I'm putting in a new thread, just to try to keep discussion out of
unrelated threads. Actually i"m surprised this was only mentioned today,
it's one of the biggest and foulest stinks in internet history.

Original WR mention here.

Article (rather crummy) here, AfD here.

I've disagreed vehemently with deletionists in the past,
but this is one time that I'm forced to agree with them.

That poor foolish girl is a victim of 4chan troll idiocy, which has blown completely out of proportion.
Now she's the focus of endless death threats, stalking, you name it.

She is underage, was not seeking widespread publicity in the usual sense, does not deserve such treatment,
and is not otherwise notable enough to deserve a WP article.
There are thousands of similar personal videos on YouTube, by other non-notable teens.

At most, it should be folded into this list.

The berserk crap surrounding Boxxy is BAD and should be discouraged.

Perhaps a good official policy for persons deserving creation of a BLP would be:
someone who obviously seeks publicity, does not use pseudonyms, and
is over the age of 18. Just saying.

(A note to the BLP inclusionist bastards: you are hypocrites. If you want to post
the real identity of Boxxy online for all to read, then it's time for YOU to post
your personal details online, as well.)


(crap...how does one edit a thread title?)

I don't see what the hell the problem is with the article. Wikipedia is only reporting what the existing sources used are saying. If someone has "BLP issues", they should seek out the original publishers of that content (i.e. The Guardian, Metros.co.uk) and talk to them as Wikipedia should only really be proxying that content in article form - that's what WP:V and WP:NOR are all about. BLP, I have always felt, is just bullshit. If a source says it, include it. Also, the reliable sources guideline allows WikiNazis to delete articles just by claiming that something's not 'reliable', whereas they can say that about pretty much any source for any subject they don't like or don't feel is worthy of inclusion.

This link is rather representative of most of my feelings about BLP.

First of all, this isn't really a "BLP issue" to begin with. The issue is really about memes, and the extent to which Wikipedia should cover them. It's more of an "inclusionist vs. deletionist" issue.

I agree that BLP is bullshit, but only because it gives Wikipedia a false sense of their actually having done something effective to "protect" people's privacy and reputations. Until they do something that gives the article subjects some degree of control, such as an opt-out policy, anything they do is just feel-good window dressing. It's better than nothing, but not by much.

Which, in turn, leads us to "Boxxy." Personally, I don't see what the problem is either, unless Boxxy herself doesn't want to be included in Wikipedia. If she doesn't want in, she should be allowed to get herself out. We already know Wikipedia is a basically a Very Bad Joke™ when it comes to what's included and what isn't, and I take their "notability guidelines" with a grain of salt, if that even.

At some point, the parents of these kids are going to have to figure out how to keep their little darlings from doing this shit. Until there's a way out for them when they f*ck up, which means the big sites stepping up and imposing some ethical standards, this situation is just going to get progressively worse.

The parents of the kids... do you mean Wikipedia editors, or people like Boxxy? Really not sure which of the two you're referring to there.

There were things like biographical optout discussed a while back last year but unsurprisingly no consensus was formed. As for BLP, this flagged revisions thing should ease the situation somewhat, shouldn't it?

BLP is a completely ineffective policy though. It's one thing saying to editors "don't put contentious statements about living persons in articles", but in practice this is not strictly enforced until it's too late in some high-profile cases.

I mean, there is no technical feature that enforces BLP other than semi-protection, which is not particularly effective until an article containing BLP violations has been identified.

And you mention the big sites imposing ethical standards... YouTube has been singled out in the past as a haven for cyber-bullying and so on, and I've seen evidence of that myself.

For an example of someone who's getting laughed at and harassed through YouTube, take Chris-chan - an autistic, twenty-something guy who has proved to be a lolcow to a number of cruel trolls. Yet because of his social retardation, he doesn't fully realise why he's being laughed at, and he continues to make YouTube videos about how much he loves women to try to prove he is straight after taking nude pics of himself and putting them online, whilst wearing his medallion of his creation that is a hybrid of Sonic the Hedgehog and Pikachu.

Here's his YouTube channel. Now I must admit that I find it hard not to laugh. It's pretty sad that this man-child can be so oblivious to how bad he looks to the outside world, but he's also quite frankly hilarious to watch and listen to sometimes. Take this video for example:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4_za09_kjZA&...re=channel_page

Got a little off topic from Wikipedia there, but what the hell.

That's a perfect example. That guy doesn't know any better, so his "seeking publicity"
isn't the same as for an actor or business executive whose career revolves around
fame. Diminished capacity and all that.

Does he deserve the online abuse he gets? There's no article on WP for him.
What makes Boxxy more or less "notable" than Chris-chan?

