[WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

Thu May 5 23:30:27 UTC 2005

On Thu, 5 May 2005 slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

> On 5/5/05, Josh Gordon <joshua.p.gordon at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This fellow is one of the pure ones. A wee bit of research shows he's been
> > threatening to sue anyone who suggests he is anything other than brilliant
> > for a decade or so.
> >
> >  If we're going to have an article on alt.usenet.kooks, it makes sense to
> > report on what they do...
> >
> Josh, the problem is that we could use Usenet to ridicule any number
> of people simply by creatring an article about a Usenet group, and
> then saying we're only reporting what it does.
>
> The problem is not only whether we'd be sued (though that's a
> consideration), but also a question of fairness. WP articles should
> strive to be well-referenced, balanced, fair, and encyclopedic.
> Repeating a claim that a named individual was called a kook by a bunch
> of anonymous Usenet posters is none of those things, and if he says
> it's hurting his reputation and business, we ought to respect that and
> just get rid of it. When it's repeated by the New York Times, we can
> stick it back in again.
>
> It starts to look like bullying, whether the kook award was justified or not.
>
I'm siding with Sarah on this one. A post to Usenet should NEVER be used
as sole proof for anything.

While there is an awful lot of valuable information on Usenet, far too
often false information is contributed to a Usenet group out of a desire
to defraud, to slander, in humor, or simply out of boredom. As an example,
ISTR a post somewhere stating that I once supported myself selling drugs
while in college -- & no, it's not true, so all requests for illicit
substances will be deleted unread! ;-)

Usenet is often little more than idle gossip traded by computer users
waiting for their programs to compile -- & I challenge anyone to offer a
simple rule to determine which posts are unsuitable for citation, & which
are. (I suspect that any such argument will simply be a reprise of the
recent discussion over which pictures are suitable for children, except
that Wikipedia has no way to turn off Usenet citations.)

Other times, information on Usenet is provided by individuals who are
either anonymous or pseudonymous -- thus making them not only unverifiable,
but irresponsible because they can't easily be held liable to suit by
slander or libel. And until a fairly recent date - 10 or 15 years ago -
Usenet's contents were very ephemeral: material posted on Usenet was
expected to vanish from record in less than 30, 15 or even a few days.
(It's only by accident that Google contains most of its pre-1994 posts,
when the old Deja News started archiving Usenet. Before then, about the
only news groups that were acrchived were in the comp.sources.* hierarchy;
the rest were considered about as interesting as old high school
student newspapers.)

And then there is the problem that citing from Usenet lends itself to
quoting out of context . . .

However, web pages are another problem entirely, & their material is
far more stable, & not subject to the same limitations Usenet is. And
ISTR that there is/was a webpage dedicated to recording the unhappy
recipients of the KOTM award. Does anyone have that URL -- either current
or where to find it on the Wayback Machine?

Geoff