You were "telling a personal story about being harassed"? I missed on it. Where it is?

By my count, mbz1 has told me twice she's set me to "ignore," so I doubt there's anything I can do to answer this. If anyone wants to forward it (or if she's still watching), it was post #28 in this thread.

And again, my real-life stalking was very mild. I'm not making more of it than it was, especially with what's happened to Allison and others. Nobody called my employer or school, or any of the other crazy things that have happened. But it was certainly enough to show me that yes, there are crazy people out there.

Everyone needs a verified identity to edit to ensure reliability and accountability. But WP won't do that. So I sure as Hell wouldn't volunteer to be the first.

When anonymity is outlawed, only outlaws will be anonymous. Or something like that.

You did no such thing (tell a personal story). Your post (linked) is bereft of personal information of any kind. And has been adequately pointed-out, Wikipedia Review is not an encyclopedia. And finally, if you don't have a pretty good idea who I am, you're even stupider than I thought.

The rest of your post has even less connection with reality, so I will not dignify it with a response.

My story had as many personal details as I'm going to give out here, I'm afraid. If that doesn't make it personal enough for you, Mr. Total Stranger on the Internet...then oh well.



Sorry, I don't. Just keep assigning me demerits in your gradebook, I guess.I'm not as up on the mythology of WP and WR as others are, and I don't know the entire cast of characters. Don't take it personally, please.

I have been posting to this site for very many years, and I don't have a clue who you are - but that might be because I really don't care. I suspect that this will not bother you, not least because you are one of the many on this site who have me on ignore and will thus not read it; a strange option for a project with the declared aim for open dialogue regarding the failings of another. Wikipedia is possibly more an encyclopedia than Wikipedia Review is a true criticism site, these days. That is sad, and one of the reasons that I grew tired of WR before I tired of WP.

If you can't have a discussion without calling the other people names you have no right to call yourself a critic, and certainly should not be moderating other peoples freedom of speech. Be the adult, for fucks sake, that you decry others for not being.

Are you talking to me? I have no one on ignore, never had. Wish I could -- mods don't get that option.

If that is true (I don't happen to agree), it would only because we allow Wikipedia apologists in here to dilute the editorial voice. I don't subscribe entirely to GBG's current bout of lunacy, but while WR is anarchic, it certainly sometimes provides valid criticism.

"For the blind, write large." Sometimes one needs to call an idiot an idiot. I have no need to be gentle with the Wikipedia morons who lurk around here -- I'm not trying to teach them anything, most of you are beyond hope.

I don't think being an adult involves babying juvenile (but presumptively adult, due to our terms of service) morons. If you can't stand the heat ...

On the contrary, history is replete with effective and sensible critics calling other (less sensible) people names. Some people are just too stupid to be reasoned with in any other way. And, sadly, this forum seems to be saturated with such people.

Wikipedia is RUN by such people. Inevitable that some of them would come over here and sock
for a sick kind of "entertainment".

Gomi, if Turk is too annoying, kick him. I don't see him offering any really useful critiques
or other information. Lately he's just been trolling. Stick him in the Whine Club with Ottava.

So telling a story of personal harassment, and using it to explain why I feel anonymity is necessary unless everyone has a verified identity (which WP will never do) is just "trolling?"

Forgive me for wasting words, then.

Well, so does Kohs apparently (i.e. he claims too). Or Horsey or any other number of folks. They just do it with socks (NTTWWT) - in what world did "I edit Wikipedia for money using anonymous sockpuppets" become morally superior to "I edit Wikipedia because I actually have an interest in some topic"?

And in what world does "I edit Wikipedia for money using anonymous sockpuppets" give the moral right to that person using anonymous sock puppets for money to start criticizing the folks who do it without sockpuppets and not for money, but semi-anonymously out of personal interest? And to criticize others for being semi-anonymous! This is some fucked up shit - when people who run anonymous sock puppet farms (for money, again NTTWWT) start pontificating against people who don't run sock puppet farms, don't do it for money but simply wish to have a semblance of anonymity to protect themselves from harassment. Some folks have been around Wikipedia too long - as anonymous sock puppeteers or otherwise - and internalized the whole "let's turn common sense on its head" theme that pervades it.

Last I checked Greg didn't put his name behind any of his edits in quite some time.

The logical turns and twists as well as the cognitive dissonance on display here are quite impressive. But hey, I guess I'm just "mentally handicapped".

