My Defamation 2.0 Experience by Erik Moeller, aged ...

Today, past defamatory allegations based on an anonymous smear letter which distorted and misrepresented early online comments and writings of mine, were resurrected by Fox News. I want to say definitively: I do not defend nor support acts of sexual violence against children and have never defended pedophilia in any way. Any claims to the contrary are false and a deliberate distortion of my views. Any repetition of those claims is, at best, reckless and irresponsible.

I’ve remained silent on these issues until now, so not to give credence and visibility to these falsehoods. But now, it seems obvious to me that the issue may be regularly revived, and therefore, I want to set the record straight. The experience of being defamed in this fashion has been highly traumatic and distressing to me. Fortunately, I have the strong support of my employer and my loved ones as I deal with this event in my life, and I’m grateful for all the expressions of support I’ve already received, also from within the Wikipedia community. The Wikimedia Foundation has also published a blog statement of support: I am grateful for that too.

Backstory

My name is Erik Moeller. I’ve been a Wikipedia volunteer editor and software developer since 2001. In 2006, I was elected by its volunteer community to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit organization which operates it; in 2007, I was reelected, and in 2008, I relocated from Berlin, Germany to San Francisco to join the Wikimedia Foundation staff as Deputy Director.

In May 2008, an anonymous defamer circulated a smear letter about me to various blogs, which resulted in a series of posts written by Owen Thomas for Gawker Media that defamed me as a “defender of pedophilia”. These posts did not attract much attention until April 2010, when Larry Sanger re-circulated reference to them as part of a false accusation that Wikimedia knowingly distributed illegal child pornography. This in turn resulted in a Fox News story, “Wikipedia Distributing Child Porn, Co-Founder Tells FBI”, which is prompting me to write this response. I am also now represented by a lawyer, and intend to take legal action.

Prior to joining the Wikimedia Foundation staff, I worked as a journalist (from 1996 to 2005), public speaker, software engineer, and project manager. I wrote a book titled “Die heimliche Medienrevolution” (”The secret media revolution”) published in 2004 and published in a revised second edition 2006.

I wrote my first article for a magazine in 1996, at the age of 17, a piece about artificial intelligence. Journalism was a good way to make a bit of a living, and it also was my way of thinking through complex issues that I was interested in at the time. In addition to many technical and scientific topics, I wrote extensively about censorship, copyright law and file sharing, privacy, religion, and sexuality.

Not all of my writings were published professionally: At age 20 I co-founded a secular humanist weblog called “Der Humanist”. In the following years, I also launched a blog called infoAnarchy, and wrote many stories for a community weblog called Kuro5hin.org. As a Wikipedia editor, I made nearly 7,000 edits to a large variety of articles, on topics ranging from technology to history to popular culture.

Most of my published articles are in German, and a list of many can be found on my personal homepage.

As Deputy Director, I represent the Executive Director, Sue Gardner, in her absence or on delegated projects, and oversee the development of Wikimedia’s product strategy – that is: how does the Wikimedia Foundation use technology to serve its mission, to bring free knowledge to every person on the planet. I am proud of my work: I think the Wikimedia Foundation makes the world a better place, and I am happy to be part of that.

The beginning of the campaign

Two years ago, a Silicon Valley gossip blog operated by Gawker Media, called Valleywag, began a smear campaign against Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation which runs it. Following attacks focused on the personal life of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, in May 2008 the blog ran a series of posts by Owen Thomas which defamed me by calling me a “defender of pedophilia”, deriving its claims from articles and comments I wrote in 2000 and 2001, mixed with malicious fabrications and insinuations.

The defamatory claims which originated in that blog were repeated in a small number of other blogs without deeper reflection. They were not picked up by mainstream media at the time.

The defamation campaign by Gawker was deeply hurtful to me. At the time, I also met with an attorney specializing in defamation, who assessed the claims and confirmed his opinion that they constituted legal defamation, but who also made it clear that trying to have the posts taken down would be very expensive and time-consuming. It was also obvious that any legal action would serve to amplify the visibility of the original posts, and would drive traffic to Valleywag.

