John254 brings Seth's bio to DRV.

The article was previously deleted after Durova brought it to DRV, at the time Daniel's was also being considered.

As long as decisions relating to BLP inclusion are left in the hands of community processes BLP victims will never get any peace. An independent process operated by a credible neutral body needs to be developed.

Mercury said it all. "Let us keep in mind, these are in fact real people."

My opinion about this:

I think if this article is restored -- to quote the words of Willie Whitelaw to the IRA in 1973 -- all bets are off.

Seth's article deletion represents a major symbolic victory for the forces of common sense and decency, uniting thinking people across the spectrum from as radical positions as JzG and Durova (I know, you wouldn't believe it) to The Review itself. We've already been forced to open our Editors forum to the search engines after some recent malevolent activity by Wikipeida. This new development will not go well for Wikipedia.

I do have mixed feelings, from a perspective of someone who believes Wikipedia represents a serious threat to our understanding of information and education:

(1) Restoring Seth's article will only hasten Wikipedia's necessary demise due to the obvious publicity Seth and the anti-Wikipedia movement will glean from it = Good
(2) Restoring Seth's article will intensify the antagonism between right minded people and the Wikipediots = bad

Toss a coin. Or better, think. If you want Wikipedia to limp towards some kind of viable position in the future, vote delete.

If you want Wikipedia to self destruct in a blaze of ignominy, attacked from all quarters, vote keep.

In the end, that's a pretty serious pyre that these kids are attempting to re-ignite. And the ensuing results will not go in their favor. I vote KEEP! and lets bring it on! 2008 -- see you in the bowels of hell!

Hello Kato. Welcome back.

Can you update us on the status of your compilation of materials that previously appeared on your blogsite?

What kind of bullshit is this? John254 argues that in order to save Seth Finkelstein from wiki-abuse, WP has to create an article on him and "protect" it. Exactly how is this supposed to prevent other "BLP violating" articles on Seth from being created anyways?

They truly expect arguments like this to be taken seriously?

If so, who about this one:

I'd like to save myself from some toxic waste leaking into my ground water. I think it's entirely reasonable to force John254, at gunpoint, to store it all on his premises ... in perpetuity, and at his expense.

My conclusion is that John254 and the rest of them are just trying to put the screws to Seth Finkelstein, just like how WP wants to fuck up Daniel Brandt as much as they can. Evidence in support: John254's inane argument is being carefully ignored in almost all of the responses to this DRV.

Hi Moulton. All gone. I tried to recover some bits for posterity but I didn't realize how definite the delete button would be. I guess I got used to Wikipedia's format of deletion / recovery.

No great loss to me. The whole WP scene is a bit too mad as far as I'm concerned and I was always on the of edge of repulsion Vs a sense of civic duty anyway. Glad to see the back of the place and its twisted environs. Though I've popped in a few times to see the latest calamities, and am glad that some of the worst aspects have reached the media.

Good luck all.

Burp. (I've had too much wine today already).

Happy New Year to All at The Review, and the other place as well. Even JzG!

The bio is now back.

Oh, that's so messed up. How was WP suffering from the loss of that article? How many complaints did they get from people enraged to find the lack of an article of Seth Finkelstein on Wikipedia? The lack of people coming along and wondering why an article doesn't exist shows how very inconsquential the article is.. that harm from losing it is negligible, whereas the bad press they get from doing things like this is far more damaging. Pathetic. I wonder what they think they've won.

He just reverted himself and deleted it. How odd.

Ah.. it was closed early.

It raises ethical issues, since journalists of his peerage are generally not the subject of a biographical article on Wikipedia. The obvious inference is that the bio page is there as payback, to provide sophomoric Wikipedians an opportunity to shoot back at him.

Oh Jesus H. Christ.

This is NOT happening.

I can't believe this shit.

His article back up for one article pointing out the shortcomings in the "real words" of the ED of Wikimedia.

It's not "all bets are off". This is a declaration of war.

(checks page)

Oh thank God. They kept it deleted. But not at the behest of "guess who", the autistic boy wonder.


You know... on that note....

I think it is high time that Joshua's parents, and his brother, get Bios. His Dad is kind of a famous lawyer who got in the press for that weird IRS claim about teaching at some funny school. And hos brother is quite notable at Yale.

Or maybe Joshua himself. He made a "splash" on the Yale Youtube project. Perhaps the Yalies would all weigh in. No, I'm not canvassing, just being hopeful.

What's even more morbid is that Wikipedians may be hoping that BLP subjects like Daniel Brandt and Seth die so they can write whatever they want about them without opposition or lawsuits.

They can bequeth power of attorney to defend themselves posthumously. I think they should.

Depends on if their family or estate can afford such an action. Only rich BLP subjects and their estates could mount any kind of legal offensive against WP. Though I'm sure some lawyers would be willing to do it pro bono.

I just hope Seth and other BLP subjects don't have to die and become ghosts just to haunt WP into deleting their articles.

Not true.

I hope we don't see an escalation in the frequency and intensity of mean-spirited BLPs.

A triumph of hope over experience, I'm afraid. When the regime in control of WP finally and belately realize how much trouble they're in, and especially in the last days, their reactions will become increasingly hysterical, abusive and bizzare. This is a behavioural pattern that has been repeated by a variety of totalitarian regimes throughout the world for thousands of years.

If so, it will be a remarkably visible story. It might even make a decent musical someday.

Opera.

Oh my.

It is still going on.

Durova is beating it down. Seth was lucky he didn't print her name.

