The front page of Michael Moore's site is perhaps of interest? Also the mess at AN/I in response....here, here , here and here.

Hi there Msharma and welcome to Wikipedia Review! Good first post! We've also had some discussion about Michael Moore already.

Incidentally, I wrote an e-mail to Michael Moore asking him to come to this site. Are we fortunate enough that you are Michael Moore? If so, can you tell us? If not, or if you are and want to stay anonymous, then welcome anyway.

I think that we all value this particular Wikipedia criticism.

∑how Michael Moore doesn't sound like the kinda guy who would shy away from using his real name …

Jonny

PLEASE be Michael Moore, Mr. Sharma. PLEASE drive your boat next to Wikipedia island, and ask for the normal people to get the same treatment as the evildoers.

Sharma sounds like Pharma. Of course that doesn't indicate for or against, just maybe a special concern.

How RU getting Mr. Sharma out of that? It could be Ms. Harma — fear and trembling! — I hesitate to speculate. Or none of the above.

Jonny

I'm afraid Mr. Msharma isn't Michael Moore, but this whole situation is hilarious! This is what Wikipedia has become, in a nice neat microcosmic nutshell. If we'd seen this a year ago, we probably would have thought The Onion had made the whole thing up.

And as for the "de-linkings," this is exactly the sort of thing we've been predicting all along, and thanks to DTobias and various others, it's not like they haven't been warned that this would happen. For months now, they've been talking about how everyone should respect their anonymity, when in fact nobody does, anywhere - that's being proven all over the web, more with each passing day. If anything, there's an increased mainstream effort to identify more of them, accusations of "stalking" and "harassment" be-damned.

And the brouhaha that pops up every time they try to apply their fascistic (non?)-policy just drives additional traffic straight to the very sites they're trying to "punish." Pretty soon the SEO people are going to figure that out, and they'll get on the bandwagon too!

Idiots...

G. Wikilers, if that doesn't revibe an easily adaptable echo from the past —

Wikipedia Review — We're the site your wikipediots warned you about …

Jonny

Now somebody is actually saying that not cracking down more on links to attack sites will lead to lynchings:



Does this beat the earlier implied connections between attack sites and rape for the most outrageously inflammatory rhetorical connection in this debate?

On it's hyperbole it does. AB is still more mock-worthy. But you know that idea about putting WP behind thick tall walls might be something to consider.

Nah, I'm not even going to touch that one …

Jonny

To be fair - and don't all jump on me here - it is only a matter of time before someone gets seriously chinned for their wiki-editing. But this has little to do with the BADSITES policy, nor "outing". Journalists, film makers and academics have always run the risk of assault if covering certain subjects. There simply isn't much you can do about it but have some sensitivity to the dangers.

Do remember, though, that editors live very disparate lives in very different locales. A female editor writing on Islamic terrorism or "criticisms of Islam" probably wouldn't relish an off site expose if they lived around my neighbourhood. Our Sri Lankan friends run the gauntlet the moment they turn on a PC. Editors on communist subjects wouldn't appreciate feeling like Joseph Kaye on their next trips to see friends or family in China, Cuba or elsewhere. But the fool writes: "its going to get worse if nothing is done to stop them off-wiki". No chance, mate. That's life I'm afraid. And like those phoney measures against the war on terror, the means wouldn't match the ends.

I think this is more about the rich wiki-phantasy life that a certain class of wiki-phlesh is heir to. And we waste a lot of our breath talking about it. The whole point of living in a wiki-phantasy bubble is not having to wiki-puncture it with too much linkage — and I do mean link-age — to all those annoyingly pointed realities out there in the real world. Naturally these wiki-puny dweebs will identify themselves with heroic figures, the sort of people who actually get off their tales and do something in the real world. If it inspired them to do something remotely like that, it might be admirable. But y'know, that would be hard, and they can't even bring themselves to do anything so hard as writing a real encyclopedia.

Jonny

A great find, Dan. I'm starting to wonder if these hyperbolic spoutings are not crafted by opponents of the policies that they preach about, all as a ruse to bring the policy down. We were coming to that conclusion about DennyColt, I believe.

Greg

The Ted Frank thing is still on the main page, but now its not the prominent bit. Its under "August 23rd" now. Is it still considered to be an attack site? It'd be quite easy to miss it now.

Cripes, I didn't twig that THF was Ted Frank until just now. Oh no. That guy's a real asshole.

