‘Wikipedia has problems’
p2p news / p2pnet: “According to a recent article in The Guardian, a group of disenchanted Wikipedia administrators has been going through back channels on Wikipedia and retrieving articles deleted by Jimbo Wales or other higher-ups,” says Gregory Rider on slashdot.
“Now they’re putting them back up on a website for everyone to see.
“This includes articles on Justin Berry, Paul Barresi, and, most strangely, Brian Peppers, which has been solicited for deletion off of Wikipedia 6 times with mixed success and is now banned from being edited on for a whole year.”
“Summary: Wikipedia has problems and we think we can only criticize it from an external site,” say the disenchanted admins.
“The WikiTruth will be back soon!
“Until then, support your local hacker convention: defcon, hope, phreaknic, notacon and shmoo!
“And for Jimbo’s sake, listen to some independent Hacker Media!!!
“Thanks for being patient.
“- The Defenders of WikiTruth”
And on the slashdot effect, “Come join us on #wikipedia on irc.freenode.net” until the storm passes.
Also See:
slashdot – Censored Wikipedia Articles Appear On Protest Site, April 16, 2006
April 17th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
There is no evidence that the site is run by former admins. Rather, it seems to be run by some banned trolls.
April 18th, 2006 at 2:38 am
Tell The WikiTruth!!! Let’s unite to destroy Wikipedia, the fascist encyclopedia!
April 18th, 2006 at 11:10 am
That article is crap and it’s posted everywhere. Even if it’s true, who cares?
Nothing is perfect. A huge project like Wikipedia must have mistakes.
Yes, they are probably some banned trolls
April 18th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Tell The WikiTruth!!! Let’s unite to destroy Wikipedia, the fascist encyclopedia!
April 25th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
First and foremost, I’d like to say that I agree that some articles need to be deleted, even if the majority of people think that they should remain. The reason for this is usually legal. To take the example of Brian Peppers, he is a disabled man with a physical disability who has been discriminated against all of his life because of this disability and now, thanks to his being listed on a sex offender’s site for something with dubious credibility and which is at best a technicality, his life is made much worse. The guy doesn’t deserve all of this. What has he done to everyone out there to deserve this? And this is the thing. We can probably argue that its okay for Slashdot to do it, or some tabloid or a joker or whatever, but Wikipedia is aiming to be an encyclopaedia, and they shouldn’t have it on there.
As for Ashida Kim, well, for his own reasons he does not want to have his real life identity exposed. This is apparently a part of the ninja issue. Wikipedia is saying his real name, which essentially has the effect of leading to him being defamed and probably stalked. Wikipedia is in effect encouraging criminal activity. They shouldn’t be doing that. And the thing is that, in spite of Wikitruth complaining that Ashida Kim was censored, it actually isn’t. It should be, but it isn’t.
With Brian Chase, well, come on now he’s not famous. He made an edit to Wikipedia once. His edit wasn’t even particularly damaging. He is not even up there with the Squidward vandal, let alone the Communism vandal, Mr Treason or the infamous Willy on Wheels, none of which have Wikipedia articles. They have administrator logs, but not their own articles. So why does Brian Chase? The reality is that had it not appeared on USA Today, it’d be a nothing. What about people that have inserted malicious vandalism in other places? People falsely reporting that someone has died, or that a schoolteacher is a hooker? None of them got their own articles. So why does Brian Chase have one? Its an invasion of privacy.
As for Wikitruth being administrators, yes, I believe that they are. I am pretty sure that I know who they are. They are not a “bunch of banned users”. Whilst some people think that are from http://www.wikipediareview.com/ , a forum for critics to discuss problems with Wikipedia, they actually are not. A few of them have posted there, but they are not administrators on Wikipedia Review (who has a policy not to allow current or former Wikipedia administrators to be administrators on Wikipedia Review). Indeed, most of the people at Wikipedia Review disagree with Wikitruth, at least with them recreating these articles. Our view, generally, is that most of the articles describing the Wikipedia culture are good, but the uncensored articles, which it seems is the point of the site, is not good. Of course, Wikitruth described Wikipedia Review at one stage as a “neo nazi troll site”, but has since described it, again inaccurately, as “a site run by a bunch of banned users”. That’s not true. Its a critic site. The people running the site were banned BECAUSE they made it, not the other way around. They were critics first, banned users later.
Wikipedia has a habit of banning critics. They take the view that there is no such thing as a “Respected critic”. According to Wikipedia, all people who disagree with them are “trolls”, “conspiracy theorists”, “whack jobs” and of course “a bunch of banned users”. Thus they can ignore the criticism and say that their project is perfect.
I have no doubt that once Wikipedia finds out who the Wikitruth people are, all of them will be desysopped and permabanned from Wikipedia, and they may also have legal action taken against them. I think that this is inevitable. And if the people at Wikipedia Review, myself included, chose to, we could make that process happen a lot more quickly. But we won’t of course, because, unlike Wikipedia, we have ethics.
You can find me on Wikipedia Review at http://www.wikipediareview.com/ where I post under the username “Blissyu2″. There’s snippets of me on Wikipedia too, but Wikipedia has this strange habit of auto reverting and deleting things from history, then asserting that things that had nothing to do with me was me. I guess that’s how you make black look like white.
May 4th, 2006 at 7:09 am
It was inevitable that someone would form a “WikiTruth” type website. Take a look at any given talk page of a contentious article and you’ll quickly understand why.
July 26th, 2006 at 5:25 am
Lets take it down.