Robert Harris, the consultant that the Wikimedia Foundation has asked to look into the issues of controversial content, has created a page on Meta-Wiki to introduce himself and "provide a forum for all Wikipedians to discuss the various relevant issues at play."

And, oh, look, WAS 4.250 has already taken a potshot at Wikipedia Review, on the discussion page.

This will be as affective as tossing a Glade air wick stick in to an ocean of festering monkey shit.

I viewed that as part of WAS 4.250's sarcastic assessment that Harris probably has no idea how impossible is the task laid out before him. Not a potshot at Wikipedia Review.

I do not get this at all. When did "worked with Sue Gardner for 17 years at CBC" count as a job qualification and 'employing recent graduate daughter as assistant' confirm professional detachment? Funnily enough, a recent blog post of his was "Selling in Tough Times – From “Cronyism”… to Collaboration"

Robert Harris is listed as a director of the 'Halton Children's Aid Society' who's mission is "to protect children and enable them to grow and realize their potential within a safe and nurturing environment" but is this also the same guy ... an announcer/producer on music radio show ... May 24, 2008 was the last broadcast of his 'I Hear Music' show.

So ... where is the 'child protection' experience ... where is the sociology or law experience ... where is the Web 2.0 experience (he admits none bar an enthusiastic user of the Pornopedia)

I dunno ... a lot of people are re-inventing themselves as corporate consultants and leadership coaches these days.

Typical that they would address "controversial content" by talking with Wikipedians. Where is the input from other stakeholders?

There is this:



This strikes me as very narrow. The only remotely outside groups are "family education groups" and "school libraries." He is torturing language not to say "parents." No mention of the child protection community. No mention of any religious groups, including the 500,000 Muslims who have actively petitioned Wikipedia on a specific controversial issue. The usual suspects from "free Internet speech" (eg Free Kulture Fanatics) but not any "decency" or "watchdog" type of constituencies. Also no mention of museums and other cultural institutions who find themselves undermined by Free Kulture extremism such as National Portrait Gallery. This is so narrow I wouldn't be surprised if even those remotely "outside" groups are dealt with by just talking about them with Wikipedians.

I just sent Mr. Harris the following e-mail:



EDIT: Additionally, please note that I am not User:Rock Honor.

No, turn your sarcasm detector on. WAS's comment is actually quite funny.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:2010_W...tent#End_result

More PR From Brutish Pedium

When you don't give a hoot about the Reality, throw some bucks at controlling the Image …

Jon

The Whores of Perception.

I don't know why I'm feeling so generous, but I'd like to give Robert Harris the benefit of the doubt, until we see how he acts in service of Gardner and the Foundation. He may not know fully the mess he's walked into. Perhaps it's just a psychology experiment for me, but I would like to provide him with at least reasonable assistance, and see what he can accomplish with it.

Granted, I'd put 99-to-1 odds against anything truly groundbreaking and ethical to ultimately result from his efforts, but I'm willing to enter into it with a fair perspective.

Another data point...

Harris' daughter, who will be assisting Robert on this project, has a Twitter account. The #1 person she's following is Jimmy Wales.

-1 for the Harris team.

I'll fast forward a bit:

GK: I'll help. I'll help.
WP: Go away troll.
GK: But I have so much to offer.
WP: We don't want it.
GK: I'm shocked and disappointed.

His comment is absolutely brilliant. "You will know you have succeeded, if at the end of this study ... fourteen year old administrators are provided with clear instructions concerning controversial content (since blindly following the rules substitutes for editorial judgement in too many cases; BLP is an example - admins were literally claiming they had to treat people no different than buildings in order to follow NPOV policy ...)

Could anyone here sum up the problem with under-age admins better than that?

Robert Harris, The Internet Watch Foundation, Cade Metz, John Seigenthaler, Prof. Taner Akçam, a decoy from Perverted Justice, Jana Winters, a dozen California Protective Service case workers, The curator of the National Portrait Gallery and half a million Muslims walk into a LA talent agency...



The talent agent is aghast and takes a moment to collect himself. Finally he says "What do you call the act?" Robert Harris looks up and says "The Aristocrats."

Slick, Oil.
Oil, Slick.