How many people like this (or Boxxy, or whoever) are there on YouTube?
Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

Must WP editor create BLPs for every damn one of them, to make the "inclusionists" happy?
Where's the goddamn line? Who decides? What is the "policy"? Is it dependent entirely
on what bored professional journalists feel like writing about as page-filler material, or
"weird news" items? The hellstorm of shit that centers around Boxxy isn't getting
much more than sideways attention from the MSM.

Even CNET or the dirt-loving Register hasn't weighed in about Boxxy yet.

I ask these questions, because it's damn obvious that WP's admin elite is not asking them.
All they can do is argue, on and on, about flagged revisions.

Real media organisations have written about Boxxy. None have done so about Chris-chan.

Also, is it wrong if I think Boxxy is hot? If she's 16, she'd be legal here, and only 6 years younger than me. Hell, my last girlfriend was 2.5 years younger than me. A little young for my tastes normally, considering that in the past I've tended to go for girls a few years older than me as a rule.

No I agree hun, she's cute Assuming she's not under 16 of course

There was a girl I worked with last year who was 16 and I felt attracted to her as well. And I tradtionally have gone for chicks that are older than me. What happened? Did I just get old myself?

Wikipedia simply cannot help itself here. Remember, Wikipedia is not the metropolis it pretends to be but really just a village of 2,000-3,000 people with serious problems of over-involvement, making thousands, tens of thousands of even a hundred thousand edits each. Of these a certain number, in itself worthy of further discussion and more precise definition, but certainly at least several hundred strong are people obsessed with internet culture. Veterans of Usenet, ED, 4chan, and god knows where else these luz-heads come from but they certainly are there (and here). They include people with some degree of a life and some years under their belts (like Alison) to people who either have none (like Grawp) to people that have lost it (like Blissy). They cannot possibly stay away from coverage of internet memes and other self-referential topics no matter how unencyclopedic or how corrosive to any serious hope for an online learning community. They are too important a constituency in "the community" not not be given what they just have to have.

Who's to know why something does it for us lol, in that respect we're at the mercy of the gods. Just think yourself lucky you're not a bestialist or something, then you'd really have something to worry about.

I did used to go for older men but find now I'm not as much, so maybe you're right and it means we're getting old lol.

But you would have to write to Dear Deidre for further advice.

Yeah, I'm not like that guy FT2, if Grawp is to be believed. I'm not into bestiality, pedophilia, or any other sick shit. I'm pretty normal when it comes to my sexual preferences. Sometimes I just look at the people out there and facepalm over the weird shit that people are into.

But no, with me being 23 this year and having restarted education from scratch, I can't help but thinking I'm falling behind somehow. Sure, I've done office jobs in the professional world in the past, but nothing properly, like, good. I had an interview with a job for a major company like a year ago, but they didn't accept me. That was during my 'alcoholic' phase, though.

I'd probably rather refrain from having anything to do with Rupert Murdoch, by the way.

Actually, come to think about it, make that two different 16 year old girls in two different jobs I was working in last year that I was attracted to.



I wasn't trying to pursue either of them of course. It'd just be inappropriate.

Seriously, a friend of mine is the same age as me, actually a couple of months older, and he's got a girlfriend who has just turned 17, and he lives with her. I can't understand that, really.

Despite your eloquent listing of the various breeds of faggotry to which you object?

wat


This much I agree with. WP is definitely not a metropolis; oh no. It may get a whole load of mainstream media attention, but I know most of the major administrators and people who control it. Hell, sometimes I think I'd make a good admin myself if I was paid to do so and was made to abide by its policies...

lol

I notice you list Catch-22 on your userpage as your favourite novel. I read some of that book, then ended up giving up on it. Same with Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Both of these novels I started reading when I was like 16 or 17, and kinda gave up on them. I started reading some of Crime and Punishment again recently, though, but don't have the discipline to keep reading the damned thing.

Catch-22 is a major major novel. At the very least.

Yeah, I know, but the amount of novels I read is fairly minimal, 'cause I'm a bit lazy like that. I do like them when I read them, but... for some reason, I don't read enough of them, even though I want to. Damned internet addiction.

Aitias deleted "Lol wut" ‎ (Clean up: content was: 'hmmm{{main:Lol wut}}')

I didn't care for Crime and Punishment, which is probably more a problem with me than with it. But Catch-22 is brilliant.

Reputedly, somebody once asked Joseph Heller if he regretted that he hadn't written anything as good since (Catch-22 was his first novel). He responded "No. Because really, who has?"

I'd agree.

