Monday, May 15, 2006

Since I Began Wiki Watchdog (5/15/06)

I thought it might be interesting to review some of the events of my days since I began Wiki Watchdog, on April 22, 2006, and strongly advised readers not to donate to Wikipedia until it institutes key changes to reduce the effects of Wikibullying, Wikiwolfpacking, Wikimobbing, Wikistalking, Wikietcetera. (see: Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands?):


  1. My Palm Beaches Review first lost Google search engine coverage for the pages in it linked from Wikipedia. The site has since disappeared entirely from the Google search engine. It has not had a hit from any search engine for approximately two days: see http://gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com/ (site URL) and site:http://gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com/ (Google listing of site pages being indexed);
  2. The Google coverage for my Virtual Grub Street Front Page site has been reduced to a handful of pages: see http://virtual-grub-street.blogspot.com/ (site URL) and site:http://virtual-grub-street.blogspot.com/ (Google listing of site pages being indexed);
  3. A number of the longtime first page Google listings associated with the original Virtual Grub Street blog have slipped to lower search pages. The total listing of pages has gone down from above 140 to 97. Site traffic has correspondingly gone down by over 30% as a result: see site:gilbertwesleypurdy.blogspot.com/ (Google listing of site pages being indexed);
  4. The most recent Google search engine index for the Wiki Watchdog blog has retained the main blog page and the three individual pages indexed during the previous crawling-cycle. None of the new individual pages has been indexed: see http://vgs-wiki-watchdog.blogspot.com/ (site URL) site:http://vgs-wiki-watchdog.blogspot.com/ (Google listing of site pages being indexed);
  5. The Google listings for "Gilbert Wesley Purdy" have gone down to 707 from above 980 pages;
  6. The Google cache page for QLRS - Criticism : AT'ang Canon Vol. 3 No. 4 Jul 2004 (my book review / essay "A T'ang Canon") has disappeared. Because this has not been done by Google (nor, apparently, a legitimate administrator of QLRS's server), the following default listing appears:
    Welcome to my Website!
    www.qlrs.com/critique.asp?id=367 - 1k - May 11, 2006 -
    Cached - Similar pages

    (see: page 1 of Google search)

  7. My sonnet sequence "On First Reading Lowell's Notebooks" and essay "The Enigma of W. D. Snodgrass" are no longer being indexed: see site:www.limestonemag.net "limestone magazine" "Gilbert Wesley Purdy";
  8. My poems "55 Madonna", "A Meeting of the Garden Club", and my reviews "Brisk Leaps the Heart" and "The Reconstruction of John Willis Menard" are no longer being indexed: see site:poetry.allinfo-about.com "Gilbert Wesley Purdy".
  9. The claim that I vandalized User:Prometheuspan's talk page has been removed and the message supporting him in his struggle has been returned to the page: see "...pack psychology driven anarchy...";
  10. Donald Albury "is taking a moderate wikibreak and will be back on Wikipedia at the end of May": see User talk:Dalbury and Wiki Watchdog's article Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands?.

Can an Al Qaida cell really have infiltrated Wikipedia? Somehow I suspect we'll all have to decide for ourselves.

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"All we are saying is give jackbooted fascism a chance."



Phil Sandifer (a.k.a. Snowspinner) is a Wikipedia Administrator who has all but grown famous for this quote from his user page, listed under the heading "I'm not a goddamned inclusionist":

All we are saying is give jackbooted fascism a chance.

If this seems like an inappropriate philosophy for a Florida-registered non-profit organization it will apparently have to be lived with. According to Wikitruth's Snowspinner page:

Snowie is much loved by Jimbo, who has declared him his kind of admin...

Jimbo, of course, is Jimmy Wales the appointed-for-life CEO of Wikipedia.

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Witness statements...

The following witness statements are presently posted at Wiki Watchdog:


  1. "Honor Killings", "Circumcision", "Dog Shows", "Child Soldiers", "Abortion" by Jason Scott;
  2. "...it's better to shoot first and ask questions later..." Mark Pellegrini (a.k.a. Raul654);
  3. "All we are saying is give jackbooted fascism a chance." Phil Sandifer (a.k.a. Snowspinner);
  4. '...the "democratic" people's MAFIA...' Steve Rubel & Steve Wallis;
  5. "...feel that they are immune from accountability." Daniel Brandt;
  6. "...a bunch of nasty, arrogant dimwits..." Warren Boroson;
  7. "...normal person, plus anonymity, plus large audience, equals flaming f**kwad." Jason Scott;
  8. "A Nightmare Of Libel and Slander." John Leyden;
  9. "...the politics, the lameness, the backstabbing..." jaberwocky6669;
  10. "...pack psychology driven anarchy..." Prometheuspan; and
  11. Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands? Gilbert Wesley Purdy.

