David Shankbone is arguably the most influential new media photojournalist in the world. [sick]

He has taken over 1,000 portraits of prominent people across a variety of fields for articles on Wikipedia.org and its foreign language equivalents. Because the pictures are copyleft — or free for reproduction, alteration, and distribution — they are used by numerous non-profits, schools, authors, television programs and well known publications, such as the New York Times and the Miami Herald.

He has also interviewed leaders ranging from Al Sharpton to Israeli President Shimon Peres and given presentations in the United States and abroad about Wikipedia, new media and Internet culture.

But, as a recent Columbia Journalism Review article about this famous Wikipedian revealed, Shankbone isn't even his real name and journalism isn't his profession. It's David Miller and his day job is doing legal work on Wall Street.

Nothing about Saranga and Lucas in the article?

Nothing about Saranga and Lucas in the article?

Hypermediots like to promote themselves as something radically new, the latest thing. But the Nøø Media does nothing more than accentuate the degeneration that was already occurring in the Old Media and amplify all its worst abuses to the point of caricature. That's okay, you can learn a lot from a cartoon. Just don't forget to laugh.

— Jon Awbrey • 02 Mar 2011 (7:18 AM)

Sandra Ordonez was not a communications manager "for Wikipedia". She worked for the Wikimedia Foundation. A recent example of Ordonez' communications style is found here:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gende...ary/000012.html

Ordonez was brought into the Wikimedia Foundation in January 2007, at the same time that the Foundation appointed as its Chief Operating Officer a multi-count felon wanted in two different states.

As Shankbone/Miller says, "knowledge pushes those boundaries." Will PBS permit this new piece of knowledge, or will it disappear?

Wow, I just signed a petition supporting the public funding of PBS, and this is how they repay me — with one e-fusive WP promoter writing a guest PR piece on some WP paparazzi who's “arguably the most influential new media photojournalist in the world”. Well, I guess everyone's “arguably” something or other, but it's hardly the standard of quality I'll mention to my Reps in Congress in support of my case.

— Jon Awbrey • 02 Mar 2011 (3:20 PM)

Whether you call them “pornography” or whether you call them “educational”, it's clear that no one could post so much as links, much less the actual images in this ostensibly “adult” forum without risking a pubic furor — and I'm guessing PBS doesn't want to “Be Daring” enough to “push those boundaries” right now, if ever. And yet the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(‍c‍)3 tax-exempt public educational charity, is actively engaged in promoting Wikipedia to minors of every age.

— Jon Awbrey • 02 Mar 2011 (3:46 PM)

Mr. Miller, please don't be evasive. Mr. Australopithicus is clearly addressing the general issue of including what you call “unadulterated information” and “explicit images” in a type of publication whose very name implies “suitable for the education of children”.

“Shankbone: Knowledge pushes those boundaries. Few aspects of society are hidden any more and Wikipedia's approach to unadulterated information plays a hand.

“Explicit images on Wikipedia have been very controversial, but time is on the side of the editors who want little censorship of reality. There's a rational line to be drawn, but what kind of porn researcher would be surprised and offended to see an example of how it's made on the pornography article [in Wikipedia]?”

— Jon Awbrey • 02 Mar 2011 (6:28 PM)

The protection from taxation that the Wikimedia Foundation enjoys by virtue of its 501(‍c‍)3 public educational charity status entails a responsibility to community interests. Our hosts at PBS could probably educate us at length on just how much duty of care and sensitivity to the values of others that does entail, which is why they would never take such a cavalier attitude toward the responsibilities of socializing children as you have just so freely expressed.

— Jon Awbrey • 02 Mar 2011 (9:00 PM)

I guess this means it will shortly be time for another round of sockpuppets creating David Shankbone...

I hear Mr. Miller's cry for the widest possible degrees of freedom in the content of Wikipedia, its sibling projects, and its Commons. And I hear Wikipedia promoters demanding the moral equivalents of academic freedom, free speech, and freedom of the press.

But our society grants academic freedom only on conditions of disciplined conduct that Wikipedia users feel free to ignore. And the advertised policies of Wikipedia practice explicitly state that Wikipedia is not intended to serve as either a “free speech forum” or an “experiment in democracy”, so Wikipedians themselves at least pretend to recognize the necessity of limitations in those regards. Finally, Wikipedia is not “The Press”. The Wikimedia Foundation goes to great lengths of circumlocution to describe Wikipedia as anything but a form of publication. And “The Press” that we have long known and loved has always consisted of independent business concerns that do not live off the voluntary charity of donors and the involuntary charity of taxpayers. In short, Wikipedia meets none of the qualifications that other vehicles must satisfy in order to earn their customary freedoms.

