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Wikimedia Censors Wikinews
An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks has revealed that the Wikimedia Foundation Board (which controls Wikipedia and Wikinews) has killed off a Wikinews report into the Barbara Bauer vs. Wikimedia Foundation lawsuit. Wikinews is a collaborative news site and is meant to be editorially independent from the WMF. The WMF office also suppressed a Wikinews investigation into child and other pornography on Wikipedia, which was independently covered by ValleyWag and other outlets this week. The US Communications Deceny Act section 230 grants providers of internet services (such as the Wikipedia and Wikinews) immunity from legal action related to their user-generated content provided they do not exercise pre-publication control. In deleting articles critical of the WMF prior to publication, Wikileaks says the Wikimedia Foundation may have set a dangerous precedent that could remove all of its CDA section 230 immunity (at least for Wikinews, where the control was exercised)."
But is this due to a gag order? It seems likely.
To cover news on WikiNews without censorship?
Let me get this straight. WikiLeaks is reporting that Wikinews suppressed an article on Wikipeida about WikiPorn? Now, the WikiInvestigators are ....I've gone cross eyed...
Wikinews used to have its own embargo on reporting about Wikipedia, because they were giving disproportionate weight to Wikipedia in the news. In fact, it even led to -- I think it was the Washington Post -- referring to Wikinews as "the news website about Wikipedia". We Wikinewsies collectively ground our teeth when we heard the fruit of our labors described like that.
Wikiwars 2008. Let the trolls and slander begin.
Where can you see that the articles were actually deleted by the Wikimedia Foundation and not by the Wikinews community?
I obviously can see the censorship issues in the first article. We're talking about an individual trying to use the legal system to squelch her deservedly bad reputation in business dealings. Welcome to the information age, lady. News of bad deals travels fast now.
On the other hand, I can't say I disapprove of the deletion of nude underage children in sexual contexts on Wikipedia, or of the decisions of moderators to override group votes on such manners. (Note the "group vote" was likely by music fans in regard to a specific album cover. What do you *think* their vote would be? Duh.) I'm not a prude or anything, but there's no real need to show some of the images they discussed. If you want those images, they're likely just a few clicks away elsewhere on the net anyhow. It seems that Wikipedia should cater to a wide audience, with content appropriate for all ages. Even the most adult of subjects can be handled in a way that makes it appropriate for all ages of the audience without diminishing its usefulness as a research tool.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
So, are we in the midst of a Wikiwar?
These are naval gazing articles. A fraud artist sues Wikipedia. They deleted the he said she said article about her while the litigation goes on. In fact, it looks like this went to deletion review and everyone agreed to get rid of it.
How is this a bad thing? How is this an expose. My god, if this is wikinews and all they talk about is bogus wiki issues, save us all.
Or that a user uploaded a bogus image, which was then deleted? How is that a bad thing.
I thought ValleyWag was an online tabloid. No better than the stuff you see in the supermarket. Why should I care what they say?
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GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
The Wikinews discussion about the story is here.
Wikipedia Signpost has another take on the porno conflict.
Ars Technica had this story weeks ago. EFF has filed a motion to quash (EFF site currently overloaded), and they'll probably win.
As Ars Technica points out, the effect of this lawsuit is to widely disseminate the information that this little-known literary agency is a dud.
in part:
Interesting, my workplace uses the Smartfilter censorship software to keep us from, you know, doing our jobs, and just noticed this gem:
You cannot access the following Web address:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikinews_suppressed_Wikipedia_pornography_investigation
The site you requested is blocked under the following categories: Hate Speech, Historical Revisionism, Extreme
You can:
Use your browser's Back button or enter a different Web address to continue.
The powers of be must HATE that site. I don't think the Historial Revisionism thing even exists on Smartfilter's official list of categories to censor.
Question, am I wrong in the fact that the whole "child pornography" problem on Wikipedia is the "Virign Killer" cover album, or was that the first thing that led to other discoveries?
If I see the word "wiki" one more time I'm going to hurl.
Better known as 318230.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The whole wikipedia organisation is a joke. All of the editors hate each other, you only have to read the wikipedia review to see the vitriol and bile they feel for the other editors. The best thing wikipedia could do is close down and save us all from watching this sad drama of corruption, ego and petty spite.
... wiki wiki.
