Crookes sues Wikipedia, moved from "WP in the Media" subforum Options

[guy]

Local man sues Wikipedia

Worth quoting in full - but how can he get anywhere in a Vancouver court?

VANCOUVER/CKNW(AM980) - Anyone who has looked up a word on the internet has likely been directed to the site Wikipedia. But a Vancouver businessman is suing the company that runs the site for libel.
Wayne Crookes have filed a suit in BC Supreme Court alleging the Wikimedia Foundtion which runs Wikipedia, and several web writers who uses aliases online, have libeled him. Crookes claims articles that appeared on the website were dishonest and abused power and were intended to hurt his reputation.

Crookes runs a title search company base in Vancouver and also has strong ties to the Green Party of Canada.

In the lawsuit, Crookes says he was never given the apology he asked for, and libelous writing continued to appear on the website. He is seeking unspecified damages.

[papaya]

This isn't going to go anywhere; they'll just WP:OFFICE the stuff into oblivion and ban a few people. It seems pretty clear that the admin riding herd on this is an honest Wikicrat.

[SqueakBox]

Google sounds a better bet than wikipedia, after all not only do they have money but they make their money out of doing the sort of thing Crookes objects to. Wikipedia doesnt have or make money (other than trivial amounts through fundraising). Reminds me of Viacom accusing Google's YouTube (another great privacy invader) of making money using a business plan based on the criminal stealing of other people's copyright). The one thing predictable about the internet is that lawyers are going to make vast sums from it.

[Vincent]

Google sounds a better bet than wikipedia, after all not only do they have money but they make their money out of doing the sort of thing Crookes objects to. Wikipedia doesnt have or make money (other than trivial amounts through fundraising). Reminds me of Viacom accusing Google's YouTube (another great privacy invader) of making money using a business plan based on the criminal stealing of other people's copyright). The one thing predictable about the internet is that lawyers are going to make vast sums from it.

Talk about conflicts of interest! Anyway, Google's Blogspot provides a quality service, unlike Wikipedia, which comes off as off-the-wall crazy!

[Somey]

Crookes will never collect from Google, though - not leastwise because it appears Google has already (quietly) removed the offending material completely. Wikipedia has only stubbed the article, and the original version of the Crookes article is still available.

I should note that civilization as a whole did not end as a result of these actions...

Anyway, Crookes isn't likely to get very far on this now, I suspect, for that very reason. His strongly-worded letter to the blogger in question is still there, along with the blogger's reply, which was to say that the allegedly libelous statement simply consisted of "Crookes threatened PEP once and we advised him, in legal terms, to blow it out his tailpipe." Presumably his position was that he didn't threaten the PEP, but I dunno, asked them nicely to do something, whatever it was, maybe.

FYI: PEP is the "Peace and Ecology Party" of Canada, and what apparently used to be their website, www.peaceandecology.ca, is now a spam page for inkjet cartridges. (Hardly very ecological, really!)

I will say this, though. The original version of the article was essentially a personal and political hatchet-job of the first order. The were four sources cited, all of them blogs. It stood for about a month, after which it was stubbed, then restored, after which it stood for another three weeks. After another 3 months or so, the hatchet version returned on January 10 and stood for 6 days. (There was also some edit-warring in March that got the page stubbed again and protected, and it's fully-protected now, of course.)

If the WP folks are saying that something like this "couldn't happen now," as opposed to 8 months ago or even 3 months ago, I just think they're delusional. Maybe Crookes isn't a particularly nice guy, and sure, he probably resorts to legal threats more readily than the vast majority of people. Maybe he even deserved some of the hostile criticism, but the question still stands, and will always stand: Why doesn't Wikipedia insist that people do this stuff on their own websites, as opposed to Wikipedia? Is web-hosting so expensive these days that they can't manage it?

Last I checked, it was really quite cheap.

[Vincent]

Crookes will never collect from Google, though - not leastwise because it appears Google has already (quietly) removed the offending material completely. Wikipedia has only stubbed the article, and the original version of the Crookes article is still available.

I should note that civilization as a whole did not end as a result of these actions...

Yeah, but some punk messed up free press releases that got posted to Google News, messing up charities with his antics. Even the American Red Cross used I-Newswire!

If the WP folks are saying that something like this "couldn't happen now," as opposed to 8 months ago or even 3 months ago, I just think they're delusional. Maybe Crookes isn't a particularly nice guy, and sure, he probably resorts to legal threats more readily than the vast majority of people. Maybe he even deserved some of the hostile criticism, but the question still stands, and will always stand: Why doesn't Wikipedia insist that people do this stuff on their own websites, as opposed to Wikipedia? Is web-hosting so expensive these days that they can't manage it?

Last I checked, it was really quite cheap.

There's something wrong with Wikipedia though. Admins control content whereas Google's Blogger does not! Wikipedia does not seem like a good place, and search engines should be better than they are. I plan to mention something about it in a blog entry myself .

[Somey]

Yeah, but some punk messed up free press releases that got posted to Google News, messing up charities with his antics. Even the American Red Cross used I-Newswire!

Ouch! I did not realize that.

What's the solution to that problem, then? Or is there one? It seems like free-PR sites would still be a good idea, but if the problem is that they're being buried in a huge avalanche of registrations and can't verify all of them as legitimate, and still make money (from adverts and what-not), then I dunno... maybe they're not such a good idea, at least not yet. But you're right, it definitely would suck big-time if you're a well-meaning charity with limited resources, and your free access to Google News got dropped out from under you because of the irresponsible actions of some anti-social 15-year-old.

Which brings us right back to Wikipedia...