— Jon Awbrey • 02 Mar 2011 (11:30 PM)

Ms. Ordonez will no doubt be aware, through her participation in the Wikimedia Foundation Gendergap Mailing List devoted to “Increasing female participation in Wikimedia projects” and many similar forums, that the issue of “wiki-porn” often comes up in that context. Whatever one chooses to call the material in question, a large number of people will naturally express concerns about sexualized images of women and children.

That is a large and complex issue, as anyone will know who has tried to follow it, and my time zone is overdue for lunch, so I'll get back to it in a little while.

— Jon Awbrey • 03 Mar 2011 (1:24 PM)

If we didn't already know it, or somehow managed to forget it in the overwhelming obsession with content, the Wikimedia Foundation's recently announced goals of increasing the relative participation of girls and women and the total participation of everyone in Wikimedia projects serves to remind us of a critical fact. Every Wikimedia project is a Highly Interactive Virtual Environment (a HIVE, as they say). Wikimedia project participants have their own User Pages and Discussion Pages that serve as the virtual cubicles in their virtual workhouses. There are virtual hallways, lounges, meeting rooms, water coolers, watering holes, and even virtual court rooms, if virtual kangaroos count for anything on the Virtual Ark.

The critical importance of participation has a number of consequences.

First and foremost, what participants learn from participating in Wikimedia projects is more about the content of their characters, pre- and post-participation, than it is about the content of the pages they happen to read or edit.

Running a close second, realizing that Wikimedia project sites are workplaces raises all the issues normally associated with working conditions, for example, harassment, hostile work environments for children, minorities, and women, child labor and child endangerment, just to mention a few.

So I think we need to talk more about those issues.

— Jon Awbrey • 03 Mar 2011 (5:00 PM)

Readers who somehow missed the full array of recent discussions on these topics around the Web may wish to sample the following threads at The Wikipedia Review:

• NYT Learning Network Discussion
• Wikipedia Women Facebook Group
• WMF GenderGap Discussion Forum
• Concern About Porn On Wikipedia
• The Truth According To Wikipedia
• Media Coverage Around The World

— Jon Awbrey • 03 Mar 2011 (10:00 PM)

"former Israeli President Shimon Peres "

But seriously, Folks, I don't have to be a spokesman for anything but common sense to describe what is common knowledge for anyone past the age of social cognizance. Anyone who has been introduced to the idea that our freedoms are contingent on respecting the equal freedoms of others will think I am belaboring the point needlessly. But that idea is a radical novelty to many enthusiasts of the Wikimedia Foundation and its self-styled “community”.

— Jon Awbrey • 04 Mar 2011 (10:00 AM)

You are most welcome to the information, Ms. Rooney. I have to say it is the fruit of many people's labor beside myself and I hope you can learn a little something from sampling it.

I did once think Wikipedia could be something wonderful, but I'm sad to report the promise shows no signs of materializing, for all sorts of reasons we might well discuss. But I do care very deeply about the state of our common society, and that requires me to undertake all manner of unpleasant tasks by way of keeping our society from going all to hell.

— Jon Awbrey • 04 Mar 2011 (4:25 PM)

Censorship is always a very hot topic. Nobody but nobody likes to be censored — I know I don't — no matter what. But if we're going to talk about censorship in general, I think we need to get one thing straight right at the outset. The sites owned and operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, including the various Wikipedias as only a small portion of the whole, are some of the most heavily censored sites on the Internet.

The Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia project user population do what any other corporate entity and any other body of people do — they permit what they like and they censor what they don't like.

The fact that the Wikimedia Foundation permits what it does and censors what it does is almost exclusively determined by the demographics of its target market, and you've all read or heard about the recent statistical reports on what that demographic is supposed to be, however much people of good sense will take any study the Wikimedia Foundation conducts on itself with a humongous grain of salt.

— Jon Awbrey • 04 Mar 2011 (7:56 PM)

Now, now, Mr. Abroad, if the only issue were the sort of photographic work that Flickr permits on its site, this would be a totally different discussion. Unfortunately, that is hardly the question at issue. I think a lot of us in the Morally Silent Mojority — or the Silently Moral Mojority, I always forget which — would probably be content to see the Wikimedia Foundation adopt similar standards for the content it oversees.

