Wikipedia

Multilingual Wikipedia home page

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia project written and edited by an assemblage of anonymous persons. The project was initiated by two individuals: entrepreneur Jimmy Wales and philosophy professor Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001. Wikipedia has an array of entries on topics. After about four years Wikipedia had about 450,000 entries, and after six years it had about 1.7 million entries.

Origins

Initially, Wikipedia was hosted on servers operated by Bomis, Inc., a company that also sold pornographic pictures. In 2003, Jimbo Wales founded the Wikimedia Foundation to oversee the day-to-day operations of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides support for Wikipedia and other similar projects, and also the free MediaWiki software that runs Wikipedia and Conservapedia.

Economics

Though Wikimedia (the parent company of wikipedia) is non-profit, the Wikia project of its co-founder is very much for-profit and has raised millions of dollars in investments. Already Wikipedia has been criticized for favoring Wikia. When Wikipedia community voted 61-39% percent to treat all links to other sites equally by removing nofollow (Google-ignored) tags for all of them, the Wikipedia co-founder overruled this decision and Wikipedia now favors Wikia in its treatment of nofollow tags.

The Register said:

Wikipedia has tried to balance the Utopian goal of "an encyclopedia anyone can edit" with the more utilitarian goal of "a website anyone would want to read". With over a million articles, and a rulebook almost as dense, Wikipedia has demonstrated an insatiable desire to participate, create lists and generate procedures. The result is a huge silo of recorded trivia, and perhaps the world's largest, most distributed bureaucracy - mostly manned by a casual staff of teenagers and the unemployed.

Quality

In other words—and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation’s Galaxywide success is founded—their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws. —Douglas Adams

Wikipedia, which is written by anyone, still struggles to solve the need for traditional quality controls characteristic of conventional encyclopedias. The self-policing practices has produced results and accuracy far better than originally expected. But still the lack of consistency and uniform supervision leaves an ever present shadow over any given piece of information. It has come to receive high grades for accuracy, but still many in the academy insist that it is unreliable source for research and an unacceptable reference in many classrooms. Perhaps these reactions are inevitable. Nevertheless, Wikipedia steers people to original source material, and with the use of hyperlinks and search engines, it has become the most widely used intermediary reference tool on the Internet.

Scandals and decline

Decline in Wikimedia Foundation donations.
Graph courtesy Gregory Kohs. Used with Permission.

The cumulative effect of multiple scandals and revelations has led to declining activity on the English Wikipedia. The rate of new account creation peaked in early 2007 and has declined ~30% since. Overall editing activity showed a steady decline beginning in February 2007. An independent analysis reported, "The rate at which edits were being made to Wikipedia articles appears to have peaked in February to April 2007 and declined since. This decline is unprecedented in Wikipedia's history.... Though it may be purely coincidental, this time frame also corresponds to the Essjay controversy appearing in the press."

Even after the hoax was revealed of high level intimates promoted by the Wikimedia Foundation as experts in fields that they were not, to persuade college professors to allow students to cite Wikipedia as a reliable source, and entrusted with the ability to invade users privacy which could affect, in their words, "life and death," Wikipedia still appealed to students with a Jim and Tammy Faye Baker-style fundraising slogan across one million project space pages that read, "OMG! Wikipedia is gone! I’ll flunk my exams!" [10]

False claim about Brent Bozell

In March 2007, Brent Bozell described this falsehood in Wikipedia:

The other day, Bernie Goldberg emailed me, upset. He pointed me to his Wikipedia entry. To read what was written was to conclude that apparently I must hate his guts. But we are friends. He is a man for whom I have profound respect, professional and personal. He knew there was foul play.

Right there on the screen, under the heading "Criticism," it stated that I had attacked him, "claiming that Goldberg merely lifted material he had been producing for years, and only published the book because he had an ax to grind with his former employers and was attempting to make a 'quick buck,' noting that Goldberg never mentioned the alleged liberal bias of the media until it was 'convenient' and 'profitable' for him to do so." ...

In fact, those words have never been uttered by me. The accusation would be false. Back in 1996, Goldberg used the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal publicly to castigate his own network for its one-sided oafish bashing of Steve Forbes. It was anything but "convenient" or "profitable" for him. It ruined his friendship with Dan Rather and put him on a path to the outer fringes of CBS "News. Ultimately, it ruined his newscaster career.

