Alledging a conflict of interest, Michael Moore's website now has started attacking en.wp editor [[User:THF]] (see http://www.michaelmoore.com/ and [[WP:ANI#Attack site]] ). They've got live "edit this page" links on the site linking to THFs' userpage (not even User talk:, but main userpage) and the Sicko film page.
Isotope23 has tried to contact the webmaster, but this is sort of a wierd situation...
A clear violation of [[WP:NPA#External links]]. Just asking nicely is likely to fail. That link should be removed from wikipedia until the attack is removed from the website.
Crockspot
On 8/23/07, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
Alledging a conflict of interest, Michael Moore's website now has started attacking en.wp editor [[User:THF]] (see http://www.michaelmoore.com/ and [[WP:ANI#Attack site]] ). They've got live "edit this page" links on the site linking to THFs' userpage (not even User talk:, but main userpage) and the Sicko film page.
Isotope23 has tried to contact the webmaster, but this is sort of a wierd situation...
-- -george william herbert george.herbert@gmail.com
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On 8/24/07, crock spot crockspot@gmail.com wrote:
A clear violation of [[WP:NPA#External links]]. Just asking nicely is likely to fail. That link should be removed from wikipedia until the attack is removed from the website.
Crockspot
So, we should not link the official website of a notable person, just because that notable person said some not-nice things about an editor? People like Jayjg were saying "Oh, this wouldn't happen - this is clearly not covered by the policy, all you need to do is use some common sense." Common sense is apparently not so common.
(Oh, yes, and should we remove all citations to michaelmoore.com pages in our articles because it is now apparently an "attack site"?)
When there is a trade-off between protecting one of us, and the quality of our encyclopaedia, which ought to come first? I suspect this disagreement is really intractable because it is a question of values. It is impossible to objectively answer this question.
When attacked, some people's response is to demand that all links to the attack be removed. When I appeared on Hivemind, my response was to link to it - from a userbox, no less. These different responses occur not because some people see the logic and some people don't, but because different people have a different way of applying the same logic.
If you ask me, the only way we'll ever put this debate to rest is if we have some leadership which can push something through. Remember, the only reason many think this policy was/is warranted was a vague edict of the arbcom's.
Of course, I am doubtful we will see much leadership on this question. It's too hot-button an issue. It will probably be left to burn out on its own, pissing off a lot of editors on both sides in the process. I'm not sure if that's what anyone wants, but that's what'll probably happen.
Johnleemk
On 27/08/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/24/07, crock spot crockspot@gmail.com wrote:
A clear violation of [[WP:NPA#External links]]. Just asking nicely is likely to fail. That link should be removed from wikipedia until the attack is removed from the website.
So, we should not link the official website of a notable person, just because that notable person said some not-nice things about an editor? People like Jayjg were saying "Oh, this wouldn't happen - this is clearly not covered by the policy, all you need to do is use some common sense." Common sense is apparently not so common. (Oh, yes, and should we remove all citations to michaelmoore.com pages in our articles because it is now apparently an "attack site"?)> When there is a trade-off between protecting one of us, and the quality of our encyclopaedia, which ought to come first? I suspect this disagreement is really intractable because it is a question of values. It is impossible to objectively answer this question.
The other problem is that admins on Wikipedia are powerful figures on an important top-10 website that's regarded as a public resource - and, as such, are somewhat public figures and hence a legitimate subject of critical comment. And this is not to justify insane stalkers, but that's not what I'm talking about. Deciding anyone criticising on such an assumption should be treated as an insane stalker is ... probably not workable.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
The other problem is that admins on Wikipedia are powerful figures on an important top-10 website that's regarded as a public resource - and, as such, are somewhat public figures and hence a legitimate subject of critical comment. And this is not to justify insane stalkers, but that's not what I'm talking about. Deciding anyone criticising on such an assumption should be treated as an insane stalker is ... probably not workable.
I'd agree with that strongly, and I'd like to amplify your point.
If you look at the other websites and resources in our class, both the organizations and the leaders take a fair bit of crap from the public. It just comes with the territory. And really, it should. A lot of it is probably unjustified, but the substantial portion that has merit has a lot of value both to society as a whole and to the entities criticized.