— Jon Awbrey • 04 Mar 2011 (8:40 PM)

The issue for me is not censorship, or else I'd personally be choosing to err on the side of the ACLU if I had to err at all. But we are not talking what people can put on the Web at large. We are talking about what people can put on a site that gets a tax-break from the IRS on account of promising to fulfill a specific mission and to meet certain standards.

You can tell people who have different values than you that they have an immediately executable choice to put a filter on their computers or televisions. But you cannot tell them that they have an immediately executable choice about what their government gives a tax-break. The fact that their government supports a project means that they will rationally demand a say in what it does to them. That is why you don't hear a project like PBS telling people to put a filter on their televisions to deal with its programming. People would scream to high heaven.

Wikimedia Foundation sites are participatory workplaces. That means that we are talking about a whole lot more than the content of article pages. The issues of hostile work environment, child endangerment, and child labor come to the fore.

I believe in the maximum rational freedom of artistic expression and scientific inquiry. That means we have to tolerate all sorts of crap in the world, but it doesn't mean you can have your favorite erotica as your screen-saver at work, it doesn't mean you can experiment on undergraduates without going through proper channels, and it doesn't mean you can entice children “volunteers” to work into the early morning hours with who knows, or who cares, what kinds of adult “volunteers” on your tax-advantaged “charity” project for free.

— Jon Awbrey • 04 Mar 2011 (11:48 PM)

The fact remains that we could not showcase a representative sample of Mr. Miller's work on this PBS site, or Flickr, or Facebook, or a host of other Internet hosts, nor even get away with posting links to them, without violating the terms of service and other applicable standards of those sites and servers. So there is nothing “anomalous” about those standards — in the sense of violating a norm — they are in fact the norm of this and many other communities.

— Jon Awbrey • 05 Mar 2011 (11:32 AM)

I, too, love it that Mr. Miller is preaching his brilliant insight that NPOV is lot of baloney to a choir of people who probably fell out of their cribs the first time they made an effort to change their POVs. And I know that all of us who have been censored by Wikipediots for the WP:ThoughtCrime of having a POV draw warm consolation from his belated support, but if there are those among you who are up to a real challenge you might try preaching that Revelation to the Wiki-Philistines who don't yet have a clue.

The mess is ended … go in peace …

— Jon Awbrey • 05 Mar 2011 (1:14 PM)

Inquiring minds who really want to know might find a few Links Of Links (LOL) on The Wikipedia Review, though even there, the TOS of their ISP might have forced them to censor, er, moderate some of the more adult-rated, er, “unadulterated” ones. There's a slightly clunky search engine on site, but anyone who registers and posts a query would likely find some helpful Staff member ready to assist.

â–º http://wikipediareview.com/

— Jon Awbrey • 05 Mar 2011 (2:00 PM)

Ms. Again, I hope that nothing you encountered {{at The Wikipedia Review}} pushed any of your personal boundaries of good taste to the point of distress or offense, but I probably should explain that maintaining the Media Forums (“Fora” to any pedants in the audience) at The Wikipedia Review is an odious and tedious task, the e-moral equivalent of KP Duty or really more like Augean Latrine Patrol, on account of the flood of nearly indiscernible snooze releases on every wikipedious topic you might or might not be able to imagine that our news-bots dump on us every hour of the day. That makes it very difficult to get anyone to do the job without allowing a bit of laxity by way of comic relief as a pittance of compensation for their largely thankless labors. Then again, it is not unknown for one of our wiki-potato-peelers to go completely bonkers from the strain, though usually only temporarily, at least, so far, and keeping our fingers crossed on that score.

Still, like I said, if you have any number of specific questions, I am sure there would be one or three saner lights hanging about who would do all they can to help.

— Jon Awbrey • 05 Mar 2011 (4:30 PM)

Ms. T, it is possible that you misread my sentiment here. By “preaching to the choir” one normally means “trying to convince people of something they already believe”, and so when it comes to that old tune, “Hallelujah❢ NPOV Is Baloney❢”, I'm already singing “Everybody Knows”.

