http://www.slate.com/id/2175651/

Our favorite virgin is mentioned in connection with our favorite spooky agency!

Agger doesn't just attribute the notion to Daniel, as you might expect, but endorses it by labeling SV "a likely agent."

bump////

What the hell is this bump and ping stuff lately ???

Have attention spans suddenly shrunk to nil ???

Jonny

True words written by John Lee Ming Keong. I nominate him as the smartest and most articulate teenager on Wikipedia. (Sorry, John, I realize that this sounds like faint praise. Consider it an accident, because my nomination is truly meant as a compliment.)

Sorry Jonny I was about to fall into the land of nod so felt unable to elaborate.. I'm not sure why this thread hasn't received much attention as Slate.com is a lot higher profile than Ohmynews and similar...

EDIT: I think the thread title doesn't make clear the significance...requested title change

Here's an H₀ — folks coming here from Tabula Rasa Land, unlike most Wikipediots, already know where they're coming from, so they hardly need to hit this thread. What they are hitting is the Skinny On Slimmy (SOS) thread that brought them here from the Wild Blank Yonder (no, the other WBY).

∂'Ôh! — I see you fooled me with the title change …

Jonny

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ber/082642.html

Now there's an interesting solution — unprotect the blanked Brandt bio and let everyone write a malicious, defamatory article about what a notorious cyber-crackpot I am.

Should I be laughing or crying? Charlotte got one part right: Wikipedia sounds unbelievably fucking stupid.

No, I believe it.

Jonny

Indeed. The whole problem with wikipedia is that there just aren't enough revenge articles about people out there.

This cute story reveals more about WP than anything I've ever read elsewhere.

http://adamcadre.ac/content/brown/

And from his seat as the High Judge, the supreme enforcer of the codified laws of Wikipedia, and the last bastion of justice, he spoke at last on the matter of Slate as an attack site:



So Slate, even with its pronouncement about SlimVirgin, isn't an attack site, but the same pronouncement coming from Wordbomb qualifies as moral depravity. Clearly there is only one logical choice...Wordbomb should start working for Slate. But if Slate likes its links on Wikipedia they probably wouldn't make that tactical error.

You mean.....

"MORAL DEPRAVITY!!!!"

Leaning... leaning... safe and secure from all alarms.
Leaning... leaning... leaning on the everlasting arms.

For those who asked about this previously,
the above pic is a cheeky photoshop of
Fred Bauder's head on another body.

Damn I always forget the emphasis...hmm is this better?

That's because Wordbomb gives you unbrideled evidence. Slate gives opinion. So wordbomb is dang-ger-ous.

People who are guilty of something don't worry much about gossip. They worry about da folks who got da goods.

Given the whimsical and goofy style of this article and it being an opinion, I doubt too many people are going to take Agger and this article seriously.

Based on the tone of the article, I'm not sure even believes that SV is a likely agent.

I think he's just humoring WR, unfortunately.

The Joy ducking and covering now.

Nor should he, nor do I, nor should it even be an issue. The issue is that she showed up on WP to push a personal agenda, obtained admin powers to make that easier to do, found a bunch of patsies and stooges to help her, and in the process drove off a bunch of more-worthy editors. But that doesn't make for a snappy hook in a news article, or a sexy sound-bite, or whatever it is they're looking for out there.

But hey, no harm done, right? I mean, if all of this is completely false, then what's the big deal?

It links to WR rather obscurely with a link saying "here", and that's it.

I don't read a whimsical or goofy nature at all to the article apart from the picture.

I do. He's writing with one eyebrow raised.

Actually he goes into a lot of detail and has clearly done a lot of research on it, so I definitely wouldn't ascribe whimsical or goofy to it although he's clearly still not convinced that Google poses a risk to anyone. I think the fact he actually mentioned that SV is a likely agent is something quite significant as there was no reason why he had to include that in the article.

The reason was to say "Brandt's got a point about this google business, but then Brandt lives in a strange world where he implies that wikipedia editors are likely MI5 agents" or some such message. It isn't pouring scorn on the claim per se, but it is telling the reader to "be warned", that they are "entering a strange world". Still, it has given wider publicity to the strange world of the Slim, which was the point of the posts in the first place.

