Not to be confused with Jif®, the Peanut Immolator.

Jonny

I think it's fair to say that without SlimVirgin, this Review wouldn't exist in its present form. Where would we be without for example Selina, Blissyu2 and Poetlister?

All of whom, as I understand it, were blocked from editing (as was I) as a consequence of corrupt and dishonest machinations by Virginia Slim.

Fred Bauder says, "From time to times there are useful policy discussions on Wikipedia Review, but not often."

I think that's code for "I post there myself occasionally".

Make no mistake, Slimy, rained down abuse and corruption like an out of control firehose.

She was drunk with her on power to abuse and hurt at will, from the comfort of her dark, basement, in some shit hole, pudunk Canadian hell hole of a town. She was full of hate and bitterness which resulted in her misanthropic masturbations on the Wild Wiki World.

I have no love for such a petty, hypocritically and petty tyrant

What?

Have you been attending the sermons of Preacher Fred, Joseph?

My wisdom is on loan from god...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=159148380

SlimVirgin says, "Wikipedia's not here to make people sad" ???

If so, then maybe she should stop doing what she does on Wikipeda.

Discussed at length here.

Perhaps merge this post into that thread? Or at least into the "editors forum".

Instead of telling you to stop emailing you or to ignore you, she secretly sends forwards email after email to Gary Weiss. That's proof right there that she and Gary Weiss are paid by the same people. I already proved with the Samiharis account's edits that Weiss and Jayjg are either close friends in real life or else paid by the same group to edit wikipedia.

I've often been fascinated to know if he talks like that aloud.

..

I searched a whole bunch and can't find the original post to quote but someone mentioned Jonny complained about SlimVirgin harassing him but he wouldn't say much of it and well it's clear what she did. Jonny actually believed in Wikipedia originally enough to use his real name and once Wikipedia banned him--which based on the discussions they did it purely because they had trouble understanding him--that she and her minions caused harassment for him in real life.

What? I don't think so.

• The fact that I use Tor was never a secret, so it wasn't 'discovered'.
• Actually, I use Tor for safety, for example to avoid being found by the
  person who molested me when I was a child.
• It isn't the opposes that upset me, or the fact that my RfA would've failed
  if it had continued, so much as that people kept bugging me to explain why
  I used Tor for months and months after I withdrew, thereby forcing me to
  relive my worst memories, and the comments that made me feel I was being
  blamed for having been molested.
• Ms. SV apologised for causing me pain, so everything is fine between
  us now. Hopefully that isn't super-secret confidential info. Ms. SV seems
  to feel it is important to make note of when someone apologises for doing
  something hurtful, so I assume she would want me to make note of that.

Where did I get the idea of Chinese censors from? I must have mistook something you said. Sorry.

I support people who use Tor to get around Chinese censorship, for
example by running a Tor exit node.

As noted above by Nobs, the real problem is that an abusive admin (and her friends) has large control over Wikipedia policies. In my case when I brought up a relevant policy point regarding BLP policy I was belittled, told I only had 400 edits so could not comment on policy, and told to go away by SlimVirgin. My very simple question on policy remains unanswered (Will you please say why the sensitivity argument allows an editor to exclude information about a marriage that a major celebrity (Richard Gere) posted by themselves in a major newspaper, and that was reported on by world media?)

That I was treated that way surprisingly poor behavior in itself, but to then be targeted in revenge on an unrelated issue by her because I had dared to question the policy she had ownership of is an outrageous abuse of administrator privilege.

I am very grateful that Wikpedia Review provides a forum for assembling evidence of such abuses, because these abuses cannot be challenged or reported on Wikipedia itself. I hope that by pointing out such abuses, Wikipedia will improve its systems for monitoring the actions of its administrators.

Well, if it is not relevant to the celebrity's 'notability', it's perfectly safe to leave
it out. According to me, WP should just delete all biographies of living persons,
or at least allow living persons to opt-out, due to the potential damage that can
be caused to people's privacy and reputations.

I tend to agree with you. I think that, at a bare minimum, any article about anyone who is mentioned by their real name should be allowed to comment on the article and request additions or subtractions to the article. The article should be truthful, but not damaging. The only exceptions should be convicted criminals of major crimes and enemies of the state (although sometimes if they are wrongly convicted something needs to be said too).

I know that it sounds bad not to allow "the truth" to be told, but I think that we have to remember that these are all real people, with real lives, and while something may appear crystal clear to us, the reality is that that too may be due to some deep-seated lies elsewhere.