Sorry, Leonard …

— Jon Awbrey • 05 Mar 2011 (5:36 PM)

It is a genuine insight, one that many Wiki-Philistines have yet to cast the scales from their eyes so far as to see, and I see no harm in sacrificing yet another fatted calf for the Wiki-Prodigal who returns to the fold of good sense in howsoever mustard-seedy a sense.

Your mileage may vary, of course, if you are the calf …

— Jon Awbrey • 05 Mar 2011 (6:20 PM)

Parents do not keep their kids locked in the basement — well, with some WP:Notable x-ceptions — carefully protected by wiki-prophylactic filth-filters. They send them off to school to learn how to function, bit by bit, as civilized and hopefully cultured citizens in a complex society. And when they do that they trust and they will demand that their kids be educated by responsible, qualified, professional, background-&-credential-verified, adult educators. If they had any clue the extent to which the Wikimedia Foundation is pushing its wiki-putrescence into that otherwise well-bounded sanctuary, they would en masse come and burn the Ho³House that Jimbo built down.

“If they had any clue …”

and that is what we are doing.

— Jon Awbrey • 06 Mar 2011 (10:45 AM)

Seriously, Mr. Notozionism, don't you think that a professional journalist would identify himself or herself by name in a forum like this? And anyone who would call Sandra Ordonez a “vociferous critic of Wikipedia” — after reading a sample of her PR cheer-leading for the Wikimedia Foundation — is simply not acquainted with the requirements of professional fact-checking.

— Jon Awbrey • 06 Mar 2011 (12:34 PM)

Sandy Ordonez blogs about her interview with Shankbone.

every single time its a relief to talk to him

journalism hurt itself by not fulfilling the role it was suppose to fill

Wikileaks and similar organizaitons

For all the Woodward and Bernsteins out there who have trouble following a clue when it's passed to them:

• Clue 201103000711
• Clue 201103000712

Welcome to the Wiki Press Syndicate, PBS — We're so glad you could join up !

— Jon Awbrey • 06 Mar 2011 (3:00 PM)

I'm totally bias too!

-- Sandra Ordonez, former communications chief of the Wikimedia Foundation

I'm not sure why Mark Glaser has allowed the MediaShift forum to be scammed in this fairly obvious way. The slightest bit of checking would have turned up the blatant conflicts of interest between the guest “reporter” and the main subjects of the “story”, namely, McJimbo and Mr. Miller, but I guess it's the spirit of the “shifted” media that the readers do all the work while the “publishers” collect their paychecks from whatever Invisible Hand is still gullible enough to dole them out.

At any rate, in that spirit, it is nevertheless possible to take advantage of the teachable moment, and observe what we can about the way the Wikipediot Game is played. I think anyone who is is not befuddled by the wiki-prestidigital medium can see that it all depends on non-verifiable identities introducing non-verifiable premisses into the play of assertions, and acting like it is somehow impolite to question their veracity.

That is how it starts, and I think it's become abundantly clear that it's all downhill from there.

So let's not go there any more.

— Jon Awbrey • 06 Mar 2011 (10:28 PM)

Well. I see that whoever manages the MediaShift Facebook Page has deleted all my previous comments and posts, and blocked me from further interaction.

Thanks for showing us the new Censorship, MediaShift —

• Porn, Good.
• Truth, Bad.

— Jon Awbrey • 06 Mar 2011 (10:45 PM)

The site has blocked you from posting new comments.

I'm kinda hoping this dies down … re-hashing those past events probably doesn't do anyone any good, really.

I've been tempted to write up my own version of what happened, just in case someone actually gets the idea that there could be a story in it, but I just don't see any reputable media outlet giving the green-light to something like that, at least in the US/UK. It's not just that it would be hard to avoid the appearance of anti-Israeli sentiment … I actually think it could be decently framed in that respect, but I'm not sure I'd trust the average reporter to do it right.

The fact is, the whole thing is tawdry, there's ick-factor to overcome, and everyone involved was probably very careful not to leave a paper trail. Sure, we've all seen the photos of Lucas, Saranga, and Shankers at the same Fire Island get-together(s), but that doesn't really prove anything, and even if it did, it wouldn't really be anything illegal.

So, long story short, we made a mistake letting him register here. If I could go back in time I'd prevent it, but that's hardly worth much, given that time travel is theoretically impossible.

Sorry, Somey, but it's a lot bigger than Skunkbone.

Or is that just me?

Works for me. Seems you really ticked someone off there, Jon.