Somehow that “Pouring Oil On Troubled Waters Panacea” (POOTWP) just ain't the panacea it used to be …

Jon

Don't remind me of the film. A gross joke told once may be mildly funny, if you like irony and are in the mood. The same joke told over and over and over again by different people for 2 hours, generates a sort of horrid fascination that makes you think of using the thing as some kind of punishment. As in: "Who can we duck tape to a chair, and have this turkey loop over and over, in front of them?"

I vote Michael Snow.

Greg's not the only "banned user" on the talk page of the controversial content study.
James Salsman was banned 3 years ago, but he continues to create accounts and edits project wide by IP like nothing has happened.
He even hobnobs with Wikimedia Foundation employees at meetups.

edit: Oops, Greg's comment has been removed.

I probably like the joke because I never saw the movie. I can see how it could get dreary after a couple of versions.

well I've sort of tried to paraphrase / put it back - and I've asked for RH to explicitly allow 'banned' users to contribute. In re-reading it, I haven't actually represented Greg's point particularly clearly (sorry!) - but I hope the gist remains.

I also kinda told off 'Rock Honor' - who might be cock up.... over here? - either ways it was a bit like getting savaged by a dead sheep - I guess I was having a Howe moment....

I'm with Greg in hoping for the best, whilst not expecting anything......

You. Have. No. Idea.

Well, was it or was it not Cock-up? I am not sure I get the insinuation you are making here.

Dory Carr-Harris has now protected her tweeter ... http://twitter.com/xxdch. Her last 5 posts as student journalist on The Torontoist suggest an ability to produce and recycle PR and ... She already appears to be listing herself as a "Consultant to Wikimedia Foundation, Inc" on her Linkedin page.

Now, strictly speaking that it is not true, is it? She is employed part-time by her daddy at Robert Harris Resources (if she is getting paid at all). An English Lit grad with a years work experience as an editorial assistant at Doubleday Canada ... which could even have been an internship for all we know.

So -2 already.

I don't know Kohser ... as a management decision from the director of a multi-million dollar, worldwide NPO, it strikes me as weak and lacking in both imagination and competence.

How serious do they take this issue to be? Was it a 'pathetically bad' decision or was a 'deliberate' decision of the board, e.g.

"let's be seen to employ someone but not make any changes ... so find someone cheap that you know but who knows nothing of Wiki-culture and we can control".

Godwin, Snow, Wales et all DO strike me as being able to make such a decision. The guy is off to bog himself down doing original research that an related academic or voluntary sector expert could print off by the bushel. And what do we make of his hiring his daughter as assistant?

"I dont understand this geekie IT stuff, so I'll get my young daughter to do it as it will look good on her CV."

I would have expected at least a senior representative of the child protection community and someone with some legal knowledge. I think what we have gotten is a toothless fairy.

These "corporate consultants", remarketed recently as "leadership consultants", are a dime a dozen. They are the snake oil salemen of our capitalist era. Their "companies" dont exist, their websites are just a network of other "corporate consultants" that they have met and like. In my opinion, for the most part they are just selling 'false confidence' mixed in with a few new age and business aphorisms; hired by bosses who have no clue on how to 'gee up' and entertain jaded management.

Funnily enough, as an aside, it is a career path for more than a few new age cult adherents who seek to re-invent and re-market themselves and cash in on some of their guru studies sold back to the corporations at corporate rates.

At present, Robert appears to be in the 'enamored' phase of Wiki-relations. As a non-editor, he knows nothing about the bitter reality of the culture and characters ... the wiki 'bottom wipers' are already into action removing commentary off it which he wont know has happened ... but perhaps even attempting to manage his talk page will soon teach him a few things.

I suspect it will be soon edit protected and he will do his research from within the gated community of the MWF world view.

Agreed. Totally disgusting and not for the feint of heart. I don't know why youtube leaves stuff like this open to all ages.

The All-American Bob Saget's version.
Gilbert Gottfried's version.

Gilbert is funnier, but Bob gets bonus points because of his image.

"Commissioning a study" in the face of negative media attention is a classic and obvious stall tactic - I can't imagine any serious WP observers falling for it, but luckily for the WMF, most of the reporters who write about WP are not serious observers.

Less luckily for the WMF, their collection of "controversial content" - which is really just their word for fringe porn - isn't likely to go away on its own, and you can only fool the media for so long before they finally figure out what your game is.

