There is an argument at wikien-l that was started when someone complained that the list of "members under moderation" for that list ought to be available to other members on the list.

I don't have a position on this issue, but someone pointed out that Wikipedia isn't afraid to show banned users on Wikipedia itself, which has high Google rankings, so why should the "moderated" members on the mailing list not be made available?

Greg Maxwell then chimed in that this person was mistaken, and you cannot find banned Wikipedia users in Google:
Of course I gagged when I saw Maxwell's statement, because for a year the number one result in a search for my name was my bio, and the number two result right under that was my User page. Right in the banned box and appearing in the Google snippet itself, it said that "This user is banned from editing Wikipedia." I complained about this many times, and recently Fred Bauder locked down that page with a more neutral message. It's still number two in a Google search for my name.

Because Mr. Maxwell is acting like a new Wikipedian who hasn't a clue about such things, here are some searches he can do: Google: 263 hits | Yahoo: 292 hits | Live: 149 hits

(On Live, you have to unclick "Group results from the same site" and save your preferences because it reads preferences from a cookie)

Yes, this is something that Wikipedia should improve, and we can all expect Mr. Maxwell to take the lead on this now that he's aware of the situation.

And of course if you use "blocked" instead of "banned" you get even more.

Our Jonny wasn't so "fortunate".
Excellent. He seems to be the perfect man for the job. Maxwell wonders:
Jonny, would you like to send some ammo in Mr Maxwell's direction?

On a brighter note, the linked google list of banned users did lead me to this guy, whose user name made me chuckle.

I've contacted Mr. Maxwell with a request to help me improve the Google search results for "Wikipedia Review" and for "thekohser". Here's hoping.

Greg

I really felt sorry for Greg when he said that he was actually subscribed to the Wikienlist. The strain it would put on anyone's hard drive, much less one's brain and equanimity, is hard to imagine. I used to sample it on Gmane when I needed to laugh or cry myself to sleep, but more and more lately it's so utterly detetched from any connection to reality that I almost start to feel sorry for the bakwarders there.

What most folks don't seem to grasp — yet — is that everybody who was ever dumb enough to use their own real name on Wikipedia has a Wikipedia Biography there in the form of his-her User-&-Talk Page, if nothing else. Your Wikipedia Bio-CV will — at the time of this writing — almost always be the first thing that anyone who Gargoyles your name will see, even if, like me, you've put vastly more stuff on the Web for a vastly longer time than you ever spent on Wikipedia.

But things are improving …

Jonny

Reading the above, I realize that there's a point that many people seem to be missing.

If you negotiate with Wikipediots to get what they say about you changed, then you are assigning a market value to what they say about you.

If you do that, you have already lost the game. You have effectively just sold yourself in bondage to them forever, or until they expire of their own wikipoisons.

Now maybe it's a luxury for me to say that, as Wikipedia is barely on the radar, much less a respectable source among folks who know me, and thus cannot help but to love me — but I think it's still a general truth that Wikipediots can bring nothing but discredit on themselves by trying to discredit people who have credit elsewhere. So the best economic strategy for everyone remains what it has always been — lay up your credits where you can, in places where people give you what's due.

Jonny

It just seems that in my observation, most of the time Gmaxwell opens his mouth (so to speak), he hasn't the slightest idea of what he's talking about.

Well, that's what it looks like to me, anyway.

Still no news from GMaxwell as to his progress in discovering whether banned users' pages appear in google.

The truth that we're finding numerous examples - and this is a big problem - seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

(I'll copy this from another thread)

There's an ongoing discussion about having these user pages removed from google's index. But it doesn't look promising. Morven, an arbitrator on WP, shows all the understanding and sympathy one would expect from the WP elite:

he follows that up with:

So Morven is going to let people's online reputations hang on a completely arbitrary judicial process - orchestrated by a mob and prone to massive, well evidenced corruption. And, of course, the guidelines as to what is considered "anti-social behaviour" are endlessly vague and adaptable. Implemented by unqualified individuals. Often with their own agendas.

It looks like GMaxwell is actually banging his silver hammer on this issue now.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ber/081709.html

He sets up sceptic Thomas Dalton by showing him a google search of a banned user going by Dalton's name, to show him how dangerous the wiki / google branding can be.

Maxwell then lays into Dalton...

He then makes a good point here...

Ending with a convincing argument...

BANG! BANG! MAXWELL'S SILVER HAMMER!

Uh³, I thought that was the whole point of Wikipedia — after all, that's exactly how articles get written.

Jonny