I will soon be posting a prequel to Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands?

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'...the "democratic" people's MAFIA...'



Steve Rubel, at Micro Persuasion, upset more than a few Wikipedians and self-professed apathetic-types, when he wrote an article declaring Wikipedia to be King Disruptor III (after Microsoft and Google):

History is about to repeat itself. A successor to Google's throne is waiting in the wings - it's Wikipedia, King Disruptor III. Like its predecessors, Wikipedia is powerful because it provides access to largely accurate information that can be hard to find. This king, however, is unlike any other because it operates in a completely democratic way. It's run by the people, without any grand financial ambitions. This doesn't mean its rule will be perceived solely as a benevolent one, however.

Already, Wikipedia instills a deeper fear than either Google or Microsoft did when they were at such a young age. [Go to complete article >>>]

At least one reader found the piece to be prescient, however:


I AGREE WITH YOU STEVE RUBEL, COMPLETELY. My best regards and
congratulations for your admirable and CLEAR vision.WIKIPEDIA is it: a "democratic" TIRANY. Very, very, very dangerous. Even more than you described. Too much more!But I admire your courage; and I am really curious how and where did you get it to wrote such an article. Are you not afraid?!... I am very surprised!Wikipedia is a people's tyranny. Jesus Christ was also killed by a people's tyranny. It's the more dangerous type of tyranny.Well... to whom who it may concern: think about that and DEEPLY research Wikipedia structure: the Wikipedia administrators (the "democratic" people's MAFIA), the sysop powers, and so on, and so on...Maybe I am
to[o] frontal, but maybe I know what I am saying.

My best regards Steve Rub-El,Wallis.

Posted by: Sir Wallis Monday, December 12, 2005 at 09:12 PM


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Saturday, May 13, 2006

Since I Began the Wiki Watchdog (Update)

I thought it might be interesting to review some of the events of my days since I posted "Since I Began the Wiki Watchdog," and strongly advised readers not to donate to Wikipedia until it institutes key changes to reduce the effects of Wikibullying, Wikiwolfpacking, Wikimobbing, Wikistalking, Wikietcetera. (see: Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands?):






  1. The Google cache page for QLRS - Criticism : AT'ang Canon Vol. 3 No. 4 Jul 2004 has disappeared again. Because this has not been done by Google (nor, apparently, a legitimate administrator of QLRS's server), the following default listing again appears:
    Welcome to my Website!
    www.qlrs.com/critique.asp?id=367 - 1k - May 11, 2006 -
    Cached - Similar pages

    (see: page 1 of Google search)

  2. The StatCounter for the Wiki Watchdog counted only "Unique Visitors" (rather than "Page Loads") until late yesterday evening when it suddenly began counting page loads again. As I have been composing this page the blocking cookie spontaneously "reverted" (disappeared) for the second time this week. That makes twice this has happened in the year and a half that I have been using StatCounter and praising it for what has been excellent service until late.

Check back for further updates to "Since I Began the Wiki Watchdog". It might prove highly instructive to see where this goes.

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"...feel that they are immune from accountability."



Daniel Brandt's battles with Wikipedia are well known. The end of his tenure as an editor seems to have been entirely occupied with attempting to have his Wikipedia bio page removed. The following is an excerpt from his recent letter to Wikimedia's legal counsel, Bradford A. Patrick. The letter appears on Brandt's Wikipedia Watch site:
April 23, 2006

Bradford A. Patrick, Esq.
Fowler White Boggs Banker
501 E. Kennedy
Blvd., Suite 1700
Tampa, FL 33602-5239
bpatrick@fowlerwhite.com
Tel: 813-228-7411
Fax: 813-229-8313


Dear Mr. Patrick:

I am writing to you because you are the attorney for Wikimedia Foundation. This letter should be interpreted as a formal notice made to the Foundation.

