the core of the problem. If your face was ugly would you object if someone pasted it all over the internet?
thats kinda pathetic... I guess i should no longer consider Wiki a reliable info source with all the selective editing and deletions by the corrupt staffers
Because the courts *always* get it right, as we all know. They are infallible. It's what separates them from the rest of humanity.
I think that unless someone can point to a source of information that suggests a mistrial or other extenuating circumstances then it isn't at all unreasonable to assume that if someone has been convicted of a crime that they may have actually done it.
Time Cube.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I am an undergraduate (2nd B/A) in a high-ranking Communication Studies Program at one of the best valued public universities in the nation. In private conversatins with several faculty, they explained the policy banning use of Wikipedia as a credible citation source. The main reason is that its articles not go through the same quality peer-review and editorial processes as do those published in scholarly journals. While some pages are well-researched and include numerous references, most undergraduate students are not properly equipped distinguish the subtle differences.
signature pending slashdot approval
While 'censor,' the noun, is used to refer to officials responsible for institutional (usually governmental) censorship, the verb has a much broader meaning. Your argument from this noun (especially the ridiculous claim that there's a significant difference in the value of information from Oxford to M-W) to the meaning of a verb is facile and insulting.
I assume you went to another dictionary, maybe your favorite, looked for the meaning of the word, and realized that you were indeed wrong about the meaning of the verb. Being unsatisfied, you decided to use the noun to prove a false point about the verb. Hopefully no one here will fall for such a silly trick.
Here's a nice, parallel example to show how off-base your argument was:
Judge, the noun, refers to individuals empowered by the state (or in some cases, as in 'line judges' in tennis, other organizations) to make rulings on the application of various laws or regulations.
This does NOT imply that to 'judge' something implies an official position. I can judge the value of a TV program, the flavor of some ice cream, or anything else I want, merely through the use of my own rational faculties.
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
The beauty of Wikipedia is: it's easy to ignore all rules. Don't bother wading through hundreds of pages of arcane bureaucratic rule cruft. Instead, when you are about to make an edit, simply ask yourself "Do I truly want to make the encyclopedia better, or do I want to push a certain agenda or piss someone off?" Answer this one question honestly, and then you'll know whether your edit is ok or not.
Bull. Just because an article is going to be inherently unflattering to a person by telling the truth, doesn't mean that we should self-censor. That's really what you're saying; in fact you're not just implying self-censorship, but the censorship of other people as well, so that they don't disparage some third person BY TELLING THE TRUTH.
Here's something that I think ought to be engraved in the minds of every person who has ever written anything for public consumption: The truth is an absolute defense.
Not necessarily in the legal sense -- although it should be -- but at the very least in the moral and ethical. If you did something, you have no right to prevent other people from discussing it, provided that they stick to what's true. And no one, I repeat no one, has any right to keep others from repeating the truth, regardless of how unflattering or damaging it may be to someone.
The best way to combat the spread of lies and misinformation is by spreading truth: we can argue whether or not Wikipedia does that well or poorly (I think it does it fairly well, actually; at the very least it gives you a good cross-section of what a significant population of individuals believes is true at any given time), but there is no place for censorship simply to protect people from "ridicule," if that ridicule stems from truth.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Regardless of whether or not you think his definition is "corrupted" or "meaningless," it's widely accepted by many people, therefore in the context of the English language, which is a moving target, it's a correct definition.
To say that it's only a government official that can censor is ridiculous; anyone can censor within the bounds of their own authority. A parent can censor information within their own household, a corporation can censor its employees internet access, the State Council censors any number of information sources in China, and apparently Jimbo Wales censors Wikipedia.
You are of course free to use whatever narrow definition you personally want to use, but I think you are in the minority here, and it will only cause confusion when talking to others. You can tell people that they're wrong and you're right all you want, but given that the definition of words is established predominantly by general consensus, I think you're always going to be wrong.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm getting a 404 now on wikitruth.info. Dead, hacked or hoax?
Actually, the losing side often has to pay the other side's legal fees. It might also be possible to countersue a harasser for frivolous lawsuit, but only if the case couldn't possibly have had any merit. IANAL, but I might be someday.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
No, not at all. The software and content are freely available.
But, bandwidth and server capacity would be an issue. It's not run on some vanilla PC...
The Wikimedia server set is described here http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
It seems their hosting provider's wiki got the Willy on Wheels treatment. http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/Special:Recent changes
Why not just always post a coral link? At what point, after years of melting the webservers of the small and anonymous, does it cease to be amusing and begin to just be irresponsible journalism?
Just some hypotheticals I've always wondered about here.
Me pot, you kettle, black.
I'm sure your completely unfounded assumptions are much more accurate than a judge and jury.
They're there affecting their effect.
