New subject: Daily Mail article on Sam Blacketer case

10 Jun 2009

I can't speak for the Foundation, but I assure you that we at Wikimedia UK are doing
our best to defend and promote the Wikimedia projects against all unfair criticism,
including these articles. 

Personally, I thought the article would have been worse if it had omitted the paragraph
from Wikimedia UK - the damage was done in the rest of the article which was largely
derived from other sources.At least they gave us an opportunity to say how we were
responding. 

As I said before, I think the main damage has come from a trusted user who has deceived
the community over a number of years and from our controls which were completely
inadequate to deal with this. Our credibility and reputation would be easier to defend if
we could show that we were actually doing something to improve these controls. 

I've opened a discussion at [1] - please add you comments there. 

Regards, 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Guide_to_requests_for_adminship…

----- "Giacomo M-Z" &lt;solebaciato(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote: 
...
  From: "Giacomo M-Z"
&lt;solebaciato(a)googlemail.com&gt; 
 To: "charles r matthews" &lt;charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com&gt;om>, "English
Wikipedia" &lt;wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; 
 Sent: Tuesday, 9 June, 2009 22:43:32 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland, Portugal 
 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Daily Mail article on Sam Blacketer case 

 Charles says: "All that can be done with the press is to try to get your own 
 spin in there, along with what they'll print anyway." Charles is quite 
 wrong; that is not all that can be done. Once can refute vociferously - 
 anywhere and everywhere. Sadly though, Wikipedia and Jimbo are afraid to do 
 that, as I learnt to my cost in the "Giles Hattersley affair"- Some of you 
 may remember that Jimbo blocked me for defending his encyclopedia from a 
 high profile attack. A high profile attack, incidentally, that has never 
 been properly reputed. It's almost as though they are frightened of 
 defending themselves - or do they just dismiss the European press, and 
 indeed Europeans, as less important than the American. One can only 
 speculate as to why this is? Wikipedia's governors and public relations 
 people are worse than nothing; they are incompetent, amateurish is the 
 kindliest thing one can say. 

 Giano 

 On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Charles Matthews < 
 charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com&gt; wrote: 

  AGK wrote: 
 > Gross inaccuracies that harm our public
image? Not that I can see. Some   of 
 > the details are wrong - number of ArbCom
cases for instance, but that's 
> pretty irrelevant to the story or indeed our reputation. Likewise with   the 

relationship between Wikimedia UK and the Foundation. 

 (Belated reply to Andrew's post of one day ago.) 

 The article certainly doesn't give a positive impression of us. It's  
quite 
  clear to me that there are inaccuracies and that
the article harms our 
 public image. Wikipedia gets quite enough stick for being "totally 
 unreliable" (and such) without the Mail spreading incorrect information 
 about how we operate. 
   But that, largely, is how the press operates - without regard for the 
 impression Wikipedians would like to be given of Wikipedia. and with 
 obvious inaccuracies (often exacerbated by the efforts of subeditors who 
 know little about the topic itself). All that can be done with the press 
 is to try to get your own spin in there, along with what they'll print 
 anyway. 

 Charles 

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