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The Register Exposes More Wikipedia Abuse
cyofee writes "The Register has up another article exposing abuse of Wikipedia's policies and processes. It tells a tale of a man, Gary Weiss, controlling the Wikipedia article about himself and his enemies (one of Wikipedia's biggest taboos) all under the blessing of the Wikipedia Cabal. A man who attempted to expose the affair on Wikipedia, along with his his entire IP range (some 1000 homes), was permanently blocked. This comes only days after the affair of the Secret Mailing list."
This sort of stuff happens all the time, the only difference here is that somebody's decided to sell the idea to the general public as a devious "Wikipedia elite" rather than a couple of administrators with personal axes to grind. I notice there was no reference to using Wikipedia's own complaint processes to try and resolve the issue - just the usual edit, edit, get blocked, complain about it on your blog pattern.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Speaking as one of the people who was quoted in the article with critical comments about Wikipedia's leadership and policy, I'm certainly not out to "destroy" Wikipedia. I still like Wikipedia, use it as a reference all the time, and enjoy editing it (and hope they don't ban me for saying critical stuff about it). What I don't like is the attitude of certain cliques there, and I hope that articles like this lead to some reform that cuts off their power without destroying the site itself.
--Dan
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I've been accused of being part of the 'cabal' because I'm an administrator who pissed off a bunch of people last year, and have on-again off-again been hounded by characters who keep baying conspiracy and trying to get folks worked into a lather.
Until now, I assumed that people would be able to properly set the bozo bit on these guys, but now that they've gotten The Register convinced, it's time for the big secret to come out:
We (the Wikipedia admins) aren't competent enough to form a conspiracy. Seriously. We all have our own agendas, our own skillsets, varying levels of intelligence, and wildly different ideas on how the project should run. Accusing us of having the ability to form a global star-chamber of sorts that seeks to control the nature of truth is like accusing us of keeping the metric system down or making Steve Gutenberg a star.
We're just editors with some extra tools, and we fight like rabid cats.
But thanks for the compliment.
* http://www.wikipediareview.com WR is a forum that is populated by a mix of Wikipedia administrators posting openly, regular users, and a few "banned" users. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia 'elite' routinely badmouth the holy hell out of the WR forums because of the fact that "banned" users are allowed. Also, the Wikipedia "BADSITES" final solution (which is still active--disregard that rejected notice, its just been implemented anyway), was a direct revenge response against Wikipedia Review and similar sites that the Wikipedia leaders have no ability to silence or control in any way.
* http://www.wikitruth.info Wikitruth is a private Wiki, which is ran by a variety of actual Wikipedia administrators, who post deleted content from Wikipedia and other insider information. Wikipedia HATES Wikitruth, almost as much as they hate Wikipedia Review, but are both helpless and powerless against them. Why? Because anything posted to Wikipedia is posted under the GFDL, and you can't de-GFDL Wikipedia content. Wikipedia just "chooses" not to display deleted content as an editorial decision. Oops.
Go to Wikipedia Review for frank and uncensored discussion about Wikipedia. Yes, some lunatics and social and/or mental defectives live there; the same as on the Slashdot comments. But a frightening number of smart and eloquent people post there. Those are the ones that Wikipedia is truly frightened of, because they can't be controlled or stopped. Go to Wikitruth for the best insider dirt.
I'm sure someone will mod me down as flame bait, or trolling, or someone who edits Wikipedia will be along to troll me. However, isn't it funny how whenever this sort of thing happens, you *cannot* get a straight answer out of the Wikipedia "executives"? It's always spin control, and damage control, sadly. Irresponsible.
Dude, where's my packet?
Ugh. Now that I've read the Wikipedia article on "naked short selling", I'm probably going to have to edit it. It doesn't mention some of the real problems. "Naked short selling" creates fake stock, which is then purchased and owned by someone. And they can vote that stock. This can lead to more votes than there are shares outstanding.
The fake stock created by naked short selling is supposed to be replaced by buying real stock within 13 days. But that's not always happening. "Overstock.com" has had such fake stock outstanding for years, more fake stock than they actually have outstanding.
Here's a New York Times article that discusses the issue. Forbes has also written about this.
The top stocks with fake stock outstanding for long periods are:
Not entirely correct. There is a policy in place that allows Wikia - Jimbo's for-profit enterprise - links, to not be "nofollow"ed, and gain the benefit of Wikipedia's PageRank. Funny, that. If you go look at Wikipedia's entries on Family Guy, too, you'll see another interesting practice - great swathes of things been "not-notable" transwiki'd to Wikia, where ads on each and every page generate Jimbo income. Almost every single link on the Family Guy entries now point to Jimbo's Wikia.