For six months I have been defamed and / or had my privacy invaded by agents of the Foundation. This has occurred primarily, but not exclusively, on these pages:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Brandt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Daniel_Brandt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Talk:Daniel_Brandt

* * *

I am prepared to show that certain administrators, some of whom remain anonymous despite efforts to identify them, have contributed to a situation where much of the material related to me amounts to defamation and/or invasion of privacy. I further contend that there is evidence of unchecked hostility and maliciousness on the part of some editors and administrators. An overview of this pattern of behavior is available at www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html.

* * *

I cannot answer my detractors as a Wikipedia user, because administrators have blocked me indefinitely. This was primarily due to their perception of a legal threat from me. This "no legal threats" policy is inappropriate in a civil society, one purpose of which is to provide civil remedies under the rule of law. It causes the Foundation's editors and administrators to feel that they are immune from accountability. [Go to the complete letter >>>]
Brandt has also been branded a spammer for redirecting links from Wikipedia (originally to his Wikipedia Watch page cited above: www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to the Wikipedia Review homepage. Again, this does not meet any known definition of spam (see: Wikipedia and the Question of LinkSpam) but an angry Wikipedia hive does not scrupple at mere facts. He pulled a fast one and that's spam enough!

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"...a bunch of nasty, arrogant dimwits..."



According to his Wikipedia bio, "Warren Boroson (born January 22, 1935) is an American author, journalist with the Daily Record, and syndicated financial columnist. He has written over 20 books, including Keys to Investing in Mutual Funds and How to Buy a House for Nothing (or Little) Down. His most recent book is The Reverse Mortgage Advantage : The Tax-Free, House Rich Way to Retire Wealthy! . His columns are syndicated to 200 Gannett newspapers." Perhaps the distinction of having his bio appear in Wikipedia was what attracted him to give editing a try. The resulting column ("Wikipedia site filled with major mistakes"), in the Daily Record, begins as follows:

My only personal experience with Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, was decidedly unfavorable. I was left with the impression that a bunch of nasty, arrogant dimwits are in charge. [Go to complete column >>>]
It seems that Mr. Boroson's impressions went beyond Wikimistakes.

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Thursday, May 11, 2006

Since I Began the Wiki Watchdog

I thought it might be interesting to review some of the events of my days since I began Wiki Watchdog, on April 22, 2006, and strongly advised readers not to donate to Wikipedia until it institutes key changes to reduce the effects of Wikibullying, Wikiwolfpacking, Wikimobbing, Wikistalking, Wikietcetera. (see: Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands?):

  1. My Palm Beaches Review first lost Google search engine coverage for the pages in it linked from Wikipedia. The site has since disappeared entirely from the Google search engine: see http://gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com/ (site URL) and site:http://gilbert-wesley-purdy.blogspot.com/ (Google listing of site pages being indexed);
  2. The Google coverage for my Virtual Grub Street Front Page site has been reduced to a handful of pages: see http://virtual-grub-street.blogspot.com/ (site URL) and site:http://virtual-grub-street.blogspot.com/ (Google listing of site pages being indexed);
  3. A number of the longtime first page Google listings associated with the original Virtual Grub Street blog have slipped to lower search pages and the traffic has correspondingly gone down by approximately 20% as a result;
  4. The most recent Google search engine index for the Wiki Watchdog blog has retained the main blog page and the three individual pages indexed during the previous crawling-cycle. None of the new individual pages has been indexed: see http://vgs-wiki-watchdog.blogspot.com/ (site URL) site:http://vgs-wiki-watchdog.blogspot.com/ (Google listing of site pages being indexed);
  5. The Google cache page for QLRS - Criticism : AT'ang Canon Vol. 3 No. 4 Jul 2004 disappeared for 2 days but is now back up;
  6. The claim that I vandalized User:Prometheuspan's talk page has been removed and the message supporting him in his struggle has been returned to the page: see "...pack psychology driven anarchy...";
  7. Donald Albury "is taking a moderate wikibreak and will be back on Wikipedia at the end of May": see User talk:Dalbury and Wiki Watchdog's article Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands?.

Can an Al Qaida cell really have infiltrated Wikipedia? Somehow I suspect we'll all have to decide for ourselves.

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"...normal person, plus anonymity, plus large audience, equals flaming f**kwad."