You don't want to legitimize that site with your edits, fine, I understand that. That's what Eric does, for example. It's consistent and non-hypocritical. But IF YOU DO EDIT IT, for money or any other reason, with sockpuppets or otherwise, then you got no room to get all sanctimonious and shit. Like I said it's just hypocrisy and the "anonymity for me but not for thee" mentality.

My clients have no doubts that my User names are tied to me, and that's really the only "proof" that they or I need. I'm sorry that doesn't fit your rabid and irrational need.

Let me be a bit more rabid and irrational: how about your clients competitors? What proof do they get?

As much as you try and fool yourself that your case is different, and that something is "ok" for you, but not for others, it's really not. "Anonymity for me but not for thee to a tee".

As someone who has been actually harassed "IRL" by a stalker (by legal definition, not the idiotic wikipediot one), I have always found this argument singularly unimpressive. Editing an encyclopedia is not generally the sort of activity that makes you prone to being a stalker victim. If WP had required real names before I started editing there, I probably would have given it. Besides, stalkers are very irrational people; there is little accounting for why they choose one potential victim over another.

My clients' competitors don't need any proof of the provenance of an acceptable, neutrally-written, factual, encyclopedic account of my client that's published in a non-profit, tax-exempt encyclopedia that helps every single human being freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's what I'm doing, and if a client's competitor has a problem with that, then they're simply being irrational.

To be fair, Greg tried to edit as himself, but was driven underground because Jimbo said it should be so.

Oh for fuck's sake. With you editing via anonymous sock puppets, the only guarantee that your edits are "acceptable, neutrally-written, factual, encyclopedic accounts" is your say so-so. Now, it may very well be that that is indeed the case, but ... we can't know that for sure can we? The whole point of gomi's post was that people need to take a responsibility by putting their names behind their edits - your sock accounts most certainly don't do that.

If a person asserts that their anonymous edits are fine they're still editing anonymously aren't they? And hell yes, if I was one of your client's competitor's I might have a problem with what you're doing - because you're doing it anonymously. That's not being "irrational", that's just called being a business. You can call everyone who disagrees with you "irrational" or "rabid" or "mentally deficient" and post funny youtube videos, but at the end of the day you're still the one who's being a moronic twit. And a grade-A hypocrite and asshole.

If I work for a politician, and I edit Wikipedia via anonymous accounts on their behalf, and then come on WR and assure everyone that it's all good because the politician I work for knows which accounts are mine, and of course my edits are "acceptable, neutrally-written and factual" (the number of of people who DON'T believe that about themselves is epsilon, where epsilon is defined as the smallest number such that epsilon>0)...

How is that any different? And then I start pontificating how people should edit with only eponymous accounts? Seriously Greg, you're oozing with hypocrisy here.

SB Johnny - I don't have any problem with greg editing "underground". I do have a problem with him getting all sanctimonious about anonymous editing when he edits the site via anonymous sock puppets himself.

I'm pretty much in agreement with Gomi on the anonymity question but more than a little amused that he or she in a position of high authority and some public figurehood here has zero information available as to their own identity.

But yeah, anyway:

1. People should have to provide their real name to edit at Wikipedia.

2. Only registered editors should be able to edit.

3. Even failing adoption of these principles, anybody old enough to grow body hair shouldn't be editing Wikipedia without making their identity known. They should be responsible — morally and legally — for their words.

very truly yours,

Tim Davenport
5010 NW Shasta Ave.
Corvallis, OR 97339

MutantPop@aol.com

Sir, I DEFY you to post this on Jayjg's or Cirt's talkpages.

I'd say the biggest problem you'd have would be the fact that you're running a business that doesn't know the difference between a possessive and a plural.

We all make our own choices, eh?

I don't know the situation of the former but I will say in the latter's defense that he did take on a highly litigious subject and I can understand a necessity in dodging bullets in his very specific case.

Cirt is topic banned off Scientology and new religious movements, broadly construed, and has been stripped of his administrative tools, so you might as well rail against the corruption of the Ulysses S. Grant administration or the environmental danger of whale oil lamps as soon as beat on him anymore.

It's a pity, Cirt was one of the fairest closers of any of the admins at AfD — although Ritzman and Kudpung are excellent as well.

t

Radek's first language is not English. How many people here speak his language as well as he speaks English?

Fair enough. Then, I'd say that my clients' competitors could rather easily solve their "problem" by hiring Wikipedia Review for themselves!

It gets tricky when some editors want it both ways...

I am now blocked because I wrote that the author of a self-published source is a retired hotel manager (Jacob Truedson Demitz (T-H-L-K-D)).