My attorney contacted Wikipedia by email demanding the removal of this false entry. No response. So we edited out the offensive material ourselves, after which in writing counsel alerted Wikipedia to the legal action that might befall them should this be repeated. Here's full disclosure, Wikipedia-style: You can see how each article is altered, sometimes hour by hour, in its "History" section. But there is no mention of the attorney's complaints. In the Goldberg article's history, an editor simply now scolds: "Bozell's article is a mock-jealous swipe at Goldberg's opportunism. PLEASE REREAD IT." (Capitals theirs.)

Goldberg and I are not alone. The website Conservapedia.com has a long list of 41 allegations of bias and factual errors at Wikipedia. You can add to that the problem with the credentials of its staff. One of its editors, named only "Essjay" online and described on his user profile "as a tenured professor of religion at a private university with expertise in canon law," was recently exposed as a 24-year-old college kid in Kentucky. He resigned in disgrace — even though Wikipedia tried to retain him, claiming he'd edited thousands of articles with flair.

Instead of apologizing to Brent Bozell, Wikipedia instead says "Bozell points to Conservapedia as a resource that documents Wikipedia's faults in this regard, presumably holding it as a more authoritative reference less vulnerable to vandalism."

Rewriting its own history

The Associated Press and others credit Larry Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia. But the Associated Press quotes Jimmy Wales as denying it:

"When you write this up please do not uncritically repeat Sanger's absurd claim to be the co-founder of Wikipedia."

"I know of no one who was there at the company at the beginning who would think it anything other than laughable," he added. This is an interesting comment, considering that Larry Sanger takes credit for coining the name, "Wikipedia."

"I am not bent out of shape about it," he wrote. "The facts are on my side, which is why I bother so little about it."

According to the Associated Press, Jimmy Wales "has repeatedly tried to address this - even going so far as editing his own Wikipedia biography to tone down credit for Sanger. Such autobiographical contributions are frowned upon in Wikipedia's community, and Wales apologized after his changes were noticed and publicized by blogger Rogers Cadenhead in 2005."

Jimmy Wales has admitted that certain administrators, contrary to their own rules, have at times completely removed editing evidence.

Seigenthaler scandal

In early October 2005 a prominent and respected journalist John Seigenthaler Sr., contacted Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales about false and libelous content in his biographical entry. Essjay, a 24 year old Wikipedia Administrator who was advancing rapidly in the organization, was dispatched to handle the situation. An anonymous contributor added to Seigenthaler's biography the previous May,

"John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960s. For a short time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven," and "John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984. He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter."

Wales told Seignethaler that Wikipedia is "accountable" and corrects mistakes immediately, but that the internet service provider of the anonymous user probably would not be helpful in identifying who placed the content. Accountability activist Daniel Brandt, a victim of a spurious biographical entry by Wikipedia Administrators, identified the place of employment of the anonymous user, and from there the person accountable was identified.

Seigenthaler returned to the editorial pages of USA Today from which he retired as its first editorial manager to write an Op-Ed piece critical of Wikipedia and the threat it poses to free speech due of its overt provocation of government regulation, its irresponsible self regulation and lack of accountability.

CNN interview

On December 5, 2005 Wales and Seigenthaler appeared on CNN. An exchange between CNN moderator Kyra Phillips and Wales went like this:

“

PHILLIPS:...I ran my name. I was shocked to see what was under my name. ...I'm telling you right now, Jimmy, that's not how I want people to see me and understand me. And what I'm about and what I write about in my interviews, et cetera. So, you know, it's not just individuals like John, but me and many other people, that just have concerns that this is creating gossip that can be very harmful. And people go to these sites thinking that this is the truth.

”

“

WALES: Well, I mean, I think the real key is that the site matures over time, the -- all of the articles are edited over and over and over, and improved. Anyone's free to contribute. You're free to go and contribute.

”

This in fact is not the case. Phillips was not free to remove objectionable content within her biographical entry, as Daniel Brandt at that exact moment was discovering. Not four days prior, Wales told Editor & Publisher magazine regarding Brandt's objections to a false Wikipedia biography created by Wikipedia Administrators about him, "I find it hard to take him very seriously at all," and libelous slanders remained in Brandt's biography for a year and half. Wales told CNN, "we are very, very responsive to complaints and concerns."

