Full Version: Wikipedia systematically erasing backups
The Wikipedia dump process has never been particularly reliable, and seems to have some genuine scaling problems. The last complete backup was April 2, and before that, in January, and before that in November. Wikipedia stopped providing image dumps a long, long time ago, and what I'm talking about here is the XML dumps of all pages with history, user pages, etc.
Well, now it appears that even the limited history that was there has been disappeared. The April 2 dump has been deleted, the most recent (June) dump failed, and no new dump is in progress. I had a copy of the April dump and lost it today in a disk crash, so I'm a little peeved about this (it was too big to easily backup).
This is not an accident. Someone is tired of: 1) competitive Wikipedia sites; and/or 2) people finding out things that the powers-that-be wish to have "disappeared", like for instance SlimVirgin/Crum375 edit histories that have been "oversighted" out of existence.
This is GFDL info, folks, and now it isn't available. I'm surprised no one is howling about this.
QUOTE(gomi @ Thu 12th July 2007, 11:08pm) 
This is not an accident. Someone is tired of: 1) competitive Wikipedia sites; and/or 2) people finding out things that the powers-that-be wish to have "disappeared", like for instance SlimVirgin/Crum375 edit histories that have been "oversighted" out of existence.
This is GFDL info, folks, and now it isn't available. I'm surprised no one is howling about this.
Google is full of spam sites that copy other websites text, string it all together and are nothing but spam and junk and yet get high google rankings.
I bet it's the second reason, though.
See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=144292966
Admins anger people and then go and change their username to a single letter. Betacommand (I don't recall him causing problems but then wikiabuse is down so I can't find out) tried to change his name to an untypable character.
Give it a year and Jayjg will eventually go and oversight all of his, SlimVirgin's, and Crum375's contributions except for the last month's.
Wow, that's so cool, usurption. I wonder if I could do that. Can I get them to change Zordrac to Blissyu2, and delete Internodeuser out of existence (oversight if possible). I wish I could do that. Also can Jimbo please delete the Arbitration page against me? That'd be so neat.
Oh man it must be so cool to be Jayjg or SlimVirgin. They get all the fun.
Oh man it must be so cool to be Jayjg or SlimVirgin. They get all the fun.
It's possible that it might be courtsey blanked, Jimbo did so for Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff
QUOTE(michael @ Sat 14th July 2007, 6:43pm)
It's possible that it might be courtsey blanked, Jimbo did so for Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff
Yeah, how come Badlydrawnjeff gets all the fun? I want to get that happen for me too! Can I? I mean it is really annoying to have to see it all the time, and it doesn't help anyone, does it?
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...uly/078336.html
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com
Sat Jul 28 23:57:55 UTC 2007
This entire discussion really and truly misses the point in a grand way.
Yes, information has been oversighted to protect the personal identities
of many people, both Wikipedia editors and members of the general
public. The reasons include inadvertantly revealing personal
information as well as the deliberate posting by trolls of personal
information. This is policy and will continue to be policy.
In this particular case, due to some really spectacular nonsense, this
is being treated as evidence that a private person who has been badly
harassed by stalkers and lunatics is... a former spy? Please.
Many editors at Wikipedia have been involved in dealing with
extraordinarily crazy people. Some of these people are dangerous in
real life. Some of them have made direct physical threats. Others have
made phone calls to people's employers. Others have done some homemade
self-styled "investigative journalism" that any rational and kind person
would see as being what it really is: abusive stalking.
I fully support the right of the Wikipedia community to protect itself
from those kinds of lunatics by giving support to those who need to
maintain their privacy.
Have edits been oversighted to protect people's identity? Damn straight
they have.
Are there massive factual errors that make me laugh out loud at the
speculation in the weird rant Slashdot linked to? Absolutely. The
amount of truth in that piece is so slim, you'd have to be a complete
intellectual virgin to take any of it at face value.
--Jimbo
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...uly/078329.html
Fred Bauder fredbaud at waterwiki.info
Mon Jul 30 12:59:18 UTC 2007
I went and looked at the Slashdot discussion. It's not about the kooky
accusations, but about significant issues. Our users would find the
discussion interesting and it would help if they weighed in. I think we
are shooting ourselves in the foot removing links to the Slashdot page.
It's certainly an initiation into the kind of nonsense we've been dealing
with privately for the last two years. Time everybody got baptized.
Fred
QUOTE
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com
Sat Jul 28 23:57:55 UTC 2007
This entire discussion really and truly misses the point in a grand way.
