Swingtips conquer Wikipedia
- by Gregory Kohs, for Examiner.com

Not only is this an interesting case-study, it includes a healthy dose of Cirt!

Should be interesting to watch the fate of the subject article over the next 48 hours. I'm rooting for its survival, of course!

Was it that bad of an article? "News Not Worth Discussing"?

Now you know how I feel.

Sheesh, you'd think someone would at least have the decency to vandalize it or something.

Will the Examiner.com accept some outright stuff about the Wiki-porn issue ... Pornopedia etc?

I am prohibited by Examiner rules from linking to or reproducing that sort of offensive content, but I can certainly discuss it in non-offensive terms.

Ewww...I don't want to know how you feel. You're not my type.

I enjoyed the article, but would have preferred a 'straight' article about the band minus the Wikipedia content.

You have a considerable writing talent.

I guess that for the audience here noting that the COI rules are broken, and that Cirt is a loon, are not exactly breaking news.

As the "Wiki Edits Examiner", it would be a bit out of my assignment to simply cover swing bands, though.

<blunt mode>
Well, seeing as you asked, not one of your best. Dangerously close to Wikipedia Annex material.

I think you'd have to be into Wikipedia to see the interest in it. The absurdity of COI is appropriate, but even from here I'm not seeing an article about that, just more unfathomable goings ons of Wikipedia.

Someone plugs their band, so what? Someone gets arsey on Wikipedia about it. So what? That someone writes obscure articles on companies they like themselves. I think you are too close to the problem on this one that you'd think that the detail of the story is of interest.

I think the Cirt thing also meant that there was some sort of lurking payback going on in the story, which might not be picked up by the public readership, but anyone from our sphere would pick up on the Cirt poking.
</blunt mode>

I think there is something worthwhile in using the Examiner as a platform to mildly ridicule Wikipedia, but you need to pick the targets that have both some humour and some subtle unsettling aspect. I think things like furries, where you can get the ick factor without breaching the smut guidelines is one thing.

Alternatively, if you are going to do COI, why start with some wiki-nerding when there are a raft of really important things like a highly condensed naked short selling for public consumption (still relevant the recent fines for the big banks and insurance companies are a continuation of a mega-COI where the attitudes where Jimbo Wales sided with the corporates to feed Wikipedia with their disinformation via Mantanmoreland over those who pointed out that Wikipedia was being duped).

I waited 4 more hours than impatient Greg waited and still no response. Was it that bad a comment?

Well, it is 4 AM here in Pennsylvania, after all!

Please do.

Thank you for your blunt and detailed comment, Doggie. I do fully understand that this was "Annex" material. My intention, though, is to build a library of at least 50 columns over the next year (for traffic and payment purposes, plain and simple) -- and there just aren't 50 "big picture" topics related to wikis, I'm afraid. So, it wouldn't surprise me if I end up with about 30 "Annex-worthy" articles, and only 20 "whoppers", in the end.

I thought that the Swingtips article at least had some rounding out, in that it explained COI policy, showed Jimbo Wales to be a violator of it himself, and suggested that some admins who police promotional content are fully capable of writing promotional content. Still, I hear your complaint, and I'll just brace myself for the distinct possibility of non-response when I write things of a lighter ilk.

(Note: I sincerely appreciate any comments on my articles, though -- they add to the payment equation. I can't tell for sure, but it seems like each comment left on my stories is another nickel or dime in my pocket. Eventually, this depressing pay scale may lead me to write a Finkelstein-style piece on the poverty of digital sharecropping.)

I see where you are coming from, I think my angle was trying to put myself in the seat of someone who was not a wiki-obsessive, as many of us are here. Examiner gives the impression of being a real publication, and I was impressed with the quality and style of the article in terms of look and feel. However, the actual meat of this didn't really work, in my opinion, especially as it is very easy for your critics to belittle your efforts simply by pointing out your track record of obsessive poking of The Wales.

I also think that WR is not necessarily the right place to review your content - it is the wrong audience to explore whether the message is getting through. You need some tame, less involved, audience. I think a bit of feed back from there, even if it is putting upon family and friends, would allow you to tune your articles better to a wider audience.