Seigenthaler told the audience "with accountability comes credibility" and expressed fear that, "I'm afraid we're going to get regulated media as a result."

On December 9, Seigenthaler appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal with Brian Lamb and articulated his concern that members of Congress or other powerful figures in government may likewise be targeted. On November 2, 2006, days before the mid-term Congressional elections, an anonymous IP address traced to the New York Times changed U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader Tom DeLay's Wikipedia biographical entry from "a prominent member of the Republican Party" to "Grand Dragon of the Republican Party."

Seigenthaler wrote a more expansive column in the The Tennessean after the November 30 USA Today piece appeared,

“

a sudden stream of invective — homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist — spilled, as if from a sewer, onto the Wikipedia page under my name. ..It identified me as ...a "Nazi," "fascist-oriented" ....murderer ...there also was the profile picture of Adolf Hitler over the caption, "Press photo of Seigenthaler." The accompanying line: "He is secretly responsible for killing all the Jews."

”

Accountability and Section 230

From Wikipedia Watch. [6] The inscription reads,
"Two wikifascists find someone without a biography."

Upon his retirement from USA Today, Seigenthaler founded of the First Amendment Center, an organization dedicated to a national dialogue about First Amendment rights and values. Seigenthaler criticized passage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Section 230 states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker." Unlike print and broadcast companies, internet service providers (ISP's) cannot be sued for disseminating defamatory attacks on citizens posted by others. Seigenthaler noted Jimbo Wales told Brian Lamb in a C-Span interview that Wikipedia is accountable and that mistakes are corrected within minutes, but the false information remained in Seigenthaler's biography for five months. Seigenthaler concluded,

“

And so we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research — but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects.

”

In the case of Zeran v. AOL, Zeran sued AOL for refusing to screen and remove defamatory messages, even after Zeran notified the ISP of their existence. The lower court ruled for the service provider and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the decision, noting that the intent of Section 230 was to (1) remove incentives on service providers to restrict speech on the Internet and (2) encourage self regulation by service providers.

An American citizen who posts material on the Internet that is illegal in a foreign country could be prosecuted if he subjected himself to the jurisdiction of that country. Internet users who export material that is illegal, that is to say, post material that is accessible and illegal in some foreign countries may be subject to prosecution in that country. However, under American law, the United States will not extradite a person for engaging in a constitutionally protected activity even if that activity violates a criminal law elsewhere.

Essjay given oversight

Essjay wrote a professor to persuade her to allow her students to use Wikipedia as a viable source of information and posted a verbatim copy of the email for others to use. Essjay stated, "I was the administrator who deleted the inappropriate revisions when Mr. Seigenthaler contacted our founder, Jimmy Wales; it is quite unfortunate that a relatively minor issue on a relatively minor figure has provided so much negative publicity. Seigenthaler noted in his Op-Ed piece, "The motive for the salacious stuff directed at me is reasonably obvious," and quoted some comments, "We all at Wikipedia think he (Seigenthaler) is a horrible, stupid p...k for complaining about small inaccuracies in his biography."

Others said, "Mr. Seigenthaler's attitude and actions are reprehensible and ill-formed," and “if there is an error whether large or small, he can correct it.” This again, was not true. Even prior to the Wikipedia policy, Biographies of Living Persons, conflict of interest restrictions existed on the subject of an article editing their own entry. Another wrote: "Rather than fixing the article himself, he made a legal threat."

The Seigenthaler scandal was viewed as "the best thing that ever happened to Wikipedia" as curiosity seekers to view the misinformation skyrocketed Alexa rankings.

Despite the damage to an innocent person and divulgence of Wikipedia's precarious claim as a viable source, the Seigenthaler scandal was viewed as a triumph and considered "the best thing that ever happened to Wikipedia," catapulting it into a top ten most visited website as curiosity seekers responded to the negative publicity.

