I had enough of wikipedia I have now decided to wage
war and two fronts on wiki.

First is to engage in part time systematic
vandalism of Wikipedia.

Particularly subtle errors introduced to basic
articles with the goal to make Wikipedia an unreliable
general reference for the average high-school/collage burnout.

The second, to bring to light the horrible law,
section 230 CDA is and how it enables Wikipedia
to be the PIG FARM it is.



Also a message to my little friend Scotty...

Hello pathetic and cowardly little man
AKA...Goethean (T-C-L-K-R-D)

Make no mistake, I have ABSOLUTELY no respect for your beliefs and methods of intellectual thuggery and bullying. You are a pathetic and cowardly little man. You are intellectual, spiritual, and morally corrupt as you have shown with your shameful ways of gaming Wikirulez, and other equally low thuggery, bullying, and other fundamental hypocrisy. You foist your rotten and flawed point of view on Wikipedia with no concern for other people rights and opinions. All of this is reflective of the lack of ethics and character you lack on wikipeidia for years now. What is sad is no one calls you to task, with out getting wacked by your admin friends.

Now if you like to hide in Wikipedia, protected by the scummy admins there, fine, but I make you a challenge, assuming you are brave enough and so sure of your beliefs, to crawl out from the dark and dank hiding place you have on Wikipedia and come on to Wikireview (a venue where you can't call an admin with tools, where you have to stand toe to toe on the merit of your augments and defend your sorry self, to the charges I make there, that your new age beliefs are garbage, and your world view is mishmash of liberal bull-donkey.

Again, if you should MAN UP instead of being a coward, then I await your presence at Wikipedia Review so you can tell me and the, world at large, why your so right and the world is so wrong. MAN UP or hid like the weak bully boy prick you are.???

Any rate I be waiting for you here.

]It is doubtful that wikipedia actually qualifies. By all criteria WP is not a service provide but a content provider.
http://www.copyhype.com/2011/05/umg-record...v-veoh-networks

I think a duel with pistols would be far more manly than arguing on the internet, but I'm old-fashioned like that...

I would prefer a saber duel.

Well, I would prefer to be the Wikipedia attorney on this. That attorney may argue that the owner, the WMF provides the web site as a service to the community that actually creates the content, that they do not control the content, except as necessary for legality, i.e., as governed by the law covering service providers.

That is, they will take down violating content on legal request, and they will respond to subpoenas for user information, I presume. They cannot be held responsible for content absent a takedown notice, because they do not have the labor to monitor that content. It's monitored only by the community, volunteers and vandals and sock puppets and all.

The office must be very careful about how and if it intervenes in content. If the office were to start exercising direct editorial control, there goes the legal protection.

I can understand the feelings, I've certainly felt like vandalizing Wikipedia, and I have some sympathy for those who do, with blatant vandalism. I also have some sympathy for those who insert harmless false information as a test, provided that they clean up afterwards (all the known "response testing" efforts have done this).

But actually inserting harmful information and leaving it there, no, I have no sympathy for this, because the harm it creates impacts the readers more than the abusive administration of the project. I have done two edits by IP that could be considered "vandalism." They removed apparently good information that had just been added by IP. My edits were very quickly reverted, before I could even consider restoring them.

They were reverted by the IP whose edits I had removed, though. RCP didn't notice. To me, the information developed was more valuable, overall, than the very transient loss of information for a short time. (And that information will be eventually shared.)

"To live outside the law you must be honest." -- Bob Dylan.

VoC, this is so petty it's hilarious. Get a life and a girlfriend. I can't believe people think Wikipedia is worth wasting time over unless you're getting paid/laid for it.

I was in the process of composing a post asking how WP can possibly get one laid, and then I twigged. Other than Jimbo, you aren't suggesting it can get anyone else laid, are you? I'm pretty sure it has the opposite effect in most cases.

Nope, I mean that it's a waste of time because you don't get laid for editing Wikipedia. And unless you're dear Mr. Greg here, you probably don't get paid for wasting half your life on some stupid website fixing up articles about boring peoples' companies.

Vic, am I to believe that you don't like Goethean any more?

Any one, who relies on wikipedia for life and death information is crazy irresponsible to a point of absolute malfeasance and bold face stupidity (see Darwin awards for prime examples of your typical wikipediot reader). The point of the vandalism is to make Wikipedia even more so unreliable and useless as a source of any accurate information of any kind.

