Wikimedia Confusion Swirls In Wake of Porn Charges

Contridictory stories are circulating after Fox News's pursuing of Wikimedia Foundation for hosting pornography reportedly resulted in Jimmy Wales personally removing some pornographic material from its servers, then giving up his special editing privileges under pressure. Fox News reported that Wikimedia is "in chaos"; this report was picked up by VentureBeat and others. Wales denies that there is any chaos (any more than usual, that is) at Wikimedia. The Fox News report apparently relied on a single unnamed source, and Wales said, "They don't even bother to contact me before publishing nonsense." The background: on April 27 Fox News published an exclusive report about porn on Wikimedia servers, then followed up by contacting organizations that had donated to Wikimedia to ask them what they thought about it. In the aftermath, Wales took a position in support of purging porn from Wikimedia Commons. This all started when estranged Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger contacted the FBI with an allegation of child porn on Wikipedia.

Comments

Internet Wars

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, good. Seems like we haven't had a proper internet war since Usenet vs. Scientology or vi vs. emacs.

Oh well, at least the right people usually win. What would've happened if Scientology or emacs had won?

Re:Internet Wars

[Anonymous Coward]

When I start emacs, I don't even get a place to type text. Just a menu offering a bunch of ways to get help. The help screen uses completely separate (+unintuitive and severely limited, I might add) keybindings. The opening menu mentions something about "visit new file", which not only sounds like some sort of Microsoft Bob jargon for thinking good thoughts about one's day, but also, as a special bonus, when selected it opens a little prompt at the bottom that says "Find file: ~/"

At least with vim, if you try to treat it like a sane editor, it is very likely to start working accidentally.

Re:Internet Wars

[Bugamn]

Hey, that's how I started using vim for coding C:

nclude

You have to wonder

[bky1701]

... if Sanger saw this sort of thing coming.

It has long been known to anyone who ever tried to contribute to Wikipedia just how much off the books power Wales has. Those who spent a particularly long amount of time there might remember the whole birth date fiasco, which basically pinned Wales against himself, much to the confusion of his many disciples.

Sanger has to know Wales even better. It wouldn't be much to assume that he might have expected this sort of reaction. Indeed, this situation really threatens Wikipedia's standing as non-bias (specifically, censorship-free) and open, at least among those who didn't already know better. Could this be the straw that breaks Wikipedia? Did Sanger expect this?

Re:You have to wonder

[rtfa-troll]

Normally, if you want to report a crime, you do it with an off the record quiet message to the authorities, which allows them to try to actually catch the people committing the crime in the act. Normally, if you want to get a project you are related to to stop doing something you worry might be a crime, you first contact the people responsible; especially those you believe aren't involved, and try to get them to do something about it. If, as it seems, Sanger went to the media first of all then that speaks volumes about his motivation.

Having said that; Wales is probably an okay guy, but his position in Wikipedia has been totally inappropriate since his personal life and finances intruded on the project. Once Wikipedia set its self up as an independent foundation all his power should have been derived from some clear democratic process in that foundation. The stupid thing (and the one which shows that he's a completely inappropriate person for the role) is the fact that he could probably have quite easily got himself elected president of the board or something and then none of the arguments against him would be nearly as effective. What Sanger has done may be a bit late, but it's definitely one of the strongest hopes of strengthening the Wikipedia project.

Total self-discreditation, Larry

[Anonymous Coward]

Larry Sanger totally and completely discredited himself by starting this allegation fiasco. From a pursuer of an alternative editing strategy (which, despite shortcomings, was addressing a real (or perceived as real) problem of content quality of Wikipedia due to editorial policy, he turned himself into a cheapshot troll that will resort to the dirtiest tactic possible to attract attention. Even if his allegations were genuine (which clearly they aren't, on numerous points of principle), he'll never be able to get over the sour grapes analogy which will forever become his soubriquet.

Even the minor PR damage caused to Wales (and I really think Wales was just looking for a reason/excuse to give up his adminship, as he was realizing "benevolent dictatorship" was no longer a fitting model for a project the scope and developmental maturity of Wikipedia) will not outweight the devastating damage to any professional reputation Sanger still had before this point.

Bye Larry. From a legitimate oppositioner to a resentful clown, all by a single, stupid, stupid decision. How sad.

Re:Total self-discreditation, Larry

[hairyfeet]

Actually I don't blame Larry at all, in this witch hunt anyone that goes for the CYA strategy is just showing they have a brain. I mean we are living in an age where a drawing, no matter how crude, and that involves no real children what so ever can get someone sent to PMITA prison depending on their location.

