http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/07/...ia-purges-porn/

WR helped break this wide open. Well done, guys!

I expect there will be a lot more twists and turns to this soap opera.

It looks like Jimbo is deleting many of the more blatantly pornographic images himself, such as those displaying penetration and, of course, the all-important "facials." The edit summaries for all the deletions say "Out of project scope: cleanup project."


Did we? Seems like we've been discussing this issue for four years, possibly longer, but then you write a published letter to the FBI, and it starts to get "cleaned up" in less than a month!

We should probably just change the name of the site to "ChoppedLiver.com," if this incident is any indication... Unfortunately, most of the "choppedliver.*" domains are currently being squatted, but if we wait long enough, maybe someone will forget to pay their registrar fees.

You've collected the evidence, you've articulated the arguments--you've provided the research base! I've learned a lot!

Very likely what scared Jimbo into acting was the report that Fox News was talking to the big donors about the porn issue on Commons.

Yup. Jimbo has two things he cares about: money and participation. With the Fox News thing, he was being hit in both of them.

Without comment :



Money and participation, did you say?

From the handwringing going on on foundation-l -



Whatta boob.

this sleazy jackass is playing both sides of the fence

For those of you who don't know Maxwell, he's the poster boy for wikipedia arrogance and sleaze. He thinks he's better than everyone but puts on diminutive facade; "as I've been frustrated and disappointed by my own inability to convince the commons community that some things, like the bulk copying of erotic imagery from flickr— hundreds of images with little to no prospect of use in an article, was inappropriate."

This asshole once edited an animated gif of male ejaculation; his edit summary was "Bigger is Better". I believe this was on en and has been deleted. He also went about harassing Christians by vandalizing their user box (with Cyde). And now here he is droning on about how he selflessly tried to rescue Wikipedia from this porn debacle before all hell broke loose, and bemoans "how ineffectual" he was. What a sleazy two-faced hypocrite.

Wow, great job FoxNews. Maybe this is part of what pressured Wales into action. Much better than the "report them to the FBI" tactic, though I suppose Fox News never would have picked up the story were it not for that part.



Sounds like Network for Good is the next one to contact. Anyone here up for it?

Given the ham-handed way Jimbo went about purging the Commons of porn, there will be another round to this story. There is no way Jimbo can continue to police the porn, single-handed. He will need the volunteer admins to continue policing the site, in accordance with realistic criteria and a functional community decision process. Given today's Keystone Kops fiasco, it's going to be hard to construct both a policy and a functional process, going forward.

And without such a policy and process, the big donors have no guarantee that the problem is solved.

So the backlash is beginning for Jimbo. The Board's mealy-mouthed statement (which probably indicates that the Board is deeply divided on how to proceed) offered him no support; meanwhile, he went way overboard deleting content and deleted several well-established artistic nudes in addition to going after the garden variety porn that no doubt has his valued donors screaming in his ear. Now the people at Commons want him deadmined, except that they can't do that: Jimbo is a Global Founder, and that means he has irrevocable admin rights on every project and nobody can say otherwise.

Today's lesson: do not start something without understanding how you will control it once it gets going.

Yeah, WTF was up with that? Sometimes I wonder if Jimbo is being intentionally destructive of the very goals he pretends to support.

Just because a picture is old doesn't mean a nun shoving a dildo up her vagina is "art".

I think it's a safe bet that he simply doesn't care.

In the real world, publishers have a little thing called Editorial Judgment, also known as House Point Of View. People will argue up one side and down the other about whether it's the right POV, but they will respect the effort to maintain a moderately consistent outlook, a rational perspective, and the responsible practices that are their consequence.

But Editorial Judgment is the Baby that Wikipediots toss out the window while keeping the Bathoswater of clown-cloud-sourcing.

And so the wiki-pendulum swings … we tried to tell them it wouldn't be pretty … but they wouldn't listen when there was still a chance to avoid the feedback howl that's coming.

Jon

Doesn't care about what, exactly? I don't think he's doing this on a whim.

I guess going after deletions which he knows he's going to lose makes him look better in the eyes of the prudes. I guess I've gotta stop assuming he's got more of a backbone than that.

who moi?

That's not just any nun, but Saint Teresa of Ávila. I believe that's a rendition of one of her ecstasies. There's some inside religious humor there, inasmuch as she's one of two founders of the Discalced Carmelites, but all she's wearing (besides the wimple) is her shoes.

She left the hat on, Mickey …

Jon

No, he's doing it because one of his sugardaddies called him up and said that if he didn't do something about this right now there'd be no more sweetness coming his way. Jimbo's running scared right now, and he's in crazed maniac purge mode because of it.

You're overanalyzing him. Jimbo's not that creative a schemer.

Thought Leader to Ground Control …

Thought Leader to Ground Control …

I said that.

I realize that the function of PR people like Jay Walsh is to lie to people, but that statement takes the cake. I don't think he said a single true thing in that entire piece. Some of the lies are really quite bald-faced, too. I don't understand how people like that sleep at night.

They lie down.

Jon


9½ Wiks

Jon

I don't see what all the fuss is about. Porn on Wikipedia has been an issue for years. Even Wikitruth covered it. There are only four new elements at the moment, as far as I can tell:

1. Larry Sanger noticed the issue and went to the feds.

2. Fox News noticed Larry Sanger doing this.

3. Larry Sanger came on Wikipedia Review and a lot of newbies on WR felt that WR, rather sleepy of late, was exciting for the first time in their limited experience.

4. Wikimedia Foundation has been empire-building during the last few years with hefty grants from Establishment sources, and by now they need to keep the money coming in so that the San Francisco partying never stops.

Yawn...

