Censored Wikipedia Articles Appear On Protest Site 589
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."
Journalism 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Informative)
Making fun of the handicapped is not the role of an encyclopedia, and screaming 'censorship' when that worthless Wikipedia entry was deleted is shameful.
http://allenpeppers.ytmnd.com/ [ytmnd.com]? title=Uncensored:Brian_Peppers [nyud.net]
http://www.wikitruth.info.nyud.net:8090/index.php
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:3, Funny)
Oh I'm sorry, but this is abuse.
You want room 12A, Just along the corridor.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know the specifics of this case; but if a man accidently ripped a woman's skirt and is therefore branded as "sex offender", we should be making fun of the legislature for passing such a law, the executive for arresting anyone under it, and the judiciary for convicting anyone under it.
People have been turned into "sex offenders" for mooning, for taking photos of their toddlers with pants around their ankles, and similar harmless acts. While removing rapists and the like from our company, or putting them under close supervision, is a darned good idea, many "sex crimes" are minor, or not justly crimes at all. (Check the laws of your state - if your sex life is at all interesting, you're probably violating some law that's on the books.)
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
For an encyclopaedia it is inappropriate, yes.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter; it's intended to be an encyclopedia.
There was an edit to the entry for John Cena, the wrestler recently. In the middle of his bio someone had written "FUCK CENA".
We've been over this discussion on Slashdot several times though, so either you're a troll, not paying attention, or new here.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:3, Interesting)
Given the 'guilty until proven innocent' nature of sex offense charges these days, I would give Brian Peppers the benefit of the doubt, here.
Re:Bollocks (Score:3, Interesting)
Plea bargain mean nothing to you. The man is a parapalegic, for crying out loud, though I'm sure the jury would have been quite positively swayed by his appearance. I mean, just look at how innocent that face is...
Currently, there are over half a million registered sex offenders in the United States. This is an increasingly suspicious statistic - half a million out of some 100 million adult men that can legally be
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
By reviewing what facts you know and deciding for yourself. The ruling of a jury is for the legal system. Free thinking human beings shouldn't supplant their own judgment for that of the legal system's.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:2, Informative)
http://allenpeppersfinal.ytmnd.com/
Keep watching. It turns out this Allen Peppers fellow was just taking the "meme" to a new level.
For those who despise YTMND, the gist is that "Allen Peppers" claims Brian died at 4:59 AM 2006-02-03, but if you keep watching the gif changes frames and says Brian left in a time machine, then turns to a Photoshopped image of Brian Peppers in a time machine wheelch
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:3, Interesting)
Bollocks. You make it sound as though it's impossible to have an article about someone that's factual and informative just because they have some kind of disability. Oh, and an article about Brian Peppers is definitely not worthless. Whether he wanted it or not, he has achieved widespread Internet notoriety and his name is known by hundreds of thousands
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Interesting)
Snopes of course can have a Brian Peppers article, because Snopes does not aim to show encyclopedic information, but to talk about rumors and urban myths.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
So you believe the article about Star Wars Kid should be deleted as well? Sorry, just because you're famous for the wrong reasons, be they stupidity, ugliness, crime or whatever, you can't expect special exemption status from information outlets. Or at least that's my opinion.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:3, Interesting)
The truth is an absolute defense. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 n
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, I'm sorry, but if Slashdotters are asking about the identity of a so-called "Internet celebrity", this claim is extremely dubious. If there's anything Slashdotters are known for, it's being total Internet geeks, but if more than one has to ask this question -- and if the OP hadn't posted it, I was going to -- the guy clearly isn't THAT famous. "Thousands" of people the world over might be accurate; "hundreds of thousands" is almost certainly not.
It's extremely unlikely that any of these individuals meets Wikipedia standards for notability.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
But, of course, by discussing these people on Slashdot now, we are increasing those articles' right to life.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:4, Interesting)
But there's an article on sexual intercourse, isn't there?
Extremely dubious?
Every man and his dog on YTMND knows about Peppers because he was a massive fad. Peppers was also on Snopes, so many people there would have come across him. Check the traffic rankings on Alexa if you want, these sites are not small beer by any means. Add in the people circulating the picture/description through e-mail and all of the other sites that feature him and you'll discover that six figures is actually quite a reasonable estimate.
