[WikiEN-l] Metapedia - worse than Conservapedia

[George Herbert]

On 7/24/07, Ruud Koot <r.koot at students.uu.nl> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/23/metapedia/
> >
> > http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
> >
> > A Nazi apologist encyclopedia. More readable than the late unlamented
> > White Nationalist Wiki. w00t! Can't wait to get questions about this
> > one.
> >
> >
> > - d.
>
>
> We probably shouldn't have released the Monobook-skin under the GPL.
> This makes it way too easy for these kind of sites to imitate us and
> benefit from, or damage our reputation.

Someone could recreate Monobook with photoshop.  We'd have to
trademark and copyright it and establish that infringements hurt
Wikipedia in a legally actionable way to stop people from imitating
us.

The quality of this site is low enough that their article on the
newest large building in the world ( [[Burj Dubai]] ) denies that it
exists.  People are going to look at the site and laugh at it, if they
look at the content.

Anything we could do to try and shut them down would give them
additional PR airtime.  As is... journalists who cover the Internet
are hopefully aware enough to be able to check a MediaWiki's "All
pages" and "Recent Changes" and think about whether a particular MW
based wiki is a credible information source, or some lone nut in his
bedroom.

The lone nuts aren't newsworthy.  This one appears to clearly fall
into that end of the spectrum.

It's one thing to note for our benefits that it exists.  Don't turn
the small depression into a Grand Canyon.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com