Jason Scott's The Great Failure of Wikipedia (the "Transcription of a presentation/speech given at Notacon 3, April 8, 2006") has recently appeared in the web and garnered considerable attention. Jason can hardly be called anything but a disinterested witness. The quote, here, is only a tiny portion of a long piece with many wide ranging and intelligent observations on the Wikipedia phenomenon:

I'd buy entirely that the Penny Arcade theory, which was normal person, plus anonymity, plus large audience, equals flaming f**kwad. That's the mirror that Wikipedia is presenting to us, and I think that we can learn quite a bit from it. [Go to the complete speech >>>]

This, of course, is precisely the point that underlies the first demand listed at the end of Wiki Watchdog's article Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands?

Jason Scott's speech can also be downloaded in various audio formats from http://www.archive.org/details/20060408-jscott-wikipedia.

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"A Nightmare Of Libel and Slander."



Joel Leyden, owner and editor of the Israel News Agency, and once a registered Wikipedia User, who went by the handle Israelbeach, hasn't much positive to say about the behavior at Wikipedia:
One realizes after being inside Wikipedia, behind the many so-called facts and figures, that there are networks within a network. Some good, some bad. A few respond with vicious relentless assaults that would make the Mafia proud. [Go to the article >>>]

Leyden is not exactly a disinterested reporter. He is a father's rights advocate who set out to assure that Wikipedia also presented that perspective in its coverage of related issues. The details are a bit fuzzy but many of his observations go beyond his own personal situation and are confirmed by countless others.



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Saturday, May 06, 2006

"...the politics, the lameness, the backstabbing..."



Wiki Watchdog has been getting out a bit lately, learning how to get around within Wikipedia and where to go for insight into how others view the behavior of (rogue?) Wikipedians. There is a lot being said out there. The following excerpted from the chat-page Stumble Upon is among the many amusing comments:

by jaberwocky6669, Apr 25, [2006], 8:17am

What it truly means to be a wikipedian... "You can set up a user account, start editing everything you can find, enmesh yourself into the politics, the lameness, the backstabbing and moronity, and fight an ever-present desperate whirlpooling battle of contract law, miserable personalities and microscopic anal details. You can run out of additional information to add to subjects you know, and instead tunnel deep into shit you don't have the slightest notion about, using your intense knowledge of Wiki-jargon and gaming the system to fight every bastard who tries to change an article in a way you don't agree with, or which might have any information you're unable to garner in the first 5 matches of a Google search. After a while at this, you will look up from your screen, realize you have achieved an expansive case of Secretarial Spread, your computer surrounded with soda, chips and candy, and your hands twitching, wanting to reload the page to see if that meat-turd from Whocaresia dared question your changes to that article on that dead king that someone else is trying to have deleted... ...and congratulations, you are now a Wikipedian."... During my time at Wikipedia I never became embroiledin batttles or edit wars or any conflict. So don't assume that I am disappointed with Wikipedia because something happened to me that I didin't like. [Go to complete thread >>>]


The Watchdog will be mainly about the behavior of Wikipedians. There is clearly a serious problem in that regard, beginning with the idea that what occurs in the anti-Oz called Wikiworld is not to be properly scrutinized by those who the tornado left back in Kansas. At the same time, Wikiworld freely spills over its borders in its wolf-pack attacks on insufficiently wary real-world-ers. [see Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands? for just one instance.]


Also See:



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Recent Wikipedia / Wikitruth Coverage.

Wikipedia Ripe for Political Dirty Tricks
By Shannon McCaffrey
Associated Press Writer
Apr 28, 2006
Montgomery Advertiser

Political operatives are covertly rewriting - or defacing - candidates' biographical entries to make the boss look good or the opponent look ridiculous.

As a result, political campaigns are monitoring the Web site more closely than ever this election year.

Revisions made by Capitol Hill staffers became so frequent and disruptive earlier this year that Wikipedia temporarily blocked access to the site from some congressional Internet addresses. The pranks included bumping up the age of the Senate's oldest member, West Virginia's Robert Byrd, from 88 to 180, and giving crude names to other lawmakers. [Go to the complete story >>>]



Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands?
By Gilbert Wesley Purdy.
April 22, 2006
Wiki Watchdog

Any user, it would appear, is provided access to the browser information of anyone who checks onto any editing platform throughout all public Wikipedia pages! That is, anyone who becomes a registered user can view the browser information by virtue of the mere fact of having registered. Adminstrator status is not required. Thus the following "Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents" chat thread in which I am freely and publically defamed, my personal information is posted and a plan is discussed about attacking me via that information:... [Go to the complete story >>>]



Wales Discusses Political Bias on Wikipedia
by Mark Glaser
April 21, 2006
Media Shift

I have had my own direct experience with editors of the Keith Olbermann page which suggests this is the case. I edit a blog called Olbermann Watch . Not that it was ever my goal in life but I am now the leading blog critic of Keith Olbermann and a recognized authority on Keith Olbermann (citation: quoted in Washington Post, New York Observer, Hartford Courant, Online Journalism Review, etc.).

