An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks has revealed that the Wikimedia Foundation Board (which controls Wikipedia and Wikinews) has killed off a Wikinews report into the Barbara Bauer vs. Wikimedia Foundation lawsuit. Wikinews is a collaborative news site and is meant to be editorially independent from the WMF. The WMF office also suppressed a Wikinews investigation into child and other pornography on Wikipedia, which was independently covered by ValleyWag and other outlets this week. The US Communications Deceny Act section 230 grants providers of internet services (such as the Wikipedia and Wikinews) immunity from legal action related to their user-generated content provided they do not exercise pre-publication control. In deleting articles critical of the WMF prior to publication, Wikileaks says the Wikimedia Foundation may have set a dangerous precedent that could remove all of its CDA section 230 immunity (at least for Wikinews, where the control was exercised)."

Wikimedia censors Wikinews



Slashdot is just ploughing (American: plowing) where WR was about two weeks ago. Still, it should be entertaining.

I'll note that Wikileaks is wrong to assert that the Foundation
removed the stories. (And Slashdot is wrong to repeat this
assertion.) If that had been our method of operation, I could have
removed the stories myself. Instead, we went to great lengths to
explain what our legal concerns were, privately, to representatives of
the community.

I'll note that Wikileaks is wrong to assert that the Foundation
removed the stories. (And Slashdot is wrong to repeat this
assertion.) If that had been our method of operation, I could have
removed the stories myself. Instead, we went to great lengths to
explain what our legal concerns were, privately, to representatives of
the community.

For anyone interested in a more detailed look at the Bauer content that was once on Wikipedia, you should know that I saved some pages a year ago, when it looked like they might be deleted. In my copies of these pages, I inserted a "noindex, nofollow" tag in the headers so that they wouldn't be picked up by the search engines. And obviously, if I hear from Mr. Bauer that she prefers that I delete these pages, then I will delete them immediately. I'm trying to provide evidence that is no longer available on Wikipedia; I'm not trying to create more problems for Ms. Bauer.

Bauer bio as of 2006-12-06
Bauer bio edit history
Bauer talk page as of 2006-10-31
Bauer talk page Archive 1
Bauer talk page Archive 2

May I say I contrast your concern for this person's feelings and livelihood as a (probably) bent literary agent with what you demonstrate towards certain others and come to further conclusions about the morality and consistency of your campaign.

What are you suggesting? That I'm opposed to anonymous editors on Wikipedia, and that I'm inclined to sympathize with non-Wikipedians, such as John Seigenthaler, who find themselves victimized by biographies on Wikipedia?

Gasp! I had no idea!