However, I think an important difference is that anybody who signs up to be an executive at Yahoo or a senior figure at the Wall Street Journal knows what they're in for. When a lot of us got involved in Wikipedia it was a much smaller thing. And it seems to me that its social prominence lagged a fair bit behind its traffic curve.
But like it or not, we are now playing in the big leagues. The companies that own the rest of the top ten are Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, News Corp, Baidu, and Facebook. Each one is worth billions, and each one endures a firehose of public examination and criticism. And none of them claim our mission of public service.
To my mind, our prominence and our mission means that we should welcome public feedback to a much greater extent than those other organizations. Often we even do. But sometimes our skins are awfully thin.
William
On 8/27/07, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
The other problem is that admins on Wikipedia are powerful figures on an important top-10 website that's regarded as a public resource - and, as such, are somewhat public figures and hence a legitimate subject of critical comment. And this is not to justify insane stalkers, but that's not what I'm talking about. Deciding anyone criticising on such an assumption should be treated as an insane stalker is ... probably not workable.
I'd agree with that strongly, and I'd like to amplify your point.
If you look at the other websites and resources in our class, both the organizations and the leaders take a fair bit of crap from the public. It just comes with the territory. And really, it should. A lot of it is probably unjustified, but the substantial portion that has merit has a lot of value both to society as a whole and to the entities criticized.
However, I think an important difference is that anybody who signs up to be an executive at Yahoo or a senior figure at the Wall Street Journal knows what they're in for. When a lot of us got involved in Wikipedia it was a much smaller thing. And it seems to me that its social prominence lagged a fair bit behind its traffic curve.
But like it or not, we are now playing in the big leagues. The companies that own the rest of the top ten are Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, News Corp, Baidu, and Facebook. Each one is worth billions, and each one endures a firehose of public examination and criticism. And none of them claim our mission of public service.
To my mind, our prominence and our mission means that we should welcome public feedback to a much greater extent than those other organizations. Often we even do. But sometimes our skins are awfully thin.
William
To follow David and William up... I generally agree with both of their statements. I think that the visibility and global interest in Wikipedia come with the price of being visible and having people interested in those of us who are helping keep the gears turning.
That said, I think that however accurate that is, we are not effectively making that part of admin / senior Wikipedian culture.
The current standard is to allow (and socially but not rules-wise encourage) pseudonymity and create a veil of anonymity which we attempt to enforce on-site and many feel entitled to try and enforce offsite, somehow...
Those don't fly so well with the outside world. People will rightly want to know who's doing stuff here, especially in issues which rise to real-world importance somehow.
I have been tilting at the windmill of pseudonymity here for a while. I'll give that a rest for now. However...
The one thing we DO need to do is start to make sure that people are used to the idea that they may become "of public interest" by some of their WP activities. Particularly admins, and more particularly senior / very active admins, members of arbcom, etc. But stretching down to normal users.
I think that most very senior wikipedians have seen enough to be aware of this, but may not have thought about what it means if it happens to them. We probably need to push the point enough that everyone considers the potential consequences.
We also probably need to message this down the chain, to normal editors, and particularly to new admins and prospective admins.
This is probably likely to scare off a few good contributors. That is unfortunate, but I think that suprising people who weren't expecting to have any real-world issues come up from participating in WP is worse.
It would be petulant for us to remove the link to Moore's site. In any case, the problem seems to be that one editor is in a COI because he is employed by the pharmaceutical industry that Moore is targeting.
On 8/26/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/24/07, crock spot crockspot@gmail.com wrote:
A clear violation of [[WP:NPA#External links]]. Just asking nicely is likely to fail. That link should be removed from wikipedia until the attack is removed from the website.
Crockspot
So, we should not link the official website of a notable person, just because that notable person said some not-nice things about an editor? People like Jayjg were saying "Oh, this wouldn't happen - this is clearly not covered by the policy, all you need to do is use some common sense." Common sense is apparently not so common.
(Oh, yes, and should we remove all citations to michaelmoore.com pages in our articles because it is now apparently an "attack site"?)
When there is a trade-off between protecting one of us, and the quality of our encyclopaedia, which ought to come first? I suspect this disagreement is really intractable because it is a question of values. It is impossible to objectively answer this question.