Yes, information has been oversighted to protect the personal identities
of many people, both Wikipedia editors and members of the general
public. The reasons include inadvertantly revealing personal
information as well as the deliberate posting by trolls of personal
information. This is policy and will continue to be policy.
In this particular case, due to some really spectacular nonsense, this
is being treated as evidence that a private person who has been badly
harassed by stalkers and lunatics is... a former spy? Please.
Many editors at Wikipedia have been involved in dealing with
extraordinarily crazy people. Some of these people are dangerous in
real life. Some of them have made direct physical threats. Others have
made phone calls to people's employers. Others have done some homemade
self-styled "investigative journalism" that any rational and kind person
would see as being what it really is: abusive stalking.
I fully support the right of the Wikipedia community to protect itself
from those kinds of lunatics by giving support to those who need to
maintain their privacy.
Have edits been oversighted to protect people's identity? Damn straight
they have.
Are there massive factual errors that make me laugh out loud at the
speculation in the weird rant Slashdot linked to? Absolutely. The
amount of truth in that piece is so slim, you'd have to be a complete
intellectual virgin to take any of it at face value.
--Jimbo
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...uly/078329.html
QUOTE
Fred Bauder fredbaud at waterwiki.info
Mon Jul 30 12:59:18 UTC 2007
I went and looked at the Slashdot discussion. It's not about the kooky
accusations, but about significant issues. Our users would find the
discussion interesting and it would help if they weighed in. I think we
are shooting ourselves in the foot removing links to the Slashdot page.
It's certainly an initiation into the kind of nonsense we've been dealing
with privately for the last two years. Time everybody got baptized.
Fred
QUOTE(Daniel Brandt @ Mon 30th July 2007, 4:40pm)
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...uly/078336.html
....
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com
Sat Jul 28 23:57:55 UTC 2007
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...uly/078329.html
....
Fred Bauder fredbaud at waterwiki.info
Mon Jul 30 12:59:18 UTC 2007
Jimbo seems to concede more about his knowledge and involvement than would seem prudent at this point in time.
Fred is either convinced it cannot be contained or wishes to unleash a wave of wiki-meatbot posts and comments into the blogosphere.
QUOTE(Daniel Brandt @ Mon 30th July 2007, 4:40pm)
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...uly/078336.html
QUOTE
Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com
Sat Jul 28 23:57:55 UTC 2007
This entire discussion really and truly misses the point in a grand way.
Yes, information has been oversighted to protect the personal identities
of many people, both Wikipedia editors and members of the general
public. The reasons include inadvertantly revealing personal
information as well as the deliberate posting by trolls of personal
information. This is policy and will continue to be policy.
In this particular case, due to some really spectacular nonsense, this
is being treated as evidence that a private person who has been badly
harassed by stalkers and lunatics is... a former spy? Please.
Many editors at Wikipedia have been involved in dealing with
extraordinarily crazy people. Some of these people are dangerous in
real life. Some of them have made direct physical threats. Others have
made phone calls to people's employers. Others have done some homemade
self-styled "investigative journalism" that any rational and kind person
would see as being what it really is: abusive stalking.
I fully support the right of the Wikipedia community to protect itself
from those kinds of lunatics by giving support to those who need to
maintain their privacy.
Have edits been oversighted to protect people's identity? Damn straight
they have.
Are there massive factual errors that make me laugh out loud at the
speculation in the weird rant Slashdot linked to? Absolutely. The
amount of truth in that piece is so slim, you'd have to be a complete
intellectual virgin to take any of it at face value.
--Jimbo
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...uly/078329.html
QUOTE
Fred Bauder fredbaud at waterwiki.info
Mon Jul 30 12:59:18 UTC 2007
I went and looked at the Slashdot discussion. It's not about the kooky
accusations, but about significant issues. Our users would find the
discussion interesting and it would help if they weighed in. I think we
are shooting ourselves in the foot removing links to the Slashdot page.
It's certainly an initiation into the kind of nonsense we've been dealing
with privately for the last two years. Time everybody got baptized.
Fred
I SAY ...FUCK HIM...
This is real life protecting itself from the dangerous wild wiki cretins, sociopaths and other
fuck'ed up numb nuts which Jimbo protects and empowers. What about the pain, hurt and
damage it does to innocent people. JIMBO could give a rats ass, based on his lack of enforcement of even the wack wiki rulez.
FUCK JIM and his NUT BALL dick headed admins and FUCK WIKI...
They better pray to that section 230 is not amened and opens JIMBO and his zoo to lawsuits.
