See here:

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/ar...?at_code=428814



and



He has removed the section about Virgil Griffith being employed by WMF!

So why would he do this?

One possible reason is because it was false, and he didn't want to get in trouble. Sounds obvious, and might be true. But why isn't he stating that? Why isn't he saying something along the lines of this:

"I was mistaken with my claim that Virgil Griffith was employed by WMF. This was an assertion that I made, and was never intended to be the focus of this article, or to be taken as if it were fact. I apologise unreservedly to anyone who may have been harmed by this mistake."

Something like that would be good. So why not?

Of course, the answer could be that Ludwig doesn't speak English and has to have everything translated for him, and that it just seemed to be too time consuming to sort that out.

But the reality is that we, or at least I, clung to this story somewhat. I'm sure that I wasn't the only one to cling to it.

If it was false the whole time, this has the effect of creating MORE positive publicity for Wikipedia! Whilst it seems inconceivable that Ludwig would deliberately do that, based on his earlier statement, well, it has that effect. So FUCK YOU LUDWIG! Ludwig seriously stuffed up on this one. If he was trying to bring truth to light and to make Wikipedia accountable, he seriously stuffed this one up. Making statements of fact when they are fiction and then, to make matters worse, correcting it, without so much as an explanation why, is seriously bad.

The other angle of course is that someone forced him to retract it for illegitimate reasons. In many ways this isn't as bad, but really someone with Ludwig's record should have stood up to them.

I am seriously disappointed all around. Bad form, Ludwig. You've put the whole investigation backwards several steps.

Have you emailed Ludwig for an explanation?

No

I just did, using the contact link on the article. I doubted the validity of the information before it was retracted, but I'm interesting in hearing why Ludwig thought it was true, and why he decided to remove it.

And why he didn't say why he removed it.

I too doubted that WMF paid Virgil to create this. It seemed very ridiculous, really. It would have been nice if Ludwig explained why he revised it, but perhaps we can assume that either he found out it was false or could not produce anything to back up the claim, even that famous guy "Unnamed but Reliable Source".

So there is another way to take this: Someone pointed out to him that this information was false, or at least questionable, and he removed it. His SlimVirgin article has undergone no such revisions.

Being willing to correct mistakes is a good thing, although in a case like this it is also nice to provide an explanation, since it caused a small amount of controversy.

The opinions of the scanner are all over the map from people on all sides. People on Wikipedia are worried it makes them look bad, people against WP are happy it makes them look bad, people on WP are happy to show people how "transparent" and on top of things they are, people "against" WP are happy that they are clearly shown as an effective propaganda tool.

So the news of the tool itself, and its preliminary findings, is a push. The controversy from it has not really arose.

I wouldn't get too worked up about it Blissy. Why is it important that the WMF funded it? How does it make them look worse? In fact, I take it the opposite way...It would make them look better.