... wiki wiki. Shut up [0:39].An independent media source is truly needed in todays world. I really like the approach of the Spogg website. Even though the site is still very small, something like this becoming a mainstream source for news could really change the world!
Their "instructional" video sums it up pretty well.
The girl's mature by now anyways.
At my job, any URL with the string "porn" in it is automatically filtered. Given my love of tech, you have no idea how many times I've hit our blockpage when trying to access a story about unpacking a new piece of tech, generically referred to as "unboxing porn."
Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable (though not as actually unreliable as either its reputation states, or probably as its corporate mass media competition). But at least its accuracy benefits from the long time in which people have to verify its content and correct it later. Most of Wikipedia's facts are about events that happened quite a while ago, so there's more time for both editing review and for other corroborative (or conflicting) sources to publish and get used in the process.
Wikinews suffers from the transient lifetime of "news". By the time the community has had a chance to verify some Wikinews content, it's probably not "news" anymore.
People probably realize this, or at least that the entire proposition of Wikinews is shaky. I've never seen a single link to a Wikinews article, or even a reference to anyone using Wikinews for anything. I've never heard anyone ever say they even read it.
Now, the corporate mass media news is awful, and of course censors (or, more usually, spins and preempts) news that's bad for its corporate owners and stakeholders. Perhaps even worse than Wikinews. But since Wikinews doesn't have the useful con of a "trustworthy anchor" staring into a camera, or just a long history of a brand name like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, more people (that is, more than 0) read and believe it.
Wikinews has probably now killed itself as a brand, and perhaps even as a model. Most people want their news stories to come from a single person or small group who they think is accountable for its accuracy (confused as its "truth"), not a collaborative effort. They want that person to persist, so they can hold their past failures against them until they're fired. News is ultimately mostly gossip, unless it's purely numerical - and practically no one wants to talk about numbers. We want something we can believe in, more than we want the facts about last night. Wikinews ain't giving us that. And since it's not even possible to wrap fish in it, its days are probably numbered.
--
make install -not war
The post says "The US Communications Deceny Act section 230 grants providers of internet services (such as the Wikipedia and Wikinews) immunity from legal action related to their user-generated content provided they do not exercise pre-publication control." But this is factually inaccurate. 230 applies even if a website exercises editorial control prior to publication. See, e.g., Blumenthal v. Drudge. Eric.
I know it's very popular these days, but can we try to go a little easy on the Big Wikimedia Conspiracy for World Domination for once, and look at facts instead?
A publishing agency (and not some poor innocent lady named Barbara Bauer) with known questionable reputation and practices has pressed charges against Wikimedia Foundation for reporting on these practices.
The plaintiff call Wikipedia's reports "libel". The judge might call them "the truth about Barbara Bauer". Noone really knows before the case is settled.
Then, Wikinews is reporting on this case. And due to the way the editing process that define Wikinews works, the reports on the case was most likely written by a unrelated volunteer contributor somewhere and not approved by the lawyers of Electronic Frontier Foundation's, who handles the case for Wikinews. The reports might even have quoted the supposed libelous statements.
Now, Wikinews is owned by Wikimedia Foundation. Legally, Wikinews and its articles is the Wikimedia Foundation. In other words, the Wikipedia Foundation may (involuntarily) be publicly repeating the reports a questionable publishing agency have pressed charged over.
How will the judge respond when he or she sees the Wikimedia Foundation repeating what might be offense under investigation, after the lawsuit was filed?
Is it really wrong of Wikimedia Foundation to reverse reports they have been sued over, while the case is still pending?
I don't know the details; if any has anything to add to the above assessment, please, fill us in.
Personally I see nothing wrong with the CD cover but I can see how some people might be offended due to the age of the girl involved. For Wikileaks to claim that there is some big scandal going on here involving "child pornography" is just plain stupid and nothing but over-blown junior highscool drama.
The age of consent in the United States varies from 16 to 18. With exceptions for teachers, parents, and others in authority, it's 16 in more than half the states.
In most countries the age of consent is 14-18. It's lower in a few and higher in a few. 16 is not "waay higher" than 14.
The differences between the white-English-speaking and non-English-speaking and non-white world:
* we are generally more prudish, especially about nude art
* "15 will get you 20" instead of a few months
* The enforced close-in-age exceptions are narrower. A 20 year old man with his 14 year old fiancee here would face prosecution, elsewhere he will be given a shotgun wedding.
