I spent a bit of time this week trying to explain ArbCom BADSITES to a pair of writers (working separately) who were assigned the story because they considered themselves very familiar with Wikipedia. However in each case, it didn't take long to realize that there's "familiar" and then there's "familiar".

I need help knowing how to accurately add perspective to this case, given that 99% of editors are likely unaware of the ArbCom, much less its history.

With the possible exception of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I believe I've never read anything, purporting to be non-fiction, that is of a more surreal nature than the events leading up to and surrounding this case. At the same time, I'm clearly at the center of things (while simultaneously as far removed from them as one could be) and so I realize others might not feel the same way.

Taking into account the fact that Wikipedia criticism is more meaningful a topic to us than most, please give me some perspective on this versus comparable past cases (such as "MONGO," which gets cited often), and any other notable cases.

Bottom line is: my goal is for these writers to regard me as a source of nothing but good information, and want to avoid over-selling the meaningfulness of this case.

There is a gross violation of process occurring. Slimvirgin, without a shred of evidence, has posted an vicious personal attack against me on the Evidence page of that proceeeding. Two days ago she identified me by name on the Foundation list. The site she refers to should be referenced according to its name, not a living person who has nothing to do with the site.

She does not have a shred of evidence for this claim, and I will sign a sworn deposition I have nothing to do with that site whatsoever. The Arbitration process is being used to slander and impugn living persons.

Fine, but what you've generally described here is not too different in kind from hundreds of other anti-SlimVirgin rants filling this site (that's not to say I don't think you've been wronged).

I want to know what, if anything, is truly exceptional about ArbCom BADSITES. In other words, why should a reporter cover this case in ways that no other ArbCom case has been examined by a major publication before? What can I credibly say makes this one unique?

Perhaps that some of the proposed remedies, should they be ratified, could be used to legitimately remove informative sites simply because they level charges against Wikipedia or some users on Wikipedia or because they contain personal information on Wikipedia users in comment sections. This is akin to what happened to the Michael Moore and Don Murphy sites and another site, I forget which one, which had links to it removed, simply because identifiable information on a Wikipedia user was posted in the comment section of the article.

Hyperlink to MONGO case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...bitration/MONGO

For the history of the ArbCom, you should sift through Wikipedia. It was Jimbo's creation. I was told by Fred as recently as a few months ago that the correct path to appeal an ArbCom decision is to go to Jimbo. Then Jimbo confirmed this for me, and said that while I could then appeal to the Board of Trustees if I wished, this had never been done before, and they would be reluctant to get involved.

So it's a Jimbo thing, which means that because Jimbo is much less involved than he used to be, the ArbCom is basically operating in no-man's land. Technically, Jimbo could pack the ArbCom. Remember, he appointed Essjay to ArbCom even as the scandal was unfolding.

For the Big Picture context behind BADSITES, you would have to start with the presumption on the part of powerful Wikipedians that they have a right to anonymity. Compare this to Citizendium, where Larry Sanger decided early on that this was not a viable approach. Sanger was right, obviously.

The "right to anonymity" (that very phrase sounds weird to anyone who lives in the real world of publishing) implies a degree of immunity for inappropriate behavior. This sense of immunity is reinforced by NLT (no legal threats) and similar unrealistic policies. The only reason such an unrealistic situation has persisted even this long, is because Section 230 makes it difficult to challenge the Foundation in court.

The strange situation we see is compounded by the fact that the Foundation is afraid to get involved. They correctly fear that if they became more involved in Wikipedia dispute resolution, then their Section 230 immunity will be more difficult to assert in court.

In my case, I was blocked indefinitely in April 2006 by Gamaliel, on the basis of NLT. All I did was mention that new law that Bush signed in January 2006. The block lasted for over a year. Since it hadn't been unblocked, it was implied — here's a typical example of Wikipedia Policy Creep — that this block was therefore a "ban." Now I'm evil Brandt, banned from Wikipedia. Just look up Brandt on Google, and the snippet said so in the number two link, right under my bio. Google never lies.

What did I do about this? Should I consider myself a nonperson, or should I fight back? A lot of people with my real-world resources (I've got no money, but I know how to put up a website) will automatically fight back. I put more effort into Wikipedia-Watch. I got my bio taken down, eventually. Basically I wore them down.