The major benefit of Wikipedia over paper encyclopaedias is that you can include the more obscure and niche information with a more limited appeal than traditional articles. True, you can't turn it into a 'I had a mango for lunch today' blog, but Brian Peppers is way beyond that level of irrelevance, no matter how you spin it. Is keeping Peppers really that much of a big deal? Is anyone being forced to view the article?
What's a few paragraphs and a few links? A couple of kilobytes? I think that's more than worth it considering the volume of people aware of Mr Peppers.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:3, Insightful)
No. A publisher rejecting a manuscript is not censorship. A website deciding an article is inappropriate for it's particular site is not censorship.
An entity saying "this information should not appear anywhere" is censorship. An entity arresting someone for what they say is censorship.
The wiki software is available for download. Anyone unhappy with what appears on wikipedia can setup their own site.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Informative)
After the NY Times article, he ended up testifying before Congress. Congress (both Dems and Repubs) is currently pissed off at the Dept of Justice for not actively pursuing the kid's case.
Peppers is a guy with a deformed skull & a charge of sexual assault against him.
Maybe they didn't include basic information on purpose so that you'd RTFAs they linked to.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:3, Informative)
One word for you:
I was easily able to read the linked articles. There's probably even a Firefox extension for this, though it's easy enough to type with a slap of the keyboard so I've never looked.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
And as of this post wikitruth.info [wikitruth.info] is Slashdotted. Just now I had to go search Google because I'd never heard of the guy before.
This is why we have summaries: to summarize the story. A quick mention of who he was wouldn't have hurt.
Re:Journalism 101 (Score:4, Insightful)
Why?
And why do you assume that girls who cam are straight? Do you have more of a problem if lesbian girls do it for straight men? I just don't see the relevance of sexual preference here. A camwhore is a camwhore. A pedophile is a pedophile.
Re:Journalism 101: On the Web (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I still
Censored or edited? (Score:5, Insightful)
David
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, great to see you here, and thanks for giving us the straight dope.
Maybe you could clear up something else. You were appointed to Wikipedia's "Arbitration Committee" a quasi-judicial body, and afterward won your seat as top vote-getter.
Three other editors who ran for seats on that committee lost with significant community disapproval, including one who -- arbitrarily and without prior discussion -- deleted (censored?) portions of many editors' personal pages.
But despite those three failing to receive the community's trust, you and the rest of the Arbitration Committee then created novel and previously unheard of official positions for them as "clerks" -- a role approximately that of prosecutor. The creation of these new positions was done apparently without any discussion or community consensus.
Why did you and your fellow arbitrators create positions without anyone's input, and staff them with three persons whom the community, just a few weeks before, had unequivocally rejected as not having the trust of the community, one of whom had engaged in massive vandalization of users' personal pages?
Why were these novel positions created without any transparency or community consensus?
As the top vote-getter in the race for the Arbitration Committee seat, did you have any qualms that doing so might be seen as an abuse of the trust placed in you by the voters?
Do you think the lack of transparency harms wikipedia?
Do you now regret doing this without community consensus?
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:5, Informative)
How interesting that my posting above, which asks a top Wikiipedia bureaucrat about out-of-process Wikipedia policies in a story about out-of-process Wikipedia censorship, had been modded flamebait in only fourty-five minutes.
There's a certain fanaticism about wikipedia groupies that lends itself to the suppression of opinions that question the wikipedia group-think or the cult of personality surrounding its founder.
But don't take my word for it: read the transcript of a lecture by Jason Scott The Great Failure of Wikipedia" [cow.net]. It covers the mysterious deletion of these articles, and a lot more. Here's one telling bit, I urge you to read the entire transcript:
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:5, Interesting)
This Slashdot story is about a lack of transparency at Wikipedia -- had the articles been deleted normally, through community consensus, the "rogue admins" wouldn't have set up a site to complain about the deletions.
But the deletions were not done by process, but instead by the fiat of a heretofore unheard of "Front Office", an end-run around the community consensus that wikipedia presents as its public face.
