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  • Our Mission:
  • We exist to shine the light of scrutiny into the dark crevices of Wikipedia and its related projects; to examine the corruption there, along with its structural flaws; and to inoculate the unsuspecting public against the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense that issues forth from one of the world’s most frequently visited websites, the “encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”
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Why Jim Hawkins’ Treatment Matters

By Dan Murphy

Jim Hawkins is a regionally well-known radio host on the BBC, based in Shropshire. He’s a fairly popular guy in his community, and clearly a broadcast pro (I listened to 10 minutes of his show from a few days ago. Show wasn’t for me, but he clearly knows his business). I suspect, like most people in his trade, he’s made a lot of charity appearances, attended events that are meaningful (horse races or holiday galas or whatever) to his local community, and done a bit to promote his show. More than most of his age and background, he’s also embraced social media (mostly Twitter) as a way to engage his audience. What this means from a Wikipedia perspective is that he’s a “public figure” who has generated sufficient “reliable sources” to justify writing a biography about him.

He’s also been unhappy about the presence of his biography on Wikipedia (the 5th hit on a Google search for “Jim Hawkins BBC”) for almost six years. Wikipedia’s response to him over all that time has been “Don’t like it? Tough.”

Wikipedia biography victim

The reason Mr. Hawkins’ Wikipedia problem is interesting is precisely because his experience has been so mundane. The horror stories of people defamed by Wikipedia are legion (the activities of Johann Hari are instructive. As “David R from meth productions,” he spent almost four years adding promotional material to his own biography, as well as defaming people he didn’t like, until he was uncovered thanks to efforts outside Wikipedia. Other editors have falsely reported people to be deceased, and still others edited articles to suggest people

…continue reading Why Jim Hawkins’ Treatment Matters

Verifiability vs. Truth

By Hersch

Verifiability vs. Truth

On June 12, 2011, an editor named “North8000” had the temerity to propose that a core policy, Wikipedia:Verifiability, be changed in the following fashion: that the hallowed dictum,

“The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.”

…be changed to the following:

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability.

To the uninitiated, this might seem like a minor change. However, the rejection of accountability, or to put it somewhat differently, the license to publish lies provided someone else did it first, is absolutely central to the practice of Wikipedia as a MMORPG.

The celebrated “verifiability, not truth” clause was added to the paragraph in question by ranking Wikipediot SlimVirgin in August of 2005. In the recent debate, she modestly opines,

“The phrase ‘Verifiability, not truth’ is iconic as a representation of Wikipedia’s sourcing and neutrality standards.”

Not everyone is happy with this approach, however. It has contributed to Wikipedia’s reputation as a website that is full of crap, or as North8000 more delicately puts it, there is “the problem that the current wording disparages the concept of striving for accuracy, and the negative impacts that such has had.”

In May of 2011, Wikipedia editor Scott MacDonald presented a compelling demonstration of the pitfalls of the “verifiability, not truth” maxim. He assembled a spectacular

…continue reading Verifiability vs. Truth

How to become a Wikipedian in four E Z lessons

From YouTube: these instructional videos will guide the new Wikipedian through the process of learning to game the system in order to achieve his or her objectives, toward the ultimate goal of becoming a Wikipedia admin.