Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain

Oh noes!!

I've been following the Gary Weiss talk page on Wikipedia with a borderline obsession. It seems The Register is now being purged as a reference as it's now considered an 'unreliable source'. The Hive-Mind feels you can now no longer authoritavely say anything regarding Weiss/Overstock/Bagley etc.

Sorry to break it to you.

thoughts

Despite many of the commenters here, I greatly enjoy wikipedia for what it is: an extremely quick way to get a general overview of virtually any subject. Wikipedia admin corruption has happened in the past, but I'd say that it definitely matters more and more as the site's popularity spreads. I'd like to see two things happen in the future:

1) a stronger push to educate readers on the site's editorial policy

2) SOME kind of check and balances system for admin corruption

Of course, this is their organization and they'll do whatever they want with it. We can just only hope that events such as these are enough to put enough pressure on those in control of the power to make changes for the better.

P.S. - Kudoz on the article! Despite its length, it read extremely well.

woohoohoohoohoo

I do like that the reg doesn't mind waving a flag and going "hey guys - something might be up here."

Anyway I don't often use wikipedia (except to look up lists of episodes for stuff and other trivia but I'm finding more specialist sites for that kind of thing now) becouse it has never struck me as very reliable (lack of central oversight and lots of crazy zealots who are alot like "the guy down the pub that knows EVERYTHING.") People power tripping? Never seen that before... except on almost every single forum and irc server I've ever been on.

Even so - one of the few things I learnt at school is that you should never use a single source, having one source to prove something is more or less the same as having no sources. You should have several different sources also preferably some contradicting sources to allow greater analysis. Also make sure your sources don't actualy just reference each other - if everything is sounding like a carbon copy keep hunting until you're sure you aren't being fed a line.

O and I'm an anonymous superstar becouse I know how much it pisses people off for no reason at all.

Anon forever!

Wicked Play..... Heavenly Delights

"O and I'm an anonymous superstar becouse I know how much it pisses people off for no reason at all."

Is that thinking, psychologically flawed, AC? I love the oxymoron though ...anonymous superstar. Very droll/smart idiot troll. And there's no offence meant there. It is just an observation from another viewpoint/perception.

Does Microsoft do Metadata trawls of techie/geek sites for goodies? .... ""The Register is a gossip rag, ..."

Well, we all know that... Especially since they were bought by Micro$oft."

Are they then vulnerable to pharming/phishing/courting/steering in A.N.Other direction or even of spawning themselves into A.N.Other Entity boldly going in A.N.Other Correction? They are painfully slow at doing anything Good Virtually other than closing the Windows on their Vista plans. Is that a Bum Steer to Kill, Bill? Were you led up the Garden Path with an immaculate Hook on that one?

Teehee!

Good spot, Just Some Dude. It's been reverted already, FYI. I note that none other than David Gerard contributed to that article and talk page way back in '04...Maybe I'm falling down the rabbit hole here.

Spot on, for a change

> It seems The Register is now being purged as a reference as

> it's now considered an 'unreliable source'.

A perfectly accurate description, IMHO.

Did any one of you bother to actually check the claims made in this article? It's not like it's a lot of work, it might take five whole minutes, starting with the links here. If you do bother to check, you'll notice that Bagley appeared in the naked short article and started making libelous attacks on "nameless" traders while re-directing links from existing articles in major magazines to his own site. People removed these edits, as they should have, and he re-added them. Over and over again.

When people told him to stop, he started attacking anyone that edited the articles or his user page, eventually trying to "out" one of the editors (laughably). That brought in the admins, who he immediately abused as well, and that led to a block. All of this happened in _one day_. Not to be stopped by that, he then started creating account after account after account so he could continue to abuse people for almost a month. That led to a ban, not when he "was merely writing about the site, from his own domain", but wayyyy back in 2006 when all of this was actually happening.

Read it for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/WordBomb

This well recorded reality contrasts rather harshly with the claims in this article. The Reg claims Bagley "hadn't edited" in a year, which is a rather nice spin on "banned". It then goes on to say the "address was banned because Judd Bagley has accused Wikipedia's uber-administrators of skewing the contents of four online articles", which is obviously not the case -- he was banned over a year ago due to a variety of well recorded reasons.

But let's not let publicly recorded history get in the way of a good conspiracy theory, eh? Then what we do on the slow news days?

Re: Spot on, for a change

You don't get it, do you? I know, it's hard for you to adjust yourself to reality as it really is: This is not about defending some nuttiness concerning naked shortselling, this is about how Wikipedia handles problems.

forest for the trees

Of course I "get it". _My_ point is that an article complaining about a super-secret cabal controlling "the truth" had better try to, you know, get to "the truth".

I'm completely familiar with the problems that societies have with the idea that there's some sort of gatekeepers of "the official knowledge", whether that "official knowledge" is the latin bible under the protection of the Vatican, philosophy of 13th century universities, or, in this case, some sort of half-baked collaborative blog site. And pointing out problems with these generally self-serving organizations has been going on for thousands of years - literally.

But is _this_ the right way to point them out? By creating skewed articles are filled with innuendo and misrepresentations? I think I need to say this again; this article states in black and white that the ban was "because Judd Bagley has accused Wikipedia's uber-administrators of skewing the contents of four online articles". But the reasons for the ban are clearly recorded on the site and have absolutely nothing to do with this. Bagley created dozens of accounts to continue arguing long after he had been repeatedly told to stop. The more recent activity was about blocking IPs apparently owned by the company in question. That's it. That's the _entire_ story. This is some sort of smoking gun about the abuse of power? Whatever.

