•Jimmy Wales in drive-by shooting of Wikipedia
guardian.co.uk, UK -9 minutes ago
It seems there are now two memes about the modern net that are gradually becoming embedded in the public consciousness: (a) Twitter is a waste of time ...

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Oh dear, it's all getting a bit silly isn't it - has anyone actially read what I wrote? Or seen the article, as deleted. It was so inocuous anyone reading it would have been bored to tears. Of the several hundred pages I have written for Wikipedia, that has to be the most dull. I see I'm described on the Telegraph's blog as "new" and "not typical" - well they are half right I suppose. Jimbo's mates posting there don't seem to want to mention that I have written one or two pages that are considered not too bad. Funny old world isn't it?

Giano

It started getting a bit silly the moment you registered your account, Giano.

Why did you (re?)create the biography?

I read it, and it looked like a hatchet job to me - I don't know how much of that was your doing.

Anyone know what this new proposal may be? I've been working all weekend, so I've missed much.

Oh, so you create articles that are boring for the sake of boringness, eh? And you kick them off with the edit description "As he seems to want a wiki-bio"? And you copy some CV information (because the person is really not notable at all), and then you conclude the by calling him all but a liar, citing a blog.

Phil Sandifer did this to [[Judd Bagley]]. It's an ugly thing.

Anyone who thinks the article Giano wrote was a hatchet job either hasn't read it or is divorced from reality.

I read it. It was a hatchet job.

I don't know if that was after Giano had finished with it or not - but by the time I read it, it had several needless "criticism and controversy" lines, and it was pretty clear that the article was a hit-job. Sorry.

Not a hit job at all. I could easily write a proper hit job on Mr Hattersley, and I don't think I'm all that skilled in such things. I didn't see the words "criticism and controversy" anywhere in it, just that he has said one thing and someone else had pointed out that it was incorrect. That ain't a hit job, and it ain't a hatchet job. It may be undue weight, but from what I've read of Mr Hattersley elsewhere I suspect not.

You know that face your children pull when you've done something silly? Putting their tongue in their lower inner lip and making a dull groan?

I just did that to you, from behind my screen.

The article had several statements that inferred a "criticism and controversy" element to Hattersley's previous career.

True?


What you Wikipedios did, starting with Giano, is scour the internet for negative statements about the guy, and create an article round that. That is why it carried several statements that inferred a "criticism and controversy" element to Hattersley's previous career.

That is a hatchet job - "undue weight" and all.

One can only guess that this was done out of revenge, for his critical comments against your cult in his piece. This is in keeping with much of what we've seen at WP. And is consistent with the behaviour of other cults.

Ooh you pulled a face! Wow.

By inferred I take it you meant implied?

If Giano had scoured the internet for negative statements about Hattersley the article would have been at least five times as long (and to be honest, it doesn't take much scouring).

I think it is hilarious the way you describe it as my cult. I do have experience with real cults (I mean the ones that cut people off from their families, control peoples finances, that sort of thing). Wikipedia does in places have cult-like elements, particularly the veneration of the god-king, and I think that I have been known to once or twice criticise these.

I've just had a look at the article, and I think it was a hatchet job only insofar as it was a WP:COATRACK for this one incident which doesn't reflect especially well on him. User:Apoc2400, who I'd never previously heard of, gets points from me for trying to remove the entire section on the Wikipedia incident (expressing a similar opinion to the one I expressed here - damned navel-gazing), only to be reverted by Giano. Giano does appear to have been a man on a mission here: besides creating the article with the summary "As he seems to want a wiki-bio" and reverting the quite correct removal of the Wikipedia section, he also changed "The Telegraph journalist Shane Richmond noted that Hattersley did not appear to have a Wikipedia biographical entry at the time" to read "The Telegraph journalist Shane Richmond correctly noted that Hattersley did not appear to have a Wikipedia biographical entry at the time" (emphasis mine).

The most cultish aspect of Wikipedia isn't the veneration of the God-King, it is the hyperaction against criticism.

In Wikipedia's case, there is a ready-made, easy way to get revenge on critics - via their biography. And they've been at it for years.

Some of it is certainly revenge, and it rather looks like that's what it was in this case. But another element is a non-malicious belief that Wikipedia is so important that any interaction that an article subject has ever had with Wikipedia belongs in their article. For example, I don't think PSWG1920 made this edit because he wanted revenge on Joseph Farah, but from the belief that that column, of the presumably hundreds that Farah has written, merited a mention in the article because it was about something so important.

Subtext: If he wants a hatchet job we will show him a hatchet job.

Your prior experience with a cult comes as no surprise. By the way what effect do you suppose 100,000 edits has on some teenagers relationship with his family?

Sorry, Duncan, but given your comments on this page, and here, here, and here on Jimbo's talk page, I'm afraid I have to call "bullshit" on that one. I read the article too, just shortly after it was put up. It seems clear enough to me that both you and Giano were convinced that Hattersley was guilty of the unpardonable crime of "lying" about Wikipedia, that he accordingly was asking for it, and that he got what he deserved (until Jimbo intervened, that is).

Looking at the deleted history, I can't find a version of the article with any "'criticism and controversy' lines". In fact, neither the word "criticism" nor the word "controversy" appears in any version of the article (though it was briefly placed in the category "Critics of Wikipedia"). Do you remember any actual wording from the article that you had an issue with that you could share with us rather than putting in quotation marks a phrase you imagined?

Oh for christssake. It was a turn of phrase. It had several statements that inferred a "criticism and controversy" element to Hattersley's previous career.

You know that face your children pull when you've done something silly? Putting their tongue in their lower inner lip and making a dull groan?

I'm doing it again!

This is a correct summary of the edit history. I drew similar conclusions. I did find the "correctly" addition quite telling, along with the comment for creation and subsequent protests such as:

This is why much of the beef between Giano and Jimbo seems to be Giano telling Jimbo how to do his job. Whereas Jimbo says he was quietly inquiring with the newspaper itself, Giano appointed himself to be PR man for "setting the record straight" against these "ridiculous claims."

Given the number of articles that do have sections titled one or the other (or for all I know with the phrase itself), i don't think it was unreasonable of me to think you meant it literally. So what _did_ you mean?

The bio when I saw it had some stuff about a couple of previous interviews where he'd supposedly made errors - and generally looked to discredit him. It also read as though it was trivializing his past career as a fashion journo or something of that nature.


I already explained up the thread.

It had the nature of an article where people had scoured the net for "criticisms and controversies" in the WP fashion.

A hatchet job.

Don't know what you mean there, but Giano did write the line "However, Hattersley's editorial policies failed to achieve satisfactory circulation figures, they fell 27% in the year." It was cited to this, an article that says nothing about satisfactory circulation figures. He moved after the magazine was purchased, so the change in editor is pretty ambiguous--a bit of unfavorable speculation.