I don't care for 'proper' books. Especially when it comes to fiction. I left uni a fair few years ago now so I've had enough of reading "edifying" stuff you might be made to read at school. Chick lit is the way to go Maybe a bit of Andy McNabb or something for the boys

I have to go and see the 'Shopaholic' film as it's based on one of my absolute favourite books. Shame the film looks awful.

Given how eloquently Joseph Heller writes about nonsensical rules, power-players, and self-serving bureaucracies, you'd think he was a former WP admin.

You know, that had somehow never occurred to me, but you're absolutely right. There's probably a fantastic Catch-22-esque novel to be written about Wikipedia.

I never heard of Boxxy before someone mentioned her here, but after watching the videos I have to admit I'm quite enraptured by her. I don't understand why she would set off some kind of massive internet troll war, but I suppose some trolls don't like to watch cute girls being quirky--it's not really worth the effort to understand trolls. As to the merit of the article, I think the subject should be covered in the sense that it is a notable meme (and I voted keep), but of course BLP sensitivity is due and the article shouldn't disclose personal details.

Only two weeks left... better bid quickly. $1.750.00 buy it now price. "Appears to be a first issue" and is damaged but "otherwise in very good+ to near fine condition"!

I'm hardly an expert on the pricing of rare books, but I can't imagine this one's that rare. The first edition of Catch-22 was well-advertised (ads taking up more than half a page of the New York Times), which I assume meant that it enjoyed a large print run. The book was well-appreciated during the author's lifetime; Heller died in 1999. I'm not aware that he was in any way reticent with his autograph. All of this adds up to there being plenty of autographed first editions out there, probably including quite a number in better shape than this one.

What was the topic of this thread, again?

If you don't care to slog through Crime and Punishment or Brothers Karamazov, you can find the Cliff's Notes version here...

Let me link you to some of the crap written about Boxxy.
Warning: you will learn more about perky little Boxxy than you
really want to know. (Enough to find her easily, if you feel
like going to Sacramento. Assuming she's not another lonelygirl15.)

All of this is wasted server space. But then, so is a lot of the frigging internet.
I would not be a bit surprised to hear that Boxxy was just another
viral marketing stunt. That became too damn successful.

http://boxxystory.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boxxybabee/43395189669
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/news/2009/01/...15.php#comments
http://www.inquisitr.com/14944/meet-boxxy-...son-on-youtube/

The other thing is: too many of the people in the AfD, when voting to
keep the article, made noises as if they wanted to meet/have sex with
the girl. As did BaT, in this very thread.

God help her.

(BTW, she's 16. Supposedly.)

The story of Boxxy is Catch-22, with undertones of teen-girl molestation.....
as I said, there are thousands of other teen girls on YouTube. Maybe
tens or hundreds of thousands. Some of them are cute, some not.
Where's the 4chan war over their videos?

Sorry for derailing the Boxxy thread.

So anyway, I reckon Boxxy will probably be deleted. Has less sources than Corey Delaney/Corey Worthington (the Australian party boy) who was about the same age, and was deleted like a year ago, and people have mostly forgotten about him.

Probably won't be deleted until people actually do forget about her. These timely deletion debates are almost always hopeless. Enough hardcore inclusionists (sorry Everyking) voted to keep that I think this is heading for another DRV.

Undoubtedly it'll be at DRV before the end of today (my local time). Anything popular, even/especially things only popular on the internet, that gets deleted ends up there. Popularity = contention on WP. Not to mention drahmahz. (Seriously, don't mention them.)

As far as the article itself goes, I'm of the opinion that WP should have an article on the meme and not the person, as everyking is. BLP issues, which are obviously present, can be handled through non-deletion methods. Protection would almost assuredly be necessary to prevent vandalism from /b/tards and the like. On the other hand, the entire internet is going to forget about her after a few months anyways, so it's not like any of this matters much.

So yeah, it's been deleted. Looks like MZMcBride called this on the basis of his personal opinions, not the wishes of the community as reflected in the AfD.

I find the logic of "wait until people forget, then delete" to be very disappointing. The best time to ascertain notability is not in retrospect, but at the time of the event; that's when the sources are most accessible, and that's when people are most informed about the subject. Certainly this AfD, occurring when lots of people are aware of the subject and have strong feelings about it, assesses the article's real suitability much better than any future AfD in which only a handful of people participate, most of them deletionist-leaning AfD regulars who vote on whole piles of AfDs and give little serious consideration to the individual cases.

I don't have much of an opinion on this, but MZMcBride is an awful, awful admin. Anybody who doesn't really care about the more inane wiki stuff needs only to look at his massive stream of unprotections, including some of BLP subjects, with reasoning "this is a wiki", without any indication of ever actually having checked the article or anything similar.

