QUOTE
Discussions by banned editors
I just listened to your conversation with the banned users. There were a number of things I felt should have been addressed. At one point (in file #1) Somey claims that Wikipedia Review is a open forum, so that people can freely converse with little or no censorship. (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it). It is, of course, a bald-faced lie. Just ask user:Grace Note (aka, user:Dr Zen). He was banned from the site when he exposed the fact that Wikipedia Review's founder, Igor Alexander, was in fact Alex Linder, a neo-nazi, and his postings and evidence were deleted. You probably didn't know that, because they don't like to talk about that much. WR feels that no-holds-barred with OK when dealing with Wikipedia or its editors, but they are very touchy when confronted with the truth about their own actions.
I don't know all the circumstances behind it, but the article Moulton mentioned (the 'founder' of the affective computing field) was Rosalind Picard. Long story short - in the US, there's this thing called the discovery institute, a creationist front that exists to market the idea that evolution is a "theory in crisis" and that creationism is right. They put together a petition called A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. That petition is a professional embarrasment to every academic (I use the term loosely) who signed it - and rightfully so. So anyway, Ms. Rosalind Picard signed it, and now (presumably) doesn't want this fact known. Moulton, who works with her, was trying to censor this fact from her article, and the members of the ID wikiproject (including Filll) - who have to deal with these attempts to whitewash the truth on a daily basis - weren't particularly thrilled. That's what led to the troubles he described. In other words, it's all his fault and he brought it all on himself.
Wikipedia Review noted that he drew inspiration for his pay-me-to-edit-your-article buisness from Wikipedia:Bounty board and Wikipedia:Reward board. I'd like to point out that both of these articles state, very explicitly, that all donations are made to the Wikipedia Foundation, not the person doing the editing. Being paid to edit an article absolutely clear-cut conflict of interest, and if he says he didn't think it was, he's a fool or he's lying.
You said in the podcast that you are a "technical ignoramus". I am not - I'm rather knowledgabout about computers and how they work. Wordbomb claimed in the podcast that the spyware he sent Slimvirgin was no different than any commercially available cookie. This is a complete untruth. If he was sending someone a link to a file on a server on which he had access to webserver logs (the http access log at /var/log/httpd) there would be no need for any client-side script -- he could simply check the log. Now, let's say he attached it the files to the email instead (so that he was sending the files themselves instead of a link to them) -- most (all?) email clients provide a utility for the sender of an email to request a return reciept (see this for example). It's equivalent to sending certified mail. What he sent - a surreptitious program that dials home to a mother server when the email it is attached to is accessed - is spyware by any definition.
The discussion with all of these people tended to focus heavily on the reasons surrounding their initial bans (and highly biased descriptions thereof) while glancing over their numerous misdeeds since. Also (and these would have been good points to put towards Somey) [1] there was one cases on WR where Wikipedia Review ranted at length about one or two socks that were absolutely not his, and that these were clearly good users who had been swept up by overzealous admins. When I checkusered them later, it turned out they were sockpuppets belonging to Jon Awbrey (another banned user/wikipedia review participant) impersonating Wikipedia Review. And while it's concievable he didn't know and thus wasn't lying, I thikn he was lying and I take anything they say with with a large grain of salt. [2] It would have been nice of you to ask Somey about the real-world harassment that Wikipedia Review has spawned. In one case, a member there (almost certainly Lir) reported user:Snowspinner (an admin and english major in Florida) to police because of fictional stories (admittedly violent ones) he had put on his personal website. The police harassed Snowspinner, demanded he voluntarily be fingerprinted, threatened to search his garbage, etc, until Cory Doctorow made a lot of noise about it; in another case, user:Katefan0 (a very good editor and generally a very nice person) was outed as a worker for Congressional Quarterly, and had to quit because of possible bad-effects on her job. Of course, I expect Somey would give some idiotic answer along the lines of 'these are the acts of individual wikipedia review participants and can't be used to judge the whole site', but frankly, WR encouragese these acts and I consider all participants there to be either actively or tacitly guilty of fostering harrassment. Raul654 (talk) 04:37, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Privatemusings"
I just listened to your conversation with the banned users. There were a number of things I felt should have been addressed. At one point (in file #1) Somey claims that Wikipedia Review is a open forum, so that people can freely converse with little or no censorship. (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it). It is, of course, a bald-faced lie. Just ask user:Grace Note (aka, user:Dr Zen). He was banned from the site when he exposed the fact that Wikipedia Review's founder, Igor Alexander, was in fact Alex Linder, a neo-nazi, and his postings and evidence were deleted. You probably didn't know that, because they don't like to talk about that much. WR feels that no-holds-barred with OK when dealing with Wikipedia or its editors, but they are very touchy when confronted with the truth about their own actions.
