It occurred to me that, since the Wikipedia community is so damned repressive of contrary views, Wikipedia Review.com really serves as another forum for the project, one that is less restricted. For this reason, I'm convinced, this forum may ultimately wield as much influence over the project, on the big issues, as any forum within Wikipedia itself. Which indicates something very interesting about online project governance generally, but I'm too tired to articulate it just now. What I do know is that it's kind of sad.

Well Larry, WR struggles not to be another forum of WP. We created the "Annex," a disparaged sub-form, specifically for the purpose of placing threads that really belong on WP but are here either because of WP repression or the posters lack discernment in selecting a forum.

Re: “disparaged sub-forum”

I've always preferred the term “deprecated” because it sounds truer the more you drink.

In Vino Veritas &helisps;

Jon

That is true. The atmosphere in Wikipedia has become so dominated by "Civility", power-drunk admins and well-intentioned, but routinely gamed and perverted rules like "Assume good faith" that it is no longer possible to speak one's mind freely there, lest a posse of wikilawyers banish one to block limbo.

Wikipedia Review (at its best) is Wikipedia's conscience.

I think you know what he means ... and he is still just getting up to speed.

As I called it elsewhere, "A tall and well fortified siege tower rolled up against the walls of the Mediawiki Foundation from which it is possible to take well targeted pot shots at them, and and their senior Wikipedian defenders, which would otherwise be lost if facing the rabble of their unpaid serf infantry".

For a few of us ... and given current events it is fair to say it works ... it hopefully gains their attention, brings about positive change and, if nothing else, acts to defend/alert society and make better their victims.

There's a cat amongst the pigeons over at; Commons talk:Sexual content Larry Sanger, FBI & Wikipedia Review.



See 'Dangerous and Fluffy': Vanishered User / Adam_Cuerden / Shoemaker's_Holiday

Wikipedia demonstrated, quite a few years ago, that it was incapable of serious and sustained critical introspection, and chose a course of reflexive ostracism of all but the most loyal subjects. In the intervening years, Wikipedia apologists, on the Review and elsewhere, periodically turn up to say "Look, we've made this tiny reform, right here!" , when in fact the underlying system remains broken.

However, the sustained influence (small though it may be) of the Review has made it a forum for those WP loyalists to continue commentary outside the "system", while playing the games inside it. It's been -- at times -- a difficult choice for the community here to allow some of the worst Wikipedia political assassins (Durova, SlimVirgin, to name two) a venue here. But in the end we try to funnel the sycophants into the Annex and keep things at least a little bit clear for real discourse.

Personally, I never had the aim of influencing Wikipedia itself, I aim to influence how the world looks at Wikipedia. The more it is seen as an unreliable source of information, overly influenced by zealots and partisans, and unsafe for children, the better. The more people think that editing it is a huge risk to one's personal and professional reputation, the better. There is every reason to think that this is a fool's errand, given the small scope of this forum, but I still think it is important. One way or the other, welcome aboard.

"Where Wikipedia Goes for Uncensored Discussion of Policy"

Y'see, most commentators here didn't really see the subtleties of the word "Policy" in the subtitle — what they mostly discuss here is Power in Practice, Present Eventualities, and Pseudo-Personalities.

My first year here, I was actually naive enough to propose, several times I'm sure, that we form a special subforum dedicated to the critical discussion of Wikipedia "Policies", per se.

Seems like a joke to me now, 'cause that's all Wikipedia "Policies" really are, or ever will be.

Jon Awbrey

I don't think Citizendium has the most stellar record for tolerating internal criticism either.

See TWIMPS.

It's not really Larry's fault. The web weaves a net of powerful temptations and tempting powers the absoulte corruptions of which few human beings can resist. Perhaps just one in all of recorded history.

Jon

Discussions at Wikipedia Review certainly influence Wikipedia (we see this over and over again in adminship and deletion dicussions, amongst other things), but the goal of Wikipedia Review, as I see it, is to spread awareness of Wikipedia's fundamental defects and deficiencies with people outside of Wikipedia in order to shape public perception of Wikipedia and ultimately undermine the site so that it is forced to change or shut down.