The scandal was originally billed as a "hoax", then "controversy," then downgraded to "incident," and now re-upgraded to "controversy," evidently in response to criticism. The Wikipedia entry on "Seigenthaler controversy" contains disinformation, making the claim, "After the incident, Wikipedia took steps to prevent a recurrence, including barring unregistered users from creating new pages." No actions were ever taken to require disclosure of the real life identities of contributors. Barring unregistered users from creating new pages had nothing to do with the Seigenthaler scandal--the page already existed when an anonymous IP added the false information. Registration of accounts requires no accountability of the real life identity of the contributor. Indeed many experienced Wikipedia editors and Administrators have dozens of registered accounts, called "sockpuppet accounts." Protecting the identities of anonymous high-level Administrators has always been more of a priority to the WikiMedia Foundation than the propagation of false information about real life persons whose identities are known. Wales was asked by BusinessWeek magazine, “Why do you feel it is important to allow contributors and site administrators to remain anonymous?” Wales responded, “there are definitely people working in Wikipedia who may have privacy reasons for not wanting their name on the site….there are lots of reasons for privacy online that aren’t nefarious.” In the Seigenthaler case, it was the odd circumstance that a victim of false information had a large enough platform to respond, coupled with the welcome fact that the victim fundamentally opposes government regulation of internet speech.

Wikipedia's "Seigenthaler controversy" also states, "The Foundation added a new level of "oversight" features to the MediaWiki software,[12] accessible as of 2006 to around 20 experienced editors nominated by Wales," one of whom was Essjay.

This ban on anonymous page creation “reform” was abandoned less than two years later as Wikipedia's usage and ratings slumped in the wake of yet more scandals and questions about Wikipedia's culture, core content policies, and endemic lack of accountability.

Brandt / Berlet feud

An ugly far-left sectarian dispute reared its head in 2005 with disastrous consequences for the site's credibility, and continues to plague the project. The feud had been dormant for many years until the need to elevate a “controversial and notable expert” above the level of “partisan and extreme” defined by its own policies became apparent which would have precluded the so-called “expert” as "a source for anything other than himself,” as Wikipedia's ever fluid policies dictate.

Col. L. Fletcher Prouty (1917 - 2001).

Chip Berlet built a career writing in various far-left revolutionary publications, including Guardian (NY) of New York, founded by KGB agent Cedric Belfrage, whose writers at times included KGB operatives Anna Louise Strong, Agnes Smedley and Wilfred Burchett. Burchett was a long time personal friend of Ho Chi Minh, assisted in extracting confessions from American POWs in the Korean War and spread disinformation about American use of germ warfare which Soviet Archives now conclusively have shown was a lie manufactured in the Kremlin.

Berlet and Daniel Brandt wrote for the Covert Action Information Bulletin in the 1970s, and Brandt wrote for CounterSpy magazine, edited by Philip Agee and Timothy Butz. Butz was also on the editorial staff of The Public Eye with Berlet as managing editor and which Berlet describes as a "spawn of the first Counterspy." CounterSpy magazine outed the names of several CIA agents, including CIA Athens Station Chief Richard S. Welch who was murdered by the terrorist Revolutionary Organization 17 November in 1975 and gave the impetus for passage of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Berlet was also a member of Brandt’s Public Information Research board of advisers, but Berlet's extreme leftism demands ideological purity from its followers. Berlet made an ultimatum to remove another Board member.

Daniel Brandt, founder of Namebase, Google Watch, and Wikipedia Watch, removed Berlet from his Board of Advisors in 1991 when Berlet refused to sit on the same Board which included, in Berlet's words, "LaRouche-defender Fletcher Prouty." Prouty, a retired Air Force colonel, was allegorically portrayed as the mysterious “Man X” by Donald Southerland in Oliver Stone's film, JFK. Berlet considered Prouty a fascist. Brandt retorted, "When it came to making a choice between Prouty and Berlet, it was a rather easy decision for me to make." Berlet further sought to undermine Brandt by convincing three others to quit, adding "He (Brandt) was mad" but admitting "On the other hand, Brandt is highly critical of the LaRouchians."

The WikiMedia Foundation retains Berlet, despite his penchant for excess, to deal with the ceaseless barrage of idiosyncratic musings from the followers of Lyndon LaRouche.

Impugning critics

Neutral Point of View (NPOV) requires,

“

without bias all significant views (that have been published by reliable sources). This is non-negotiable and expected on all articles.