Now the legal... See the exploits of Professor Tim Perice of Northern Illinois University and the legal threats made by the wiki empire. Professor Perice and the University told them to pound salt. Since Wikipedia is an "all can edit" website, and since they have in place a mechanism to deal with vandalism as well as it's own disclaimer statement. Wiki has not a legal leg to stand on regarding vandalism.

Again, any one chooses to use Wikipedia information for life and limb decisions is a MORON at best and at worst a prime candidate for the Darwin award web site.

Please stop saying this. It's not true, and you've been told hundreds of times it's not true. The only way you lose Section 230 protection is if you explicitly direct people to provide or generate tortious content. Section 230 protection is not waived or breached by exercising after-the-fact editorial control, to any degree; the case law is crystal clear on this.

Excellent point, Kelly.

But, a question. Do you think a crafty lawyer could demonstrate that hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles are, by their very nature, a public nuisance and invasion of privacy of private individuals, and that by not installing available safeguards (like Pending Changes) the WMF may be directing people (in a de facto way) to continue libeling private individuals?

I think about the Roommates.com case (if I can call it that), where a mere drop-down box that included sex, family status, and sexual orientation was enough to trigger a Section 230 test. It doesn't seem too terribly difficult to envision a similar test being put to a repeated host of libelous content that elects not to deploy an anti-libel tool that is readily at its disposal.

Unless you have a girlfriend who finds it fascinating that you edit wikipedia. ... as long as you don't spend too much time on it, of course.

The situation that Roommates presented was that the website forced contributors to choose from a limited selection of options, and in so doing substantially channeled contributor expression. (The fact that the questions they were asking were also ones that a housing broker is not permitted to ask likely also played into the equation here.) The Wikimedia Foundation has never imposed any such channeling restrictions on content; all editing is via free text fields with virtually no guidance, either mandatory or advisory, that would tend to channel contributor expression. All the content rules that do exist have been created by, and are enforced by, the user community, almost entirely by after-the-fact moderation. The only place I know of where dropdowns are used is in the licensing-of-uploads process, and that is an area where Section 230 doesn't apply anyway (Section 230 explicitly excludes copyright claims from its scope), nor is the question "Under what legal basis do you claim the right to contribute this content?" one which a hosting provider has no legitimate purpose for asking.

So while I'm sympathetic to the claim that Wikipedia is a public nuisance, Section 230 is quite clear that they have no legal obligation to either use or not use "safeguards" (such as "pending changes") of any sort. The only legal requirement imposed on them is that they respond in a reasonable time and manner to complaints about content which is being distributed via their service. Section 230 explicitly discharges hosting services of the obligation to predict what sort of content their customers may choose to provide, or to take any effort to alter the behavior of their customers; all they have to do is remove potentially tortious content in a timely manner when advised of it by the injured parties. In any case, the Wikimedia Foundation has made the Pending Changes feature available to its customers; it's the customers who have elected not to make use of it, not the Foundation.

If I were a Wikipedian, I would not want to be involved in pending changes in any way. Any reviewer of changes is on the hook for any tortious content that they do approve, and so anyone stupid enough to do edit review of controversial articles is basically pasting a "sue me" sticker on their back. There's just not enough gain for the cost to be had. Sure, Wikipedia's reputation might gain, but that means very little to the average Wikipedian; Wikipedia's reputation is already more than good enough for their purposes, after all.

Harumph.

Somehow, some way I envision poor JoJo snapping and necessitating the storming of his house by a SWAT team. I hope you barricade yourself well and hold them off as long as possible to continue posting here, my boy. This is quality entertainment

What are you Tarc, the resident Wikiclown??? You seem to be drunk on the fresh keg of Jimmy Juice.

Any rate, you are an epic loser and wikidrone any way.

How will we tell?

You wont... I have been engaged in this type of vandalism for some time now.

spelling, numerical values for elements, compounds ect.. and other...

Unless it rises above the general level of Wikipedia Troothiness, it won't register.

Sure. However, be wary of "only way" comments. If it could be shown, for example, that after-the-fact editorial control was selective, that Wikipedia was gaining benefit by avoiding taking reasonable measures to prevent the posting and maintenance of a tort, then it's possible that the veil of protection could be pierced. That would not be easy to prove. But I wouldn't call it impossible.
There is little limit to what skill and craft can accomplish. I'm thinking this would take a class-action suit, really, because what the plaintiffs would be trying to show would be a pattern, repeated across many cases. The legal theory would be that by setting up and maintaining conditions that encourage libel, they are amplifying traffic to the site, thus being able to make more of a case for soliciting donations.