I'm still pissed off, because Wikipedia is now doing the same thing elsewhere that they did to me. The whole concept of Wikipedia is fundamentally flawed. Wikipedia is guaranteed to generate BADSITES, because there are no other options for people like me.

Wikipedia must either install a dispute-resolution process that can survive real-world scrutiny, or they have to man the barricades and put down the BADSITES. The second option is a temporary expedient, obviously, but with the Foundation afraid of its own shadow, and Jimbo more interested in Wikia, Inc., the BADSITES and the banning are the only tools currently available to the cabal.

What is happening right now, in an effort allegedly to protect living persons and prevent slander, the Arbitration process itself is being used to slander a living person wholey without evidence.

WOWYW4

BTW, does the font Curlz MT work for most folks ???

Jonny

SlimVirgin has authored many of WP policies. In a discussion on the now deleted page [[Roots of Anti-Semitism]] where an editor challenged the scholarly credibility of the source for that article, she had this exchange with another editor :


Rangerdude responded:

So Wikipedia uses (a) uses authors who have written for extremists publications, in violation of their own policies, as sources for thier articles; ( b ) WP ArbCom protects these "controversial experts" when its exposed.

This is what SV is referring to alleging I mainain an attack site entitled," Chip Berlet, SlimVirgin, and Wikipedia". It is not my site, and I'll swear under oath I have nothing to do with it.

At the root of this problem is the fact that Wikipedia purports to be an encyclopedia and solicits donations to meet this goal. What is happening with BADSITES (and the like) is not something that will help the encyclopedia, or for that matter generate an increase in donations. To be fair, the counter argument is that without editors, there is no encyclopedia, so they should do what they can to protect them. But the truth is that BADSITES makes only a few feel good (or safe, comfortable, whatever), not the larger editor base, because the guy editing physics related articles is not embroiled with controversy and a dysfunctional community. That guy is the everyman on WP, he is the one motivating the donations.

If this were a real world occupation, those always emersed in drama would be expelled at the first hint of a pattern. Since this is a volunteer organization, that may be tougher, but the corollary would be to tell them that their drama has nothing to do with building an encyclopedia, and if they cannot resolve it then please leave for the good of the project. For the record, a few asked them to please end it or leave. It's interesting to note that Jayjg "left" a little bit after that. Kelly Martin blogged about this [1] [2]

BADSITES is something that makes (some in) the community feel good, and things like this happen on every other internet community, large and small. Actions that seem contrary to encyclopedia building have been happening for some time, with mixed results. I believe this one has the potential to cripple the project. Wikipedia has become less a project involving building an encyclopedia and more a community, based on socializing, making friends, and drama. There have been others that have commented on this, so it is not a novel idea, but it is thrusted into the spotlight now with recent actions and events.

(Perhaps unrelated to this topic so maybe don't comment on this, but if you do not care about WP you shouldn't do anything to stop what is happening, just let it happen, it is a tipping point. )

Encyclopedia building has been going on for years now. That is coming to an end, for the most part. There are maintenance tasks and current events to keep up with, but for the most part the thrill of actually building an encyclopedia is gone. The thrill of being part of a community full of drama has replaced it.

This outline may require a certain amount of prior knowledge, but I hope some parts of it is of help.

All true, Bobby. I would add that BADSITES and the proposed ArbCom sanctions against so-called "attack sites" only makes a few editors feel better because most editors won't even know it exists. What percentage of the 5.5m accounts have any interest in this? Probably less than 1%. Probably far less. But it has the potential of affecting every user.



It also has the potential to be a public relations disaster for Wikipedia, which, as you hint, should make several people here very happy, but will upset others. A headline like "Wikipedia suppresses criticism of itself by adopting new banning regulations" (or something along those lines) could be potentially devastating. And FOX News is just looking for a reason to attack Wikipedia again. These proposals should send alarm bells among people who are generally pro-Wikipedia.



I disagree with this part, though: certainly the "thrill" is gone for many editors, perhaps replaced with drama, as you say. Millions of redlinks remain, however, and there must be (rough estimate) a million stubs. There's plenty left to write, I think. And of course, there's that Mitch Kapor estimate of up to 50 million articles (which I think is far too high, personally) which was widely quoted in the press in 2006.

To sum it up briefly (wasn't that what WB wanted?), the main issue with BADSITES is that the final decision would seem to suggest that anyone who criticizes Wikipedia may be banned and/or censored, while the Wikipedia systems causes these people to be framed as "evil", "puppetmasters", "indefinitely banned" etc on major search engines without any "due process".