”

Berlet complained about criticism in his Wikipedia biographical entry, and the organization he is associated with, Political Research Associates. One critic was blasted in the article mainspace with an unsourced, unspecified rebuttal by Berlet as "unethical;" when an editor asked if the charge by Berlet could be substantiated the editor was rebuked and accused of "harassing a controversial expert." Another reliable source in the article read,

“

one leftist writer mentions Berlet’s 'crusade' against Progressives who stray from Berlet's ideological fever swamps by working with non-leftist groups. In a fascinating conclusion, the leftist commentator warns that Berlet 'may try to undermine your work and isolate you.'

”

Berlet stated, "This complaint was written by Daniel Brandt," and a Daniel Brandt entry on Wikipedia soon was created. Brandt describes himself as an "accountability activist" and claims he originally began working with Wikipedia editors in good faith during October 2005 but any biographical information he revealed was spun against him to depict him in a negative light. Brandt states,

“

I soon realized that it was also about Berlet, who was still bent on undermining me. Berlet was using Wikipedia as part of his political agenda, and he was successful in this.

”

Berlet's biography underwent an extensive revision with most of the substantive NPOV criticism cut out. The revising editor commented, "I kept Daniel Brandt, not because I feel he's a credible source, but because there's so little published criticism of Berlet, that I felt I had to retain something." This is an extraordinary statement and raises the question why the same high-level Administrator and author of several of Wikipedia's core content and citation policies, including Wikipedia:Reliable Sources and Wikipedia:Biographies of Living Persons (BLP), would use a source she did not consider credible. Brandt observed, "I soon discovered that she had slimed me in defense of Chip Berlet several months earlier."

Wikipedia:Reliable Sources/Self-published sources states,

Berlet inserts highly inflammatory, guilt by association material cited to himself; the slanders remained for at least 16 months.

“

Self-published sources should never be used as sources for controversial, derogatory, or otherwise unverifiable statements about living persons other than their author;

”

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Reliable sources states,

“

Without reliable third-party sources, it will violate the No original research and Verifiability policies, and could lead to libel claims....Material about living persons available solely in questionable sources or sources of dubious value should be handled with caution, and, if derogatory, should not be used at all in biographies of living people, either as sources or via external links...Self-published books, zines, websites, and blogs should never be used as a source for material about a living person that is controversial, or derogatory...

”

Brandt is also a registered user at Wikipedia, hence No Personal Attacks and Civility clauses apply, in addition to What Wikipedia is Not, a vehicle for propaganda, advertising or self-promotion, and Wikipedia is not a battleground.

Wikipedia:No Original Research, which has undergone several revisions, at the time stated, "This policy prohibits expert editors from drawing on their personal and direct knowledge...If an expert editor has published the results of his or her research elsewhere...the editor can cite that source while writing in the third person...They must cite reliable, third-party publications... bearing in mind that specialists do not occupy a privileged position within Wikipedia." Wikipedia:Ownership of articles prohibits asserting ownership over articles, particularly where a conflict of interest may arise. Chip Berlet has been cautioned by the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee on several occasions about over involvement in his Wikipedia biography. When Berlet was unable to have criticism sourced to Brandt removed from his entry, Berlet dredged up a 16 year old highly inflammatory and vicious guilt by association smear against Brandt to elevate Berlet's own personal credibility and further undermine Brandt as a reputable critic of Chip Berlet. Berlet himself placed the slanders in Wikipedia entries about Brandt, citing himself, and using his own in-house self publishing source. Despite rigorous protestations and appeals to the WikiMedia Foundation Board of Trustees and the ultimate arbitrator Jimbo Wales himself, the slanders remained in for a year and half.

The Wordbomb Saga

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne [7]

One of Wikipedia’s most bitter and drawn-out disputes, chronicled in The Register, centers around the assertion by representatives of Overstock.com that a mainstream financial journalist Gary Weiss had been editing Wikipedia to impose his point of view on a series of articles relevant to the company. Weiss was once a reporter with BusinessWeek, in 2007 became a columnist with Forbes, and had for over 10 years been posting under fake names to confuse, distort, hijack Usenet groups, stock message boards, and Wikipedia, to prevent the public from understanding criminal activity. Weiss was notorious around the Internet for his public feud with Overstock and its CEO Patrick Byrne, ridiculing their campaign against the controversial practice of Naked Short Selling.