I had no reason to believe that Valleywag would engage in a responsible dialogue: quite the opposite. And I didn’t want to increase its public profile. Therefore, I decided then that it was best to ignore the claims, rather than responding to them. It may not have been the right decision, but at the time I believed it was the best among many bad options available to me.

On April 7, 2010, Larry Sanger made public statements to the effect that Wikipedia’s media repository, Wikimedia Commons, knowingly hosts illegal child pornography, and that he had reported the Wikimedia Foundation to the FBI. It’s a false claim related largely to some historic early 20th century drawings, as described in the summary published by the Wikipedia Signpost. The Wikimedia Foundation’s General Counsel examined the drawings and concluded that they do not violate federal laws; we have not received any communication from the FBI to the contrary, and when and if we are asked by authorities to remove images that are illegal, we will do so.

In that context, Sanger repeated the two-year-old defamatory claims about me, adding his own defamatory comment that I was “well known for [my] views in defense of pedophilia”. This resulted in some additional visibility for these claims, most notably the April 27 Fox News story “Wikipedia Distributing Child Porn, Co-Founder Tells FBI” . Moreover, two years since the original Gawker publication, the associated blog posts remain accessible and highly ranked in a Google search on my name, thanks to Gawker’s heavy search engine optimization.

At this point, I believe it’s preferable to have a full response to these defamatory claims on the record, rather than letting them go unchallenged. If you write about this situation, I would ask you to provide a reference to this response where relevant, and to avoid linking directly to the defamatory claims in question, both to avoid perpetuating the libel, and to avoid further driving page views to its publishers.

I have no problem being called out for things that I believe. Even attacking me based on things I wrote in my late teens or early twenties without giving me a chance to weigh in is, while not fair play, forgivable. But defaming me based on deliberate, malicious misconstruction of old writings , attributing claims to me which I have never made, describing me as a person who would defend sexual violence against children – that is completely beyond the pale, it is shocking, and it is unforgivable.

I’m not going to speculate about why Valleywag, Larry Sanger and Fox News would do this: your theories are probably not much different from mine.

The intent of this post is therefore the following:

to state clearly which claims are defamatory and false;
to provide further context for the defamation campaign;
to provide context for my writings on the topic of sexuality.

Nature of the defamatory claims

The key defamatory claims originally made by Gawker include:

That I am a “defender of pedophilia”:
Pedophilia is a mental disorder which causes adults to be sexually attracted to children. Pedophiles who act upon these impulses commit abhorrent acts of sexual violence against children. I have not defended pedophilia in any of my writings.

That I have argued that “non-violent child pornography does no harm”:
I have never made such an argument. This claim is apparently based on the malicious insertion of the word “child” into a heading from an article which stated “non-violent pornography does no harm”, based on an interpretation of a German-to-English machine translation. Child sexual abuse is an abhorrent crime, and the depiction of child sexual abuse, and the trade in such depictions, are rightly criminalized.

That I “oversee editorial operations” at Wikipedia, or otherwise control its content:
Wikimedia’s projects are governed by volunteer communities. Individual Wikimedia Foundation staff members, including myself, do not control or direct editorial changes. I am not sure why Valleywag made that claim, which it presumably knows to be false. I can only assume its goal was to amplify excitement and outrage about the story, by implying that I was personally influencing Wikipedia’s articles on controversial topics.

Gawker Media made several other insinuations and defamatory claims in its posts which are so over-the-top that they are barely worth rebutting; one post attributed an edit to the Wikipedia article about child sexual abuse to me which was made well before my first edit to it, based on an incorrect reading of the edit history. That post was completely false.

Context of the defamation campaign

As mentioned above, Gawker Media ran a series of other posts with defamatory attacks against the Wikimedia Foundation before and after its campaign against me. Most of these posts were written by managing editor Owen Thomas, who left Gawker.com in 2009 and recently joined VentureBeat.com.
Gawker Media is a multi-million dollar publishing empire comprised of several blogs. The defamatory claims about me and the Wikimedia Foundation were published in Gawker’s ValleyWag blog, which was later folded into the main Gawker.com site.