The Arbitration Committee has, at the least, created the appearance of a similar end-run, by creating a special and heretofore unheard-of office for editors whom the voters -- by an over 2 to 1 margin -- rejected as trustworthy.
Besides, if you post your answer on wikipedia, most slashdot readers won't see it. And I see that page where you promise to post your explanation is "archived" more frequently than most, and there are already accusations that's done to hide things.
As I'm sure your explanation is convincing, and as you say yourself you don't want to hide anything, why not just explain here, where Slashdot reads?
It's lack of transparency that is causing this mistrust of Wikipedia, so why add to it by posting your response elsewhere?
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:5, Insightful)
She posted here.
She even told us she did so because criticism that "goes through channels" usually isn't publicly seen. I applaud her attempt at transparency. (And I'm sure she can fight her own battles.)
She said she had nothing to hide and wanted to answer the question.
So why shouldn't she reply here, to those you've called the "Slashdot hordes"?
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:3, Informative)
There, happy? Oh, and WP is much more public than
-Kat
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:3, Funny)
We prefer to call it "Depressionally Challenged."
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know what the Userboxes are good (or bad) for myself. That's not the point.
The point is, many editors slave away adding content to wikipedia, working hard to adhere to a Neutral Point of View, working hard to add citations, etc, all for free. They enjoy having a space on their own userpages to say what they want, to blow off a little steam.
The problem is, their userpages were without warning or discussion or even a "by your leave", altered by an administrator on a self-imposed "mission". As it happens the administrator at the time served on the highest quasi-judicial hearing board on wikipedia, a position of much power -- and, we would hope, responsibility.
That board is called, ironically, the "Arbitration Committee", but this arbitrator couldn't even be bothered to ask -- much less arbitrate with -- the "little people", the people who do the actual editing, if they minded having their personal pages vandalized. Rather than arbitrate, she just went ahead and crapped on everyone's personal work, because she thought it best.
That's just not polite.
In the aftermath, the administrator wasn't sanctioned -- when the community tried to make a "Request for Comments", they were told that the damage could be undone, but the administrator herself couldn't be held responsible. In other words, "too bad, you lose".
The community responded by giving the Arbitrator vandal a vote of "no confidence" when she ran for re-election to the Arbitration Committee. They didn't trust a hothead on a mission to be a calm and impartial arbitrator, and no wonder.
After her 2-1 loss, she further disparged the average worker bees, in harsh and personal language.
But rather than heed the community's vote of no confidence, the Arbitration Committee decided to create a wholly novel office, previously unheard of, of "Clerk" -- essentially a chief prosecutor -- and appointed the vandalizing ex-Arbitrator chair of the "Clerks".
That's just a slap in the face of the hard-working people who work hard day in and day out, to contribute to wikipedia.
And it speaks of a great disconnect between the "average" worker-bees and the Administrative queen bees of wikipedia.
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the proof's in the pudding: an Arbitrator appointed by Jimbo (whose choices, you'll admit, are almost always given great deference on Wikipedia) was voted out of office by a 2-1 majority.
Sounds like quite a few people were pissed.
I don't think anyone really went out and touched any userpages directly.
This I admit, is unclear to me; you may be right.
I do know that the vandalizing arbitra
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like the system you're working with (or if you think it's a good idea for an organization to fight EVERY threatened lawsuit), start your own Wikipedia-like project. Good luck with the lawsuits. I know from experience as a newspaper editor that you have to decide which threats are worth fighting and which are not. Sometimes, the people threatening lawsuits are actually correct on a factual level. I have no idea in this case, so I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying that someone has to exercise reasonable editorial control. There will always be disagreements about where to draw the line. But it's easier to cry "censorship" and want to fight lawsuits to the death when you're not the one who's going to be facing the consequences.
David
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:2, Insightful)
YOU don't seem to understand the meaning of the word censored. Censorship is the suppression of material considered objectionable or deemed a security risk. I am no judge or police officer, but I censor materials for my children all the time.
You're mistaken... (Score:3, Informative)
noun
the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts : details of the visit were subject to military censorship.
Censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
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 numbe
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever heard of self-censorship? Your definition of censorship seems to be dangerously narrow.
