SKOKIE -- A 14-year-old freshman at Niles West High School was arrested this week after an online encyclopedia alerted school officials to a threat allegedly posted by the teen.

Article: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/searc...63690571225.txt

Teen charged after threat to school on Wikipedia
Bloomington Pantagraph, USA - 12 minutes ago
... The threat was submitted Sunday night or Monday morning to the Web site Wikipedia.com, and warned of violence at the school on Halloween, school district ...

Okay, it took me all of five minutes to figure out that the school in question is Niles West High School in Skokie, Illinois. The edits in question have been oversighted out of existence, but as of now there's a reference to them in this diff, for what that's worth. A more detailed version of the story is on the Chicago Tribune's website.

Not much that's interesting, IMO - after all, people use Wikipedia to harass and threaten others all the time - but this quote was interesting, from the Tribune story:


Submitted but not posted? What the heck does that mean? It had to be an edit just like any other, right? They don't have the funky new German-only approval system in place (yet), so this has to be incorrect. Presumably the Faithful were worried this incident would make them look bad, so they made up a blatant lie to cover up the fact that anyone can post threats on their website?

Shameless.

Likely the edit mentioned a real name like "I John Smith will do X". I doubt that an IP address really would be traced and even if it did, it would get their parent's info and such.

So if someone put a real name down, they could even have framed someone.

Well now, there's an interesting point. Get your playground enemies in big trouble by posting threats to your school on Wikipedia using their names... Hmm, where have I seen that tactic before?

It's that extreme-straw-man sock puppet idea again! Only it doesn't make sense. Why would SlimVirgin or Cyde or Rebecca care about Niles West High School in Skokie, IL? In fact, why would anyone care about anything that happened in Skokie, IL? I've driven through Skokie, IL once or twice, and frankly it's nothing to write home about. It has a big mall, I guess, but it isn't anywhere near as upscale as, say, Schaumburg.

"the online encyclopedia-like Web site Wikipedia"

You mean Wikipedia isn't an encyclopaedia, only a web site that looks like one?

It's a massively multiplayer shoot-em-up of all of human knowledge inside of the Ministry of Truth.

I'm still trying to figure out how you can submit something without posting it... Maybe the kid sent Danny Wool a handwritten letter via the US Postal Service?

Oversighted: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...est_High_School

Right - I got that, but there had to have been a period of time when the edit was visible to the world, and they're trying to imply that this wasn't the case.

My guess is that the press inquiries on this were directed to Brad Patrick himself, and that he's probably the one who came up with this peculiar "explanation." He's been known to say this sort of thing in the past, most notably in the recent Editor and Publisher interview in which he baldfacedly claimed that a disclaimer warning users that they're legally responsible for their edits appears "prominently" on every edit page.

If so, then it's just another in an ever-lengthening list of arguments to support future claims of bad faith and legal negligence on the part of the Wikimedia Foundation.

There is no pre-post moderation.

Well, there you go then! So the question becomes this: Should we, as concerned citizens, send angry letters to the newspapers, magazines, and other media outlets that regurgitate these false statements, correcting these kinds of inaccuracies and asking them to kindly verify whatever Brad & Co. may say about Wikipedia's policies and procedures in future interviews?

Or should we send calm, cordial letters saying basically the same thing?

Or should we send out our own press releases, pointing out how certain supposedly-respectable journalists are clearly failing to do their homework and perform even the most rudimentary fact-checking on things the guy is saying?

I'm not sure which would work better. However, I'd have to say that reporting Brad's misstatements to the Florida bar is rather pointless. They'd probably give him some sort of award for them, quite frankly.

It's USENET wearing gay deceivers.

<img src=http://news.google.com/news?imgefp=ABCYz_-y77oJ&imgurl=www.chicagoist.com/attachments/chicagoist_alicia/wikipedia2.jpg width=80 height=72 alt="" border=1>Wikipedia Prevents Bloodbath (Not Really, But Kind Of)
Chicagoist, IL - 3 hours ago
He hinted that some bad things were going to happen at Niles West High School in an email to Wikipedia, and once the Wikipedia administator alerted the school ...

Okay, now they're saying the kid e-mailed these threats to the school to a Wikipedia admin? So why did they have to delete the article and restore only the previous revisions? And if the kid just e-mailed it to someone, why couldn't they just say so? Maybe they didn't want a rash of copycat e-mailers spamming the hell out of the entire admin crew, but still, someone should clarify this a little better.

Not that it's hard to confuse me, you understand...