If the New York Times were to "out" a WP editor, regardless of documentation and motivation, they would technically be part of this ruling and could be considered a "BADSITE".

That's the issue as I see it in a nutshell.

Two individuals that had direct contact or actually knew her over 15 years ago, Daniel Brandt (footwork) and Patrick Byrne outed Linda Mack, an incredibly prolific (24 hour editing sprees, wikipedia IS HER LIFE) "editor" who specializes in content control of articles swayed towards her POV (PETA and anything that might be construed as abusive to animals, anything related to Patrick Byrne, anything related to the events and colleagues and bosses that led to her journalism break from 1990-ish to present....I have feeling that isn't her only kind of break from something since).

She made lots of friendsters on wikipedia. Mostly because those friends know that by kissing her ring, they too can get their way on wikipedia.

Wagons were circled in her defense. Evidence was thrown out the window. This looks bad, after all. Diversions were deployed. Anyone who dared question authority was banned or sanctioned.

Wikpedia isn't a community, it's a circle of virtual friends, some of dubious sanity based on their behaviour, who are protecting their positions in the inner circle of wikipedia, to the detriment of wikipedia itself.

That's a great summary. The next question is: has anything like this been seriously considered before? What made the MONGO case so different from this one?

As I understand it, "Mongo" was dealing with on-wiki activities. It seems that this is the first time that they've actually tried to go off-wiki on an Arb-com case.

Now, you can say "good luck with that" because there's no way that they can enforce anything off-wiki....but they sure can enforce EVERYTHING on WP.

So, it ends up being a digital "iron-curtain" which is about to descend. Fred playing Trotsky (the one ends rather badly...), Jimbo playing Stalin and SV playing Mata Hari....

From the MONGO case.



After many users took the MONGO ruling to the extreme (or perhaps logical conclusion?) they needed to clarify matters in the current Attack Sites case.

Mongo wasn't outed by 2 of the most hated figures in the history of wikipedia, Brandt and Byrne, and any outing he might have experienced was by a cartoonish shock site (shock I tell you!) probably run by an anonymous teenager, with no evidence presented in any verifiable fashion.

Unlike the Brandt/Byrne/ASM outings.

Outings of Conflict of Interest - that is what the conflicted don't want wikipedians (oh god, let's just say earthlings from now on, to be a "wikipedian" involves the ability to have internet access) to see.

Plus, this ARBCOM kangaroo court involves "moral depravity!" as coined by a man who was disbarred from practising law in Colorado for his Baud-y attempts to re-enact an episode of "Silk Stalkings" with a client.

Outings of "wikipedians" that aren't friends of the inner sanctum are A-OK (sparkzilla, etc).

By the by, the New York Times pretty much outed Gary Weiss (Dan Mitchell's piece), but they did abstain from using his Mantanmoreland/LastExit/TomStoner/DoRight names. Not yet at least. It doesn't help Weiss with the NYT in that he runs an attack site blog (mediacrity) against the NY Times. Oh the irony. Wordbomb is quite first-person familiar with the Mitchell piece.

Here is direct evidence of the type of abuse we've seen from ArbCom. In a previous case, an editor named Rangerdude filed an Arbitration Request against Will Beback (aka Willmcw) and SlimVirgin. Kat Walsh (User:Mindspillage), a law student and now Foundation Trustee, took more than 6 weeks consideration to Accept the case entitled, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Willmcw and SlimVirgin. SlimVirgin took the statement of "involved third party" Katefan0 (the same Katefan Daniel Brandt just referenced as the journalist working for Congressional Quarterly and whom SlimVirgin alleged was "fired from her job"), made Katerfan0 a direct party to the case and deleted herself as a respondant. The case was renamed, after ArbCom voted to Accept Arbitration against SlimVirgin, with the original Complaintant now named as Defendant, and SlimVirgin not named as a party to the case.

There is much more to this, and some of the issues regarding "Controversial Experts" are being revisited right now in the THF-DavidShankBone/Proposed decision.


Reference: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=22830

I can't find LastExit, TomStoner, or DoRight on Wikipedia so either they are spelled a little differently or they renamed themselves.

What is the complete list of Gary Weiss's usernames on Wikipedia?

[[Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of...]]

(though plugging in 'Gary Weiss' or some of usernames don't give me anything there so perhaps there's no list per se)