The primary Gawker.com blog is a celebrity gossip blog, and ValleyWag applied a comparable editorial style to blogging about more or less notable figures in the Silicon Valley. That’s remarkable in and of itself: regardless of whether individuals are celebrities or not, they are now subjected to the same kind of invasive attacks that celebrities have long endured on a daily basis. Gawker bloggers were, at least at the time of the defamation campaign, rewarded according to the number of pageviews they produced: optimizing for the most sensationalized output possible. Heavy search engine optimization through massive cross-linking and syndication ensures that Gawker posts often rank at the top of relevant searches indefinitely.

Valleywag is widely derided in Silicon Valley: nobody takes it seriously. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause real damage. People are afraid of Valleywag, and generally stay quiet about it, for fear they will otherwise be targeted.

That’s presumably why technology blogger Michael Arrington asked in early 2008: When will we have our first Valleywag suicide? Not surprisingly, Arrington became a target of multiple Valleywag posts after writing the story. Indeed, before Valleywag targeted me, I wrote a post in my own blog, titled “The Rise of the Trash Blogs“, in response to the campaign against Jimmy Wales. I have no idea if Owen Thomas ever read it, and indeed, I do know that it was not the trigger for his series of posts about me.

That’s because I know I know the trigger: an anonymous e-mail smear campaign. I know that because Jimmy Wales received a tip-off from a blogger, who forwarded to Jimmy a long, rambling smear letter he had received. The e-mail called me “a man who would actually put Jimmy Wales to shame for his decrepitude”, and went into a long series of snippets from various writings, throwing in some bizarre and mean-spirited insinuations for good measure (for example, it stated that “I can only imagine why Google blocked one page of his blog” – which was, in fact, because of a temporary Wordpress vulnerability –, and that it was no wonder that I had “planned on moving to the Netherlands before the Wikimedia gig took off”).

I was able to confirm that the email was sent to multiple bloggers; the only recipient who ran with it was Owen Thomas. His series of posts is almost entirely based on the original email (and probably some additional correspondence with its author).

I cannot confirm the identity of the anonymous defamer and will not speculate about it. Regardless, it’s evident that Owen Thomas had no problem copying even the most bizarre aspects of the smear letter, wrapping them under the headline “Erik Moeller, No. 2 at Wikipedia, a defender of pedophilia”, accompanied by an old photo. That initial post remains, as of this writing, result number 3 in a Google search for my name. It was also linked from the Fox News story. Again, at the time I didn’t want to dignify the Valleywag posts with a response. They were not journalism as I understand it; nobody had called me to verify facts or ask for a comment. I assumed nobody would take them seriously. And so I decided to remain silent.

My writings about sexuality

My writings about sexuality focus on the core topics of pleasure/affection, pornography, censorship, and children’s sexuality. Not a single article I published either as a journalist or as a blogger focuses on the topic of pedophilia. There’s a reason for that: I have never had any interest in the topic.

Indeed, in order to support the claim that I am a “defender of pedophilia”, the anonymous defamer had to dig deep into my writings. Nine years ago, at the age of 22, I wrote an article titled “Defending the Right to Pleasure“. The article has nothing to do with pedophilia; it doesn’t mention the issue. To find a snippet worth quoting, the defamer had to dig further into the comments section of the article, where I wrote a 3,000 word response addressing various comments.

Pulling from this long, carelessly written comment, the anonymous smear letter, followed by Gawker and later Fox News, quoted three sentences out of context: “What is my position on pedophilia, then? It’s really simple. If the child doesn’t want it [sexual contact], is neutral or ambigious [sic], it’s inappropriate.” It omitted the sentence immediately following: “This excludes most adult/child sexual contact, but only little child/child contact.”

