[WikiEN-l] Daily Mail article on Sam Blacketer case

[Andrew Turvey]

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#Sockpuppet 


----- "Giacomo M-Z" <solebaciato at googlemail.com> wrote: 
> From: "Giacomo M-Z" <solebaciato at googlemail.com> 
> To: "charles r matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>, "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org> 
> 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 at ntlworld.com> 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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