Wikimedia Foundation is one of 17 defendants in a lawsuit by Barbara Bauer and her literary agency. Details are unavailable, as far as I know. Bauer's Wikipedia article was zapped today by Doc Glasgow as a "bloody disgrace" but you can find cache copies on Google, Yahoo, and Answers.com. The talk page is still up.

The suit was filed in New Jersey. Go to http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/acms/disc/ and put in Monmouth for the venue, and L-001169-07 for the docket number.

(psssst: Wouldn't it be easier for Wikipedia if they zapped bios before the victim sues?)

The main criticism appeared to be properly sourced (although some of the secondary support was weakly sourced), but yeah, its not something she wants publicized and she seems very litigation prone.

Now Pilotguy zapped the Talk page. I'm getting ticked off at this suppression of evidence.

Here's most of it:

Barbara_Bauer (last article page)
History of article page
Talk:Barbara_Bauer
Talk:Barbara_Bauer/Archive_1
Talk:Barbara_Bauer/Archive_2

The article about Barbara Bauer is a stub. Wikipedia has requested my help by expanding it. I want very badly to help, but someone seems to have deleted the article. What's a helpful editor to do???

Well they might not have deleted the archived copy so it's not complete evidence supression, but more like stopping what's bothering her.

Anyway, Dan, I take it she's the first person who has sued Wikipedia over BLP. And yet you haven't sued them?

#wikimedia Well then, Barbara Bauer properly appealed to the Office, so that's one reason that Wikimedia Foundation won't be able to completely ignore the lawsuit. I'm sure Danny Wool has kept careful records of all BLP complaints, and the actions he took in response to them.

(However, if it's anything like my case, I can only assume the records go something like this: "screw him, did nothing"; "screw him, did nothing"; "screw him, did nothing.")

Fred Bauder just posted this to WikiEN-L in response to an outcry over "out-of-process deletion" of the Barbara Bauer article:


Okay, so... good for them. But couldn't it easily, and accurately, be argued that the very existence of the article on Daniel Brandt is malicious? Given that most outside sources (reliable and otherwise) agree that it is?

I mean, forget about the content, or how "well-sourced" it is, or how "reliable" those sources supposedly are. None of that really matters in his case - the article exists to needle, retaliate against, and generally piss off the subject. That's extremely well-established, as far as people outside of Wikipedia (at least those who are paying attention) are concerned.

So why not delete it? Just like they deleted this article on Barbara Bauer? By not deleting it, aren't they essentially admitting that the BLP policy is completely hypocritical?

Duh ...

Could it be because she sued them and he didn't?

Nah ...

I'm sure that it was all a matter of principle, alone.

Jonny

Well, sure, we know that... But do they know it?

In other words, for the last 18 months, they've been saying that Brandt has to be banned for making "legal threats" (though he really didn't), and that they won't delete their web page(s) about him because that would be "giving in" to his so-called "threats." And now, by way of comparison, here's someone who actually carried out a legal threat, filed suit in a real, honest-to-goodness court, and presto-bingo, away goes the article! Which means what, exactly? Legal Threats = Bad, Legal Action = Good? What kind of organization are they running? Anyway, the Keep Brandt Brigade can't possibly use the "no giving in to legal threats" excuse anymore - at least not without making it glaringly obvious that their policy is hypocritical.

Of course, I don't mean to put User:Doc_glasgow on the spot here - he did the right thing, and should be commended for it. But they'll probably all read this thread, and want to restore the article about Barbara Bauer, just to prove they're "not to be messed with." Sorry, Doc... Let's hope I'm wrong!

Gee, I was trying to play the straight man, and all it did was confuse the audience.

Jonny

Will they also ask Daniel Brandt to take down his copy? Or is it okay because he is not trying to pass it off as fact, but rather simply as what Wikipedia wrote?

http://www.sfwa.org/beware/twentyworst.html

I'm trying to have sympathy for the wronged person, but I doubt that Wikipedia is anything other than low hanging fruit for a litigant out to make money from a lawsuit.

If you google Barbara Bauer you'll find she's well known, and that list is widely disseminated.

See also http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2006/05/vict...bauer-show.html

Admins are in a fight over the Bauer article. It was sent to DRV after she filed suit, and survived that to get kicked into AfD. Today Thebainer closed out the AfD as a "delete" with the count at 13 deletes and 21 keeps! Now badlydrawnjeff is unhappy, and kicked it back to a new DRV. I think the goal here is to make sure that if the Bauer case ever ends up in court, the judge will get so dizzy following the evidence trail that he will have to throw it out! See my links near the top of this thread for the preserved record of what they're fighting about.

Well, I for one would just like to congratulate and commend Wikipedia for showing that it could do the right thing when the situation clearly called for it. An encyclopedia should never be in the business of tabloid journalism or personal revenge, nor should the efforts of thousands upon thousands of contributors be devalued by the sites' sinking into a morass of sniping, backstabbing, and ridicule by the media - not to mention the courts.

Often we're quick to assume that everything Wikipedia does is wrong, spiteful, evil, or some combination of all three, so it's nice to see the system work in favor of society at large for a change.

Thanks, WP!

They have done the same to us. We are considering legal and possible crimin al action againt Wiki-foundation for harassment, defamation and libel.


They needed to do what we did which is archive ALL of the "Talk" pages on our server. This is time/date stamped, encoded, etc. If they delete or attempt to delete the "Talk" pages from what Wikipedia "Editors" did to us, it would be considered a cover up, and that can go criminal, which we would be happy to push for.

I hope this information helps other fellow victims of Wikipedia.

pilotguy on tv http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=8840

Didn't notice this before- according to some wiki editors, case dismissed.

They only dismissed WMF as party to the lawsuit. The individual editors are still liable to be hit by that lawsuit.

Cool. Who's on tap? *rubs hands together*

If Barbara sued you over your mirrors of those pages, wouldn't you "suppress the evidence"?

I believe in free speech, but I more believe in keeping my ass out of court.