In 2006, Judd Bagley, an ally of Overstock’s Patrick Byrne having interviewed the CEO for a personal project, began editing Wikipedia to counter what was perceived to be a skewed representation of Naked Short Selling and Overstock.com. He was swiftly dispatched by influential Wikipedia administrators.

Shortly after, Bagley became Overstock’s Director of Communications, and embarked on an aggressive campaign to publicize the dispute on various websites, aiming to expose the administrators he held responsible for protecting Weiss. Using the moniker “Wordbomb”, Bagley presented evidence suggesting that not only was Gary Weiss editing Wikipedia using the name “User:Mantanmoreland“, but that he was operating other accounts to manipulate consensus and protect his interests in the dispute. Mantanmoreland violated Wikipedia policies against Conflict of Interest and No Self Promotion by creating an article about himself. Bagley proved Weiss had edited Wikipedia from one of two main IPs used by the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the organization charged with settling about a quadrillion stock trades each year. The DTCC is also the organization Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne said acts an enabler of perpetrators of illegal naked short selling of many public companies.

Wikipedia responded to Bagley’s campaign in typical schoolyard fashion. The dispute was escalated by a small clique of powerful Wikipedians who seemed less interested in the truth of Bagley’s assertions, and more concerned with attacking perceived threats to the status quo at Wikipedia. With the approval of Jimbo Wales, administrators sided with “Mantanmoreland” / Gary Weiss, and anointed Bagley / Wordbomb an “Enemy Of The Wiki” who needed to be silenced — a “stalker” and a “harasser” for publicizing the details of the person who had been editing relevant articles on Wikipedia, and the people who had been stopping him from doing the same.

For nearly two years, Bagley’s name was invoked to inspire paranoia in the Wikipedia Admin Community to keep questioning editors in line. It became a textbook case for analysis of the intense group-think Wikipedia has become notorious for.

Judd Bagley was made a target at the highest levels of Wikipedia and became a victim of a global witchhunt by the Wikipedia Admin Community for daring to expose an unholy alliance of abuse and corruption on Wall Street and in the Wikipedia cabal. [8]

Bagley was repeatedly disparaged by a cabal of out-of-control administrators such as Guy Chapman, who denounced Bagley as “lunatic” and “evil” when it suited. UK Wikimedia representative David Gerard banned an entire area of Utah to prevent Bagley raising his issues and made personally disparaging remarks. Wikipedia Arbitrator Fred Bauder claimed that Bagley’s blog AntiSocialMedia.net showed “moral depravity” for challenging the Wiki-elite. Administrator Phil Sandifer dismissed Bagley in highly personal and offensive language while boasting that he himself had become a “powerful and trusted administrator on the 9th biggest website in the world.”

Other editors who raised Overstock’s quite legitimate complaints were banned as proxies of Judd Bagley. Paranoia had taken such a hold that editors with productive records from all over the US, and as far afield as Europe and Asia found themselves accused of being Bagley. When the editor Cla68 questioned the issue of Gary Weiss editing Wikipedia, he was swiftly blocked by administrator Durova on the orders of Jimbo Wales who wrote, “Durova and Guy have my full support here. No nonsense, zero tolerance, shoot on sight. No kidding, this has gone on long enough”.

A study undertaken by concerned administrators into the editing patterns of “Mantanmoreland” came to fruition. Despite the “Mantanmoreland” account ceasing edits on Overstock / Naked Short Selling articles in September 2007, the study revealed evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the same person had been operating several accounts to “control” articles. Thus affirming Bagley’s claims.

More worryingly for good faith Wikipedians was the revelation that Jimbo Wales, alongside leading administrators, had considered that this person was almost certainly Gary Weiss in a private discussion as long ago as September 2007 (the same month the “Mantanmoreland” account quit editing the relevant articles). Meaning that behind the scenes, they were admitting that Bagley was probably right all along, yet in public were vilifying or blocking anyone who publicly stated so.

After the financial meltdown of 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued directives aimed at curbing abusive naked short selling. Patrick Byrne has been widely recognized as in the forefront of the movement aimed at curbing such abuses.