At least you actually tried to answer the question. My point was that I got no answer other than go away you're annoying us , and was then targeted for abuse due to the challenge. My strong impression was that SlimVirgin had ownership of the policy, and that she knows the policy is arbitrary (which gives her power). Therefore, any challenge must be met with the strongest resistance.

BLP policy is an unecessary addition to the Wikipedia policy book that allows for arbitrary admin decisons ie allows transfer of power from editors to admins. If an item is widely reported in reliable sources then it should go in -- subjective discussions about the subject's feelings are irrelevant. An opt-out is not necessary. Stuff happens to people whether they like it or not and is reported in newspapers all the time as news. There is no extra damage by Wikipedia reporting on events that have been widely reported elsewhere. Taken to its absurd conclusion the sensitivity aspect of BLP stops any mention of any criminal act or court cases because we have to be sensitive to the criminal's reputation and privacy.

I won't fight the Gere thing again here. It's an example of how the policy is broken, how broken policy is defended by entrenched interests, and how challenging that policy will get you blocked.

Update to Blissy: Wikipedia is not about truth, but verifiability.

Question for you - what do you think should be the purpose of WP?



What if WP's Google rankings are higher than these other sources, or these
other sources are offline?



Well, what of the victim of the criminal? Or, what if the courts were wrong,
and the criminal was in fact innocent?



I think you will find many of the people here are commenting from an
ethical perspective, so appeal to WP policy won't really help your
argument. Although, if WP articles came with big huge disclaimers
on top saying 'WARNING: Anyone can edit this article. There is
absolutely no guarantee of accuracy. Believe at your own risk'
that would make many of the people here much happier.

Anyway, can you see how false and negative statements (or even
ones that are true and negative) can be damaging to a person's
reputation? Hence defamation law....

Oh, and welcome to WR! Sorry you are here.

For good or bad, Wikipedia is not actually an encyclopedia but a search engine about topics and people.

It is obviously important to weed out unwarranted negative information, but it is also important not to exclude relevant information that has been widely reported in reliable sources. In the case of a wrongful conviction, if the courts were wrong, it will have been reported, and added to the page (see Guildford Four)

Current policies that define "sensitivity" in BLP allows editors (and admins who back them) to define arbitrarily what is included on the page. By removing the policy and going back to the primacy of basic policies such as reliable source policy then much of the trouble would be avoided.

I think that the thing that you have to consider whenever dealing with something like this is "What would it be like if it happened to you?"

Now, I know that a lot of people are going to say "Who cares, they deserve it", and in some cases perhaps they are right. Someone like Saddam Hussein, who was an enemy of the state, most certainly does deserve to have significant negative information in his biography. Convicted criminals of major crimes (felonies) most certainly do deserve to have that negative information in their biography.

But let's just say that someone wrote a biography on me.

Now, I would fully expect them to write something about PA, about the talker I ran, about WR, about some of my political involvement, and the various protests that I had been involved in. And I wouldn't mind too much if they included some criticism about it (constructive criticism at least).

But what if they then included Grace Note calling me a holocaust denier, and went to lengths about analysing it? Or if they included LJ Drama and company saying I was a convicted paedophile, terrorist, rapist, murderer, serial killer, and whatever else? I mean that smear was all over the internet for quite some time. Sure, we had a court case that we won that disproved it. But that was extremely difficult to do. I really need to highlight that. People shouldn't have to go to those lengths just to stop something like that being out there.

So what if my bio had a bit of factual information, had the things I am most well known for, all with more focus on the criticism of them than on the actual actions, and then added in the various smears against my name? Perhaps if they put in the various places on the internet I've been banned from.

Now I would not be too happy with them doing it. Would you?

It doesn't matter who you are, they can find something nasty to say about you. I don't have a criminal record, I've never broken any law, yet there you go there's plenty of nasty things that you could say about me. Some false, some believable yet ultimately false, and some which are half-truths. I am sure that it is the same for everyone.

If its not the case for you, then well done, nobody has yet made a significant smear against you. Hopefully it stays that way. Once they start, it just means that next time there'll be a bigger smear, and so on until the end of your days.

We need to consider that a lot of things that are out there are not actually true. They may look true at first glance, but unless you are deeply familiar with the case, you can't be certain that they are actually true. You have to consider whether it could be harmful if what you are including is false.