If you read the entire piece, the context of the comment and the article are clear: They argue for a less zealous approach to policing consensual sexual relationships among young people of comparable age.
From the article:

A 16-year-old girl from Oregon, a beautiful, intelligent young woman named Crystal Larkin, was sentenced to 6 years and 3 months in prison for consensual sex with a 12-year-old boy. Another 16-y-o boy was sentenced to the same sentence for having sex with a 13-year-old — again, consensual, and he was imprisoned against the explicit will of the girl and both families. This is the result of the sex abuse scare coupled with the "tough on crime" scare, as these sentences are mandatory minimums.

In other states, large groups of kids aging from 7 to 17 having sex with each other were split up into "victims" and "offenders", half of them sent to prisons, the other half to "therapy". Again, the sexual relationships were playful and non-violent. Teenagers have been imprisoned for making photos of each other while having sex — producing "child pornography".

The intent of the comment was precisely to differentiate between adult/child and child/child sexual contact. The only borderline cases are those of the type described above — statutory rape cases covering consensual sex between teens, one of whom may be a legal adult. Certainly, if I had anticipated at the time that a blog comment would be used 9 years later to defame me, I would have taken greater care to make myself absolutely clear. But, it takes deliberate malicious or sensationalist intent to construct out of this a “defense of pedophilia”, knowing the full context of the comment and blog story, which have nothing to do with pedophilia.

I have consistently defended the right of children of comparable age to engage in consensual, harmless sexual interactions with each other – what’s commonly called “playing doctor”, and also safe sex among teens. I have never defended the “right” of pedophiles to abuse children; child sexual abuse is a crime, and there is no such right. Children also don’t have the ability to consent to sexual activity with pedophiles, and such activities are sexual violence against children by definition.

All my writings (including the above comment in context) are consistent with this view. One particularly pertinent article that I wrote about the topic of children’s sexuality is called “Gefaehrliche Doktorspiele” (”Dangerous doctor games”), which describes the results of several weeks of journalistic research I had done into the criminalization and pathologization of consensual child sexual activity. Many of my views on the topic are also well-reflected by Judith Levine’s excellent book “Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex”.

Sexual violence against children, like all violence against children, is abhorrent. 9 years ago, as a 22-year-old student, I wrote about these topics with an eye to issues and questions that gave me pause – the implied consensus that children are asexual creatures, that sexuality is a switch that is flipped on with adulthood, that non-violent adult pornography is harmful to minors, etc. I didn’t believe those things then, and I don’t believe them now.

The difference between then and now is that those topics are no longer the focus of anything I write about or do. If I did write about them today, I would take greater care to reassure any reader that I, too, believe that sexual violence against children is a horrific crime inflicted upon the weakest members of society. I have always believed that, and any suggestion to the contrary is false.

Defamation in the age of the web

What’s remarkable about this entire episode is how decade-old web writings have been used against me in a blog-based smear campaign, which then, after another two years, successfully escalated into a mainstream news publication. This is an eye-opening example of how defamatory information can be spread – all going back to an anonymous smear letter distributed in 2008 – and how helpless and incompetent mainstream media can be when dealing with such challenges.

Michael Arrington proclaimed last month that “reputation is dead“. The truth is, however, that we’re in the dangerous transitional period where media, especially old media, are still received with a degree of trust that is not necessarily warranted. This defamation will probably continue to damage me and my employer. I can only appeal to you to reject a smear campaign for what it is – and to let it reflect on the people who have engaged in it instead.

I want to make a few final points.

First, I am very grateful to have my employer’s support. Throughout this, the Wikimedia Foundation has supported me without wavering. I am grateful that I work for an organization that is loyal and not easily frightened. I know that’s not true of all employers, and I’m glad it’s true of mine. I do also want to explicitly say that although I voluntarily asked various people at the Wikimedia Foundation to review this post and help me ensure it’s clear, I have not been asked by the Wikimedia Foundation to submit it for approval, nor have they asked me to censor myself in any way.