I don't know all the circumstances behind it, but the article Moulton mentioned (the 'founder' of the affective computing field) was Rosalind Picard. Long story short - in the US, there's this thing called the discovery institute, a creationist front that exists to market the idea that evolution is a "theory in crisis" and that creationism is right. They put together a petition called A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. That petition is a professional embarrasment to every academic (I use the term loosely) who signed it - and rightfully so. So anyway, Ms. Rosalind Picard signed it, and now (presumably) doesn't want this fact known. Moulton, who works with her, was trying to censor this fact from her article, and the members of the ID wikiproject (including Filll) - who have to deal with these attempts to whitewash the truth on a daily basis - weren't particularly thrilled. That's what led to the troubles he described. In other words, it's all his fault and he brought it all on himself.
Wikipedia Review noted that he drew inspiration for his pay-me-to-edit-your-article buisness from Wikipedia:Bounty board and Wikipedia:Reward board. I'd like to point out that both of these articles state, very explicitly, that all donations are made to the Wikipedia Foundation, not the person doing the editing. Being paid to edit an article absolutely clear-cut conflict of interest, and if he says he didn't think it was, he's a fool or he's lying.
You said in the podcast that you are a "technical ignoramus". I am not - I'm rather knowledgabout about computers and how they work. Wordbomb claimed in the podcast that the spyware he sent Slimvirgin was no different than any commercially available cookie. This is a complete untruth. If he was sending someone a link to a file on a server on which he had access to webserver logs (the http access log at /var/log/httpd) there would be no need for any client-side script -- he could simply check the log. Now, let's say he attached it the files to the email instead (so that he was sending the files themselves instead of a link to them) -- most (all?) email clients provide a utility for the sender of an email to request a return reciept (see this for example). It's equivalent to sending certified mail. What he sent - a surreptitious program that dials home to a mother server when the email it is attached to is accessed - is spyware by any definition.
The discussion with all of these people tended to focus heavily on the reasons surrounding their initial bans (and highly biased descriptions thereof) while glancing over their numerous misdeeds since. Also (and these would have been good points to put towards Somey) [1] there was one cases on WR where Wikipedia Review ranted at length about one or two socks that were absolutely not his, and that these were clearly good users who had been swept up by overzealous admins. When I checkusered them later, it turned out they were sockpuppets belonging to Jon Awbrey (another banned user/wikipedia review participant) impersonating Wikipedia Review. And while it's concievable he didn't know and thus wasn't lying, I thikn he was lying and I take anything they say with with a large grain of salt. [2] It would have been nice of you to ask Somey about the real-world harassment that Wikipedia Review has spawned. In one case, a member there (almost certainly Lir) reported user:Snowspinner (an admin and english major in Florida) to police because of fictional stories (admittedly violent ones) he had put on his personal website. The police harassed Snowspinner, demanded he voluntarily be fingerprinted, threatened to search his garbage, etc, until Cory Doctorow made a lot of noise about it; in another case, user:Katefan0 (a very good editor and generally a very nice person) was outed as a worker for Congressional Quarterly, and had to quit because of possible bad-effects on her job. Of course, I expect Somey would give some idiotic answer along the lines of 'these are the acts of individual wikipedia review participants and can't be used to judge the whole site', but frankly, WR encouragese these acts and I consider all participants there to be either actively or tacitly guilty of fostering harrassment. Raul654 (talk) 04:37, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Privatemusings"
Sense of humour bypass there, to an extent.