This is supposed to be harassment of SergeWoodzing (T-C-L-K-R-D) .

And Fæ (T-C-L-K-R-D) supports my block - Mr. Van Haeften is also trying to have it both ways.

From what I understand Mr. Van Haeften likes it all kinds of ways.

But seriously, why are you wasting your time in that company?

Then along comes Baseball Bugs - a political buttsnorkler who hasn't created anything significant in recent history - calling for your ban.

And there's the heroic BB asking around for nails so he can get that coffin closed up tight!

Most hobbies are a waste of time. The only place where I am active on wikipedias is Commons, where the company is not that bad. And it is a useful source of free illustrations.

I will just watch the AN/I proceedings that Baseball Bugs initiated. The result does not matter that much to me. It will just be the usual defamation by anonymous cowards.

PS: Fæ has no problem with outing himself on Commons as "the UK GLAM programme leader" or "I am spending the weekend at at OTRS workshop, which I was part of organizing." But when someone he likes to get blocked says it, it is "outing".

Well Jimbo has spoken (see below). What he is suggesting is that linking to publicly available items like Facebook, personal blogs, interviews in mainstream media etc may not be the sort of harassment and danger to personal security that some Wikipedians think it is. And I think he is right.

I guess it would be okay for me to post all of Jimbo's divorce records, then?

yes Wikipedia is cheap but if you shell out some money you could be rocking a cool model airplane or something.

Well he's consistent, and there is some logic there too. If one says all of that publicly available private information is off linits where does it end?

Most of the BLPs are a collection of publicly available private information. Where some celeb's kids go to school, where there live, who they might have played away from home with, which bathhouses they might have frequented.

So is Google Image Search.

It's interesting how Wikipedians' privacy is holy, but that of BLP subjects is shat on by anonymous editors.

We are seeing the effect here of editors writing the policies and skewing them in their favour. It's not like Wikimedia policies are a social contract negotiated between Wikimedians and the people they are writing about, or posting pictures of. Only one side turned up for the negotiations – Wikimedia editors. Editors naturally want as many rights as possible, and as few ways to be held personally accountable as possible. As Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects gain more and more importance, this imbalance will increasingly become an issue, and rightly so.

is there some compelling reason to do so? We all love juicy gossip but there's his x and child to consider.

Yes, this irony, and the fervor with which they maintain it, is key to understanding the Wikipedia hypocrisy.

Well hey, then let's do this Wikipedia-style. We assemble a few dozen "functionaries", known or anonymous people we know we can trust because of their history here. Then we discuss it via an email list or private forum.

The more people we have looking at this info and discussing it, the more likely we are to come to an ethical decision, after all.

HE evidently doesn't understand HIS OWN position very well. In other words, this is typical Jimbo-slime, calculated to avoid criticism and attacks upon himself. It's vague and limp, making it difficult to turn into a "policy" which might be used to force out some of his Magic Project's worst actors.

He NEEDS his trolls. They do all the "free" labor. There's a hidden cost, but Jimbo don't care, it ain't comin' outta HIS pocket!


The entire Internet, in a nutshell. (Hey, so just how many admin socks does Poetlister have on Encyc nowadays, anyway?)

Only if you have no concerns about copyright. But then most people seem not to care about such in any case.

The same is true of Commons. There is no trail to show that the license on Commons is correct. That is primarily why Mila is getting queries for reuse on her talk page. Some one wants to obtain verification of the license.

I had images in a book published last year 250 pages with two images per page. The company sorting out the rights sourced the images from flickr and alamy. None were taken from Commons as the rights issue is too confused. You have some anonymous uploader skimming flickr content, a bot that says it was licensed on X date, but was it, and the flickr account is deleted or abandoned. No publisher is going to touch Commons.

But Flickr is anonymous too? *confused*

But the judge already kept confidential from the public file any of the information that was deemed to bring any undue embarrassment to the child. As for the ex-wife, a former employee of Bomis, isn't her portion of the sum of human knowledge as important as Jimbo's, especially when you consider she was the petitioner and he the respondent in the case?

I don't comment on user identities.

Why, have you stopped by lately?

so somewhere in the region of over 9000 I am guessing

Flickr might be anonymous but there are a number of ways by which you can contact the photographer. When the uploader on Commons has taken something from a flickr account then you have another hoop to jump through before you can ascertain whether the license is valid. Often the tie between the image and the uploader is broken. If the flickr account was abandoned, or the account deleted, then there is little chance of contacting the photog. So why search Commons? Go to flickr directly or a stock agency.