Have you ever read a sex offenders registry? It describes exactly what the shitballs did. And it's not rip some nurses' skirt. Mostly innocent? You're an idiot. Or an irate sex offender. Whichever.
They're there affecting their effect.
I assume there is sarcasm in your post because if not, wow. Just, wow.
They're there affecting their effect.
Yes.
Bruce Perens.
Wow.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I've been a steady member of the Wikipedia "community" since 2003. Unless anybody has missed it, Jimbo is frequently described as a "benevolent dictator".
The benevolent part is speculation, but the dictator part is 100% spot on.
While Wikipedia has many admirable attributes, a dictatorship is a dictatorship no matter what color you paint it.
Doesn't anyone find it strange that Wikitruth doesn't have an entry for "Wikipedia"? You'd like to think that all the ranting and raving could be nicely collated onto a single page. Or maybe Wikitruth is afraid that a page like that might get edited. Someone start up thetruthaboutwikitruth.org now!
In other words, technically not a problem. You can download the software and a recent database dump and do it. In fact, quite a few people already do - mostly to get Google results for a lot of searches and sell ads.
However, just like Linux, you'll be mightily bored with your own forked version that nobody cares about. In order to fork the COMMUNITY, you need to have enough people convinced that (a) the current guys in charge suck, and (b) that you'll be better. Hard task.
Or maybe, just maybe, somebody can make a positive contribution to our society despite being physically attracted to children or cucumbers or whatever...
There are certainly web sites devoted to people who are physically attracted to cucumbers*, and while they do contribute to the economy, their social value is dubious...
*I am told this by my stunningly endowed nymphomaniac supermodel/actress girlfriend** who only lets me look at hard core hetero porn; actually, encourages me, more like.
**No, really, I'm not making this up. Well, maybe only the part between the words "I" and "like".
Blank until
This is no big problem, really, as the data that would otherwise be contained in the Wikipedia page are instead merely linked to in the discussion for the censored article. The information is still available, just not as publically as before.
Special t337 backdoor to track Jimbo Wales
Well, firstly, I don't believe for a second that David Gerard did this. I suspect that right now David is at home asleep or away on holidays. The site notice that appeared had a quote from me that I made on IRC about 10 minutes after I said it. DavidGerard was not online at the time.
Secondly, it is not possible to tell who owns the domain wikitruth.info as it is registered by Domains by Proxy (just do a whois).
It does appear that an admin has gone rogue however. This is another issue we'll have to deal with: possibly by keeping a log of all people who view deleted articles.
Ta bu shi da yu
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Of course, my opinion of you is that you're just a virus who likes "togetherness" for the obvious reasons.
Seastead this.
Because if you think fucking kids is ok, then we can't exactly trust anything else you feel the need to say. Really, who gives a shit?
I was under the impression that the worth of a wikipedia article was based on the merits of the information contained in it, not on the sexual or criminal background of the writer. I'm sure there are murderers who know more about China than me, or rapists who know more about cats than me, and would therefore be capable of writing better Wikipedia articles on these things than me.
For the love of all that is holy (and good grammer), "wiki" is the software that the site runs on; "Wikipedia" is a registered trademark and applies to exactly one group of websites, wikipedia.org. Calling Wikipedia "wiki" is plain wrong and makes English teachers cry.
I recently took my last remaining GE at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was an Art / Architecture course, and they absolutely forbid the use of Wikipedia as a source. The paper was a 15 page research report on modern architecture, and a specific modern architect. When I listed Wikipedia in my bibliography as the source of my images of the structures discussed (the artist's website was "under construction")I was marked down significantly.
I've taken classes from several departments that specify, in the paper assignments, that wikipedia is not to be used as a "primary source" - though it can collaborate facts listed elsewhere. For many of my courses in philosophy, it has been perfectly acceptable, though largely not useful.
nothing to read here
LOL!!! That is just too funny!
TBSDY
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
yeah, try that one on for size
When have you had to go look up and see who Brian Peppers was or another obscure thing that only existed on the internet?
Call me a pervert, but I love stories like Mr. Peppers. I think it is IMPORTANT to see examples of people being branded as "bad", and an entire planet then mocking them, all because they were born with a birth defect.
I found relevance here, not a source of childish amusement. And it is for this reason that I agree with the parent post.
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
You sure do know how to fuck up simple communication. Maybe that's an apropriate name, after all.
"Allegedly is not appropriate. That word is not used to denote that someone has been accused of a crime but not convicted. There is a widespread acceptance of its usage in that context."
So the word that is inappropriate because it is NOT used that way is accepted to be used in that way? I'm pretty sure that you meant to type something different (because hopefully you aren't trying to shoot yourself in the foot).
But the fact is that you typed something retarded when wrongfully trying to correct someone else, and being an utter ass about it. Way to go! That's a double bogey.
By the way, one perfectly acceptable definition of "alleged" is "Questionably true or asserted to be true."