Sociologically, Wikipedia is basically a cult, and should be understood as such. I've made something of a study of cults over the years, and Wikipedia shows quite a few of the hallmarks of cults, although certainly not to the damaging extremes of something like the Family or Scientology; we have had no reports of Jimmy Wales forcing editors to slave away in sweatshop conditions for hours just to earn a few slices of stale bread. Like the members of any cult, people leave Wikipedia when they can no longer rationalize away the cognitive dissonance of believing the untruths that Wikipedia's cultish beliefs force them to accept, or make peace with their consciences with the unethical things that Wikipedia's rules force them to do. (Others are kicked out, but have yet to leave: witness Ottava, who has been kicked out but yet still seeks to be a part of the club.) Some of those who do leave, or who are in the process of leaving, will come here, with various motives, and to some small degree this site does help them in their exit process, but that too is not the purpose of Wikipedia Review. People in Wikipedia are not likely to leave Wikipedia because of something they read here; while it is possible that in some people something they read here will push them over the cliff, so to speak, that is going to happen somewhat infrequently. In any case, insiders (and especially leaders like Jimmy and Erik and Sue) are not the targets of our discussions.

My goal, at least, is to contribute to a broader understanding of what Wikipedia is and how it works so that people who have not already been drawn in can be forewarned of what they're up against and defend against it, and so people who are harmed by Wikipedia's lack of ethical constraints can find ways to defend themselves against further harm and, just possibly, obtain justice. I have little hope that Wikipedia will voluntarily change so as to rectify its faults, and so I want to see Wikipedia's recruitment and fundraising wither away to nothing and the site dissolve in a mass of seething vandalism as the maintenance corps slowly wither away to inadequacy.

If you want to do something about Wikipedia, you need to understand why people donate to and volunteer for Wikipedia, and undermine those motivations through carefully developed public awareness education. I'm not a public relations expert, so I'm not the person to develop those campaigns; my role here is to assist in documenting what goes on in Wikipedia so the people who are developing those campaigns can do so as effectively as possible.

All very deep, worth and noble sentiments ...

The question of the mechanics of Wiki-addiction is one that I attempted to raise earlier. Of course, it is close to the bigger question, as you point out, of the causes for cult addiction.

In cult addiction, there are the obvious psychological and sociological factors involved with direct contact with others that are not so strong on the Wiki-pedia ... but as a 'cyber cult' it is preeminent.

As we have seen, individuals do slave away for less than a crumb of bread for extensive periods ... 16 hour shifts, 7 day weeks and are clearly addicted on something.

A normal 501 c NPO would be bound by a duty of care for its volunteers. Here the Wikipedia changes hat quickly and claims not to have ANY duty of care at all and only be an internet host for self-published material. Well, it is not. It is exploiting individuals' addictive tendencies and the Foundation is relinquishing its duty of care over its adherents ... just like most cult leaders do "... its their karma".

How to incorporate this "workers' rights", "duty of care" issue is the one that I wonder. Sure porno is going to raise headlines but what about workers' rights and duty of care?

This is why I think the big corporations are so keen to pay Jimmy Wales $10,000s to speak for an evening ... sub-consciously they want to know how to get workers to work for free. In terms of corporate exploitation of working classes, he is a giant from their point of view.

This is why I think the Pee-dians should at least be given or put in a claim for hardware or costs ...

Hi Larry.

Wikipedia is dying, if not already dead, but there are many insights to gain from the experience. That, I think, is one of the better purposes of WR.

The main error of Wikipedia, as I see it, is actually the total lack of project governance. Instead, there is community governance, and in fact one that is at odds with the original idea of building an encyclopedia. It's essentially maoistic, i.e. anyone who sticks their head out even once will be branded and become a target for all times, wherever they go.

Granted, things are much better than they were only a few years ago, when we were pointing things out such as The Strip Search Prank Call Scam, which included a link to a video of a sex crime right on the article,, Wikipedia's "Rape Victims" category, which used to include a horrific photo of a rape murder victim and her two murdered children and the the Crystal Gail Mangum article, which included a description of the woman's yeast infection...

One of the reasons that these articles were cleaned up is that we collectively made a big stink about them. So, we have been useful in that respect.