A skillfully filed suit would cost the Foundation quite a bit. I don't see it as being in the interest of the Foundation to maintain conditions that would encourage this. Overall, the Foundation is, my opinion, better served by finding better ways to fulfill the stated mission and promise of Wikipedia. I've long stated the problem this way, personalizing it to Jimbo:

Jimbo has a tiger by the tail. He knows that the tiger is doing damage, but is terrified of what will happen if he acts. If he kills the tiger, there goes the source of energy and labor for Wikipedia. If he lets go of the tiger, it may eat him.

The Foundation is afraid that if it interferes in content decisions at Wikipedia, beyond satisfying legal requirements per take-down notices, etc., they will offend the volunteer force on which they completely depend. They do not have the resources -- even if Gardner were to donate her entire salary -- to pay for editorial supervision of Wikipedia. In my view, what the situation needs -- and has long needed -- is efficient process for determining what might be called "true informed community consensus." That has been resisted, from the first day it was proposed (an experiment that *might have* led to this), and my conclusion is that it is resisted for the same reason that reforms leading to fair distribution of power are almost always resisted by those who hold excess power.

In an established organization, then, this kind of reform must come from the top, unless something that I've never seen happen were to happen for the first time: bottom-up organization using the principles involved, creating a separate power structure that is organized for efficiency and intelligent decision-making. It's not likely, because few even understand why it would be needed. On the other hand, my structural theory indicates that this could start with only a handful of users who agree to cooperate, putting in place a scalable structure that could survive and function even if membership soared into the millions.

Isolated disgruntled users who have had "enough" can cause damage beyond their numbers. Imagine what would happen if a dozen disgruntled users were organized and coordinated and disciplined in how they proceeded, and if they included people who truly understood the structure, and its weaknesses. Then imagine what a hundred users could do if they saw beyond their immediate discontent, returned to the original purposes and goals of Wikipedia, and began acting, again with coordination and discipline in a structure that efficiently seeks consensus among all participants, maximizing it, to bring about the realization of those purposes. Esperanza was shut down precisely because off-wiki decision structure had been set up, it *might* have shifted the balance of power, and it was in a weak period, vulnerable to the attack. Esperanza was vulnerable, my opinion, because they did not use advanced structural techniques, they used classic board or executive-committee-oriented structure. Had they been ready for what was coming -- they absolutely did not expect to be attacked as they were -- they'd not have been vulnerable. They assumed that they could have most of their activity on-wiki.
"I certify that the content I am providing is not libelous, and I understand that, if a court requests it, otherwise private information about my access of Wikipedia will be provided, so that a plaintiff may determine my real identity, and so that I can be held responsible."

Think that would slow some of these wikipediots down?

That could simply be in a user agreement, with a checkbox required for all edits. A user could provide a generic agreement, and then the checkbox would not appear with each individual edit. As it is, there really is no user agreement, beyond a surrender of copyright noticed with each edit. Maybe.

Relevant here, "vandalism" is not defined. If I think that Wikipedia is a giant role-playing game, all moves are part of the game. That the site pretends to be an encyclopedia is just part of the game. Professor Pierce did not do anything illegal. And I notice that "Zoe" was promptly defunct. Vandals 1, Admins 0.

There are already a few such groups in operation, independent of VoC or the other WR users who have said they will vandalize Wikipedia subtly. It's been going on for years, and the only people who know about it or accept it are the people doing the vandalizing. The Wikipedia "community", in all their arrogance and deluded madness, will not even admit that such vandalism is successfully being carried out. If they did, they would appear to be redundant. So, they keep on lying to the world, and the world (being kept in the dark about the actual situation) doesn't care.


It's worthwhile to quote a critical part of the 2007 AN/I argument involving Pierce, to show how deranged the "precious community" often is. I happen to agree with Pierce's method, there's no better way to show a student that the "reference" he's been using is untrustworthy, than to have him change said reference.

And the response to Pierce by (more than one) Wikipedia admin was: "how dare you mess with our anyone-can-edit website, we'll fink you out to your university president and try to get you punished".

Please note the comments made by Mel Etitis and Piotrus. This event caused admin Zoe to quit Wikipedia, and may have convinced the famed Canadian idiot HighInBC to abandon his previous account, claiming "physical threats to his family" (though he continues to be a semi-active editor as Chillum).