Hopefully something positive will come of this, though - maybe Harris' daughter will get a shiny new car with the consutancy fee money, and the sale of the car will boost the economy slightly. It's nice to see they're doing something with all those "charity" donations other than letting them get sucked up into the ludicrously overpriced San Francisco commercial office-space market. (That reminds me - aren't they due for another massive earthquake soon? )

The individual ones are not nearly as bad as the total impact of one-immediately-after-another, again and again and again, from first to last. As Napoleon said in his own statement of sorites, "Quantity has a quality all its own."

Wretched excess.

Sometimes I think its encouraging when WMF adopts even the worse of normal non-profit culture. According to a well worn story the new Executive Director of a large non-profit finds three sealed envelopes in her desk with a note saying "Good luck. Open one envelope in the order provided whenever you face a crisis." Shortly later the ED is faced with her first crisis and opens the first envelope it reads:

"Blame your predecessor."

She does this and while nothing improves the crisis eventual fades. A while later another incident arises and a even worse crisis develops. She opens the next envelope and reads:

"Commission a study."

She does this and things settle down and the crisis is largely forgotten by the time the finding of the study are released so nothing is ever implemented. A short time passes and yet anther crises rocks the organization. The ED by now has confidence in the wisdom of the envelopes and turns to third one to find:

"Make three new envelopes for the next Executive Director."

Good one.

New book ... 'Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality' by Gail Dines

http://ffeusa.org

http://sexandculture.org/about-us.html
-- facebook.com/pages/Center-for-Sex-and-Culture/28812555275

http://nsrc.sfsu.edu
-- http://facebook.com/sexresource?v=info
-- http://facebook.com/sexresource?v=wall

Yeah I know, significantly underfunded compared to the vast amount of censorship lobbyist sites...

I note the cover of the book in comparison to the quote has not anything more generally representing sex or the American porn industry (which nearly everyone agrees is mostly abusive) but a picture of a fetish boot.
Yep. That's the symbol of the target/"enemy".
That and the quote makes it clear what it's really about, it's a targeted attack on sexuality that doesn't conform to their strict conservative standard of what sex is, and "normalisation" e.g. tolerance. It's pretty smart of them to realise that the tone would otherwise be obviously aimed at restricting expression and so instead try to characterise THEMSELVES as the ones who are offering "creativity", freedom (opposite to their "limits sexual behavior") and excitement (opposite to "boring") when in fact they are the very opposite.

http://thesaurus.com/browse/conservative

It's a common tactic of those kind of groups to try position themselves as the oppressed ones while at the same time making out to be the "voice of the silent majority" while receiving heavy funding from conservoreligious lobbyist groups...


http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminists_Against_Censorship
-- http://fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC

sexuality.about.com/b/2006/08/22/sex-question-of-the-week-what-does-sex-positive-mean.htm

velvetparkmedia.com/blogs/zanele-muholi-black-lesbian-and-african

amazon.com/Caught-Looking-Feminism-Pornography-Censorship/dp/0942986121

informaworld.com/smpp/806373170-34107633/content~db=all~content=a904708213

http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-01-29_132

sexposfemme.blogspot.com/2006/07/5-myths-about-sex-positive-feminists.html

amazon.com/Dont-Need-Another-Wave-Dispatches/dp/1580051820

http://thedevilspanties.com/archives/927 (more: http://thedevilspanties.com/archives/1480 / http://thedevilspanties.com/archives/575 / http://thedevilspanties.com/archives/1124 / http://thedevilspanties.com/archives/1128) )
http://thedevilspanties.com/archives/date/2006/04/11

thelesbianpodcast.com/interviews/Body-Heat----85394147.html
-- http://facebook.com/BodyHeatTour?v=info (the main website on Myspace got closed down due to complaints from these same kind of people... REALLY incredibly insidious how the massively funded religious right lobbyist slimeballs like "Gail Dines" try to style themselves as the underdog, twist things to try make out that they are championing creativity and freedom while doing the exact opposite in attempting to corral society backwards towards their regressive idealised "traditional" version of sexuality.)
-- http://facebook.com/BodyHeatTour?v=wall

I also fail to understand why they would hire a private "consultant" without the relevant research or policy experience to handle this. Clearly they are only concerned with PR here, but its a pretty bad PR move to entrust a "research study" to someone who is clearly a PR consultant and not a researcher.

