<img src=http://news.google.com/news?imgefp=gCcJQY8pd5oJ&imgurl=www.latimes.com/media/photo/2007-09/32856355.jpg width=80 height=35 alt="" border=1>
Wikipedia wars erupt
Los Angeles Times, CA -41 minutes ago
Mzoli's Meats, a butcher shop and night club outside of Cape Town, South Africa, was the subject of a lively back and forth on Wikipedia. ...


View the article[br]

This story was been covered by Wikipedia Review in this thread.
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=12893

The LA Times article links to this site called wikirage. Anyone seen this before?

Wikirage? Yes, I think David Gerard made a post about it on the mailing list. The creator of Wikirage has a WP account. Evidently, he also had a wikipedia article at one time that was deleted. Which is probably a reason why he says this on his blog:


Of course we could have told him that he really doesn't want to have an article on Wikipedia anyway.

I saw you (Kato) and GBG's comments on this article in this thread, but since I'm here and that is what the topic is about and all, I guess I'll chime in here. Honestly it seems a little surreal. The writer's target audience seems to be...nerds like us that actually know what he's talking about. Must have been a slow day for "web scouts". Also, note that it is filed under "Entertainment news"!

It is interesting what 'mainstream' media outlets report on Wikipedia and how that is changing. First it seemed like the reports centered around some kind of mystical thing called a "wiki", which the writer rarely understood or described correctly, then the "HEY, YOU MEAN ANY ASSHOLE CAN EDIT THIS THING?" episodes after the Siegenthaler controversy, now it seems we've moved into reporting on rather trivial community events. This article is about the minutia of internet community interaction! That does not seem like a good thing for Wikipedia, and people have often said that if others knew what exactly what went on "behind the scenes" it would be realized as a big joke. God forbid, is SlimVirgin going to be a household name one day? Are children going to collect trading cards of their favorite wikipedia admins?

Of course, the people in the middle of these petty squabbles (most of the core community, actually), want to stick their head in the sand and pretend that no one is going to care about that. Once these things become more and more common knowledge, who is going to want to donate to a glorified (non-profit ) internet community? One might as well send the donations here...

Everyking was right on with his comment. This has happened before, will happen again, and it is one thing that cannot be fixed. If writers are going to start to focus on these things, then that is a heck of a problem for Wikipedia...

And from the mailing list, somewhat related to how I view this article, is a quote that could have come from one of our very own (I'm thinking of GlassBeadGame )


I believe we'll see more detail of this dysfunction in articles about wikipedia and the dysfunction of the community will become common knowledge among the uninvolved, just like vandalism problems are now. The difference being, you can't solve this problem with software changes.