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
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.
Both the MediaWiki software as well as the database itself are freely available.
Which is a pointless argument. In a paper based encyclopedia this matters because there will be limited space and the "important" people and subjects needs to be covered. In Wikipedia it doesn't - if people care enough to write it, they will. If people care enough to look someone up, then it belongs there. The only real reason to be restrictive is for common names where the amount of disambiguation might get too large.
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.
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.
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)
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.)
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.
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 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.
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.
Piano is the dog on the Piscataway kazoo manual.
Banana box zygote of the elephant maple comics
Answer that!
KFG
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.
Wikipedia has no invariant sections, so this would not be an issue.
Bruce Perens.
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
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.
Nothing I said is incorrect.
The ArbCom has nothing to do with how articles are edited unless subject to a complaint.
I mention "Arbitration Committee members", but this turns into the entire ArbCom when you answer what I supposedly said. "Subject to a complaint" is about as vague and subjective as you can get (just how "the cabal" likes the rules), you might as well say they can't be edited unless they flip a coin and it comes up one way or another.
The page is locked because it was being vandalized.
If you consider linking to the main web site critiquing Wikipedia on the Criticism of Wikipedia vandalism, then it is. This is not how Wikipedia defines vandalism however.
Plus, we don't block any mention of Wikipedia Review. To do so would be stupid and have a pro-Wikipedia bias. Unless you can prove these claims, then I would ask that you do your homework a little more before accusing.
Here's just one link of an ArbCom member removing mention of Wikipedia Review. He has locked the Criticism of Wikipedia page, the Criticism of Wikipedia discussion page, and has blocked many, many users who have inserted the link. I myself added the link weeks ago, before it was removed, I didn't even know at the time that this particular deviation from the Wikipedia party line was verboten and all mention of it was removed, with violators blocked at the time. I think you're the one who needs to do your homework.
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 sure your completely unfounded assumptions are much more accurate than a judge and jury.
They're there affecting their effect.
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.
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!"
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.