Dear oh dear.
Der Jimbo never fails does he.
Like the Essjay debacle, he is so dozy he's sleepwalking into another pit of shame. Muttering utter nonsense on his way there by all accounts.
Jimbo, the evidence is irrefutable, numerous, we've known it for months, and you'd have to believe in the most wild set of coincidences imaginable to dismiss it. Now, Der Jimbo reminds me of King Cnut, who tried to command the incoming tide from the shore line. (Or have I mispelt that?)
Der Jimbo never fails does he.
Like the Essjay debacle, he is so dozy he's sleepwalking into another pit of shame. Muttering utter nonsense on his way there by all accounts.
QUOTE
The amount of truth in that piece is so slim, you'd have to be a complete
intellectual virgin to take any of it at face value.
intellectual virgin to take any of it at face value.
Jimbo, the evidence is irrefutable, numerous, we've known it for months, and you'd have to believe in the most wild set of coincidences imaginable to dismiss it. Now, Der Jimbo reminds me of King Cnut, who tried to command the incoming tide from the shore line. (Or have I mispelt that?)
QUOTE(Kato @ Mon 30th July 2007, 5:03pm)
Dear oh dear.
Der Jimbo never fails does he.
Like the Essjay debacle, he is so dozy he's sleepwalking into another pit of shame. Muttering utter nonsense on his way there by all accounts.
QUOTE
The amount of truth in that piece is so slim, you'd have to be a complete
intellectual virgin to take any of it at face value.
intellectual virgin to take any of it at face value.
Jimbo, the evidence is irrefutable, numerous, we've known it for months, and you'd have to believe in the most wild set of coincidences imaginable to dismiss it. Now, Der Jimbo reminds me of King Cnut, who tried to command the incoming tide from the shore line. (Or have I mispelt that?)
YEAH..its going to be like a hot October 8th night on 137 DeKoven Street, in Chicago; the cow is bout to have restless leg syndrome..
There is something seriously odd about the current enwiki backup. The size of one of the two "unexpurgated" backups, theoretically containing all historical page revisions, is actually smaller than the "current pages only" copy, and the other version (compressed with a different tool) is only a little bigger, despite documentation that one should be about 20x and the other 100x larger.
The last full dump I had a copy of (sadly lost in a disk crash a couple of months ago) was about 70Gb, while the largest now is 5Gb.
I don't have the time or resources right now to bring this copy up to see what is missing (I'm guessing nearly everything, i.e. user and talk page histories), but something seriously screwy is going on here.
(And just to remind of what's above -- this is the only dump out there. All previous dumps have been erased. Anyone having copies of old dumps, please PM me.)
The last full dump I had a copy of (sadly lost in a disk crash a couple of months ago) was about 70Gb, while the largest now is 5Gb.
I don't have the time or resources right now to bring this copy up to see what is missing (I'm guessing nearly everything, i.e. user and talk page histories), but something seriously screwy is going on here.
(And just to remind of what's above -- this is the only dump out there. All previous dumps have been erased. Anyone having copies of old dumps, please PM me.)
I was reading wikitruth and came across this reply to Improv that mentions the GFDL issue:
Now who actually prosecutes GFDL violations? Any idea?
QUOTE
Ah, yes. It was only a matter of time before we knew our inbox would be stained by a missive from Improv. In him, we have a fellow who has drank so much Wiki Kool-Aid that if there was a breathalyzer test for it, people would tackle him for his car keys. His behavior as a Wikipedian admin has shown that he believes there are several levels of Wikipedian: Jimbo, Admins Who Are Like Improv, and Dust Motes.
The GFDL arguments are as tired as SlimVirgin after a Pan-Am Flight 103 documentary marathon. Basically, the idea is that if you remove or fail to display previous revisions of Wikipedia articles, you violate the GFDL... but wait! Wikipedia routinely deletes and disappears old revisions, either because of legal threats, perceived inaccuracies, or requests on the part of living people. The process is arbitrary, weird, opaque and definitely a violation of GFDL. But it has the magic words "For the good of Wikipedia" before it, so it smells like fresh biscuits.
The GFDL arguments are as tired as SlimVirgin after a Pan-Am Flight 103 documentary marathon. Basically, the idea is that if you remove or fail to display previous revisions of Wikipedia articles, you violate the GFDL... but wait! Wikipedia routinely deletes and disappears old revisions, either because of legal threats, perceived inaccuracies, or requests on the part of living people. The process is arbitrary, weird, opaque and definitely a violation of GFDL. But it has the magic words "For the good of Wikipedia" before it, so it smells like fresh biscuits.
