Wikipedia Review: Opinions and Editorials

Wikia’s “Spanking fetish” site and the use of photographs of children

January 30th, 2008 by The Review

The below essay (by Review member “Dogbiscuit”) was submitted after Wikipedia Review discovered that Wikia, Inc, the for-profit company founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, were hosting a Wiki called Spanking Art. This Wiki detailed sexual fetish practices relating to corporal punishment, but also featured numerous sexualized images of children and photographs of minors uploaded in innocence by editors to Wikipedia and the Wiki-Commons.

Our discovery provoked protests against “Spanking Art” on Wikipedia itself. One editor, a representative of the Scouting movement whose uploaded photo of boy scouts had been transported onto the Spanking Sex site without permission, demanded answers on Jimbo Wales’s Wikipedia talk page. Eventually Wales personally deleted material from the Wikia site. Later, the entire Spanking Art site was removed, with an accompanying statement made by a representative of Wikia Inc. :

Thanks for the concern. There have been some outside inquiries about the content of the wiki that were very difficult to deal with in a thoughtful way on a Friday afternoon. We chose to remove the wiki from public view while we work with the both the complainants and the community to make sure that the wiki is focused on its mission of documenting adult sexuality. All parties have been polite and responsive and we hope to have the issue resolved soon.

We do reserve the right to remove access to our wikis on the very rare occasion when we decide it is necessary, but the GFDL license means that the content belongs to the community, and we comply with that license by making backups of all wikis available on a daily basis. We will be happy to provide more information as it becomes available. — Catherine (talk) 03:15, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

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Posted at 3:39 pm, January 30th, 2008 by The Review in Wikia, Copyright | 6 Comments �

Wikipedia Ideology Project, Mark II

January 27th, 2008 by Herschelkrustofsky

First page from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, 1776 London edition At first blush, Wikipedia appears to be a vast, sprawling mélange of competing Points of View, with no particular ordering principle other than a Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” But in viewing the activities of the dominant elites in the Wikipedian hierarchy, or what Jimmy Wales once infamously dubbed “the cabal,” a pattern begins to emerge.

First, let’s consider Wales’ own ideological profile. He is best known as a “Randroid,” an acolyte of quasi-philosopher Ayn Rand. The essential feature of the Randian Weltanschauung is the assertion that efforts to order society through the establishment of governments and constitutions are inherently counter-productive, and that society prospers when such efforts cease. This is similar to the doctrine of the “invisible hand” from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: that if governments follow the doctrine of Laissez-faire and avoid any intervention into the economy, the “invisible hand” of the markets will order matters to the benefit of all.

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Posted at 5:57 pm, January 27th, 2008 by Herschelkrustofsky in The Cabal | 3 Comments �

Wikipedia’s Museum of Defamation

January 25th, 2008 by The Review

When The Review published its Compendium of Criticisms recently, responses were largely positive. That’s not to say we didn’t come across Wiki-idealists who continued to doubt some of the facts. One counter-critic questioned Clause 2 of our summary, which focuses on the Biographies of Living Persons dilemma :

Wikipedia’s “anyone can edit” culture has allowed baseless defamation of various individuals to spread widely through the Internet.

Wikipedia’s dwindling supporters have yet to come to terms with the reality that the site has become the world’s largest and most efficient revenge platform. And on Wikipedia, anonymous character assassins can (and do) strike at any moment, round the clock, 365 days a year.

Gaging and communicating the scale of the problems that beset a project as broad as Wikipedia is often a struggle. You can highlight as many examples as you like; but the bewitched Wiki-apologists merely dismiss them as “exceptions”. There is no method of quantifying the mass antagonism caused by Wikipedia, and those within the cult seem unwilling to even contemplate the task.

To get an idea of the scale of the problem, look no further than the archives of the Biographies of Living Persons Noticeboard. This is the Smithsonian Institution of defamation, a vast virtual museum bursting with tales of false rumors, libelous comments, and revenge attacks on biographical subjects — all cataloged, dated, and folded away in neat little drop down boxes.

The noticeboard was introduced some fifteen months ago, (following the Siegenthaler controversy) but has already swelled to unmanageable levels, becoming a burden to maintain in itself. This is before one considers the complex subject matter of each case and the numerous legal ramifications, which at present appear to be (mis)handled by besieged juvenile Wikipedians way out of their depth. And the noticeboard only covers the problems that got profiled by administrators. Most of the nastiness never even finds its way into this back chamber. And worse, a lot of the horror remains entirely unattended to.

An enlightening way to spend a few moments is to browse these archives, stopping at a whim on a given date and picking a case at random. Here’s a few exhibits we discovered on our brief expedition down those dusty aisles…
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Wikia’s “Spanking fetish” site and the use of photographs of children

Wikipedia Ideology Project, Mark II

Wikipedia’s Museum of Defamation