Not only do I know a great deal about Keith Olbermann, I also have a good deal of familiarity with some of the Wikipedia editors who have watch-listed his entry — liberal fans of Keith Olbermann. Some of these fan/editors have declared online that the Keith Olbermann page is their “pet project” and, not surprisingly, the entry reads more like a “fan site” than an encyclopedia entry. Some of these editors have openly sought to use that page to market their own fan sites and forums. Not surprisingly, the Keith Olbermann entry is massively non-NPOV. [Go to the complete interview >>>]



Wikipedia Founder Calls Protest Site Wikitruth 'A Hoax'
by Antone Gonsalves
April 17, 2006
TechWeb News

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on Monday claimed that a protest Web site reportedly launched by contributors to the online encyclopedia is a "hoax."

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, the site called Wikitruth was launched by a dozen Wikipedia administrators who were unhappy with what they believed to be the gradual deterioration of the site. [Go to complete story >>>]



A thirst for knowledge
Andrew Orlowski
Thursday April 13, 2006
The Guardian


...Robert McHenry, a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica, has described Wikipedia as "a game without consequences". BBC Radio 1's afternoon DJs recently took turns to deface each other's entries live on air. MPs have joined in, too. But as Skip begins to guide me through the arcane and often Kafkaesque bureaucracy of Wikipedia, vandalism starts to look like the least of its problems.

Skip isn't his real name or his Wikipedia identity. It's a pseudonym the 30-year-old Silicon Valley IT professional uses as he documents the inner machinations of the project, along with a dozen other Wikipedia administrators, on a site called WikiTruth (www.wikitruth.info).... [Go to complete story >>>]



Wikipedia - separating fact from fiction
By Martin Hickman and Genevieve Roberts
February 13, 2006
New Zealand Herald

...Wikipedia (wiki wiki means 'quick' in Hawaiian) was founded in January 2001 as a sideline to the Numedia encyclopaedia being written by experts for an American company, Bomis, whose main interest was internet pornography.

In 2003, Bomis handed the burgeoning encyclopaedia to a not-for-profit organisation headed by one of its executives, the Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales.

The Wikipedia Foundation is funded by public donations and has just three employees, a lead software developer, Wales's assistant and an intern.

But there is an army of between 600 and 1,000 unpaid administrators, developers, stewards and bureaucrats, who maintain the site.

A bigger pool of 13,000 regular contributors edits at least five entries a month each.... [Go to complete story >>>]


Online Encyclopedia Is A Gathering For Internet Predators
by POSC
December 14, 2005
POE News

It has come to the attention of the Parents for the Online Safety of Children (POSC) that there is a underground cabal of pedophiles who edit WikiPedia, trying to make WikiPedia a distribution center for pedophile propaganda. [Go to complete story >>>]



Page:
[1] [2] [3]
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How to Remove ISearchTech.SideFind

The following is a detail page of Virtual Grub Street's Adware & Malware Indentifier Index:

The information in the Adware & Malware Indentifier Index is the result of thousands of web searches. It can not, however, possibly be complete. The subject is vast and constantly changing. Moreover, vendor uninstall tools and other removal tools do not necessarily remove all of an infection from your computer. Vendor uninstall tools, for instance, may silently leave cookies or other tracking software installed. It is suggestible to follow up a removal with one or more adware scans and/or to do an inspection using a HijackThis log. The information on the page is not guaranteed correct and any use you may choose to make of it is entirely at your own risk.


ISearchTech.SideFind



Also See:

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Wednesday, May 03, 2006

"...pack psychology driven anarchy..."