And since courts of law are fallible, there may often remain questions as to the veracity of their proof of guilt. Therefore, Mr. F. Dickhead, his usage was apropos.
Before conviction, you use "allegedly" to protect yourself from claims of slander or libel. After conviction, you are allowed to say he is guilty because the courts have "proven" it.
It has NOTHING to do with respect. What a silly notion.
I see 99% of the posts her missing the point. Stop bickering amongst yourselves over how unimportant these people are, over the specifics of legal terminology and sexual predator laws, and realize that there exists this little thing called FREEDOM OF SPEECH which is kinda a foundation of our society. It doesn't matter who the articles were about, they should have been left up there. Either it's all ok or none of it is. If not, who chooses what is and what isn't? NO ONE can say they are unbiased and impartial, I repeat, NO ONE! There is no such thing as unbiased and impartial.
Chums up, let's do this!
"loose" Since you clearly can't spell worth a damn, you shouldn't be editing anyway. Did you ever stop to think that maybe your edits are crap, like your posts?
It's ironic that such an article appears on the Guardian as it is also in the habit of removing posts from the tech blog that its journalists don't agree with. At least with Wikipedia you can go back and look at the history page.
..
"Internet discourse has the ability to negate the diversity of voices, and no one can differentiate between truth and myth," Jorge Cauz, Britannica.
What 'diversity of voices` are you refering to here. A handfull of companies own the US media and Murdock owns most of the UK media. Since Blair cliped its wings the BBC has been reduced to reading out gov press statements.
"It's hard to tell someone who's devoting 40 hours a week to Wikipedia that it's going to fail," says Skip. "But it will."
translation: We hope Wikipedia will fail and people get back to getting their facts regurgitated for them by the legitimate media.
key words: bureaucracy, glut, hazy, kafkaesque, morass, soupy
Encyclopedias need to keep up a certain standard for what they're putting out too, garbage is garbage.
Signal to noise ratio. Some information is worthless, or essentially so, and not deserving of inclusion because it falls in the "noise" part of the spectrum.
The goal if Wikipedia isn't to collect EVERYTHING. Some things just have no business being referenced.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Users and administrators form political coalitions and hijack articles and stalk, harass, and ban users that actually add any accurate information to an article. Take a look at the Iraq War article. The history clearly shows that accurate coverage of human rights abuse have been deleted. Recently the Manning Memo, in which a top Tony Blair advisor stated that the start date of the war was set months before the search for WMD failed, was repeatedly deleted.
There is no way you can trust a Wikipedia article that remotely has anything to do with people because such articles will always been manipulated by people with agendas. Of course, this includes any article that involves current affairs, history, religion, science (because of science/religion conflicts), the environment, technology (because of company agendas), politics, culture, or just about anything else except *maybe* mathematics.
You know, the number of times I hear someone tell me what an encyclopedia is for is quite amazing.
TBSDY
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
What use does a wrestling fan have for a virtual encyclopedia?!!!!
It's not like you can hit somebody over the head with it!
Of course, those articles you give an example about can't hurt someone. The Brian Peppers one can. Same with the Star Wars Kid and Numa Numa kid articles, if they are done badly. That would be the main difference. I applaud Jimbo's action on that article: it was the only sensible course to have taken.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
It is wrong because you are not arguing a valid point. Wikipedia doesn't ever aim to be completed. It does aim to have a large subset of its articles to be of a high standard. There are of course articles that are very fanboyish and probably not that notable. That's OK you know, it hasn't hurt anyone and somebody out there might find them useful. Obviously none of those articles will ever go out on CD/DVD/Print media.
TBSDY
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I read one telling post that described the Wikipedia founder as an Ayn Randian acolyte. Ayn Rand's views are very compelling if you don't have knowledge of the wider world. So I went and read his profile and indeed he thinks very highly of Ayn Rand. As a recovering Randite, I'd recommend that you stop criticizing him and start your own Wiki-type site. Why? Because you are playing his game. Objectionists thrive on confrontation.
This will be marked troll or flamebait if an Ayn Randian with moderation points reads this.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Wikipedia is gay..... ON WHEELS!
I don't particularly care for Wikipedia, but the owner of the system, Wales, has the complete right to run it as he sees fit. Censorship is a term applicable only to government actions, because only the government can legally use force. The government cannot properly stop such statements as "All nerds are disgusting", but if somebody said in your house and you kicked them out for saying it, that is *not* censorship: you have a moral and legal right to your own property. They can say it somewhere else. The same is true for the complainers of this story, the fact that it's a privately owned internet site does not change the principle.