Somey's right though. It would have been helpful if, long ago, people had taken onboard the very easily proven truth that there was someone controlling a vast number of WP articles and processes, and virtually declaring the whole site to be hers by fiat.

That's your reading, I don't read that. The fact is Brandt is a good researcher and campaigner. He's not someone who just lies down and lets corporations and special interest groups do whatever they feel like doing.

This section only:



With here pointing to http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showt...st=&#entry40014

Which in turn means that you have to change the setup from threaded to normal by clicking here: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showt...014&#entry40014

Yup, that single topic had 56 guests at one point.

I read the tone as "Brandt might live on the wrong side of the grassy knoll but you discount him at your own peril."

His ID blurb on a staff page at Slate says that "Michael Agger is an associate editor in Slate's New York office. Before joining Slate, he was an editor of the "Goings on About Town" section of The New Yorker. His writing has appeared in that magazine as well as in New York, the New York Times Book Review, Film Comment, and other places."

I spoke with him for over an hour. I can't remember how I got sidetracked and started my SlimVirgin rant. My impression is that he's an excellent journalist, and I think he handled the issues well in his article. He seemed genuinely concerned about how he had been too trusting when it came to Google.

The important thing to remember is that Slate readers are not bloggers, geeks, Usenet veterans, or Wikipedia addicts. They're bourgeois non-technical professionals who cruise on their laptops with their morning coffee, the way they used to read a newspaper. For my concerns about Google, this is an audience that I'm delighted to reach. These readers start out presuming that if Slate spends any amount of space writing about something, then there's something interesting going on, and there's more to it than a bunch of wackos talking about alien abductions. That's how they approach Slate, and that's because Slate is probably the most professional magazine that has ever been created for web-only distribution. By "professional" I mean real-world, old-style, vaguely-liberal journalism that isn't fixated on Silicon Valley.

I was delighted that WR got the link. If someone is not interested in Wikipedia, or the possible role of intelligence agencies in the new digital media, then they don't have to click on it. If they are interested, then there's enough material behind that link for them to chew on.

I believe that Agger took me seriously in the interview, and I felt that his article reflected this. His apparent hedging about the wacky world where I'm coming from is a form of covering himself, sort of like a warning on TV: "This may be inappropriate for children."

He wasn't trying to diss me with that link, but was trying to prepare his readers. There are lots of other links he could have used if he was trying to make me look foolish — some Wikipedia talk pages, for example, or Wikipedia's mailing list.

Regardless of the differing takes on the link, good work Daniel. With Greg's interviews coming up elsewhere, it's all coming together rather nicely. The message is getting across. And we may just get someone here on the Colbert report still!

Yeah I guess its good if people click on the link, but its just a pity that its a little obscure.

BANG! BANG!


Maxwell's Silver Hammer comes down upon Fred's head again!

Love this edit. Of course Maxwell is referring to Fred's crazy clown proposal to the BADSITES case.

It seems a shame we all came down so hard on Maxwell not so long ago. He's certainly fulfilling his promise.

Can you spell R-E-D-I-R-E-C-T ???

Too bad Maxwell couldn't …

Jonny

Maybe that was deliberate, so that it wouldn't redirect.

Yes, good work, Daniel. I just wished Agger had elaborated more on SV and others like her on WP. Of course, the article was more about Google than Wikipedia although Google and WP are becoming more and more like conjoined twins to the point that criticizing one will be criticizing the other.

Fred toys with blackmail here.





...or if you effectively criticize us we will put the article back. Blackmail by editorial policy.

Yeah, that's the ticket — 'cause it worked so well before !!!

Jonny

So Slate is mainstream media so can't be an attack site. Good.

Developing the syllygism —

"Mainstream Media" (M&M) are allowed to criticize Wikipedia in no uncertain terms and to investigate the real-life identities of its personnel, but nobody else is?

Inquiring minds want to know …

Jonny