And is Wikipedia just a search engine? Perhaps it is. But should it be? Encyclopaedias, real encyclopaedias, are somewhat more than that.

I am not asking you what it is, I am asking you what you believe its purpose
should be.

It has happened to me on multiple ocassions, on WP and outside of it. Outside of it, I used the legal process to remove defamatory material, with one abuser almost being sent to jail for harassing my family. On Wikipedia I simply go to the source - is it reliable or not? In fact, if you can show that the sources are unreliable by WP standards then you have a very strong argument against malicious information.

For example, a competitor published an article that my company was lying about its circulation numbers. Wikipedia trolls who had been fighting me on another page picked up on this and added it to my magazine's page. By following Wikipedia policy for reliable sources I was able to destroy their argument.

The only problem with this is the COI issue, which overreaches itself in trying to stop people editing material clsoe to them. I have long argued that COI policy is irrelevant if the person making the edits is working in good faith to correct trolling by adding or improving reliable sources. See my note on COI here.

AB: It is what it is

Yeah Conflict of Interest is a delicate policy that needs to be written properly, and is regularly misused.

I mean Conflict of Interest is relevant when people are trying to push an agenda, to promote something that isn't true or is greatly misleading.

The problem is that most of the worst breaches of Conflict of Interest happen by people that don't reveal their identity. If I am going to push an agenda, the smart thing to do is to pretend that I have nothing to do with it.

Another problem with Conflict of Interest is that it relates to another flawed policy, Neutral Point of View. Neutral Point of View insists that someone actually knowing what they are talking about (an expert) is worse than someone who is completely ignorant of the topic but is neutral. Hence of course Conflict of Interest just backs up Neutral Point of View even further by suggesting that anyone who knows what they are talking about is going to be breaching at least one of those.

Unless of course you do it right.

Chip Berlet, Adam Carr, Ted Frank, and a number of others have managed to get around all of this, somehow or other.

What's with this from Krimpet's user page.

And the diff where she mentions the NSA and Mossad satirically has been oversighted.

I hate quotes without links. Anyway I'll try to find the link so we can all put this in to the proper perspective.

Hrm only one edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=history

Oh but the deletion log is C-R-A-Z-Y!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ge=User:Krimpet

No block log for Krimpet, and he still seems to be a sysop, in spite of it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ge=User:Krimpet

Nothing obvious, but a few hints in the user talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Krimpet

Perhaps requires a bit more investigation.

An admin quitting in disgust over SlimVirgin?

Where is the NSA / Mossad thing?

Why does that need to be oversighted?

No worries its in the log for the page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ge=User:Krimpet

I'd suggest that he wrote something on his user page that Ms SV didn't approve of, and was forced to change it.

What did he have on there I wonder.

That's actually a circular argument - opt-out is necessary to get Wikipedia out of peoples' lives who don't want it there. If the subject accepts the existence of the article in the first place, then fine, forget the subject's feelings. The point is that they shouldn't have to accept it, and that Wikipedia isn't like a magazine, a newspaper, or a real encyclopedia - lies and distortions can be added to it at any time, by anyone, without the subject's knowledge or consent, so that the subject is burdened with the unending hassle of having to check some stupid website regularly for the rest of their lives to make sure they're not being libeled. Are you denying that?


"About"? If it's supposed to be an encyclopedia, then it's "about" everything. You're conflating the thing itself with the thing's internal mechanics. What it's "about" is what's actually irrelevant here.


But if the subject's feelings are irrelevant, why make the distinction between "topics" and "people"?


So if they don't do that, what then? Throw up your hands and say "oh well, at least the subject's feelings are irrelevant"? Whee, no problem!


"Much" of the trouble? What would you consider an acceptable percentage of avoided trouble? Maybe 90 percent? How about 80 percent? Let's see, there are 150,000 BLP's on WP... That's a mere 30,000 people, then. Whee, no problem!


Good for you! How much did that "legal process" cost you, by the way? Please include not only legal fees, but opportunity costs and an estimate of reputational damage...


And if you still know the material is untrue, but you can't show that the sources are unreliable without considerable personal expense and anguish?


What if you hadn't even owned a computer? Or been able to read and write in English? I mean, obviously you wouldn't have been running a magazine, but let's just say hypothetically...


And how successful were you in making these arguments?

That isn't an answer.

Since you seem to be having trouble thinking of an answer, here is my
opinion, with which you can agree, disagree, or whatever.