You can't simply ignore these problems and say that's not the issue. This IS the issue. "Old media", of which El Reg is a member, _is_ one of those "gatekeepers of truth", one that makes pretensions far in excess of anything the wikipedia has ever claimed. The wiki has problems dealing with conflict? Big deal. Aren't problems accurately reporting reality just a tad more important?

Maury

@Maury

"You can't simply ignore these problems and say that's not the issue. This IS the issue. "Old media", of which El Reg is a member, _is_ one of those "gatekeepers of truth", one that makes pretensions far in excess of anything the wikipedia has ever claimed. The wiki has problems dealing with conflict? Big deal. Aren't problems accurately reporting reality just a tad more important?"

I disagree with the second sentence. Allow me to quote Jimbo, from his user page:

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing."

I think that is somewhat more pretentious than this site, self-deprecatingly referred to as "hack-central". And if you were saying that The Register is a "gatekeeper of truth" unlike Wikipedia, I note that if I google naked short selling, Wikipedia is the very first result. If I google Gary Weiss, Wikipedia is the fourth result (although a Gary Wiess blog about wikipedia is 2nd).

In that context, the biases, conflicts and political games (for both sides of this Judd Bagley issue and beyond) in Wikipedia's editing process is a big deal; it sets itself way above 'old media' and is massively more prominent than most other websites for virtually all proper nouns and technical terms. People are often well aware that The Daily Mail is feeding its readers bullsh*t about immigrants and house-prices and the smelly EU and readers are appropriately critical. But they don't know what really goes into Wikipedia. To quote Jimbo again:

"[Wikipedia is] like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made."

An apt metaphor because, like a sausage, the consumer will have no idea about the nutritional content either without guidance.

RE: Spot on, for a change

Maury's understanding of events surrounding my "banning" from Wikipedia resembles a fourth-hand version of an out-dated urban legend retold by a 10-year-old with a gnat's attention span.

In other words, his version only roughly resembles the truth, although I'll concede that it's quite faithful to Wikipedia's officially endorsed version of the WorbBomb Chronicles.

So, I don't blame Maury. He's only repeating what he's been told by those in charge at Wikipedia. Furthermore, he's never heard my version of events, because my version is strictly forbidden. Those who attempt to tell it are banned. As are the thousands who live near me or work in the same place I do.

Indeed, I forgive you, Maury, because you have no idea what you're talking about, and it's not your fault. However, if you're open to learning a little, please see the WordBomb Manifesto, at http://antisocialmedia.net/?page_id=116

Having said that, I'd like to point out that even if everything Maury says were true, it does nothing to change my message (backed by incontrovertible evidence), which is that the most powerful Wikipedia admins have systematically abused their tools to hide their own violations of policy. And while that's bad enough, what's worse is that they regularly ban others for doing the same thing they've been doing for years.

So feel free to continue attacking me, Maury. I'm numb to it by now. If you'd like a bigger challenge, get over your issues with me and try to disprove the evidence presented at AntiSocialMedia.net.

All to much like hard work

Good evening Mr Bagley, we've been expecting you (said slowly whilst menacingly stroking my pussy)...

Well, actually, I for one wasn't expecting you but it's good to hear from the other side. Assuming it's really you.

You're quite correct of course, the point here isn't the detail of your dispute. The crux of the problem with wackopedia which this article highlighted (there are, no doubt, many others) is the way in which well organised clique can operate with such speed and efficiency to censor material of which they disapprove. The process being almost invisible to other wackopedians. Sure they leave tracks but can anyone be arsed to follow them? Does anyone *without* a vested interest in a particular subject really care enough to put that much effort into wackopedia's take on it? It seems that if you're organised and motivated enough you can manipulate the thing as you please. Makes a bit of a mockery of the whole wikipedia premise really.

The over zealous over reaction to this article just proves the problem.

Perhaps one day they'll stop being so aggressively defensive and turn their attention to get their own house in order. Until they do it all seems pretty hopeless to me, just more bunker mentality BADSITES, mass blockings, locked pages, etc as they disappear further down the rabbit hole. Bye bye wackopedia. It was a nice idea.

For the interested (or bored)

"The Register is a tabloid blog with a tiny audience and of virtually no importance outside a certain subculture" - Jimbo Wales

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Overstock.com

I...I can't get enough of this stuff...

Will reality adjust to suit Mr Wales' vision, please?

Oh dear, a newbie, going off topic.

I decided to upload a photo to Wikipedia last week and signed up. I try to be as self taught IT literate as poss for work and pleasure but found it difficult and clunky, a bit like some of the hierachy appear to be. I read El Reg in much the same way I used to read Private Eye (God, he's old), as a probably credible insight into areas of life about which I know nothing, and laugh as I read it. Being work idle until 2008 I have used the recent dark days to crawl all over this Wiki/Overstock/Stein/!!/SlimVirgin/Patrick Byrne web and its been hilarious. Dont we get carried away? Shouldnt a lot of people be? As a time waster the net is great. Please go and see bogritz.com and scroll down to paragraphs 11-15 to see The WikiAntiChrist come back from the dead.

Newbie F**ks Up

Sorry, the particular page I referred to just now is /notintotemptation.htm at that link.

!!Paranoia attack!!; am I meant to post link linked stuff? ; maybe theyll think I m a Ukrainian bot zombie? The FrakSpncerWorm?

"Are You Being Served?"

"Good evening Mr Bagley, we've been expecting you (said slowly whilst menacingly stroking my pussy)..."

Am I "Unanimous" in being the only one to have Mrs. Slocum come to mind?