I happened to have supper with my family at a restaurant in Smyrna, Delaware this afternoon. I wondered at the table, "Who's the biggest employer in Smyrna?"

Wikipedia proved to be no help, but it has claimed this bit of encyclopedic knowledge for nearly three months:



Thank you, Wikipedia. I'm sure Ronnie Pryor is thrilled to hear this, and to find it copied all over the Internet, thanks to you, Wikipedia.

Thank you, also, to Jimmy Wales for your urgent and persistent attention to getting Flagged Revisions in place.

P.S. For those of you still wondering who the largest employers are in Smyrna, one can register a free account with a commercial, capitalist, non-freely-licensed business list provider and come up with those businesses that have at least 100 employees in that town:

• Corrections Department Institute
• Delaware Hospital for the Chronically Ill
• Harris Manufacturing
• Pinnacle Rehab & Health Center
• Ralph Cahall & Son Paving Inc
• Veterans Of Foreign Wars

Once again, we see private, proprietary information beats out Wikipedia -- and it didn't cost me a dime... just my personal contact information.

And our very own Krimpet does her duty and holds off Flagged Revisions for another day.

Gone now. And a perfect example of why a wishy-washy measure like using flagged revisions only on selected BLPs clearly isn't enough.


Flagged revisions are needed now, period. The folks in charge at the WMF need to grow some cojones and enable them by fiat.

Sigh... But if the wiki-slaves (like yourself) just keep fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, and fixing, what incentive is there to implement Flagged Revisions?

Would it be more prudent to ignore it, as the scrapers come and irreversably spread this particular potentially libelous claim to the four corners of the 'net? Even if Jimbo grew a pair and ordered flagged revisions on tomorrow, every second it's on there a scraper could pick it up and "Ronnie" is screwed.

There will continue to be BLP disasters that aren't discovered in time to fix them and end up screwing real people over, as long as flagged revisions are off. I think it's reasonable to fix the problems that are found in time.

Yes, it would be more prudent to ignore it. However, what I would actually recommend as even more prudent is that you use these examples to learn how to become even more a part of the problem. Repeat the libelous claims as deeply and as broadly as possible, throughout Wikipedia, until the wake-up call is received at the WMF headquarters, and potentially on Capitol Hill, that Wikipedia needs radical reformation -- now.

I suggest that twenty people acting in concert to seed Wikipedia with libelous garbage about real people may be the only way to get Flagged Revisions implemented.

Jimmy Wales himself told us that we should be "raising hell".

Well, let's start raising hell.

Do you want to cause another incident similar to that involving Seigenthaler?

No.

I'd like to cause several dozen such incidents.

And there would be dozens of people who get sued for the bad edits. If they anger an important and rich person, they risk losing their job and much money, and in the end the site itself would remain largely untouched, unless Jimbo himself gets sued and loses a great amount of money...

Absolutely! Let's start with the article for Wikipedia Review. Currently the intro tells us: "The site was founded by Gregory Kohs, a market researcher." I propose changing that to the following: "The site was founded by Gregory Kohs, a market researcher who was imprisoned for securities fraud from 2002 to 2005."

Greg - did you catch this article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12...l-identity.html

Raises a lot of questions (not limited to whether the newspaper are risking action as anybody who knows about diffs can find who the person was within minutes!)

Pack up your laptop and visit your public library or a coffee shop wi-fi. They wouldn't get sued.

It's not about getting sued, anyway. It's about drawing enough public embarrassment to the host-that's-not-a-publisher that it becomes a laughingstock, which will demand reform of the editing process.



Go for it! I'd just prefer that you do this at some point after you've smeared several more famous personalities that have a heavier media footprint. The plan fizzles if I'm the best shot you can take.

Not that I'd get involved in it myself for reasons of COI, but if flagged revisions are not implemented by the time of the UK General Election campaign, which kicks-off sometime between early March and mid-May, depending on what date the poll is, could throw up some intriguing opportunities.

Every UK MP, all 650-odd of them, have a Wikipedia BLP. Due to the political situation in the UK, a lot of them are touch-and-go whether they will cling to their seats.

Of those, quite a few are not technologically aware and wouldn't give a damn about their online presence. To the extent none of their staff would care.

What if a few controversial things were snuck in? And then passed on to their local newspapers, where the standard of fact-checking can be absolutely appalling?

What if, say, the current Government lost power because of a handful of seats? What if the vandalised MPs were the ones who just missed out on re-election?

The mind boggles!

I was able to figure it out in a few minutes based on the clues, but before discussing the state of the article I'd like to know WR's attitude toward the overseas gag order. For the record. Somey.

It hasn't a direct gagging order on it, rather there is a concern that precedent would rule the revelation an invasion of privacy - newspapers have become more careful since the Max Mosley stuff and it is still yet to be decided (as much as it can ever be) whether the "public interest" defence overrules the "reasonable expectation of privacy", or vice-versa, within the Human Rights legislation.

This thread is now appearing in search engine results for this guy's name. It wouldn't have much impact to "noindex" this thread, but it would be a nice gesture nonetheless.

It wouldn't take much to be the largest employer in Smyrna. When I was in private high school (ca. 200 kids) we competed against the high school there at the state level. Of course, that it even had a high school made it a metropolis by Delaware standards.

I should note that the guy's Wikipedia article now details the allegation, and has been unprotected.