What this site hasn't done is to get this information out to the general public, to allow them to know that this site should not be used in any educational or academic work, especially not if it involves underaged children.

In that mission, we haven't gotten the results that we should. But we have made a difference in highlighting some of the other garbage. For the person who wants to write an exposé about this business, the information is all here and completely searchable....

Doing a search for Wikipeda + Porn finds the current story about 20 pages deep and running all around the world.

The Mediawiki Foundation is now cranking out its own PR ...

Larry, are they quoting you in their PR releases? I presume you have not been consulted by AFP or anyone else? Are they quoting something you said here on WR?

I do not know how to feed back into the AFP press machine but the story is being pumped out by AFP worldwide. AFP's Contact details are here. if you could make a reply.

You can see what they are doing ... making it look like you think you made a mistake.

As for the first sentance, it is a vomit inducing bad joke. Who does Jay Walsh think he is are fooling!?!?!

What!?!?!?!?!? Job requirements ... ability to lie blind through clenched teeth.

Elsewhere you are portrayed as a "Disgruntled ex-Member" which I flag up to everyone's attention because it is EXACTLY the same device used by cults to discredit their "apostate" members.

There is never anything wrong with the cult, it is always the disgruntled ex-members fault.

Jay Walsh, here, does not seem to be on your hive mind Daniel Brandt.

They're quoting something I posted on http://www.larrysanger.org/ -- I think that's what you're talking about. I don't think the WMF quoted me in their blog post, did they? I don't care. And, yes, to people like Mike Masnick, I am a "disgruntled ex-member" (yawn).

You can't control the narrative. It will go its own way. You can influence it and make it truer, though. That's what I've discovered anyway...

I disagree with the above for many, many reasons.

Now, if this forum purged certain people who have no connection to Wikipedia, such as GBG, then maybe you could make some claim to the above. However, there are many old remnants that exist only to make nasty attacks against Wikipedia without any legitimate criticism.

Ottava, are you promoting pogroms and purges?

That's a circular and reactionary argument - one could just as easily say we should "purge" the people who "provoke" such "attacks," because then their aggression would be unnecessary. The point is not to purge anybody unless we can't possibly avoid it, as we felt we had to do on your first "tour" here, when you were deliberately trying to get yourself banned for precisely that sort of behavior...

In any event, what you're talking about is little more than what Moulton calls "narcissistic wounding." I'll be the first to admit that it would be better, nicer, etc., if folks like GBG (and Ottava v.1.0) would be less caustic in such instances, but the ultimately the provocations themselves also add up, and can be just as damaging.

They're quoting something I posted on http://www.larrysanger.org/ -- I think that's what you're talking about. I don't think the WMF quoted me in their blog post, did they? I don't care. And, yes, to people like Mike Masnick, I am a "disgruntled ex-member" (yawn).

You can't control the narrative. It will go its own way. You can influence it and make it truer, though. That's what I've discovered anyway...

This was excellent. We have this



Followed by

The only way to stop the attacks is to remove Wikipedia from history itself.

But then they would only find a new target to vent their hatred. The attacks are only on Wikipedia because Wikipedia is the subject. They use this forum to vent their own frustration and despising of reality itself.

Yah, reality sucks.

Dr Sanger is nothing if not consistent.

Well, technically he is something of a n00b as far as WR's boardware is concerned, and double-posting is a classic n00b move. Besides, sometimes people don't get redirected to the updated thread after posting, and with everyone using tabbed browsing these days...

Absolutely. Wikipedia Review has three things going for it:
1) It is a hub for people happy with many aspects of the Wikipedia idea (the one YOU started), but not so happy with current governance and state of things.
2) It is an open forum. Not only is it interactive and community-forming, it is very open, so anyone with a good idea can get a popular thread
3) Most importantly, it is not controlled by Wikipedia!

