[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's problems

Sun May 9 01:12:00 UTC 2004

On 05/08/04 21:43, Robert wrote:

> More off-topic slander. I'm not surprised. I don't even
> contribute to Wikipedia anymore, ever since many members on
> this list became actively anti-Semitic.  It was bad enough
> when proven Nazis like Stervertigo, and his cheerleader
> Martin (MyRedDice) Harper were allowed to push their views
> with the full support of this list.

I don't know if you can appreciate that this looks like the words
of someone off on crack, but it does to me. Perhaps I'm wrong.

> It got worse when various list members wrote and telephoned
> me privately in support, but admitted that they would never
> speak out here in public because they were afraid of being
> ganged up on (they were correct.)

Eegh. Send them to me. I've had legal threats from the Church of
Scientology for my other hobbies (dealing with the CoS), and pretty
much *anything* looks light-duty after you've been through their
mill.

> It got even worse when your so-called arbitartors publicly
> demanded that I accept admitted Nazis and work with them.
> (Such quotes are still archived.) Sane people would see
> that as obvious Jew-baiting; similarly, demanding that our
> black contributors work with members of the Ku Klux Klan
> would be racist black-hating. Yet sadly when this was
> brought to the attention of this list, none of you
> mentioned any problem with this.

I swear to God that I tried to work with Paul Vogel. And I'm
actually ashamed that I cheered when he was banned for a year.

> It got even worse: In recent weeks Steve Rubenstein warned
> you all about another Jew-hater who was constantly
> vandalizing Wikipedia and clearly pushing Nazi websites.
> Yet in response, you refused to ban this person.
> Outrageously many of you said that you wanted this Nazi's
> views, and that you wanted to find a way to keep him on as
> a contributor.

It would have been nice to have had access (not blind acceptance of,
but access to) to Vogel's views without his personality.

> Every wonder why so many people leave this project? It has
> been taken over by leftists,

And rightists. (Political partisans in general. I mind Usenet
newsgroup aus.politics, which, by the time I gave up on it in
1997, pretty clearly divided not by left or right, but by lucid
or frothing.)

 > anarchists, anti-science
> whackos and hatemongers.

Mr-Natural-Health's Alternative Medicine project looks entertaining.
I'll have to cast a closer editorial eye over it. He looks heavily
into rule lawyering. My goodness I love those sort of people.

> do not want.  I should have listed to my colleagues last
> year, when they told me that they forbade their students
> from using Wikipedia. They said it was anti-science,
> anti-Semitic, out of control, and that without empowered
> moderators it merely created facts by voting.

I would actually like to hear more about this.

> That is the kind of leftist Stanlinism-type "research" that
> truly educated peopel abhor. Facts are not created by the
> consensus of the most radical writers, no matter what the
> deconstructionists and leftists among you might wish to
> believe.

You appear to have POV against leftists. I'll have you know
I read the Guardian and vote Liberal Democrat!

> While Jimbo's idea of an open-source encyclopedia still is
> a very good idea, Wikipedia will never be achieve this
> goal. At best, it will be a good feeder and working sandbox
> for articles that can be vetted by professionals for a
> second-level, stable open-source encyclopedia, like Nupedia
> was supposed to be. But the Wikipedia itself will at best
> become well-known and infamous...not good.

The reason the partisan trolls of all stripes are a problem on WP
is that this is, in fact, the place, and that this is blindingly
obvious. We're writing source material for this century.

(So I'd better get the Australian Indie Rock project together
quick smart!)

- d.