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:2)
David
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, what I suggest is that the verb censor be used (m-w.com):
Main Entry: censor
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): censored; censoring
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
Therefore, any anytime you self supress anything you think is objectionable, often out of fear, then you are self-censoring.
Anytime a company "suppresse
Re:Censored or edited? (Score:5, Insightful)
David
Re:1945: NAZI censorship. 2006: USA censorship. (Score:3, Funny)
Banana box zygote of the elephant maple comics
Answer that!
KFG
Re:Is this a violation of GFDL? (Score:3, Informative)
Where is project Xanadu when you need it? (Score:2)
Brian Peppers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Brian Peppers (Score:2)
Once again, as with the Siegenthaler case, the 'pedia is caught in an embarassing bind... And once again the attitude of the administrators is "these aren't the droids you are looking for, move along"...
Re:Brian Peppers (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Brian Peppers (Score:5, Informative)
And as for your statement that Wikipedia is banned from use in undergraduate writing, do you have a source? I know, at least at my university, that's not true, and I haven't heard it elsewhere either.
Re:Brian Peppers (Score:2, Insightful)
This may be your definition. It is not the definition of the word in English:
censoring: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable (Merriam-Webster)
censoring: To examine and expurgate. (American Heritage)
Most television networks have their own censor (yes, with that title) who decides what is allowed on the air. Censorship has a precise definition, and it requires no gover
Re:Brian Peppers (Score:3, Informative)
Some people disagree. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Brian Peppers (Score:2)
Re:Brian Peppers (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Brian Peppers (Score:2)
Whether or not Wikipedia has the right to perform censorship is another issue. Legally, it does -- though its power in that area is limited as the GFDL under which WP content is submitted and released precludes them from preventing others from distributing
Re:Brian Peppers (Score:2)
That, and the little fact that encyclopedias in general are not satisfactory for research papers. Please, take a trip to your local library. Or even better, your university library. There you can get some real research materials. The wikipedia exists so you can find some fast information about a variety of subjects. It
Re:Brian Peppers (Score:3, Informative)
If you're trying to convince someone, it's best not to flame them right off the bat....
policy (Score:4, Insightful)
Is Wikitruth supposed to be an oxymoron? (Score:4, Funny)
Forking (Score:3, Interesting)
Not very (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Forking (Score:2, Redundant)
I'm going with number 2 myself. By now, hundreds of self-important dipshits would have forked by now, just because their pet article was a candidate for deletion (for example). But Wikipedia needs to keep those same dipshits around for the sake of the other useful things they c
me = wrong: dumps available (Score:3, Funny)
Brian Peppers article (Score:5, Funny)
Could somebody explain to me why I should care about this "issue"?
Re:Brian Peppers article (Score:2)
Wikitruth.info will be deleted (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wikitruth.info will be deleted (Score:2)
Re:Wikitruth.info will be deleted (Score:3, Insightful)
Linkage (Score:5, Funny)
Most biased summary in the history of slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Great job (Score:4, Insightful)
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;
Wiki isn't Google (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Wiki isn't Google (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia has been subject to a lot of criticism in the pre
Why was the Peppers link relevant (Score:3, Insightful)
Did the submitter even RTFA? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
This article is full of crap (Score:4, Informative)
Disgruntled Wikipedia people (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
WP:OFFICE (Score:3, Informative)
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.)
Censored again? (Score:2)
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.
error id: "bad_httpd_conf"
Before someone screams, WIKIMEDIA SUES WIKITRUTH! (Score:2, Insightful)
Wikitruth has some good moments (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Wikitruth has some good moments (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia is not Britanica. It needs to stop pretending that it's a traditional encyclopedia. The whole concept of deleting articles because they aren't "notable" enough is bunk. If a Wyoming town [wikipedia.org]
And we take Andrew Orlowski seriously because...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Wikipedia is a dictatorship (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Objectionists (Score:3, Interesting)
This will be marked troll or flamebait if an Ayn Randian with moderation points reads this.
Their server, their rules... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:What a bunch of FUD (not really) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well, why do these articles matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
History is more then what is in the history books (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
About WP:OFFICE (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
Re:More important censorship of Wikipedia (Score:3, Informative)
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 b