Michael Moore

Moore with Leslie Cagan United For Peace and Justice [9]

The website MichaelMoore.com, dissatisfied with a Wikipedia editor's edits to Sicko, published an image of a Wikipedia user on its main page. This was combined with links to edit both Sicko and the editor's user page.[11] Several Wikipedia editors and Administrators regarded this action on the part of Michael Moore's official website as an egregious violation of a well publicized ruling to protect Wikipedia editors from outside harassment. [12][13] The consensus, per Wikipedia's policy was to remove links from Wikipedia to Michael Moore's attack site which was urging vengeance and reprisals against an editor who posted criticism of Moore's film.

In Arbitration, Wikipedia's internal policy making and dispute resolution arm, the Arbitration chairman publicly admitted,

“

No question it contained an attack, including a link to edit our user's page. The problem is that many of us like Michael Moore very much and don't care much for the viewpoint of the user involved. Applying our policy in a rote manner (Without consideration of the unwritten rule that we support prominent subjects that we like) yields removal of the link (At least while it contained the personal attack).

”

Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View (NPOV), laid down by founder Jimbo Wales allegedly is "absolute and non-negotiable."[14][15] The ArbCom chairman further stated, "Obviously we need to make an exception for prominent people whose viewpoint we support." [16] When asked, "How, then, is this remotely compatible with NPOV?", the ArbCom chairman responded, "Not at all." [17] The editor whom Michaelmoore.com was urging its viewers to attack and harass is described as "a Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank."[18]

Sinbad hoax

On March 16, Wikipedia entry on the 50-year old entertainer Sinbad, born David Adkins, states: "He succumbed to a fatal heart attack on the morning of March, 14, 2007." This hoax was widely reported in the media.

Rutgers-Ivy League hoax

A Wikipedia entry falsely stated that Rutgers was once invited to join the Ivy League. Although that false statement was eventually removed from Wikipedia, it was not removed before the Daily News relied on it in this story:

You don't have to define your college with your football team, but Rutgers long ago decided to give it a try. Back in 1954, when it was considered a 'public Ivy,' Rutgers might have joined the fledgling Ivy League and altered its destiny. But the school declined the offer - arguably the dumbest mistake in its history. Ever since then, Rutgers has scrambled to prove itself worthy of playing football with the big boys."

Barbara Bauer vs. Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation is one of 17 defendants in a lawsuit suit filed in New Jersey, by Barbara Bauer and her literary agency. Her Wikipedia article was deleted on March 25, 2007 by Wikipedia administrator Doc Glasgow as a "bloody disgrace".

GFDL License Issue

Wikipedia's practice of complete deletion of articles without reference to the original article, the author(s)/publisher(s) of the article, and the history and title(s) of the article, including modification history, description and appropriate dates, is a direct violation of at least GFDL version 1.2. Not only that, but the GFDL License states that if the article/document contains Copyright notices, that said notices must be preserved at all times. If those notices are removed, then they are in violation of Copyright Law, as well as the terms of the GFDL license. Furthermore, the question of them removing anything outright at all comes into quite a grey area. If one reads the GFDL License literally, then it implies that once the article document is posted, it is in distribution, and technical measures are not allowed to be taken to prevent the use of the document in question, and that no other conditions whatsoever can be added by you to those of the GFDL license.

See also

• Examples of Bias in Wikipedia
• Articles about Wikipedia from previous "Breaking News"
• Essay:The Protocols of Ritual Defamation

Further reading

• SHEFFIELD: Conservatives miss Wikipedia's threat by Washington Times, August 21, 2008
• Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain, By Cade Metz, The Register, 6th December 2007.
• Avoid Wikipedia, warns Wikipedia chief - It can seriously damage your grades by Andrew Orlowski, The Register, June 15, 2006
• Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems by Andrew Orlowski, The Register, October 18, 2005
• Who Writes Wikipedia? by Aaron Swartz, 2006

External links

• Wikipedia
• Article: Chip Berlet, SlimVirgin, and Wikipedia
• Wikitruth
• Citizendium(Beta)
• Wikipedia Watch
• Wikipedia Review
• Wikipedia: What Is It Good For?, By Dick Clark, 9/19/2007. Retrieved from The Ludwig von Mises Institute, http://www.mises.org/ November 5, 2007.