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

January 30th, 2008 by The Review

Co-founder of Wikipedia and Wikia Jimbo Wales at a Wikimania ConventionThe 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@Wikia (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 »

Wikia : Picks up where Wikipedia left off

January 7th, 2008 by The Review

Jimbo Wales, the God-King, Sole-flounder, or Spiritual leader of Wikipedia (depending on your gullibility) launched his latest scheme, Wikia Search, today.

But his renewed efforts to make big-bucks off the back of unpaid volunteers like you fell on stony ground with a cynical media. This was no doubt due to the sharp realization that his previous venture was teetering out of control at Wales’s own hands. A string of scandals have undermined what faith people had left in the “encyclopedia”, and with questions still unanswered about the relationship between the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and the for-profit Wikia, the knives are surely out.

According to a critical Salon Magazine:

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington called it “one of the biggest disappointments I’ve had the displeasure of reviewing.” And at Search Engine Land, Chris Sherman labels Search Wikia “essentially useless as a search engine,” and he wonders if the project can ever succeed, and, indeed, if it’s even necessary.

Our own resident polymath, Jonny Cache, was the first Reviewer to test Wales’s “revolutionary tool”*. Inevitably, Wikia exhibited the same level of competence and responsibility as its spiritual brother:

That’s right. The first entry for George W. Bush was a guide to the site “George Bush is A Crackwhore“.

Back at Wikipedia, it was business as usual. Bush was “President of the United States and a cage dancer by night”, whose “Vice President was Osama Bin Laden“. Oh and he’s “a dickhead and a crook” as well, if you didn’t know already.

(* See comment 2)

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Posted at 11:54 pm, January 7th, 2008 by The Review in Wikimedia Foundation, Wikia | 4 Comments »

Time to change public opinion of Wikipedia

November 27th, 2007 by thekohser

Something monumentally offensive has happened this week on Wikipedia, and the powers that be are trying to sweep it under the rug. All Wikipedia critics should take this excellent opportunity to write letters to the Editors of their local and regional newspapers, and to contact their elected officials. The public opinion of Wikipedia can and should be changed by these six simple points:

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