When attacked, some people's response is to demand that all links to the attack be removed. When I appeared on Hivemind, my response was to link to it - from a userbox, no less. These different responses occur not because some people see the logic and some people don't, but because different people have a different way of applying the same logic.
If you ask me, the only way we'll ever put this debate to rest is if we have some leadership which can push something through. Remember, the only reason many think this policy was/is warranted was a vague edict of the arbcom's.
Of course, I am doubtful we will see much leadership on this question. It's too hot-button an issue. It will probably be left to burn out on its own, pissing off a lot of editors on both sides in the process. I'm not sure if that's what anyone wants, but that's what'll probably happen.
Johnleemk _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 8/27/07, Frank Bellowes fbellowes@gmail.com wrote:
It would be petulant for us to remove the link to Moore's site. In any case, the problem seems to be that one editor is in a COI because he is employed by the pharmaceutical industry that Moore is targeting.
On 8/26/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/24/07, crock spot crockspot@gmail.com wrote:
A clear violation of [[WP:NPA#External links]]. Just asking nicely is likely to fail. That link should be removed from wikipedia until the attack is removed from the website.
Crockspot
So, we should not link the official website of a notable person, just because that notable person said some not-nice things about an editor? People like Jayjg were saying "Oh, this wouldn't happen - this is clearly not covered by the policy, all you need to do is use some common sense." Common sense is apparently not so common.
(Oh, yes, and should we remove all citations to michaelmoore.com pages in our articles because it is now apparently an "attack site"?)
When there is a trade-off between protecting one of us, and the quality of our encyclopaedia, which ought to come first? I suspect this disagreement is really intractable because it is a question of values. It is impossible to objectively answer this question.
When attacked, some people's response is to demand that all links to the attack be removed. When I appeared on Hivemind, my response was to link to it - from a userbox, no less. These different responses occur not because some people see the logic and some people don't, but because different people have a different way of applying the same logic.
If you ask me, the only way we'll ever put this debate to rest is if we have some leadership which can push something through. Remember, the only reason many think this policy was/is warranted was a vague edict of the arbcom's.
Of course, I am doubtful we will see much leadership on this question. It's too hot-button an issue. It will probably be left to burn out on its own, pissing off a lot of editors on both sides in the process. I'm not sure if that's what anyone wants, but that's what'll probably happen.
...true, THF has a COI and was using his editorial powers in such an abusive manner as removing trolling comments like "Michael Moore is a fat ass" from the articles...
I've looked at what THF did. THF has nothing to apologize for, as far as I can tell. Moore should be thanking him for removing the vandalism off his pages.
We can't insist that life be fair, but we can look into acusations of unfairness and identify when they have no evident factual basis.
George Herbert wrote:
Alledging a conflict of interest, Michael Moore's website now has started attacking en.wp editor [[User:THF]] (see http://www.michaelmoore.com/ and [[WP:ANI#Attack site]] ). They've got live "edit this page" links on the site linking to THFs' userpage (not even User talk:, but main userpage) and the Sicko film page.
Isotope23 has tried to contact the webmaster, but this is sort of a wierd situation...
I can't find any such links there. This seems to be a simple matter of a few thin-skinned individuals whining because their actions have been criticised, and using that as an excuse for their vivid imaginations to allege that the Moore site is an attack site.
We're big, and a little criticism is just a part of life.It should not be used as a rationale to delete information at the drop of a hat.
Ec
The links were removed, about three hours in to the incident, after complaints from several WP members to Moore's webmaster.
I did review Moore's webpage and traverse the links to see that they were live prior to posting here...
-george
On 8/23/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
George Herbert wrote:
Alledging a conflict of interest, Michael Moore's website now has started attacking en.wp editor [[User:THF]] (see http://www.michaelmoore.com/ and [[WP:ANI#Attack site]] ). They've got live "edit this page" links on the site linking to THFs' userpage (not even User talk:, but main userpage) and the Sicko film page.
Isotope23 has tried to contact the webmaster, but this is sort of a wierd situation...
I can't find any such links there. This seems to be a simple matter of a few thin-skinned individuals whining because their actions have been criticised, and using that as an excuse for their vivid imaginations to allege that the Moore site is an attack site.
We're big, and a little criticism is just a part of life.It should not be used as a rationale to delete information at the drop of a hat.
Ec
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