Yeah, and THAT is scary! Seriously.

Not only are Wikipedia deciding to "not make a judgement" about this prick, but they are taking sides with him in saying that it is perfectly fine.

THF received considerable help from [[Team America |Mongo and Crackspot]] and is being met with only ineffective token Resistance from SevenOfDiamonds. I'd provide diffs but getting them off of AN/I is a pain in the ass.

You don't get them off of ANI.

They get themselves off on their own ANI.

Xcuse My Bad Latin.

Jonny

THF is just an awful man. He's been slandering real world political enemies on WP for months. With the help of some of the usual ghouls, of course. Team America (I wished MONGO and his Elk had caught on as a phrase) is just the latest in a list of allies, which previously included Jayjg on the matter of - you guessed it again - holocaust denial .

He previously got into some conflab on WP with another user, and the user's wife, over some legal case he was involved in. The conflict of interest issue was raised. Again. THF pleaded "personal real-life harassment" on ANI. Again. Make of it what you will.

Again, in many ways this gets back to Wikipedia's insane "No legal threats" rule.

The argument in THF's favour is that he has received legal threats from many people (including, but not limited to Michael Moore), but the argument severely against him is that there appears to be significant proof that THF is engaging in illegal activity.

Now, "anywhere else" would at a bare minimum not take sides, but if they did take sides, they would take the side of the law.

Wikipedia seriously shoots itself in the foot by opposing law abiding citizens and siding with someone who is committing crimes.

I'm quite happy with them taking the view of not involving themselves, but they ARE involving themselves.

Perhaps this will be the case that goes to the courts and causes major problems for Wikipedia.

It appears this is about to be another blood bath...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Frank

I love the way they present Cite 10 as being from CBS News, rather than a shitty blog round-up on CBS News..

Meh. THF seems like a total jerkoff. Anyway, looks like he's running to this guy for all his admin needs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cool_Hand_Luke
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/THF

An enemy of Michael Moore is a friend of mine. I certainly don't see why you would think that THF is a jerk off. To me, he's simply been using his accurate understanding of the issues involved to correct Wikipedia biases.

THF is attempting to pull a SV regarding his privacy.

THF outed himself as Ted Frank himself before and after his Wikipedia account name change from Ted Frank to the "anonymous" THF. SV never ever released her real name AFAIK. Thus SV and THF are very different cases.

Something else has sprung to mind - has he been editing articles while cases were still in litigation? If so, this is surely contempt of court and *way* beyond. A little story here:

I, and another friend of mine, happened to know the fellow featured here.

For our amusement, we posted things about him on various wikis. See this for example, noting that it was posted many months before the trial proper.

Now, myself and my friend went to said fellow's trial, where it turned out that previously he'd tried to get that case dismissed because we had been doing this. At the time we thought he'd been finding it quite amusing, actually...

Furthermore, the judge specifically cautioned us, in the witness gallery as we were, that any futher writing about this case by us would be contempt of court and we'd essentially be heading straight to gaol. (I'm fairly sure this no longer applies, especially as I have made no comment about the merits of this case except to bring it up as an example).

This is a long winded way of saying that clearly editing Wikipedia during a court case is shakey legal territory. Has THF been doing anything like this? If so, this is probably the biggest Wikipedia scandal so far.

My understanding is that British law (and that of some other countries, including Canada and Australia) is much more protective of court cases than American law, which is restrained by the First Amendment. In other countries there are often restrictions on what the press can write about ongoing cases, while in America such general prior restraint is unconstitutional and there are only occasional narrowly-construed gag orders that generally apply only to direct parties to the case and their attorneys.

Yup, but wasn't this chap an attorney?

He was. I think it would be a good WR exercise to dig up all his legal actions during his WP tenure, and report any ethics violations to the appropriate bar asscotiation.

THF is playing Wikipedia like a fiddle now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:ElinorD#WP:HARASS

Going right to pro-BADSITES trolls like this SlimVirgin meatpuppet.

Well, I see no evidence of editing while he was working on those cases. So I revert to supporting him (to the extent I can support any Wikipedia editor).

But then again, I am a crazy libertarian type

There's no doubt that THF is gaming the system, and using Wikipedia to earn money for himself. In my opinion, this should be our focus.

