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Russavia is Scott Bibby is russiansafetycards

By W. P. Beans

 

Let’s meet Scott Bibby, a person who, shall we say, has taken a strong interest in this Wikipedia criticism website.

You might know him better as Wikipedia editor Russavia. I say Wikipedia editor, but he’s actually banned on Wikipedia right now. That doesn’t stop Bibby from being a very active Wikimedia Commons admin and bureaucrat. It’s no secret that proud Russophile Scott Bibby is Russavia. Here’s Bibby identifying himself as Russavia and asking permission to use a photo on Wikipedia. Here’s Bibby cc’d on a message about Creative Commons Australia (Bibby lives in Perth, Western Australia, according to his Wikipedia user page). Bibby also uses @Russavia as his Twitter handle, although he hasn’t made any public tweets. Does it hurt when you tweet in public? (Oddly, he doesn’t use Russavia as his Facebook handle, he uses mudozvon. That roughly translates from Russian as “bullshitter”. Among the many domains that Bibby has owned is mudozvon.net.)

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A rose by any other name would smell as sweet Bibby tried to get the Wikipedia article on Chanel perfume Coco Mademoiselle deleted. In the deletion discussion he says “I own and operate a fragrance business”. That was in January 2008 and the article was not deleted. In July, Bibby came back to the article and added a new reference – Heavenly Perfumes. Who owns Heavenly Perfumes? That’s right – it’s Scott Bibby! Well, it seems to be registered to his dad, but that’s the business he was referring to in his earlier comment.

Why would Scott Bibby’s dad Graeme Bibby be listed as the contact if Scott owns the company? Maybe it is because it is a family business. After all, the trademark for Heavenly Perfumes is owned by JGSB

…continue reading Russavia is Scott Bibby is russiansafetycards

Wikimedia UK governance review finds significant failings

By Andreas Kolbe

Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia UK team, circa 2010

The publication on 7 February 2013 of an independent report on Wikimedia UK governance, commissioned jointly by Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK, was covered the following day by Civil Society Media’s Governance magazine (“Wikimedia UK trustees have been ‘too involved’ to effectively govern charity”), aimed at charity trustees, chief executives and company secretaries, and by Third Sector (“Review urges major overhaul of governance at Wikimedia UK”), a UK magazine specialising on the voluntary and non-profit sector.

Background

The review, performed by management consultancy Compass Partnership, was paid for by the Wikimedia Foundation. It was commissioned in October of last year, in the wake of media controversy and community discussions around the Monmouthpedia and Gibraltarpedia outreach projects. A key part of the dispute, Governance said, was—

“ an intellectual property dispute over QRpedia, a mobile web-based system using QR codes to deliver Wikipedia articles, that was developed by former chairman Roger Bamkin (who resigned as a trustee in 2012) and contributor Terence Eden. ”

Bamkin had undertaken a paid consultancy for the Monmouthpedia project, which involved the use of QR codes, resulting in a conflict of interest that according to report authors Compass Partnership was not drawn to the attention of legal staff at the Wikimedia Foundation who dealt with trademark applications. Bamkin then also charged for consultancy fees in relation to Gibraltarpedia, leading to a further conflict of interest which eventually resulted in his resignation from the Wikimedia UK board in September 2012.

As stated by Jay Walsh, Senior Director of Communications, on the Wikimedia Foundation blog,

“ The Foundation and Wikimedia UK saw the potentially damaging effect of these matters and we ordered this review and report. We

…continue reading Wikimedia UK governance review finds significant failings

Meet the editors: Crakkerjakk

By Delicious carbuncle

 

Another in a in a series of blog posts highlighting lesser-known Wikipedia editors.

 

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When the account Crakkerjakk was registered on Wikipedia in late October 2010, the person behind the account was probably already an experienced WP contributor. Their very first edit was to create a fully-formed article about actor Kipp Marcus, who would have been 13 when he began the television show which is his most significant credit. Crakkerjakk has gone on to become a prolific editor of articles about male child and teen actors. What’s wrong with someone being interested in adolescent actors and adding information to WP based on their interest? If you are a child or teen watching television shows made for children and teens, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you want to add information about shows that you enjoyed as a child, there’s nothing wrong with that, either. But if you are an adult man and you are creating WP biographies about current adolescent actors on kids’ shows, then I find your interest troubling. As we saw in the case of For An Angel, that kind of interest can be an indicator of something more ominous.

 

Discovery On 5 October 2011, I noticed a change to Scott O’Hara, an article that I had on my watchlist. A user called XXX Pink Narcissus XXX had added an infobox, which is an unusual thing for a new editor to do. The fact that the article had a featured quotation from O’Hara that started “When I was 12 and 13 years old I would have joined NAMBLA in a minute…” made me especially curious about the people who edited it.

…continue reading Meet the editors: Crakkerjakk