* More than a few nude photos of infants and toddlers in your family scrap-book will get you thrown in jail.
* Teens sharing pictures of themselves with their friends get prosecuted
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Of course, the Wikinews article was not deleted prior to publication. All Wikinews articles, even ones in development, are accessible by the public, and are therefore "published" in the sense of the law. Articles in development are simply not placed in as prominent of positions on the site as those which are considered to be finished.
The claim that the Wikimedia Foundation exerts pre-publication control over Wikinews articles is therefore false. Merely because the Wikinews site may refer to some publicly-accessible articles as "published" and other publicly-accessible articles as "in development" does not change the fact that both classes of articles are, for legal purposes, published: that is, intentionally placed in the public view.
One of the first things most child-abusing obstetricians do after delivery is spank the poor baby!
Thank goodness for childhood amnesia or we'd all be neurotic recovering child-abuse victims!
Oh wait....
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
WTF
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The only thing you have going for you is your user generated content. Start limiting that and you may as well become another Fox news, or other corporate lameness with no value that nobody will visit.
You're only hurting yourself, wiki.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
remember that the lawsuit against Wikimedia Foundaion is about libel and HAS ENTERED INTO TRIAL, of which a statement or article, even posted on Wikinews, AND REGARDLESS OF WHO WROTE THAT, could be constituted as a official response about the lawsuit and could very be held against Wikimedia Foundation.
Section 230 does not apply in this case.
wikigoatcx for the taking
Gizmodo (and other sites) censor comments by users. Would this not qualify the same way?
Their articles disclosing the slimy pedo-creepyness of those in charge of Wikipedia link to all the evidence. You don't need to just take their word for it.
... apparently, news does not. It would appear that the objective perspective is ultimately swallowed by self-interest.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it's part of human nature. The problem is that we keep trying to see news outlets as objective, when they most very clearly cannot be neutral.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
I don't feel aroused. Do you ? If you are not either what is the problem ? Or are you trying to tell us "some" people might feel aroused by it ? Then quick let us burn all underwear catalogs for kids. Also let us take out all advertising showing kids in underwear in big store. And also one of my niece has a white & black art picture of her naked. Let us forget it was done for an artistic competition and let us burn it as child porn, and put her sorry 15 years old ass behind bar for making child porn. Let us burn every art showing children naked or half naked , every picture (family or not) every album cover, every marketing advertising, because less than 0.1% of the population MIGHT GET AROUSAL OF IT.
And once we are finished destroying a whole pan of culture because of an extreme minority of people, let us then next switch to the other pan of culture we might want to destroy to "protect the children"...
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that ValleyWag IS a credible source, but I'm pretty sure they'd argue that an article shouldn't be automatically deleted from WikiNews just because the source is ValleyWag. I mean, I would probably put the words "ACCORDING TO VALLEYWAG" in the largest bold font available, but I wouldn't delete the story altogether for it.
As a fellow old-fart I agree with your recollections. When in primary school I (and the other kids at school) thought Mao's "little red book" must have been banned because it was about sex..."you know....like that Indian sex book".
:)
In the early 70's there was also a huge fuss about minature replicas of the statue of David, so even though....teenagers were bonking themselves silly with whoever would let them, young adults were choosing to 'live in sin', "collage girls" were setting fire to their undergarments,...it was still politically benificial to try and stop teenagers having sex by putting a fig leaf on David.
Last year I watched "American beauty" on TV, an excellent film that I had seen before on DVD. If it had been made a few decades earlier I don't think you would have seen it on 1970's TV. No matter what the time slot, it would have been despised by extremists on all sides for failing to adequately point out the line between "good and evil".
What experience I have had with genuinely abused people has taught me that on most occasions those who shout the loudest about punishing "sexual deviates" are often the ones who have the most to hide. Wether this behaviuor is driven by their subconsious after suffering abuse themselves or not, I don't know. However what these 'predators' are doing is diluting the seriousness of their own actions by associating them with draconian punishment for trivial or even normal behaviour. The guy who is responsible for the FUBAR'd sex-offenders list is one (very significant) example of the machiavellian rock spider.
Now excuse me, I feel a need to quaff an amber potion.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Removing articles from Wikipedia should need a voting system.
4 votes yes, 0 against would delete.
1 vote yes, 2 against would not.