I also want to explicitly express my thanks to my colleagues — Wikimedia staff and editors — for their personal support. Wikipedia is a high-visibility website, and like anything high-profile, it attracts its share of cranks, detractors and media. Wikipedia editors and staff have sometimes been stalked, publicly maligned, and threatened. I am sad for everyone who has been targeted as a result of their involvement with Wikimedia, and I am grateful for the personal messages of support that I’ve received from others, including those who have themselves been targeted.

I also want to explicitly say this: at this point, I intend this blog post to be my definitive and final comment on this issue. The entire episode has been deeply distressing and a distraction from my work. If you are a journalist who calls me for further comment, I will likely direct you here and be done with it. I have no interest in wasting my time or my employer’s time rebutting false accusations: I have work to do.

Erik Moeller April 2010

My Defamation 2.0 Experience by Erik Moeller, aged ...

Defamation in the age of the web

What’s remarkable about this entire episode is how decade-old web writings have been used against me in a blog-based smear campaign, which then, after another two years, successfully escalated into a mainstream news publication. This is an eye-opening example of how defamatory information can be spread – all going back to an anonymous smear letter distributed in 2008 – and how helpless and incompetent mainstream media can be when dealing with such challenges.

It is generally acknowledged that children are capable of feeling sexual pleasure, even if they are not yet able to engage in sexual intercourse with each other, and/or are not yet biologically able to reproduce.

A small minority believes that children are capable of consenting to homosexual acts with older men, but all major pro-homosexual groups have rejected that view.

Again, someone who sexually abuses a minor is not necessarily a pedophile (”exclusively” ”attracted” to ”preadolescents” — emphasis on every word), but may simply be acting out of opportunity. The title “pedophiles and pederasts” is redundant — pedophilia ”includes” pederasty. This does not in any way mitigate the definitional problems of this article.

Which is worse, Erik?

Being "defamed" by the likes of Valleywag?... or having Mike Godwin's hand shoved up your ass?

My Defamation 2.0 Experience by Erik Moeller

What’s remarkable about this entire episode is how decade-old web writings have been used against me in a blog-based smear campaign, which then, after another two years, successfully escalated into a mainstream news publication. This is an eye-opening example of how defamatory information can be spread – all going back to an anonymous smear letter distributed in 2008 – and how helpless and incompetent mainstream media can be when dealing with such challenges.

"[If] any person who doesn't like their biography could request it to be deleted, [this] would result in huge gaps in our coverage. WP is an encyclopedia which attempts to accumulate the sum of all human knowledge, not the sum of knowledge which people find tolerable." (vote to KEEP) — Erik Moeller

I dunno... Are you guys sure we're not spoiling our moral-high-ground potential here with all these "ass fisting" references?

OK, now I think I understand - it's all just an allegory for the whole Wikipedia experience, isn't it?

Frankly, I've never understood that whole concept - there's little or no pleasure to be had from it for either party, it's unsanitary as all get-out, and I would assume there's also considerable injury risk involved

Perhaps Mr Moeller now feels a little more sympathy for those who reputations are regularly shat on by his army of unqualified, often uneducated Wikipedian and anonymous "monkeys with typewriters".

I dunno... Are you guys sure we're not spoiling our moral-high-ground potential here with all these "ass fisting" references?

Frankly, I've never understood that whole concept - there's little or no pleasure to be had from it for either party, it's unsanitary as all get-out, and I would assume there's also considerable injury risk involved.

[If] any person who doesn't like their biography could request it to be deleted, [this] would result in huge gaps in our coverage. WP is an encyclopedia which attempts to accumulate the sum of all human knowledge, not the sum of knowledge which people find tolerable." (vote to KEEP) — Erik Moeller

Brandt's quotation of Moeller's own comments is very apt.

Would be nice to correct everything that's wrong with this poll (such as "Wikipedia Foundation"). I mean, really... how long have we been at this, and we can't get the name of the legal corporation correct?