Now who actually prosecutes GFDL violations? Any idea?
QUOTE(JohnA @ Tue 31st July 2007, 2:08pm)
Now who actually prosecutes GFDL violations? Any idea?
Well, there's http://gpl-violations.org/. but I doubt you'd get very far with them.
QUOTE(JohnA @ Tue 31st July 2007, 3:08pm)
I was reading wikitruth and came across this reply to Improv that mentions the GFDL issue:
QUOTE
Ah, yes. It was only a matter of time before we knew our inbox would be stained by a missive from Improv. In him, we have a fellow who has drank so much Wiki Kool-Aid that if there was a breathalyzer test for it, people would tackle him for his car keys. His behavior as a Wikipedian admin has shown that he believes there are several levels of Wikipedian: Jimbo, Admins Who Are Like Improv, and Dust Motes.
The GFDL arguments are as tired as SlimVirgin after a Pan-Am Flight 103 documentary marathon. Basically, the idea is that if you remove or fail to display previous revisions of Wikipedia articles, you violate the GFDL... but wait! Wikipedia routinely deletes and disappears old revisions, either because of legal threats, perceived inaccuracies, or requests on the part of living people. The process is arbitrary, weird, opaque and definitely a violation of GFDL. But it has the magic words "For the good of Wikipedia" before it, so it smells like fresh biscuits.
The GFDL arguments are as tired as SlimVirgin after a Pan-Am Flight 103 documentary marathon. Basically, the idea is that if you remove or fail to display previous revisions of Wikipedia articles, you violate the GFDL... but wait! Wikipedia routinely deletes and disappears old revisions, either because of legal threats, perceived inaccuracies, or requests on the part of living people. The process is arbitrary, weird, opaque and definitely a violation of GFDL. But it has the magic words "For the good of Wikipedia" before it, so it smells like fresh biscuits.
Now who actually prosecutes GFDL violations? Any idea?
GFDL is a copyright license. A license is permission to use the copyright material, as long as the terms of license are adhered to. Failure to adhere to the terms of he license is the same as using copyrighted material without permission. The holder of the copyright may bring a civil action to enforce the copyright and obtain an injunction and money damages for the infringement. As I understand it GFDL produces a multi-layered copyright. An editor is allowed to use the work of previous editors and promises to continue to use it according to the terms of the GFDL. That editor then holds a copyright over his contributions which is again licensed under GFDL. Anyone in that chain of editors can enforce his/her copyrights. Certain type of copyright violation may be criminal in nature. A prosecuting authority (US Attorney) brings those cases. But I don't believe any criminal liability applies here.
QUOTE(gomi @ Fri 13th July 2007, 6:08am)
The Wikipedia dump process has never been particularly reliable, and seems to have some genuine scaling problems. The last complete backup was April 2, and before that, in January, and before that in November. Wikipedia stopped providing image dumps a long, long time ago, and what I'm talking about here is the XML dumps of all pages with history, user pages, etc.
Well, now it appears that even the limited history that was there has been disappeared. The April 2 dump has been deleted, the most recent (June) dump failed, and no new dump is in progress. I had a copy of the April dump and lost it today in a disk crash, so I'm a little peeved about this (it was too big to easily backup).
This is not an accident. Someone is tired of: 1) competitive Wikipedia sites; and/or 2) people finding out things that the powers-that-be wish to have "disappeared", like for instance SlimVirgin/Crum375 edit histories that have been "oversighted" out of existence.
This is GFDL info, folks, and now it isn't available. I'm surprised no one is howling about this.
Atlas t wikipedia is beginning to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...s_for_oversight this page more. if we keep going like this we wont be an attack site (BADSITE) ourselves anymore, this trend needs encouraging.
QUOTE(SqueakBox @ Tue 31st July 2007, 3:23pm)
Atlas t wikipedia is beginning to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...s_for_oversight this page more. if we keep going like this we wont be an attack site (BADSITE) ourselves anymore, this trend needs encouraging.
The requests for oversight page is the same as their being a publically viewable log of oversight usage. They got rid of a public oversight log.
QUOTE(SqueakBox @ Tue 31st July 2007, 3:23pm)
At last wikipedia is beginning to use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...s_for_oversight this page more. if we keep going like this we wont be an attack site (BADSITE) ourselves anymore, this trend needs encouraging.
Huh? That page is fully-protected, and directs users to email. There is no oversight of the WP:Oversight.
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