By Yerucham Turing
A conference dedicated to talking about Wikipedia took place this weekend (May 30 to June 1) at the New York Law School in Tribeca. While the conference advertised itself as being “open to all participants” and welcoming “the skeptical”, one notable and vocal critic of the Wikimedia movement was very abruptly blocked from attending the conference. The critic of Wikipedia’s governance, Gregory Kohs, is the founder of MyWikiBiz, which since 2006 has been the first and longest-running enterprise dedicated to paid editing and content improvement focusing on Wikipedia. (When MyWikiBiz was founded, Wikipedia had no prohibition against editing its content in exchange for payment. Indeed, Wikipedia still has a Reward Board where cash is paid to writers.) Kohs had hoped to participate in the WikiConference in a session devoted to the pros and cons of paid editing, but the conference organizers headed him off at the pass only 18 hours before the conference began.
Kohs registered for the conference in late January, and he submitted for consideration by the selection committee a proposed presentation entitled “Confessions of a paid editor”. Proposals were to have been cut off on March 31, but on April 6 the deadline was extended to April 15. In all, three proposals were submitted related to the subject of paid editing on Wikipedia: the January 29 proposal from Kohs; a proposal from Susan Hewitt entitled “Why paid editing is a really bad idea”, submitted April 7; and a proposal from Dorothy Howard, entitled “Paid Editing Moderated Discussion”, submitted May 21 (more than a month after the already extended deadline had passed). Prior to the April 15 deadline, the only submission that received any “Interested attendees” was Kohs’ proposal.
Ultimately, though, the only paid editing proposal that materialized on the conference calendar as an actual session was Howard’s late submission. Dorothy Howard was one of the “Program officers” of the conference, so it became clear that the session organizers wanted one of their own speaking to the conference attendees, rather than a more highly experienced outsider who might share provocative views. Kohs then asked Howard and other organizers if he might be added to Howard’s moderated discussion roster.
What happened next was alarming, to say the least. Not only was Kohs’ request to participate on the panel refused, the afternoon before the conference kicked off, Kohs received an e-mail from New York lawyer Ira Matetsky, saying that Kohs was forbidden to even attend the conference as an observer. The e-mail stated:
The organizers of Wikiconference USA 2014 have determined that based on a number of considerations, you are not invited to attend the conference. Your name has been removed from the list of registered attendees and will not be included on the list of attendees being provided to the venue.
Please note that this is not any one individual’s decision but a group decision, for which I am acting as messenger/scrivener. The decision is final and is not subject to reconsideration or appeal.
While Kohs had already booked travel and lodging for the conference, this denial of access forced him to cancel his plans to attend. Trying to get more information about what led to the ban from a gathering that was billed as “open to all participants” was no easy matter. It appears to be of some significance that Kohs’ account on the conference website was blocked for “Intimidating behavior/harassment”. Another clue came from Wikipedian Kevin Gorman, who tweeted a hint that Kohs may have been banned under the auspices of the conference’s “Friendly Space” policy (Mr. Gorman has a position on paid editing, and his airfare and lodging for WikiConference USA were paid by the conference budget.) However, this policy had been posted only after Kohs received notice of the revocation of his registration ticket. Kohs questioned the provenance of the after-deadline submission by Howard, and he was told “The panel is not an outside submission, but a planned event at the conference from the start.” ‘From the start’ would suggest that this panel was conceived sometime in January 2014, but no mention of it ever appeared on the WikiConference website until May 13, some four weeks after outside submissions were closed.
Dorothy Howard and other conference organizers were contacted on Friday morning, to allow them an opportunity to respond to the mysterious circumstances under which a professional researcher was banned from a conference where his expertise would have been a fitting addition to the presentation calendar. While Howard replied on Friday afternoon that she and others were “discussing how to respond as a group”, nothing further was heard from Howard or any of the other conference organizers.
Image credits: Flickr/Jan Tik,Wikimedia ~ Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
Wikipedia will protect the echo chamber at any cost. Innuendo, slander, abrupt closure of discussion, banning of well-known authorities on a subject.
Are you a marketing expert? A Nobel laureate?
It matters not.
If you agree with the house rules, you’re gold.
If you raise a voice against the errors and incompetence, you will be banned, ostracized, even barred from a ‘public’ meeting. Whispering campaigns, calls to your employers, even the threat of legal actions will be used.
What a shame for the “online encyclopedia anyone can edit.”
Nothing?