Some Wikipedia administrators/arbitrators and so on have become so power-mad and cultish, that the idea that there is a popular, open forum that criticizes them makes them foam at the mouth. They're too used to having absolute and complete control of any criticism, to the point where a message I leave on a sympathetic colleague's user talk page gets reverted by the cabal, or even deleted - not to mention the subsequent possible bans on Wikipedia, ormaybe from the Wikipedia mailing list. For a very long time, any mention of this web site was banned from the Criticism of Wikipedia page, with arbitrators like Raul654 and others enforcing that rule. A sign of cultish behavior. The fact that all their powers on Wikipedia do not allow them to block our free speech regarding WIkipedia here drives them absolutely nuts. They are too used to using their powers to purge any signs of dissent from the project.

One sign of Wikipedia Review's power is nowadays they not only have to let mention of its existence go on the Criticism of Wikipedia page, Wikipedia Review even has its own article on Wikipedia.

I thought that was organized religion's job.

(I'm going to have to count Communism as an organized religion in that case, but if you consider the history of the True Believers and Cult Follower, that's no big stretch)

Some of these people would find and upload a real snuff film to illustrate the concept, if they could find one.

Sigh. I've been waiting to see how long it would take somebody to get one of the color photos taken during the JFK autopsy (and leaked in the 1979 invesigation) into the John F. Kennedy autopsy wiki. It took them a while, but somebody finally dared put in something other than a drawing, and it stuck. I wasn't bothered too much by it, since the man is dead, after all. Probably only his daughter cares by now, and I'm sure she's seen it. But the lack of ethical standards on Wikipedia keeps being brought to mind. There's not even much of a debate. They're simply a ship without a compass over there-- a great big megaphone with no guidelines, except that the megaphone input must provably (or at least plausably) be somebody else's smaller megaphone. It's really very sad.

The development of ethical standards for editorial decisions regarding appropriate content remains as urgent today as it was when I first urged it upon Wikipedians.

Considering all the self-made porn up there, it would probably not be too much of a stretch that some Wikitard will create the snuff film himself and then upload it.

Then, after the conviction, the Wikipediots will refuse to remove it. The sum of all knowledge!



People here are long tired of this, but this kind of thing is a direct consequence of the "don't think, just upload" inclusionism. (Just as bad is the "don't think, delete" contingent ... and the idiot 'debate' between these un-thinking groups.)

Jimbo is now demanding people exercise what anyone else knows as the usual editorial perogative -- carefully pick and choose -- and look what is happening. The Wikitwits are outraged, and some are quitting. This may well be because it flies in the face of years of applied wiki ideology, but I strongly suspect that a great deal of it has to do with the fact that their job is threatening to become quite a bit more difficult. At least compared to how stupidly easy it was in the past. "Think?", they are asking themselves. "But why?" is the only answer they know.

Larry, if you make it back here, I just wanted to remind you that there have been genuine contemporary pedophile interest pictures on the Wikipedia over the last year that we have had removed from here.

From memory, there was the young Asian girl caught urinating in the street showing her bare backside and looking very unhappy, there were a couple of young kids in a playground clothed but obviously touching their genitals, The Registered has stated "centuries old drawings" but some of the illustrations, the father daughter incest 69 and teacher school girl were perhaps 1950s, may be at the most 1930s. I do not know if they are still up there.

Yes, when we did remove it, they reverted it back as vandalism.

It has all the makings of a stereotypical "Irish" or "Polish" joke ... perhaps we can replace racist humor relating to stupidity with "Wikipedian humor"

"Did you here the one about the Wikipedian who decided to make a home made snuff movie of himself and then upload to Commons?"

Larry, after you have watched this forum for a while, I suspect that you will see that it replicates many of the problems of Wikipedia. Threads here frequently have the jeering tone that is so common on WP:AN/I, administrators/moderators move threads down when feel they don't like what they hear, and in general discussions generate a lot of churning action without ever any forward motion.

In classic form, this twit tried to snipe at WR, without logging in.

Don't criticize Wikipedia, on Wikipedia.
But it's okay to use it to shit on anyone else. Jimbo bless you.

(How's that for a "jeering tone"?)

San Francisco? — that really narrows it down.

Jon

Gee, we could sing a warning song. We got lots of 'em.

This has to be documented and made as simple as possible to find...I wish I had time to help more.

That's one way of looking at it.

And that's another. I lean toward the latter.


True; in a higher-class cult, they would at least get the stale bread.