Here's what most of the comments seem to be missing. If you look at the top 25 most-viewed images on Wikimedia Commons, they are not "made-up drawings", and many of them are themed as such:
5 Category:Shaved genitalia (female) 231062 views
6 Category:Vulva 204043
11 Penis 129794
12 Category:Female genitalia 115613
13 Category:Ejaculation 107525
14 Category:Sex positions 107061
16 Category:Vagina 98422
17 Category:Erotic 95543
18 Category:Oral sex 92525
19 Category:Masturbation 92416
21 Category:Penis 90955
22 Category:Female masturbation 85930
23 Category:Sex 84217
25 Category:Male masturbation 77042
The evidence clearly indicates that what Commons is, is a porn gallery server. Why is it that my government allows Google, Omidyar Network, Hewlett Foundation, Stanton Foundation, and Sloan Foundation to ENJOY A TAX BREAK when they donate huge sums of money to this particular porn gallery? The fact that the Wikimedia Foundation is allowed to operate as a 501-c-3 "charity" makes me puke a little in my mouth.
See my response to this fallacy, below, John. My post was rated up to "5", but then the Wikipediots came along and must have voted it back down again. So, you'll have to search for it. Look for the word "MyWikiBiz".
Well, one of my paid articles about a pharmaceutical remedy receives over 5,000 page views on Wikipedia per month. I don't know how YOU define "non-notable", but apparently there are over 5,000 people a month search for information on Wikipedia about some of my "crap" that I put there.
This is the sort of idiot response I had to put up with on Wikipedia, and frankly, one of the main reasons I just went underground. I got tired of arguing with teenagers who lack a foundation in logic.
By the way, if anyone is wondering just how "shut down" is the MyWikiBiz paid editing service, we had three paid engagements in the last quarter of 2008, and one paid article created and published on Wikipedia in the second quarter of 2009. So, it's certainly not thriving, but it's far from dead.
When I am under contract with a person or corporation to write an article about said person or corporation, I have very, very, very little interest in presenting an "advocacy" position on behalf of that entity. Rather, success is measured in durability within Wikipedia, so my highest priority is...
How do I write (and publish) this article in such a way that it passes WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:RS, and all the other WP:things, while simultaneously NOT DRAWING THE ATTENTION of someone from the WikiHive intent on deleting paid promotional puff pieces?
Guess what? The articles that result are relatively bland, not puff pieces, quite encyclopedic, and (ever since I learned this technique) 100% durable within Wikipedia -- with surprisingly little follow-up maintenance, and likewise lasting appreciation of my clients.
Since the veracity of User:Durova is being questioned here, I would like to present the following brief statement. I am a real person, Gregory Kohs, who is not hiding behind a pseudonym. Durova is.
In an unrelated case, Durova stated on Wikipedia that I "gave misleading information to journalists". When I asked her to provide evidence of that claim, she refused to provide it to me, out of fear of losing her anonymity by exposing her e-mail address to me. I offered that she could send the e-mail from a single-use, throwaway e-mail account if she wanted. She refused that offer, too.
I later found out that she e-mailed all of her evidence to the AP reporter in question, Brian Bergstein. Bergstein's reaction?
He said: "...it's not so much that I decided she [Durova] was right or wrong, but it's more that I didn't care one way or another. I would have come back to you and grilled you about it had I at all cared. As I'm sure you know, my story was not meant to carry water for you, personally, but instead was meant to explore the issue you raised about payments and Wikipedia and how it played out in your experience. There was no point in trying to assess whether she had opened up some new revelations about your character. It wasn't relevant to the story."
While she will not confirm it, I am now of the understanding that what Durova meant was that when talking with Brian Bergstein about my enterprise, I failed to mention that most of my corporate paid-to-edit articles were being entered into Wikipedia by other independent, non-paid editors. Which is actually untrue, because I did mention that to Bergstein -- he just didn't publish it. Indeed, that was how Jimmy Wales himself told me to operate the business! If that's not the conundrum, she is possibly upset that I failed to mention that I continued to evade a site block using a "sockpuppet" account on Wikipedia, in order to intelligently correct falsehoods being repeated in paid-editing discussions. Whoop dee freakin' doo. I challenged falsehoods in a non-profit, open-source forum where I had been site blocked. When does my prison sentence begin?
Of course, neither of these factors would have been germane for the well-written January 25th, 2007 AP story that ran about MyWikiBiz. Yet, the public record on Wikipedia (thank to none other than Durova) says that Gregory Kohs "gave misleading information to journalists". Durova won't redact the statement, all while refusing to provide public evidence for it.
So, fellow Slashdotters -- you decide. Who is guilty of duplicity here? Me? Or Durova?
There's another wiki that's just getting started, called http://www.centiare.com/. It's much like Wikipedia, but with two HUGE differences:
(A) If you're a business, organization, or individual, there is ownership of your Directory page. No more vandals saying you went bankrupt because you lost a pickle-eating contest.
(B) Semantic tagging. If you know what this means, I needn't say more. If you don't know what it means, check out the ASK query at the bottom of http://www.centiare.com/Portal:List, and you should begin to understand the wild potential of semantic tags in a wiki environment.
Jimmy Wales did a wonderful thing by co-creating Wikipedia; but in his pursuit of "Neutral Point of View" and eliminating all appearances of "conflict of interest", he's lost sight of the fact that 95% of editors of Wikipedia have a point of view and/or a conflict of interest. They are all welcome at Centiare.com.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously, you're not well-versed in Erik Moeller's groundbreaking off-Wikipedia research, "Kinder sind Pornos":
http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/4/4158/1.html
"Nonviolent pornography does no harm"
"I would also reiterate that there is no empirical support for the hypothesis that pornography promotes harmful behavior in adolescents or adults."