"[If] any person who doesn't like their biography could request it to be deleted, [this] would result in huge gaps in our coverage. WP is an encyclopedia which attempts to accumulate the sum of all human knowledge, not the sum of knowledge which people find tolerable." (vote to KEEP) — Erik Moeller

Hopefully after this incident, Mr. Moeller will have at least taken a small step towards finally learning that it isn't the information itself that people aren't finding "tolerable" — it's the loss of privacy and control over one's life and reputation that Wikipedia inherently represents, and the fear of having to deal with a faceless, anonymous, and often hostile community of people with no professional journalistic integrity or academic standing to lose, just to set the record straight.

The fact is, this is simply wrong. Even if an opt-out (or "courtesy deletion") policy were to be as liberally applied and inclusive as might be possible without being rejected by a majority of Wikipedians (and please note that it's currently being stonewalled by what I consider to be a very loud, tenacious, and evil minority), there's just no way the attrition rate would ever be more than 5 percent. I doubt it would be more than 1 or 2 percent, personally.

I notice Erik Möller's BLP has been pre-emptively protected, to prevent addition of the Fox News story.
[...]
It is certainly clear that when the subject of arguably unfair press coverage is one of their own, Wikipedia applies criteria that are quite different from those applied to Brandt.

It's long been clear than when unfair press coverage is applied to one of their own, WP applies BLP criteria different from those they apply to ANYBODY else. The only thing that comes close is the BLP coverage of some marginally notable wanker who is involved in some issue that is holy to a powerful admin (or who actually IS the editor, ala Weiss) and who thus succeeds in WP:OWNing their BLP. COI be damned. But for WMF personnel, it goes far beyond even that. This is because they are goddamned hypocritical bastards.

And because they learn nothing general, even while doing all this, and even though they do it repeatedly over the years, I have to conclude that they aren't very bright in many ways, either.

Of course, intelligence is a multifaceted thing. I'm just astounded that there's no trace of "G" here. These people are no dumbies when it comes to writing or whatever. They are college grads. They haven't had concussions and brain damage. But when it comes to social matters, their EQ is about 70. They are dumb as rocks; stupid is as stupid does.

They are the Forrest Gumps of EQ. Remember how Gump's IQ was 70, but in the film we find that his EQ is appealingly about 130 or more? Well, with the crew of WMF, it's the other way around.

Not a new observation. But still fascinating.

QUOTE(Peter Damian @ Tue 6th May 2008, 5:55am) *

Let me argue on the other side for once. Moeller's comments were taken absurdly out of context. Read his article in full, or at least the stuff around the quoted material. I don't see anything particularly damning in anything there, and indeed he makes some thoughtful and good comments (with which I don't agree, but there's nothing inherently disturbing in his remarks).

I haven't linked to the Boyline one for obvious reasons, but I'm interested in what they say.

GBG's response:

Not so much taken out of context as isolated from his overall purpose in writing the article. What has happened once again is yet another instance how "the cult of the amateur" distorts judgment. Erik launches into a very Wikipedian amateur lecture of child sexuality. He has the usual Wikipedian pseudo-reliance on authority, but in the usual manner of an amateur cut off from the actual peer review and participation in the field comes up with some very outlying conclusions. These include the premise that children, especially "older children" should be permitted to enter into any non-coerced sexual relationships they wish to pursue. Erik is blindly following his own thinking, cut off from ideas of people who know better. He concludes that this includes adult/child sexual relations. So long as child is good with it all. "Older children" are not defined but what... 13, 14 , 15 years old? This pedophilia is ok with me if it is ok with the child position was just a stepping stone in Erick's reasoning. But it was a step he seemed to clearly take in the context I have just described.

Erick may not be a pedophile or even their fellow traveler. The main thrust of his argument was meant to defend a permissive attitude to "older children" having sex with other older children and the harm done by repressing sexuality. Two fifteen year old children having sex may be a parental management problem, and may have serious consequence for the children involved, but it is hardly anything that toleration of would be shocking.

What is of greater concern is the underlying abandonment of respect for wider community norms or the positions of scholars, professionals and activists seeking to protect children. In the world of the wisdom of crowds, what is good for children depends on whoever shows up on any given day in that crowd. This is certainly no way to run a website that engages thousands of child to collaborate in a project with thousands of adults.