In the below Wikipedia "Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents" chat-thread older and wiser hands try to calm a newer User (the upper-case "U" indicating a registered Wikipedia user) who finds Wikipedia to consist of "pack psychology driven anarchy" (see: "Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands?"):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:ANI#regarding_.22rejected
.22_arbitration_case_.22merecat.22

In any case, I am slowly coming to the realization that Wikipedia is a mostly headless beneficient dictatorship combined with a loose level of consensus process resulting actually in pack psychology driven anarchy, and, I will probably quit participating, because i don't see that theres any sane way to deal with abusiveness, and the policies in place that do deal with the issues require exorbitant amounts of time and energy, which means that only the very worst problems are ever resolved, and editors who are clearly gaming the system and manipulating and lying can continue to do so as long as they are clever enough not to become a really big pain to some administrator. Prometheuspan 19:59, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course, the older hands are only that: older. They are most certainly not wiser, at least not by any definition that would be accepted outside of the anti-Oz of Wikiworld. It is the newer User, as of yet imperfectly assimilated into Wikiworld, who still retains a glimmer of reality-orientation.



Also see:



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Monday, May 01, 2006

Jimmy Wales and Wikipolitics.

Political bias and dirty tricks is the current Wikisubject de cachet, it would seem. This from Mark Glaser's "Wales Discusses Political Bias on Wikipedia" (MediaShift, 21 April 2006):


Conservative blogger Robert Cox, who writes the National Debate blog, told me he was amazed at the quality of Wikipedia and thought it was a great resource. But there was something about the free online community-generated encyclopedia that was getting under his skin — what Cox believed was a liberal bias in many hot-button topic entries, despite Wikipedia’s principle of giving a neutral point of view (NPOV).

Cox felt there was a liberal tilt to the entry on George W. Bush, Bill Clinton , and the partial-birth abortion entry, to name a few. Plus, at one point, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales invoked the dreaded WP:OFFICE command — basically a unilateral edit done only by Wales — to tone down a scathing liberal point-of-view entry on the conservative site NewsMax.com .

Glaser does address a question to Jimbo Wales about editors possibly ignoring their own rules and simply "reverting" (i.e. removing) material based upon the personal predilection of small groups self-appointed of "censors":


From time to time, I have attempted to correction misinformation or edit a section to make it NPOV. Those edits are typically “reverted” within the hour without explanation or discussion. Over the past month, I signed up for an account with my name in the User ID; many of the editors know who I am and are openly hostile to my editing the site. These editors aggressively revert any edits I make to the entry. When I attempt to discuss my recommended edits they ignore me. When I make the edits they criticize me for not discussing them. If I continue to make edits they complain to the “Wikipedia cops.” Even after posting a detailed exposition on why the page is massively NPOV they have ignored the substance of my post and instead attacked the messenger.

It’s a neat trick — they demand that I propose changes on the discussion page, ignore me, then when I go ahead and make those changes they revert them, all the while complaining to an admin that I should be banned from editing because I won’t “discuss” changes. The real issues is that these people WANT the page to be massively non-NPOV and resent any efforts to alter their “pet project.” [Go to the full text >>>]

At least this person does not seem to have been "wolf-packed" (see: "Is Wikipedia Handing Out Your Browsing Information to Thousands?"). Still, the outlines of the dark side of Wikiworld, which inspired the WW blog, can be vaguely made out. It could only be expected that Wales, given his "investment" in Wikipedia, and the enormity of the beast, would blow the issue off with a platitude and that is precisely what he did.

It is not difficult to understand that the political implications are of more interest to the general public. A Montgomery Advertiser/AP article, with the following tidbit, came out shortly after the MediaShift piece:

In Georgia this week, the campaign manager for a candidate for governor resigned amid allegations he doctored the Wikipedia biography of an opponent in the democratic primary. Morton Brilliant was accused of revising the entry for Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor to add his son's arrest last August in a drunken driving accident that left his best friend dead. The information was accurate and had been in the news. But Brilliant's boss, Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox, declared the son's legal troubles out of bounds. The link to Brilliant was discovered by Taylor's campaign, which immediately accused the Cox camp of engaging in "gutter politics" and demanded Brilliant's resignation.

Incidental to the various examples of the political uses of Wikipedia's open editing format, the reader learns that:

With more and more Americans getting news and information from the Internet, the stakes are high. Wikipedia had 25.6 million unique visitors in March, making it the 18th most popular site on the Internet. [Go to the full text >>>]

Interesting info. But, of course, by the Wikipedia definition of "LinkSpam," unless a site you link-to from a Wikipedia page is one of the 17 with better traffic stats you are by definition a "Spammer" (see: Wikipedia and the Question of LinkSpam). Shucks ma'am, all in a Wikiday's Wikiwork.
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