The simple fact is it has long since quit being about "protecting the children" and become a classic witch hunt where I doubt anyone is truly safe if they end up with a zealous prosecutor and a hang 'em high judge. Is that an elf in the game you are playing? Looks like she might be loli! Hell we are gonna have to have every single fantasy/Sci Fi book have a porn style "all models depicted or described in this work was over 18" in the front of the book just to keep from risking jail!

So don't blame the guy for CYA when it is the whole system that is completely fucked. I mean you can go to prison just for having words on a page nowadays, so just the fact that he accessed those pages on his PC without reporting them could have landed the guy a jail sentence. I mean, what would you have him do, keep a stack of HDDs handy so he can burn his drive every time he accessed Wikimedia, in case something got cached? If you don't like this horseshit, write to your elected officials and try to organize your fellow citizens to get the laws overturned. Of course you'll probably be labeled a kiddy fiddler by the MSM and have your place raided, but that's what happens when you have a witch hunt and why most people will go for a CYA in this crazy time.

Re:Total self-discreditation, Larry

[silentcoder]

You know... I went and read that link you posted about fictional writing, and with only a few small exceptions every single commenter was declaring that the punishment wasn't severe enough.
How sad.

Where would the law draw THAT line then ? Canada's law prohibits fictional writing about sex involving children... well I guess it's illegal to read Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliette in Canada then. Every single line in that play is a thinly veiled sexual refference, every single word they say is flirtatious and promising of sex. Juliette goes so far as to decry having to wait longer "to be enjoyed"... and according to the script... she is 12 years old.

Times change. In the 1600's a 12 year old girl was considered a grown woman and the average age of marriage was between 12 and 15 (you know that whole wait-till-you-marry idea must have been a LOT easier when that meant 2 years after puberty rather than about 20 like now) - point is.
By modern standards, Julliete was a child, way below the age of consent for just about any country. If we ban the stories this man had, we have to ban Shakespeare... well we wouldn't be first I guess.
Hell old Bowdler actually deemed himself justified to have the audacity to rewrite Shakespeare and remove the sex...

I didn't start my comment with "I hate childporn but..." - because it's a sign off the witch-hunt that everybody who shows a little reason in these matters feel the need to do that. Stallman spoke out against the witchhunt, and got a bunch of the Novellian New-breed OSS'ers calling him a paedohphile for it.
It seems humanity will never learn, witch-hunts are never just -and whatever atrocity leads to a witch-hunt, the one thing you can be sure of is that the witch-hunt will do nothing to reduce it. All it will do - is remove justice and freedoms from a whole lot of innocent people. My claim that censorship is never a good thing rest firstly on the fact that no matter how noble it's cause, it's never effective in any positive way - but it always has many negative effects.

Thank goodness I got to study Shakespeare BEFORE we Romeo and Juliette became illegal.

Well, duh.

[Black Parrot]

"They don't even bother to contact me before publishing nonsense."

FOX is in the business of publishing nonsense.

Excellent trolling by Fox

[NicenessHimself]

Fox have successfully created a news story from nothing; the ringing up of donors is a classic. Whatever you think of Fox's agenda, they did what they do very well on this one!

Or, in other words...

[SanityInAnarchy]

[citation needed]

Re:Ignorance of the Masses

[bjourne]

Your memory must be very short. Wales usually gets involved in a small number of conflicts which become landmark cases that everyone has to adjust to. It was his votes that forced the removal of the autofellatio photos and decided that the vagina and clitoris photos were to sexual. Previously, he has even been involved in the Palestine conflict, pruning some articles he thought were "unbalanced." Plus, let's not forget the time he tried to purge the "co-founder of Wikipedia" status from Larry Sanger.

Re:Fox News vs. Wikipedia

[sa1lnr]

Murdoch against porn?

http://www.page3.com/

Re:Fox News vs. Wikipedia

[xaxa]

Wikipedia against "child" (by USA standards, and the more recent British standards) porn

The Sun and other British tabloids have also provoked controversy by featuring girls as young as 16 as topless models. Samantha Fox, Maria Whittaker, Debee Ashby, and many others began their topless modelling careers in The Sun at that age, while the Daily Sport was even known to count down the days until it could feature a teenage girl topless on her 16th birthday, as it did with Linsey Dawn McKenzie in 1994, among others. Although such photographs were legally permissible in the United Kingdom under the Protection of Children Act 1978, critics noted the irony of Murdoch's Sun and News of the World newspapers calling for stricter laws on the sexual abuse of minors, including the public identification of released pedophiles, while publishing topless photographs of girls whom many other jurisdictions would legally classify as underage minors.[8] Controversy over these young models ended when the Sexual Offences Act 2003 raised the minimum age for topless modelling to 18.

(From Wikipedia)