I take it that you don't see these events as possibly suggesting a more general approach that might bring about reforms in other areas...?

FWIW, I don't think I do - public media pressure can only get them to fix problems that the public can easily grasp the nature of. Many of the more egregious abuses we see on WP have nothing to do with sex, porn, or manga drawings of little girls (with or without their clothes on). I'm not even sure I'd call the porn-related issues "emblematic" - after all, with something like porn, even the dumbest of WP'ers should be able to discern when the site is being spammed, pranked, or otherwise manipulated. They've allowed much of it anyway because that's just part of the culture, but even if that changes, it doesn't mean that shaming them via Fox News is now the Best Way To Get Them To Do The Right Thing™ in general.

Maybe Indictments for creating and distribution of child porn, from the US attorney, on the JAGS that run Wikpeidia will get they're attention?

Follow the money...


Oddly enough, Jay Walsh professes to be baffled about why Jimbo waded into the porn issue yesterday...


I agree with Kelly's view, that Jimbo was responding to WikiLobbying (or the fear of WikiLobbying) by the big donors.

And (courtesy of Stephen Colbert), here is your definition of WikiLobbying:


Clearly the unpaid volunteers are not as motivated by money as Jimbo.

The comments are pretty funny on the fox article... a few pointing out that when they google "teabagger", the first result is this WP article.

(I didn't know the sexual connotation either, btw.)

I've never understood the use of “teabagger” as a political reference. The Boston Tea Party was about ripping open bags of non-representationally-taxed tea and dumping the lot in the harbor. So it really ought to be “tea unbagger” or “teabag harbor-dumper”. What that means as a sex act — Ouch!!! — I don't even want to think about it.

Jon

I think there's more to it - the foundation and Jimmy have obviously concocted a strategy. I suspect in this case that the foundation wants to control the content without looking like they control the content, so the actions are meant to look independent. Jimbo gets to look all righteous on his deleting spree and the foundation 'agrees' with his actions, as an independent editor.

I doubt that's the case. Instead, I believe what happened is Jimmy got a phone call from a sugardaddy, panicked, and went on a deletion spree without consulting anyone else. Then, when people started objecting and yelling, he tried to harangue the Board into supporting him, but the Board refused to do so, because several of them share the community's values on such things, at least enough that they're not willing to remove all nudity whatsoever from Wikipedia just to keep one of Jimmy's sugardaddies happy.

Historically, the Foundation has never been able to effectively develop and implement a strategy to do anything; there's no reason to believe that this instance would be any different.

maybe my choice of the word 'strategy' was generous, but before Jimbo kicked off his commons rampage he also mentioned that a statement from the foundation was on the way.

Jimbo ordered the Board to produce such a statement. The Board refused to oblige him; the mealy-mouthed statement that Michael Snow released (which in no way supports Jimbo) was the best he could get out of them. This incident has been a major blow to Jimbo's authority within the Foundation, and I think there's a very real chance that he'll lose his "founder" status (or at least the privileges associated therewith) as a result of this mess.

Really? Do you think he'll put up with that? At some point the guy's gotta realize what a monster he's created. I guess that time is rapidly approaching, and reality is starting to catch up with poor Mr. Wales.

So much for your theory that Wales can do anything he wants in Wikimedia, eh?

interesting. do you have an inside scoop here or are you speculating?

About Jimbo's deletion spree, it won't stand as is. What he has to do is de-sysop some of the more obnoxious idiots on commons, then a bunch more will leave in a fuming huff, then those left can embrace the new party line.

<edit>
a large number of Jimbo's deletes are being reverted.

Also, I think most of those pornographic .svg images are copyright violations. Someone rips off an image and runs it through a jpg to svg converter. The original is hard to identify from the svg, but it's still a derivative work and therefore a copyright violation.

Another tidbit: I noticed two Foundation employees chit-chatting on IRC today about how they'd be voting in favor of removal in the poll to remove Jimbo as Founder except that they feel that doing so while employed by the Foundation might be viewed the wrong way.

Wow! I go away for a week and look what happens. I think Kelly's supposition is on the mark, and when I read the statement I wondered if that could have been the same one Jimbo had expected to vindicate him. It doesn't, in a way that should be deeply troubling to him, although anyone else should have seen this coming a long way off. Backchannels must be on fire.

How come the only way Jimbo can do something right is by doing it wrong?

I just reread this and realized you probably meant they'd vote in favor of "removal of the bit", not "removal of the poll".

To say the least. As in, you risk being bitten while the lion retains any of his teeth. Coups are messy, but failed coups are messier.

That's 100% right, but as Jon Awbrey said, GFDL stands for Get Fucked Dumb Loser.

Well, Jimbo's behavior may be odd, but there's nothing odd about Walsh professing to be baffled about the answer to a question to which there is NO answer to this that won't cause the WMF to get into either some kind of hot water, or cause them to have to do something official.

Spokespeople for organizations, including The White House Spokesperson, can be incredibly ignorant when it serves them to be. And the amazing thing is that they're hardly ever called on it. It's not as though some journalist with a long attention span ever stands up and says: "Okay, I understand you don't know the answer at this minute, but would you please ask and we'll ask you the same question when next we see you?"

And then goes again and asks again? And if no answer is forthcoming, repeats and repeats and repeats until it's very, very VERY clear that he's being stonewalled?

There's some really interesting "musing" coming from some guy called "QCoder00" on the Commons IRC channel:
It's amazing the strange universe these people seem to inhabit. Apparently documenting the content available to the public on a Wikimedia site is now an offense against public order and must be stopped.

These "attempts to censor" should really be documented somewhere. It's like reading the emails of the Roman emperors just before the Vandals arrived. Pun intended.