10 votes yes, 4 against would delete.
10 votes yes, 5 against would not.
You get the idea. Majority would rule.
Or, you could weigh the system however you think is best: easy to delete, hard to delete.
Nor is it an encyclopedia but any rational definition.
I find it interesting all the angles people are taking to double-talk naked pictures of children into being ok.
In a perfect world, it would be ok.
It's not remotely a perfect world.
The very countries you are propping up as being 'better' than the USA due to their younger 'adult ages' are the same ones that have rampant sexual child abuse. Again, the reality of an imperfect world.
To suggest that Brooke shields at the time had any realistic idea of what she was doing is simply silly. She was 12. Most 16 year olds don't have a realistic view of the world, so that's a specious argument at best. And irrelevant.
You're basically, intentionally or not, trying to justify exploitation of children with silly notions of art and simple-minded definitions of pedophilia. If you need naked pictures of children to satisfy your 'art' intake, you have a problem. This idea that anything and everything should be allowed in the name of art is stupid - maybe not in a perfect world, but see above. Most of the time that excuse is simply used by people with zero talent to get 15 minutes of fame by shocking everyone.
EK
Lets not forget that Wikipedia was founded by a porn movie investor. Using wiki to make porn even more mainstream is probably on his agenda.
I think the FBI should investigate him and the Google guys under continous close scrunity, just like those 1950s "fellow travellers" were being watched. You never know when someone is looking to ruin USA, many people are interested in ending this nation inspired under God and free enterprise.
The disguise of free enterprise and free speech is often used to dismantle the basic values USA was built upon, like family, motherhood, the flag and capital punishment.
No wonder the discourse surrounding kids and sex is so lunatic on the Internets. People can't even keep pubescent and prepubsescent straight. The actors in Blue Lagoon were both pubescent, in late adolescence. They were not 10 and hairless.
The article on Wikinews pretty much corresponds to the 'news' on conservapedia some days ago about the same trial. While the topic would be extremely interesting, because as a matter of fact i see the issue with the image, i would be more interested in comptetent lawyers speakting than christian fundamentalists giving other christian fundamentalists the opportunity to speak (quite unbalanced) and calling this news. I lived a large part of my life in Germany, and since Americans were among the group influencing out constitution, and due to the extremely bad experience Germany made with state-based censorship, it is lucckily forbidden and we have a strong free speech (for which i am, as for the freedom of Europe, very thankful to the USA). To be more precisely, censorship is forbidden with the exceptions of child pornography, denial of the holocaust and usage of nazi symbols. And, to point it out one more time 'censorship' only applies to censorship fron the state. Nobody can force a newspaper to print an article, and this should apply to Wikinews
If an Administrator decides an article is to be deleted - well, that wikipedia. If you dont want you articles to be deleted, post them somewhere else. The really ineresting question is: how long would a article in the opposite case have lasted on conservapedia? I gueass not very long. The cases of biased censorship there are the worst i have ever seen (virtually any controversial article is locked down, for some of them even the talk page). And doesnt the outcry about the liberal decay of values on wikipedia come from a direction who proposed to censor scientific journals? So why should wikipeadia allow that people whos daily business is to flame on wikipedia for being 'liberal' to publish 'news' (of similar bad quality as the rest of conservapedia) on their own server? Why should a decently minded admin leave such a crappy article, which remains on topic (the lawsuit) for a few sentences and then turns over to general mud-throwing on the website? Actually i would have really been interested in how such these things are seen in the USA, the home of free speach. - and not just by people belivieng that they are better Americans than 'the liberals', but by layers from bith sides an maybe a competent judge.
BTW: While i disapprove the Album cover, it is a fact that you can find it in record stores. So reporting about htat means to report on a fact. If you need a image for that-this is a question which should be settled by a general policy in Wikipedia.
It's still up.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I'm sorry but you can't compare wiki-anything to news corp. news sources.
one is occasionally manipulated but carefully monitored, and thus any deviations from reality are quickly dragged to die a painful death in the light of day.
the other is a propaganda arm of the extreme "liberal-right", the owner of which actively purges progressives and moderates from his organization.
One reflects reality as well as it possibly can given human fallibility, the other has a tacit (but obvious to anyone with 2 brain cells) mission of pushing an agenda so far to the right they would call nixon a pinko liberal traitor.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!