Michael Moore should not be our focus. Some of us like Michael Moore, probably an equal amount of us don't like Michael Moore. THF isn't bad because he hates Michael Moore, he is bad because he is breaching WP:COI, WP:OWN, and a number of other rules and gaming the system like a pro to earn money for himself. This is the problem.

With regards to THF being able to influence his own biography, I agree with him overall.

Take the Daniel Brandt case, which led to Wikipedia's Biogaphies of Living Persons rule (which I agree with and I think most people agree with). If in doubt, it should be positive, or else extremely well referenced.

THF isn't directly editing the article, nor should he be. He is doing the right thing by asking someone else to do stuff to it.

Anyway, let's see about individual edits to see what might happen. I just wanted to state that first off before we get in to serious analysis.

Were the attorneys subject to any gag orders in the cases?

That's what I thought might be the case initially, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. Which articles are you looking at?

As a somewhat unrelated aside - anybody else have a problem with the category 'Jewish Lawyers' when there are no categories for Christian Lawyers, Muslim Lawyers, Hindu Lawyers, etc?

I do.

I'm surprised this hasn't been CFD'd.

I'm still waiting for Michael Moore's next movie: Jimbo and Me.

Try it and you'll be accused of being a Wiki Lawyer.

Jonny

Try it and you'll also be accused of being anti-Semitic (you could then argue that not having Christian Lawyers would be anti-Christian and so on and so on, but they'll still call you anti-Semitic and whatnot).

(And we all know those falsely accused of being anti-Semitic get mentioned on You-Know-Who's blog. )

I think you mean Anti-Slimitic — it's a common mistake, at least, in Wikiputia it is.

Jonny

And now it's at AfD.

This will never die.

The nominator, Tbeatty, seems to be new to edit history reading, or maybe calendar reading, as he can't tell the diff between August 2005, when the article was created, and August 2007, which is now.

Frankly — if you'll excuse my taking Frank's name in vain — I think that the only real criteria to be balanced here are (1) subject option and (2) no first bio.

Jonny

Test edit.

Jonny

Dear Teddy has been up on AN more than once; here is the first time (I think):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...e77#Help_Wanted :
"he seems to not find any problem with him editing on his own time articles on topics about which he is paid in the daytime to propagandize"

This point's been debated many times. "Jewish" is ethnic - many famous Jews, such as Benjamin Disraeli and Albert Einstein, were not practising Jews. And they do keep deleting such categories, such as Jewish mathematicians. Thus you have the absurd result that mathematicians born in Eastern Europe but who came to Britain or America as children are described as Russian or Polish mathematicians but not Jewish mathematicians, even if they were practising Jews.

This is all really weird... I thought that stupid BADSITE thing was over, not policy, and rejected by the community. THF seems like an idiot, and WP is trying to censor everything that criticises them, instead of trying to improve. BADSITES is gone, and hopefully it will never be back again.

Ahh, but it's not gone, and it never left. So whether or not it will be back is a moot point.

I mean, here's the recipe for a political/ideological WikiTeam getting an enemy website "de-linked" and, eventually, censored outright from Wikipedia:

1. Find a user on WP who dislikes the enemy website but isn't really part of your inner circle
2. Send information (anonymously) about the user to the enemy website, preferably including the user's IRL identity
3. Sit back and watch while the enemy website gleefully publishes the user's identity
4. Point this out on AN/I and have the enemy website de-linked as an "outing site"
5. ...
6. PROFIT!

Rinse and repeat! What we're seeing now is nothing less than a gang of neocons shamelessly trying to censor Michael Moore under the flimsiest pretext imaginable, for reasons that are almost comically ideological, if not actually financial. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to learn that they fed the Ted Frank info to Moore's website themselves, if only to have a chance to do exactly what they've just been doing.

The one thing we've seen time and again from Wikipedia is that whatever works will get picked up and repeated by everyone who sees it working. This certainly isn't the last time we'll see this sort of thing happen, because this is how they want to operate. And every time it does happen, WP will only look worse.

Somey, I couldn't have said it better myself. Moore is right, the Wikipediots don't want to admit it, because it is a neocon clique that rules the place. Methinks something is rotten in the state of Wikiland. My Hundredth post! I am now upgraded to "member".

This never occurred to me, and I'm not convinced that it happened in this case.

But now you've mentioned it in the open, I guarantee that it will happen again soon! Good times.

Congratulations.

Link to the AFD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...etion/Ted_Frank

Perhaps the single greatest example of gaming the system I've ever seen.