None of you “dedicated Wikipedians who love free speech” has anything to say about this railroad job done on one of your critics?
What if it was done to you instead?? Would it be “important” then?
Stinking hypocrites.
This is appalling and gutless behavior by the conference organizers. Attorney Matetsky (longtime ArbCom member “New York Brad”) is to be particularly criticized for allowing himself to be used as the official “messenger” of the cowardly conference organizers, who expended thousands of Wikimedia Foundation dollars on the event.
It is fortunate that Mr. Kohs only suffered $5.30 in financial damages as a result of the capricious action of the conference organizers.
I am fully supportive of a boycott of all WMF conferences until this sort of cabalistic nonsense is terminated.
tim
A petition to boycott conferences that exclude attendees who do not pose a threat is available here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/wikipedia-make-wikipedia-conferences-truly-open-to-all-by-allowing-greg-kohs-to-attend
Everyone deserves to be heard, and only empathy can bring the Wikiwar to an end.
,Wil
Oceanic has always been at war with Eastasia.
+1
This is not a free speech issue.
No, it’s not a free speech issue. It’s a false advertising issue. The conference was billed as being “open to all participants” and welcoming “the skeptical”.
I mailed the President of the New York Law School about this. It’s an academic freedom issue: a journal or conference is free to reject submissions, but cogent reasons need to be given.
The Dean immediately replied, apparently distancing himself and the School from the conference, saying that the sponsorship agreement did not provide any substantive role, and that it was organized entirely independently of the School, that the School had no control over the decision making policies and processe regarding acceptance etc. “New York Law School is committed to the principle of free and open debate”.
Dean Anthony Crowell’s reply specifically said, “this conference was organized by an independent organization, independent individuals, and for an independent purpose uncoordinated with the Law School”. But the WikiConference USA’s conference director (and secretary of sponsor Wikimedia New York City) was then an employee of the New York Law School. Her name was Jennifer Baek, and at that time worked as a Legal Fellow at the New York Law School, where she received her Juris Doctor in 2013.
When you try to find out more about Dean Anthony Crowell, you might arrive on his biography on Wikipedia. It was authored by Wikipedia editor “Ajuncos.” Coincidentally, Andrea Juncos is the communications director of New York Law School. Ajuncos has also edited Wikipedia frequently about New York Law School and about Carole Post, the law school’s chief strategy officer.
So, the New York Law School hasn’t been abiding by Wikipedia’s guidelines against editing where one has a topical conflict of interest, has it? When Jimmy Wales was notified of this problem, his pithy and dismissive reply was that he had “no personal comment on the situation,” and he implied that the question wasn’t a “genuine” one.
This whole thing was a big, stinking cover-up by the Wikimedia Foundation and its satellite organizations, Wikimedia NYC and Wikimedia DC.
What a bunch of chickenshits these people are (skipping NYB’s page because you all have that):
Bluerasberry won’t talk about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Bluerasberry&diff=611535015&oldid=611534853
DGG won’t even talk about why he won’t talk about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:DGG&diff=611626766&oldid=611626557
The rest of them are silent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jihyunb&diff=611419923&oldid=611227998
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Harej&diff=prev&oldid=611421369
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Pharos&diff=prev&oldid=611421484
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Keilana&diff=prev&oldid=611421567
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:BobCummings&diff=prev&oldid=611533918
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Mozucat&diff=prev&oldid=611534121
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:OR_drohowa&diff=prev&oldid=611534502
I added an item to this list with a summary of the issue at hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedia_controversies. Although I wasn’t involved, an edit war broke out and the entire page was locked. There is currently a very lively debate happening on the talk page about whether this is or is not a controversy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_Wikipedia_controversies.
,Wil
And all of this discussion about what I did or did not do, or what I may or may not have done had I attended the conference, goes on and on at Wikipedia, where I am literally not permitted the right of response. It’s truly a medieval form of justice. (Don’t worry, I’m used to this insanity from Wikipedians — I’m not asking to be coddled in any way.)
[…] up front, from the get-go) attempts to attend a Wikimedia chapter conference, he is told that he is banned from setting foot in the […]
JR Dobbs
June 3, 2014 at 7:24 am · Reply
This is not a free speech issue.
My response:
http://xkcdsucks.blogspot.com/2014/04/cosmics-1357-and-1357-guest-reviews.html#comment-form
[…] But when it comes to criticism of their own practices, they clam up. This reporter was even barred from attending a Wikimedia conference that billed itself as “skeptics […]