He's clearly an expert.
Here's what most of the comments seem to be missing. If you look at the top 25 most-viewed images on Wikimedia Commons, they are not "made-up drawings", and many of them are themed as such:
5 Category:Shaved genitalia (female) 231062 views
6 Category:Vulva 204043
11 Penis 129794
12 Category:Female genitalia 115613
13 Category:Ejaculation 107525
14 Category:Sex positions 107061
16 Category:Vagina 98422
17 Category:Erotic 95543
18 Category:Oral sex 92525
19 Category:Masturbation 92416
21 Category:Penis 90955
22 Category:Female masturbation 85930
23 Category:Sex 84217
25 Category:Male masturbation 77042
The evidence clearly indicates that what Commons is, is a porn gallery server. Why is it that my government allows Google, Omidyar Network, Hewlett Foundation, Stanton Foundation, and Sloan Foundation to ENJOY A TAX BREAK when they donate huge sums of money to this particular porn gallery? The fact that the Wikimedia Foundation is allowed to operate as a 501-c-3 "charity" makes me puke a little in my mouth.
See my response to this fallacy, below, John. My post was rated up to "5", but then the Wikipediots came along and must have voted it back down again. So, you'll have to search for it. Look for the word "MyWikiBiz".
Well, one of my paid articles about a pharmaceutical remedy receives over 5,000 page views on Wikipedia per month. I don't know how YOU define "non-notable", but apparently there are over 5,000 people a month search for information on Wikipedia about some of my "crap" that I put there.
This is the sort of idiot response I had to put up with on Wikipedia, and frankly, one of the main reasons I just went underground. I got tired of arguing with teenagers who lack a foundation in logic.
By the way, if anyone is wondering just how "shut down" is the MyWikiBiz paid editing service, we had three paid engagements in the last quarter of 2008, and one paid article created and published on Wikipedia in the second quarter of 2009. So, it's certainly not thriving, but it's far from dead.
When I am under contract with a person or corporation to write an article about said person or corporation, I have very, very, very little interest in presenting an "advocacy" position on behalf of that entity. Rather, success is measured in durability within Wikipedia, so my highest priority is...
How do I write (and publish) this article in such a way that it passes WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:RS, and all the other WP:things, while simultaneously NOT DRAWING THE ATTENTION of someone from the WikiHive intent on deleting paid promotional puff pieces?
Guess what? The articles that result are relatively bland, not puff pieces, quite encyclopedic, and (ever since I learned this technique) 100% durable within Wikipedia -- with surprisingly little follow-up maintenance, and likewise lasting appreciation of my clients.
So, how do I PayPal to aywwts4, if he doesn't provide his e-mail address on Slashdot? I want that sig line!
Since the veracity of User:Durova is being questioned here, I would like to present the following brief statement. I am a real person, Gregory Kohs, who is not hiding behind a pseudonym. Durova is.
In an unrelated case, Durova stated on Wikipedia that I "gave misleading information to journalists". When I asked her to provide evidence of that claim, she refused to provide it to me, out of fear of losing her anonymity by exposing her e-mail address to me. I offered that she could send the e-mail from a single-use, throwaway e-mail account if she wanted. She refused that offer, too.
I later found out that she e-mailed all of her evidence to the AP reporter in question, Brian Bergstein. Bergstein's reaction?
He said: "...it's not so much that I decided she [Durova] was right or wrong, but it's more that I didn't care one way or another. I would have come back to you and grilled you about it had I at all cared. As I'm sure you know, my story was not meant to carry water for you, personally, but instead was meant to explore the issue you raised about payments and Wikipedia and how it played out in your experience. There was no point in trying to assess whether she had opened up some new revelations about your character. It wasn't relevant to the story."
While she will not confirm it, I am now of the understanding that what Durova meant was that when talking with Brian Bergstein about my enterprise, I failed to mention that most of my corporate paid-to-edit articles were being entered into Wikipedia by other independent, non-paid editors. Which is actually untrue, because I did mention that to Bergstein -- he just didn't publish it. Indeed, that was how Jimmy Wales himself told me to operate the business! If that's not the conundrum, she is possibly upset that I failed to mention that I continued to evade a site block using a "sockpuppet" account on Wikipedia, in order to intelligently correct falsehoods being repeated in paid-editing discussions. Whoop dee freakin' doo. I challenged falsehoods in a non-profit, open-source forum where I had been site blocked. When does my prison sentence begin?
Of course, neither of these factors would have been germane for the well-written January 25th, 2007 AP story that ran about MyWikiBiz. Yet, the public record on Wikipedia (thank to none other than Durova) says that Gregory Kohs "gave misleading information to journalists". Durova won't redact the statement, all while refusing to provide public evidence for it.
So, fellow Slashdotters -- you decide. Who is guilty of duplicity here? Me? Or Durova?
Brilliantly wry, ToiletDuck.
There's another wiki that's just getting started, called http://www.centiare.com/. It's much like Wikipedia, but with two HUGE differences:
(A) If you're a business, organization, or individual, there is ownership of your Directory page. No more vandals saying you went bankrupt because you lost a pickle-eating contest.
(B) Semantic tagging. If you know what this means, I needn't say more. If you don't know what it means, check out the ASK query at the bottom of http://www.centiare.com/Portal:List, and you should begin to understand the wild potential of semantic tags in a wiki environment.
Jimmy Wales did a wonderful thing by co-creating Wikipedia; but in his pursuit of "Neutral Point of View" and eliminating all appearances of "conflict of interest", he's lost sight of the fact that 95% of editors of Wikipedia have a point of view and/or a conflict of interest. They are all welcome at Centiare.com.