Same here. I'd never heard of her, then watched a few videos. Her exaggerated facial expressions remind me of a young Jim Carrey. PBS says he could have been a silent movie star.

I, of course, disagree. Some of these things will have lasting cultural significance, but most of them will disappear and never even be featured on VH1. We should only have Wikipedia articles for the former--especially when it's very easy for the article to slide into BLP violation territory.

I'm fine with allowing articles to exist until the ultimate significance of the subject is unclear, but once it is, we should get rid of google-fueled billboards for potential libel.

I understand where you're coming from, and I would have agreed with you in 2004, but Wikipedia's prominence on Google turned me from an inclusionist into a deletionist--especially where real people might be involved.

You don't have to be one or the other. You can be a deletionist for "live people info," and an inclusionist for all the rest.

It's rather like being an economic conservative, and yet also a social liberal. It's possible. Ask how I know.

Boxxy is pretty but annoying. She started a troll war because newbies and love sick teenage sychophants on 4chan (/b/) linked to her videos. A lot. That pissed the old timers off enough to DDOS 4chan.

Catch-22 is my favourite novel too. It is utterly brilliant - do perservere, then read it again a year or two down the track - you miss a lot in the first reading - there are layers and layers of subtelties and humour.

I think I got something new on each of the first five or so times that I read it. It's sort of like the Big Lebowski that way - and, as with the Big Lebowski, I think I've now garnered everything there is to garner from it. I still reread it every couple of years, though.

Yeah I have read it half a dozen times. I didn't like The Big Lebowski much though.

Yeah, well. the dude abides.

Funny how WP and ED's standards of notability differ.

This was in DYK on the main page, and since it's to do with lolcats maybe it deserves an article in ED? Wrong. It's shit nobody cares about because it's not funny or interesting in any way.

I propose we open this for discussion again. Boxxy's popularity is growing, she needs a reliable safe-for-work page where all her thousands of fans (including the thousands of new non-4chan ones from youtube) can learn about what happened and what is happening. She was and to some extent still is a big thing. She made the news and has many other blogs, fan-sites and media about her (I can provide links). The two new July 12th videos were re-uploaded into one video and this currently has +130,000 views and growing, and this is in September. She needs more than just a one line sentence which barely explains anything at all.

This is the sort of issue that should push the wikipedia into a larger discussion of just what it means to be "notable" and "reliably sourced". With the super-saturation of 24/7 mass media, and said media's downward spiral into a tabloid frenzy for every "news" event it can get its hands on, the bar for inclusion in the wikipedia has been effectively drastically lowered. Honestly, the only difference between CNN and TMZ these days is 3 letters.

And for the record, no, some ADD tweener doesn't need a fucking article.

How is any of that relevant to what I just said? You haven't addressed any of my post at all.


Very professional. "Hurr durr we dont need an article cos I don't like her derp". Boxxy having her own article would be extremely useful for a lot of people. As I said, her popularity is growing on you-tube.
Also: She was acting in the videos.

Um, yea, I kinda did. You're doing a simplistic tally of "how many times is this chick name-dropped in a source?" My point is that such a measurement is becoming increasingly meaningless is an era of round-the-clock media that covers everything with a sensationalist whiff these days.


All you want is a place on the wikipedia for her fanboys (i.e. you) to congregate, and that is about the last thing that an alleged encyclopedia should be used for. You're lowering the bar, when we should be working on raising it higher.

Agreed.

Is "Dav4e" some 15-year old brat who wants to get into her pants,
and thinks that making her "famous" will help his "cause"?......

Sorry lad, even if you're not motivated in such a base fashion (and I would expect
as much from a guy who pretends to have a WP account, but doesn't really),
I have to call bullshit.

Now be nice. There's another inclusionist who was thought to have a similar fixation on a somewhat different girl. I think the comments toward that person were mostly unfair.

Does the rule on "subjects must have significant coverage in reliable sources" specifically exclude "name checks?" It should. That would help with a lot of articles, actually. (A newspaper's entertainment section printing "DJ Pusspuss will be performing at the Firebird Lounge on Friday" is not "significant coverage.")

Oops! We usually deny registration validations to people who do that - I might have overlooked that one myself. Sorry - I've removed the WP name from his profile, but yes, it does suggest a certain lack of above-boardness on his part.

As for "Boxxy," did she change her mind about wanting an article about her on WP? If not, then I guess my opinion on it (FWIW) is unchanged.

Btw, Catch-22 may also be my favorite novel. It's in the Top 5, at least...