jayjg wrote:
On 8/1/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
If I knew nothing about SV and her Wikipedia history, I would at least expect my n00b question of "SV, what's this on /. about you supposedly being some sort of spy?" or my n00b statement of fact like "SV, there's this silly thing on /. about you being a secret agent" to be responded to civilly, with at least a brief explanation, rather than having them being removed from the talk page without a trace,
If Wikipedia Review started alleging you were a pedophile, do you imagine you respond civilly to questions of "John, what's all this about you being a pedophile"?
I probably wouldn't be civil at all: well, about WR, I'd try to be nice to the questioner.
I would compare them (WR again) unfavourably to the mighty John Grubor who was the first (and AFAIK only, so far) person to allege on-line that *I* was a pedophile (me, and hundreds of others, it was a favourite tactic ;-), and I would likely be provided with an opportunity to mock them for their lack of knowledge of Internet history when they said "John who?" (if the article on Grubor hadn't been deleted by some nitwit who thinks that history finished with the invention of the Internet, I would be able to point them at a Wikipedia article, but as it is I would have to Google for him).
I would chide them for their lack of anything approaching intellect or imagination, and compare them (again) to small children at the zoo poking the animals through the cage (myself, I'd like to be a polar bear, but a civet would also be perfectly acceptable, in terms of self-defence capabilities).
I would not, however, go screaming around the wiki waving my virtual hands in the air and demanding that any reference to any such allegations be deletionated with extreme prejudice. I would not expect any of my friends or colleagues to do so either, and any such juvenile behaviour indulged in on my behalf would be soundly mocked in turn. I would not attempt to create a policy which said that any web-site which mentioned such allegations should be delinked from any and all pages on the wiki: assuming that any such site exists, it would likely be an integral part of our sources on the early history of the Internet (oh, no, wait…see above for the end of history and consequent deletionation).
For your information, in my position as an Adoptive Father, allegations of pedophilia would be much more worrying to me than anything to do with being some sort of Secret Agent, but happily I am comfortable that neither is true (although some of that stuff Q makes would be kewl).
Whether or not SV is or is not an agent for MI-5, Mossad, the Bavarian Illuminati, or the Gestapo themselves is now lost in the crackle of flames as Good Faith in Wikipedia is destroyed: if "the Kabal" are willing to go to town over something as stupid and trivial as this, what would they be like if a *serious* allegation came along?
HTH HAND