I'm going to give a bit more thought on that article as an example. I had a bit of an epiphany on getting messages across when dealing with my wife who was trying to advertise computer training courses. It was pointed out to her that she should not be advertising training, but she should be advertising the problems that people had, because that is what people would relate to, don't advertise "Browser training" but "Do you want to book theatre tickets on your computer?" (not the best example, but you get the drift, I assume). I think there was something in the article that was too much in terms of "our world" rather than the readers' world.

There is no shortage of subjects to pursue.

Fixating on content is a waste of time. It serves only to render observers more and more content-blinded or content-hypnotized. It is far harder to examine the competence-eroding practices behind the content generation process, too hard for anyone to bother with so long as they can blather on about the minutia of yet another article all day.

Jon Awbrey

This is one case where I can say, without hesitation, that I agree with Jon 100%.

It's the process that's corrupt.

Sure, a corrupt process will produce junk product, but the diagnosis has to go to the process, not to the products coming off the mis-assembly line, one by one.

You haven't followed the dark, weird story of what happened to the Examiner after Hearst decided to sell it off in 2000, have you?

First, Hearst dumped it. To the batshit-crazy Fang family, who already were putting out a free giveaway paper (whose website usually doesn't work). So they made the Ex a free "community" tabloid, meaning that it turned from a genuine evening newsrag into a mess of crazy conservative/paranoid/whatever editorialists, adverts for medical marijuana and gay prostitutes, and assorted pseudo-news and non-news slop.

That was how Hearst avoided a federal antitrust lawsuit, for owning both major newspapers in a major city market. The Fangs got a famous title, the Hearst company paid the expenses. And thus avoided harassment from the feds.

When Hearst realized that they didn't have to worry about antitrust anymore (because the Ex was no longer a "real newspaper"), they stopped subsidizing the Ex. So the Fangs sold it to Phil Anschutz, who decided to keep it going as a free daily. And made the editorial content even more conservative/weird. They basically are now an adsheet, with bloggers writing screeds that look sorta-like news, plus some service stories--mostly from Bay City News, an odd little outfit that repackages news items for low-cost sale to local newspapers. The Ex has zero actual professional reporters on staff.

Trust me, it's crap. You would learn far more by reading their freebie competitors, like the SF Bay Guardian or the SF Weekly.

(And take heed. If the newspaper industry continues on its present course, all newspapers will end up looking like the Ex.)

Gresham's law. People don't really think they die of misinformation, but sometimes they do. And people absolutely have irrational notions against PAYING for good information. They think it ought to be "free." So here we are. The most precious thing in our society (if you disregard empathy) is knowledge. And knowledge is disrespected everywhere. In places were it is respected, it's stolen.

THe line you left out of your syllogism is "Power corrupts" ala Lord Acton. But Acton meant SOCIAL power corrupts.

That's what keeps all knowledgable people from being evil. Einstein turned down the presidency of Israel. Said he knew nothing of politics and didn't want to learn, either.

A corrupt process can produce pretty good camouflage for itself. All of Wikipedia content, discussion, and policy pages, not to mention its ever up-ramping PR initiatives and press releases, fall into the category of camouflage for what Wikipedia is actually doing behind the scenes to mis-train its naive participants. It's 2010 — most academic, mainscream, and e-journalistic commentators are staring professional death in the face and they can't even recognize it. Witness those traitors to critical thinking who manage the Critically imPOVerished List, just for the example du jour.

Jon Awbrey

I've been trying to bring Moulton to the power of the dark side.
No go, joe. He's a gooooooooooood boy.

I was being careful in my words. Anyone who would have Greg doing editorials on Wikipedia...

Examiner.com seems to be a "reliable source" as far as Wikipedia is concerned.

Even though they say it's not...

Over 1,700 outbound links, and from a cursory glance, it looks like many of them depart from Main Space articles.

This gives me some ideas.





P.S. To say that Examiner writers "do not need to answer to any vetting process" is wrong. I had to pass a criminal background check, and the lead editor of my National category has the authority to remove any of my articles that are false, defamatory, or otherwise break Examiner's policies.

Phyllis Diller was married to Fang:

While I'm sure there are more than a few Wikipediots who would say that my Examiner articles are having no impact on Wikipedian behavior, the traffic stats say otherwise.

First, I gotta figure out how to make 'em laff.

I'm still studying Humor Theory. Please bear with me as I tediously struggle through the bumptiously disregardable lab exercises.