Mark Gallagher wrote: Here's an example of the sort of rhetoric-by-repetition technique that works much better spoken than written. The repetition in this case is the phrase, "This is the site that..." It would spare Mark a bit of typing if he would just list his litany, without the oratorical device. I know a bit about AMorrow because he showed up briefly on my own wiki, SourceWatch, before we banned him. One thing that happens with people who can't get along with Wikipedia is that after they quit in anger or are banned, they go forum-shopping to other websites. We get a few disgruntled ex-Wikipedians this way, and almost always it turns out that they were banned for good reason, which was certainly the case with AMorrow. Given the mission of Wikipedia Review, I'm sure it attracts far more disgruntled ex-Wikipedians than we do. Just now, however, I did a Google search for AMorrow on site:wikipediareview.com, and it appears that he was banned there about a year ago. I didn't spend a lot of time reading the discussion threads, but there was some debate over his banning, with a user named "blissy2" writing, "Amorrow was commenting in ways that could be considered to be cyber stalking. Since Wikipedia Review is a law- abiding entity, it is risky for us to be associated with someone who may be engaging in illegal activity. ... Even if Wikipedia was sitting there being decent, not harassing us, not slandering us, not trying to destroy us, and we were working together, we still couldn't allow this kind of activity. Its got nothing to do with whether or not Wikipedia hates him." Banning him on grounds that he is a cyberstalker doesn't sound to me like "welcoming with open arms." I did a similar brief search to see what happened in the case of Katefan0. (I hadn't heard of it before.) In that case my snap judgment is that it was indeed meanspirited and wrong for Brandt to go after her as he did. The problem I have with litanies like the one that I quoted above from Mark Gallagher is that they dredge up old history mostly for the sake of rehearsing bitterness, and they usually do so in a tendentious way that selectively presents the facts in order to make WR look even worse than it is (such as saying that AMorrow was "welcomed with open arms" without mentioning that they banned him). If this sort of history is important enough to keep bringing up, then it ought to be done in a more thorough, precise fashion, which inevitably means linking to and quoting from the relevant threads on Wikipedia Review so everyone can see for themselves what is being discussed. But, um, that presents a problem, doesn't it? I also couldn't help noticing the similarity between the anti- Wikipedia rhetoric that comes pouring out of "blissy2" and some of the rhetoric that I've seen written here about WR. Blissy2 says Wikipedia is "harassing us, slandering us, trying to destroy us." Do any of these phrases sound familiar? I agree that WR is a pretty pissy bunch with which I would not personally want to become associated, but I think the problem is being exacerbated rather than improved by a few Wikipedians who are so busy seeing red that they can't let a few things go. -------------------------------- | Sheldon Rampton | Research director, Center for Media & Democracy (www.prwatch.org) | Author of books including: | Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities | Toxic Sludge Is Good For You | Mad Cow USA | Trust Us, We're Experts | Weapons of Mass Deception | Banana Republicans | The Best War Ever -------------------------------- | Subscribe to our free weekly list serve by visiting: | http://www.prwatch.org/cmd/subscribe_sotd.html | | Donate now to support independent, public interest reporting: | https://secure.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/cmd/shop/ custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=1107 --------------------------------