Consider a theoretical universe which contains stars, nebulas, black holes,
and all that. This theoretical universe, however, does not contain a single
experiential being. No matter how many colours the nebulas are, twisted into
what shapes, no one will see them. They cannot be beautiful or ugly. This
universe is utterly irrelevant.

A single experiential being can give purpose to the universe - someone to
experience the universe and react with joy and sorrow.

Similarly, encyclopaedias and search engines are completely irrelevant,
except in how they affect experiential beings. Hence, a 'good'
encyclopaedia or search engine is one which helps people, and a 'bad'
encyclopaedia or search engine is one which hurts people. Of course, it
is generally more complex than that, as an encyclopaedia or search engine
may help some people while hurting others, but anyway.

Also, please provide your definitions of 'troll' and 'good faith'.

The other thing is that this phrase, "the subject's feelings," is actually a form of "framing" - it's a lot like phrases such as "the death tax" and "Pallywood" and "exploring for energy." It attempts to foster the assumption that the subject's "feelings" are the issue, because in reality nobody cares about anyone else's "feelings" on this planet. In fact, the subject's reputation, time, psychological well-being, and career viability are, in some combination or other, the issue.

This is Wikipedia propagandism of the worst kind, and we must always call them on it, no matter what happens.

That was a lot of questions, but this is the most relevant:


I don't deny there are expenses in managing one's online presence, but in this day and age it is each person's responsibility to manage their online reputation. In some way WP can make it easier by creating a standard of inclusion, however my experience also shows that current BLP and COI policy make it more difficult than need be.

IMHO, any person who is notable enough to have a Wikipedia page (which means that they will have been mentioned in multiple newspapers, magazines and journals) should be allowed to edit the page, to correct and remove items without fear of being banned for COI.

I strongly believe that the standard of inclusion comes down to the sources. If a nobody writes a blog post on his personal site then that should not be included, but if The New York Times writes it then it's a different matter.


I was not sucessful, that is why I am discussing them here

AB: It's not about good or bad, but about what actually happened. IMHO, a troll is a person who adds poorly-sourced negative information and/or who removes well-sourced positive information. Posting in good faith is the opposite.

So you are saying that ethics are irrelevant?



I thought 'faith' was about intent, not action.

So your definitions of good faith and bad faith centre around information
sourcing?

Please explain the ethical impact of information sourcing.



And if those sources are all offline, the person didn't have an online reputation
(or at least not much of one) prior to the WP page. A paper newspaper people
forget in a week can have much less of an impact on a person's reputation
than a forever searchable encyclopaedia with a high Google rank. Do you
really think the person is not impacted by the presence of the article?

Also, what if the person does not have a computer, or is not very computer
literate?

Do you really believe that? Considering the large number of older folks who have no internet access, or if they do, have no experience editing a web page (not to mention the number of younger people who have limited computer proficiency), is a blanket statement that everyone nowadays must "manage their online reputation" very realistic? Can most people afford to pay people to monitor web-sites like Wikipedia looking for potential problems? Who would actually do that?

Again, you're making a circular argument here, probably without even realizing it. Aside from the fact that lots of people don't live their lives "online" and would prefer to not have any "presence" on the internet whatsoever, what do you even mean by the word "manage"? Couldn't the word "manage," in this context, consist primarily of the sending of take-down requests to publicly-editable websites? After all, that quote was focused on the question of opt-out, not the question of how much effort and time should be considered reasonable for dealing with websites that post falsehoods about you. Like I say, if you accept the article's existence in the first place, then it's perfectly reasonable to extend that to accepting the article-host's content policies, such as they are. But if you totally reject those policies, not to mention the "right" of that website to carry publicly-editable content about you, what then? "Just deal with it," eh? So what does that say about the attitude and mentality of the people running that website?

Otherwise, it's like AB said - what of the celebrity rape victim, the falsely-accused prison inmate, or the person who's fired from his/her government job for blatantly political reasons? Or more particularly, the WP critic who's obviously being targeted simply for having criticized WP? When the bad guys start in with the online vilification in those cases, what should they do?

I suppose I should point out that Wikipedia Review is just as capable of imposing this kind of burden and harm on private individuals - though with orders of magnitude less impact than WP, of course. Even so, we have the ability to hide entire subforums from Google, require moderator approval of certain posts, even COPPA compliance. Meanwhile, MediaWiki developers are hard at work adding "Digg This" and "Del.icio.us" buttons to the bottom of every page, and giving wiki operators more options for placement of banner ads.