This is the problem exactly: Wikipedia is about the validation of what we think rather than about actually collecting knowledge. Erik thinks (probably quite reasonably from his standpoint) let the kids have their sexuality if that's what they want., but he doesn't consider the complete implications of what he's suggesting. There are social workers, child psychologists, teachers, doctors and others who have done research on this subject who might have surprising things to add, but the only that matters is the validation of his own personal agenda regarding child sexuality.

It's irresponsible. It's also completely amateur, as you so clearly put it. But it is, indeed, the Wiki way...a world in which electric knives are primarily used to create buttocks padding for male transvestites....and this is the sum of all human knowledge....

There's really only two intellectually honest positions. Either allow Erik Möller's BLP to feature the Fox News story, warts and all, unfair or not, just like other BLP subjects have similar stuff in their BLPs, or extend other BLP subjects the same courtesy.

I notice Erik Möller's BLP has been pre-emptively protected, to prevent addition of the Fox News story.

Current revision as of 00:54, 28 April 2010 (view source)
KillerChihuahua (T-C-L-K-R-D) (talk | contribs)
m (Changed protection level of Erik Möller: Excessive vandalism:
prevention, due to current coverage in media ([edit=autoconfirmed]
(expires 00:54, 28 May 2010 (UTC)) [move=sysop] (indefinite)))

OK, try it now... (to wit, Mr. Cock-up had referred to the "Wikipedia Foundation" instead of the "Wikimedia Foundation.")

What gets me about these nepotistic shitbags ...

is their constant, persistent and blatant DISHONESTY

Example, look at the the edit summary. This is so typically "acceptable" within their world view.There has been no excessive vandalism ... there had been no edits at all. The only remotely connected edit, which was removed, was in his favor.

I forget. He's such a forgettable little slug ……

The legal Age of consent (T-H-L-K-D) in many European countries is 14; in Spain, it is 13, in the Vatican, 12 (according to Wikipedia).

There has been no excessive vandalism ... there had been no edits at all. The only remotely connected edit, which was removed, was in his favor.

That last factoid is worth a DYK if true. If not, it's a very funny vandalism.

Did anyone ever find out more about KillerChihuahua in the "real" world?

Tracy E. Walker (aka KillerChihuahua) dabbles in horticulture in the real world. Her personal domain, KillerChihuahua.Com, remains undeveloped. She occasionally posts without logging in.

On Wikipedia, she is known for making prejudicial remarks, without regard for the evidence at hand, and then summarily acting as if her ungrounded beliefs and incredulous flights of fancy were scientifically grounded knowledge.

Finally, in the Tag Team Event, the award goes to Odd nature, Salmon of Doubt, KillerChihuahua, Jim62sch, Mu301 and FeloniousMonk, also known as the ID (Intelligent Design) Cabal.

Last year, she won the Tag Team Event in the W-R Dick of Distinction Award Pageant...

Relationships between adults and youths ... were practiced historically dating back to at least antiquity, when they were reported among a number of cultures ... The best documented, and perhaps the most formalized, being the Greek tradition ...

Rant and Suggestion

This article has improved, and kudos to everyone who has worked on it. I'd like to ask that everyone take a giant step back and look clearly at this article. Look at the title. Look at the content. It is NOT about Pedophilia and sexual orientation. It is about Homophobia and pedophilia. Look at the history section. If it were about Pedophilia and sexual orientation, it would begin with something like "throughout recorded history, there has been Pedophilia." Instead, the very first sentence brings up how homosexuality became less taboo in the sexual revolution. This is not germane to the subject, people. It is germane to the subject of how homophobia gave rise to a 20th-century urban legend type "all gays are child molesters" mindset, and Anita Bryant would be a good topic in that article. She is not germane to this article. I suggest we move the entire article to Homophobia and pedophilia and start a brand new article here, and if there is a History section start it in the distant past, with cave paintings if we can find any of pedophilia, and with the earliest mention of pedophilia if we cannot find cave paintings. We can add how different cultures view pedophilia differently, and have throughout history - feudal Japan comes to mind, for example. We might mention that the age of consent has varied through the years, tossing in Shakespeare's Juliet. Then on to the purported actual subject! There are eight possible permutations or categories:

Hetersexual men abusing male children
Hetersexual men abusing female children
Hetersexual women abusing male children
Hetersexual women abusing female children
Homosexual men abusing male children
Homosexual men abusing female children
Homosexual women abusing male children
Homosexual women abusing female children

It is obvious that category 2, hetero male adult on female juvenile, will probably be largest. What is second largest? Can we find statistics anywhere? Why do men who are heterosexual with adult relationships abuse male children? Can we get enough data on the psychology of each category? We must include all eight categories for this to be an article which matches the title. Currently ONLY the homophobic gay-bashing late 20th century meme is being addressed. I welcome comments, discussion, feedback - I think this article should be written. I also think it should be written from scratch, because nothing here relates to the darn title. KillerChihuahua 04:01, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

Do you think she was prodded by someone above? It is still blatantly hypocritical and two faced.

Relationships between adults and youths ... were practiced historically dating back to at least antiquity, when they were reported among a number of cultures ...

Then on to the purported actual subject! There are eight possible permutations or categories:

Hetersexual men abusing male children
Hetersexual men abusing female children
(ad nauseam)

It seems to be true.

Incidentally, in the Vatican City State itself homosexual acts are not technically illegal, for historical reasons I don't have time to go into, but which involve the laws of Italy when the city state was created in 1929. For similarly arcane reasons, the age of consent in the Vatican City State is 12 years.

What exactly is the purpose behind using KillerC's purported real name in this thread? She is not one of my biggest fans, nor I hers, but I see no reason for it.

So I will go on record as protesting this usage.

Should the record reflect your real name or your pseudonym making the protest?

What exactly is the purpose behind using KillerC's purported real name in this thread? She is not one of my biggest fans, nor I hers, but I see no reason for it.

So I will go on record as protesting this usage.

My name is Dan Walker; I am Tracy Walker's husband.
...
Tracy Walker, my wife, owns the domain killerchihuahua.com

Please send all complaints to KillerC's husband:

That was nearly 5 years ago, before wikipedia-watch.org existed. Try to get up to speed, Lar.

So this shows what, exactly? Certainly not that KillerC currently wants her identity known. My objection stands. Not that you care.

What exactly is the purpose behind using KillerC's purported real name in this thread? She is not one of my biggest fans, nor I hers, but I see no reason for it.

So I will go on record as protesting this usage.

On the notion of penning protest songs...


One purpose (presumably among many) is to provoke a futile protest, so that those looking in here may better appreciate the experience of lodging a futile protest.


Your futile protest is duly noted.

Thank you for protesting, and have a nice day.

false claim related largely to some historic early 20th century drawings, as described in the summary published by the Wikipedia Signpost. The Wikimedia Foundation’s General Counsel examined the drawings and concluded that they do not violate federal laws

http://twitter.com/wikiangela RT @eekim: Wikimedia's Erik Moeller responds to the vicious, false attacks. Please help set the record straight; retweet: http://j.mp/bO8oSn4:13 PM Apr 28th via web

People turn to poison
Quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
every time they kiss.
It's a sociologist's paradise
each day repeats
On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy
beastly Beasley Street

I think this is all a good start but really has to be worked on a bit more spreading the public concern to encompass all the amateur hard core porn they host and all children to administrate.

WikiAngela, co-founder of Wikia with Jimmy Wales, bleats "please re-tweet" ...

"... vicious, false attacks"? Save us, save us please!

COI alert: Erik Moeller is Angela Beesley's ex-boyfriend. Also worth noting that she was merely re-tweeting a message originally from Eugene Eric Kim, founder of Blue Oxen Associates -- "Imagine a world where every group, large or small, maximized its collaborative potential. Our goal is to do our part to create such a world, one group at a time.".