With the way Seth is arguing this, I'm surprised there aren't more people reflexively saying to do whatever he doesn't want. I guess he's lucky that he found an opponent who's just as annoying in insisting that their illogical arguments are all perfectly fine.

Wow, this is amazing. John254 could single-handedly bring on a Congressional re-examination of Section 230 with talk like this:

With all due respect to Seth's distress, I think that this John254 is brilliant. He's almost better for making Wikipedia's flaws more salient than if Durova won an Arbcom seat.


(that is, assuming he is over 18, which I highly doubt).

You have a point, Greg. I was taught that fundamental fairness requires every wrong to have a remedy. If so, it is more than WP's reputation that should suffer.

John254 for Arbcom! = Hasten The Day!

Huzzah!

The problem being that the Finkelstein article seemed to get caught up in the whole Brandt deal.

Not saying that I agree with the logic, because i don't, but even if you can make the case that Brandt isn't noteworthy, there's really no legitimate question that Finkelstein is. His work is well known, he's consistently approached for expert opinion on internet matters, and it's just that he's gotten himself in enough people's hair that the article ever got deleted in the first place.

You can't run a legitimate encyclopedia project if the subjects have so much say over things that they can have entire articles removed. but, then again, the consensus view here appears to be that Wikipedia can't/shouldn't be a legitimate encyclopedia project, so...

The policies and practices of those calling the shots on Wikipedia routinely bring the project into disrepute.

Legitimate encyclopaedias don't generate rubbish articles, especially about living people.

Legitimate encyclopedias operate according to ethical principles appropriate to the enterprise.

Oh for God's sake. This isn't a real encyclopedia, because the output isn't vetted and it is mallable to any person who logs on. The work-in-progress is what is what is viewed online, and the fact that such horrid things can take place on bios is reason enough to allow for people who haven't been the alpha and omega of the history of man to be omitted.

Seth Finkelstein is just a reporter. There are thousands, if not millions of reporters NOT having bios in Wikipedia. Your response is the typical self-referent Wikipedia one of "he writes about us, so he's famous, because Wikipedia is". Well, no, that's simply not so. In any event, he wants it off, so since he's writing ABOUT history, not MAKING it, then let the man be.

And go spend your time making yourself famous (or whatever), rather than bothering people who are doing their own good work.

Legitimate encyclopedias have a right to say that being informative is more important than any particular person's wishes. But they have good mechanisms in place to make sure that articles are correct. Not only is Wikipedia's review mechanism terrible (read: practically nonexistent unless someone cares enough to go through the featured article process). Wikipedians will constantly deny that they have any obligation to check facts, instead preferring to just publish whatever someone else has said as fact.

If I say something disparaging about someone knowing that it is false, that is bad. If I actively refuse to determine whether or not the statement is false, that's willful ignorance, which isn't any better.

Encyclopedias have a right?
True. Which doesn't make the material any less libeloous.
It can also be illegal. And I think you mean "write" because that is what is in an encyclopedia (i.e. libel) wheras "saying" makes for slander (also illegal).
That's adding immoral to illegal.

It's irresponsible journalism, which tends to bring the publisher into disrepute.

The merry-go-round of madness resumes. Seth up for deletion review. Again...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Del...eth_Finkelstein

Moved to Userspace!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Manhatta...eth_Finkelstein

Poor Seth, he's going to have to fight Wikipedia all over again to get his bio removed all because some Manhattan Samurai was upset about a red link.

A red link! Seth's bio is now back (albeit in userspace, but still there!) because of some incessant Wikipedian mad about a red link!

Absolute madness. Goodbye WP:Biography of Living People (BLP). You were an ineffective policy while you lasted!

(Just picture Mad Money's Jim Cramer slamming his fists down and yelling "THEY'RE NUTS! THEY'RE NUTS!" and you'll have a picture of my seething rage over this)

Since it is the color of blood, they never should have made non-working links red. You can change the color from your reader, but the default should have been something/anything else. It just screams: EMERGENCY!! Fix me! Fix me NOW!!

But these redlinks are buds from which Wikipedia grows. If you don't like them, change your reader. If you must, remove the brackets. Write a stub. But for godsake, don't write a BLP!

Do you suppose they could put a section into WP:NOT with all the others, to the effect that a redlink, despite the distressing hue, is NOT a crying baby or a fire alarm. And is barely even an invitation, and NOT an IOU or engagment ring?

Treat it as junk mail, and chill.

I still don't understand moving the deleted article to userspace. That won't resolve the red link problem anyway.

But why restore a BLP article that its subject repeatedly wanted gone and that's deletion caused so much drama and emotion? Userspace or not, that article should not have been restored.

I wonder if I went to DRV and said "WAAAAAHH! I have [[Daniel Brandt]] as a red link in my wiki-essay and I want his bio restored!" would they actually do it? This doesn't make any sense!

No BLP subject can ever sleep at night even if their article is deleted because Wikipedia will just either restore it or allow for its recreation. Deleted BLP articles should be salted.

There ought to be a "noindex,nofollow" on the Seth bio in user space. It is possibly reasonable to have a copy so that it can be read by those interested in the DRV, but they way these idiots are doing this, the damn bio will end up in Google soon even if the DRV decides to keep it deleted.

I wonder how well it will rank? I wonder if Seth will be happy about this?

The thing should have been salted. That's the only way to keep the Wikipediot children from repeatedly sticking their grubby fingers in the cookie jar.

Wikipedia might be better if it set its robots.txt to block all search engines, except its internal search function does not work well so one has to use google when searching through it.

Relax - I've added {{NOINDEX}} to it. That should keep things away from Goog ...

DRV closed, and bio deleted.

Really, these wiki merry-go-rounds are too much.