•Wikipedia Removes Semi-Protection from Civil Liberties
Huffington Post, NY
On May 29th, Wikipedia, "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" banned all IP addresses affiliated with the Church of Scientology from editing any part of the online encyclopedia. The decision came after four months of debate among Wikipedia's top ...
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QUOTE(Newsfeed @ Sat 30th May 2009, 7:57pm) 
•Wikipedia Removes Semi-Protection from Civil Liberties
Huffington Post, NY
On May 29th, Wikipedia, "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" banned all IP addresses affiliated with the Church of Scientology from editing any part of the online encyclopedia. The decision came after four months of debate among Wikipedia's top ...
View the article
Here's the arbcom decision: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ARBSCI
What a uninformed boob is this "Leah Anthony Libresco" writing for the Huffington Post. He has himself completley worked into a tizzy about something that never happened. I'd log in and correct him, if the software didn't make me sign up for facebook to do it. But here's some of what he says:
QUOTE(Libresco)
Almost no one would deny that Scientologist editors have persistently caused problems for Wikipedia. The latest case is the fourth scientology-related controversy to require arbitration at Wikiedia's highest levels in as many years. Edits and deletions of material that criticizes scientology have occurred on a massive, seemingly coordinated scale. It is entirely possible that, on net, edits from within the Scientology compound do destabilize the Wikipedia community, without contributing very much of value, but banning all members of a controversial organization sets a terrible precedent for the regulation of online speech.
Comment:
It would if WP had done anything like that. They banned a few IP addresses known to be owned by Scientology and used by them for proxy IP edits. Somewhat like banning the IP of a school library computer if all it did was vandalize. But they even left a way for people who identified themselves with a username to edit from these IPs! In addition they topic-banned for a year from Scientology-related articles, a number of single-purpose editors (less than a dozen) who had abused them. That's it. These editors are still free to edit elsewhere. Scientologists not named are even free to edit elsewhere, and even Scientology, though if they abuse it single mindedly, they may find themselves warned, and if they don't stop, topic-banned also. All in all, it's way more gentle than what they did to Herschel WRT LaRouche (let's hope the Huff Post doesn't find out about THAT).
QUOTE(Libresco)
There are ways to curtail the kinds of edit wars that were raging on the Wikipedia Scientology pages. WikiScanner, a free software available online, can identify the sources of anonymous edits made on Wikipedia by analyzing the IP addresses of the perpetrators. With the motto of 'Radical Transparency' this software has already uncovered self-serving edits by Diebold Election Systems, Exxon, and the Central Intelligence Agency.
This one is funny. And if they find such IP addresses in that way, what exactly do you propose they DO about them, eh?
QUOTE(Libresco)
Wikipedia's commitment to sourcing its articles and maintaining a neutral point of view should allow it justifiably to revert biased editing that isn't supported by facts. In the long run, Wikipedia can succeed only by fact-checking and not by bans. Very few organizations' edits stem from a central location that can be discerned by IP address, and, even for those that do, it is easy to send operatives out to public libraries to edit Wikipedia articles with real anonymity. Wikipedia's policy to ban all Scientologists, regardless of past behavior, is ineffective, at best, and sets a terrible example for online communications.
Or it would if that was what Wikipedia had done. Except it didn't. They know full well anybody who is a scientologist can edit from any library anyplace. They're not attempting to stop it. They're stopping it for a couple of computers that have abused it, and (for this topic only, and for one year) a dozen editors who have. Get a grip, Libresco.
If you only knew how much more abusive to editors WP can be, than you've just seen here, you might lose control of your bodily functions. But it didn't happen to the Scientologists. L. Ron's ghost would be pleased.
I gave it a shot - they seem to like Gmail accounts too, in addition to Facebook ones, so I used one of those.
In case it gets moderated out of existence, here's what I wrote:
I probably should have tried to plug WR in there too, but they'd probably "red flag" me if I did that...
In case it gets moderated out of existence, here's what I wrote:
QUOTE
Well, exactly - Wikipedia hasn't really done anything effective here to stop Scientologists from continuing to try to "sanitize" information about them on the internet. What they've done is the rough equivalent of trying to stop a charging rhino with a flyswatter. I'm not saying it can't possibly work, but... what are the chances?
The thing you have to understand about Wikipedia is that so-called "edit-warring" is actually a recruitment strategy for Wikipedia itself, which some people consider to be rather cult-like too, in many ways. People are drawn to the "drama," they sign up, and next thing you know, they're in there defending the "sum of human knowledge" from all the Bad Guys of the world, or just as likely, they're acting out their own Bad Guy fantasies - whichever floats their boats. The important thing for Wikipedians is that their website has to *matter,* and they see edit wars (among other things, including these kinds of news items) as proof of this.
The Scientologists will change their strategy and be back at it within a few days, most likely. No effective preventative measures have been taken against them, really. Meanwhile, the blogosphere sees the first three words, "Wikipedia Bans Scientology," suddenly they're in Twitter Heaven, and they don't bother to look any deeper. If they did, maybe they'd see that Wikipedia is once again getting credit for something they're not actually doing. Just another day on the Intarwebz, folks!
The thing you have to understand about Wikipedia is that so-called "edit-warring" is actually a recruitment strategy for Wikipedia itself, which some people consider to be rather cult-like too, in many ways. People are drawn to the "drama," they sign up, and next thing you know, they're in there defending the "sum of human knowledge" from all the Bad Guys of the world, or just as likely, they're acting out their own Bad Guy fantasies - whichever floats their boats. The important thing for Wikipedians is that their website has to *matter,* and they see edit wars (among other things, including these kinds of news items) as proof of this.
The Scientologists will change their strategy and be back at it within a few days, most likely. No effective preventative measures have been taken against them, really. Meanwhile, the blogosphere sees the first three words, "Wikipedia Bans Scientology," suddenly they're in Twitter Heaven, and they don't bother to look any deeper. If they did, maybe they'd see that Wikipedia is once again getting credit for something they're not actually doing. Just another day on the Intarwebz, folks!
I probably should have tried to plug WR in there too, but they'd probably "red flag" me if I did that...
QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Sun 31st May 2009, 4:29am)
QUOTE(Libresco)
There are ways to curtail the kinds of edit wars that were raging on the Wikipedia Scientology pages. WikiScanner, a free software available online, can identify the sources of anonymous edits made on Wikipedia by analyzing the IP addresses of the perpetrators. With the motto of 'Radical Transparency' this software has already uncovered self-serving edits by Diebold Election Systems, Exxon, and the Central Intelligence Agency.
This one is funny. And if they find such IP addresses in that way, what exactly do you propose they DO about them, eh?
Wikiscanner is working with an August 2007 database dump, and is not helpful in analyzing what is going on now. They also have a couple of toolserver accounts that had unprecedented access to data, but those accounts are set to expire tomorrow.
For nearly a year Wikiscanner has said that "WikiScanner2 goodness is imminent. Just waiting for the statistics to finish precomputing on our fancy new server." Virgil said last October:
QUOTE
WikiScanner is still up, but the live database is from August 2007. However, there is a new WikiScanner that's ready for release. It just needs to clear some legal issues and you can resume your joyful WikiScanning :) Romanpoet (talk) 05:52, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
I presume that they have not cleared those legal hurdles, whatever they may be.
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