It was perfectly clear from context that his name was raised because he was a person at the center of some controversy for some reason and that's all you really needed to know to unstand the article
I don't really agree. The core issue here is a controversy relating to the idea of banning certain topics from Wikipedia. The only way for anyone like me to be able to make any kind of judgment about whether or not such 'banning' is justified or not is to know exactly what those topics are about. Without knowing, it's impossible to form an opinion. (It's a bit like the whole Danish cartoons "controversy", where everybody was reporting on these controversial cartoons without publishing them. How can you form any kind of judgment about them without seeing them? Or are our opinions supposed to be "guided" based on what someone else feels is controversial, like children? No, we have to know.)
I keep seeing the comment that it's not censorship if it's not the government....Who sais? To me, it means "deletion or repression with an agenda". So I looked up the definition on webster, and it sais something similar. Maybe I'm over-simplifying, but the definition I found doesn't mention government.
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
Not to invoke Godwin (well, ok, I'll do it) but at least Wikipedia's moderators aren't a crew of soccer-mom ninnies like fark's content censors. Wikipedia maintains a fairly decent history of page edits and allows discussions on matters where there may be differing views. Slashdot implements a moderation system rather than erasing submitters' posts.
Now fark -- Drew used to have a really great system, but not since his band of nancy-boy sissies took power--those fascist blog barons will ban you (and remove your posts) for any little infraction. He also started bowing to commercial interests and removed any content his "ad affiliates" found offensive.
My solution is... I no longer submit stories, participate in discussions or have anything to do with fark. I also do not participate in TF (their pay-per-use system, which is really a pay-for-porn service).
This leads me to my point... oh yeah, my point: their server, their rules, you don't have to go there.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Information wants to be free, that is Wikipedias problem. While they may have noble intentions for censoring the articles in question that does not negate the fact that the information is out there and is trivial to find. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, a collection of knowledge and should not be subject to censor for two reasons. The first is that censorship only acts to deepen the interest and controversy of the item in question, I'll bet zeitgeist shows that searches for the topics that were censored skyrocket for at least a time after the censoring. The second reason is that since the information is out there Wikipedia should include it on principal, they are a collection of knowledge and should by definition include all knowledge that they can on all topics. Deleting articles because of personal bias only tarnishes the reliability of the site as a whole. What else has been deleted? Why? Who deleted it? Those questions are natural for all topics once you realize that some topics have been censored.
Information wants to be free, and it will be free, we all need to embrace that reality.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
"The fact that it's well know removes it from the noise category."
It's not well known, that's the point.
It's an article about an insignificant happening that matters to almost no one. Couple that with the fact that most people have never heard of the guy ( which refutes your well known argument) and your assertion that's it's not noise is nonsense.
It's noise, it's clutter, and wiki is better off without it.
"It's interesting that you believe that your opinion of a topic should preempt a wider audience"
It's even more interesting that you believe people should waste time and resources managing an article of no practical use whatsoever, for no reason other than to satisfy you.
Wiki isn't a storage house of everything that has ever happened. This guy is a nothing, and should be treated as such.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
A number of users think articles about Internet fads should be deleted as insufficiently notable altogether - there have been attempts to delete many articles about Slashdot phenomenal, for instance.
But TBSDY is right - articles that aren't about people are less risky.
most of the people I see leaving haven't contributed much except their sense of self-importance.
... applies only to the guy that owns the presses.
... here's a hint: pay for it yourself.
In other words, who are you to tell the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikipedia project that they're not allowed to have standards? Are you paying for their hosting? Are you helping run the project?
I suspect not. If you want a web site where anyone is allowed to post anything and nothing is removed
I had a look at the so called "Wikipedia Truth stuff web site". I am happy this bunch found a space where to expose The truth. The web is wide, for the better.
One of the recurrent issues with Wikipedia, is some users consider WP like a kind of MySpace.com : put up whatever you fancy just because you can. May I encourage those users to create as many spin-off sites with lots of hurting Truth as possible, and have as much fun as they can. Alternatively one can create a space on MySpace: little censorship there. You can even claim the moon is made out of chocolate should you fancy it.
On a more "serious" tone, I often wonder what makes WP different from MySpace. How comes I feel so certain that WP contains some sense as opposed to (again just for the example) the (MO) "rubbish" lying on MySpace ? Probably because some folks, including Mr. J.W., have a vision for Wikipedia... and heroically sticks to it. Thanks Mr. Wales (and others) for doing the right thing: taking the risk from time to time of claiming something is not really worthy in WP. I guess that is the very reason why Wikipedia is not one-more-an-other-web-site.
Z.
My bet would have gone the other way, because when I searched Google for "Bruce Perens" GFDL, the second link was an email (presumably) by you saying that "the GFDL is a DFSG-compliant license".
Anyway, I agree with you that there are a number of problems with the GFDL. But I've gotten off-topic enough for this thread.
Hey guys, it is pretty damn clear that the post below this is NOT flamebait. It is 100% informative.
Holy crap, man, learn to use anchor tags and not stuff. I couldn't even read your post.