Yeah there's a certain kind of mindset among a certain type of people that all you need is PR in the world, throw enough PR at things and it will be true... Serious research e.g. honesty is never valued as much...

By their appointment of this guy it seems most likely is that at the board level they have already decided what they are going to do (probably some sort of crackdown on non-mainstream content), the PR operation here of course would be to make whatever change they have planned look like it was the result of input from "the community".

Honesty is something people like Jimbo require of everyone else, but never provide themselves. It is absolutely not surprising that the WMF takes after its founder in this regard.

I think it's far more likely that they'll just muff around for a while and do nothing. They have to know that a "crackdown" will cost them a great deal of both traffic and volunteers, so any crackdown will be 'for show" only. They aren't going to depornify the Wikipedia until Jimmy is facing either jail time or loss of income, and that point is quite a ways off indeed.

Nah, this is a PR stunt: "Look, we hired a consultant!" The consultant will mill about visibly until the press attention dwindles and then they'll quietly pretend that nothing ever happened.

Thank you. For me, it appears so wrong as to be ... COMPLETELY ... out of orbit.

And there you have it folks, the real secret. It does not matter whether you are black or white, gay or straight, left or right, or Michael Jackson;

... the big trick in life is whether you are funded or unfunded.

Through the good offices of PrivateMusings, I was able to get my 2 cents in.

Did you need to use these good offices, with their efficient air conditioning and thick carpets? You are not banned on Meta, as I understand it. There is not even an account of that name registered.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Herschelkrustofsky

I do urge you to post on Meta and see what happens. It would at least be an interesting experiment.

Oh boy. Yet another breaching experiment.

Which reminds me, Jay Walsh - spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation - also came fresh from a position as Manager, Public Relations at Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

When did "worked with Sue Gardner at CBC" count as a job qualification? That is a hell of a small pond you are fishing in there, dear.

You might want to add Mona Venkateswaran (former Senior Director of Business Administration at CBC News) to the list, as the outside accounting consultant who helped the Wikimedia Foundation doctor balance the post-Carolyn Doran books.

Mona is also "a raving, swooning fan with arms flailing in the air, at the front row of every Morrissey concert".

Golly. Did Sue work, ah, under Jay?

Well, now we know how Joan of Arc felt, as the flames rose to her Roman nose and her hearing aid started to melt.

Ehhhh....uggghhh....thank you for making me vomit.....

There are a lot of musicians that I could forgive for unintentionally becoming freak-magnets.
But Morrissey ain't one of them.

Robert Harris has emerged from his bunker.

After a month of painstaking review, Robert Harris uses several paragraphs to say, "I think we can solve this porn issue with some user-selected filters."

The brown paper wrapper option used with adult magazines, suggested here years ago, and probably at WP:PERRENIAL.

What is it about the WP community that they are incapable of recognizing a good idea of somebody else's, or at least one worth trying? They're not "stupid" in the ordinary sense, but they don't work and play well with others. Nor do they have any respect at all for history, and the previous experience of others. Yes, they're like high school boys. Or else ARE high school boys.

MR

Here's a fun thought: All IP editors have to view WP through the maximal amount of net-nanny filters as default, and they cannot be removed for IP users. That takes care of shared school addresses automatically. You want to see the less filtered stuff? Become a registered user. Want the really totally unfiltered stuff? You have to supply working email address also (which at present, is not necessary to register).

It appears that the exact same condition afflicts the Wikimedia Foundation's "weird little buddy", Craig Newmark, of Craigslist infamy.

Link to audio story on NPR

Please listen to the story. I have a feeling we'll one day hear a similar one focused on the WMF'ers.

Sorry, I gave a text article link. Actually hearing the Missouri Attorney General's voice and assessment of Craigslist has more impact. Please give it a listen.

... and how much money did Sue's old out of work friend from Canada get paid??

That will only possibly be made "open" and "transparent" in next year's Form 990 filing with the federal government.

Robert Harris has published a lengthy "Librarians's Perspective" on the 2010 Wikimedia Study of Controversial Content. As I read the letter from Nancy Black, Manager, Access and Information, University of Northern British Columbia, if you believe in Intellectual Freedom as she does, there should be no restriction on the access of "information" to anyone, regardless of their age or what the "information" may be.



One interesting point she makes, and it is one that the Wikimedis Foundation has studiously avoided acknowledging, is