Top 10 most viewed WR threads!, The topics that got everyone excited Options Rating

[Kato]

With all this talk of "Attack sites" and BADSITES on WP, and descriptions of The Review getting thrown about on the ARBCOM pages, it seems like a good time to go and examine the Top ten most viewed threads in The Review's back catalogue. Though this thread should probably be in the Wikipedia Review Review section, so as not to disappoint our non-signed up members, this one goes out for free on the top section. Here goes:

1
25,838 views Who is Essjay? Epic thread started by Daniel Brandt that continued for nearly a year. Tracing the long Essjay saga from mere Brandtian brain wave to The New Yorker magazine and into the history books of the internet itself. Brandt opens the thread with "Who is Essjay? I would love to ID this guy." Some 20,000 or so posts later we were to find out.
(IMG:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Essjay.jpg)

2
13,844 views Oops, Durova's Mea culpa Durova, wikipedia's self styled "sleuth", comes predictably unstuck when it is discovered that her much cherished "sleuthing methods" are little more than a paranoia fuelled game of Shot-in-the-dark. Convinced that The Review has unleashed a co-ordinated army of sockpuppets to bring down the site (if only), Durova sets to work unmasking the machiavellian meddlers. Inevitably, her prime suspects turn out not to be grisly trolls, but good faith editors, and one in particular is a well respected editor with connections in high places. Oops. An aroma of rebellion against this unchecked power fills the air only days before WP's annual Christmas Pantomime otherwise known as the Arbitration elections. As the story unfolds, it is also revealed that rather than The Review co-ordinating exploits, a Wikipedia clique had been operating a "secret mailing list" to plot underhand missions and spy on innocent users all along. And all this with Jimbo "we-need-more-love" Wales's approval. Reviewers had been shouting this truth from the rooftops since this site's beginnings of course, but it was refreshing to see the media begin to acknowledge that There IS a Cabal. Of course, in a collapsed culture that rewards cronyism, bullying and arbitrary decision making over reason and good practice, this should come as no surprise.

(IMG:http://www.kbs.uni-hannover.de/Lehre/Oberstufenlabor/Gruppen/Travis/presentation/agents1/clouseau.gif)

3
11,512 views Boy Scouts are for spanking?
The Wikipedia Review discover 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.

4
11,480 views Snowspinner muses about stalking and murder
Bizarre tale of admin Snowspinner, who wrote a short story on his blog - a typically youthful kind of Camus meets Chuck Palahniuk thing about a malevolent stalker - and became embroiled in a real life Police investigation over an unrelated incident at his campus. The Review gallery (featuring a surprising number of now forgotten figures) revel in Snowspinner's woes, and despite being exonerated by the cops, Snowspinner appears on the thread himself to mud wrestle with some of The Review's less sympathetic literary critics.

5
10,092 views The Jeff Merkey thread An amalgamation of various threads detailing the activities of the mercurial Merkey. What was the I.T entrepreneur and Cherokee activist Merkey playing at? Was he right? Was he wrong? Was he actually contributing to the thread himself using a pseudonym? Who knows? Enjoy the Merkey mayhem.

6
9,644 views Illustration of Muhammad
A petition to remove the perennially controversial images of Muhammad from Wikipedia's article on The Prophet gains 1000s of signatures, and becomes a hotly debated topic in Wikiworld. Wikipedia is "the wisdom of the crowds", but what happens when the crowds sign a petition to make a change to an article? "Wikipedia is not censored". What about the stuff that is removed from articles all the time, is that not censorship? "Wikipedia makes changes based on consensus, it is a fundamental tenet". Then seeing as they have a consensus of 1000s, can't they change the article? "Wikipedia is not censored" etc etc etc.

7
9,395 views Can Jayjg be stopped? Endless speculation as to the motives and identity of WP's highly evolved Octopus, an editor so prolific that he apparently sprouted tentacles and beak to handle a watchlist that grew to the size of the Pacific. Some of it seems plausible, much of it isn't. The thread ends with our own Lamontstormstar sagely noting, "Someone will just take Jayjg's place." And he is probably right. Somey pays tribute to our tentacled friend on a subsequent editorial piece.
(IMG:http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb311/Kato90125/octopus.jpg)

8
9,365 views What we know about SlimVirgin A comprehensive exposition of the backstory behind SlimVirgin, Wikipedia's most mysterious and (according to the watchers) most corrupt administrator. The evidence trail leads us through what Slate Magazine calls "Daniel Brandt's matrix". Slate tells its subscribers to "read about how he uncovered a likely MI-5 agent operating on Wikipedia under the alias Slimvirgin. The winding road starts here." Follow that long and winding road yourself and tell us what you think.

9

9,345 views ColScott Says Hola
Natural Born Killers Movie Producer Don Murphy roars onto the The Review board like Ollie Reed in a bad mood to denounce WP and several of its teenage editors. All kinds of issues spill out: Notability issues, the young age of WP editors, "stalking" of article subjects, Dan Tobias's mensa score. The Review attempts to salvage some common sense out of WPs irresponsible mess-ups. Very little changes. Bliss provides a write up on The Review's blog.
(IMG:http://www.sfi.se/sfi/IMAGES/SKOLBIO/FILMHANDLEDNINGAR/NATURAL_BORN_KILLERS.JPG)

10
9,025 views Mantanmoreland RfAr
Two years of deceit and simply outrageous corrupt behavior by the Wiki-elite in support of a writer who had been feuding against Overstock.com comes to a head. Furious good faith Wikipedians demand answers from the Arbitration Committee as to how this was allowed to happen. What did the Arbitrators decide to do? They fudged it. Join the post Arbitration seething to share in the anger at the Committee's lack of integrity.

________________________________________________________

Threads lurking outside the Top Ten:

11
8,852 views Giano Arbcom case
Imagine a process where decisions are made to benefit a project by consensus after a transparent process of open discussion. Wikipedia? Think again. While copy editors and article writers slave under the hot sun of the clumsy Wiki-software to protect their work, the real business is being hammered out in smoke filled Internet Relay Chatrooms controlled by the most aggressive bully boy administrators. Forget about transparency and all that stuff Jimbo tells his audience in Taiwan. Imagine a chat room where police gather to get their stories straight, swap evidence for planting, exchange informers and snitches, plan cover-ups, talk sports and relax after a hard day. Surely no law abiding citizen object to such a private forum? Giano, a prolific article writer does object. And he keeps on objecting. For his troubles, he is sent before the Arbitration Committee to face his Arbitrary show trial. The Review observe the kangaroo court proceedings through the wire fence.

12
7,871 views Please help me and Seth get our bios deleted Brandt's plea for assistance from the The Review faithful to end the stalemate regarding both his own shabby biography and Seth Finkelstein's article. The thread turns into a sockpuppet hunt on the Brandt deletion discussion, with The Review sleuths attempting to identify any potential Denny Colt sockpuppet stalking horses that may have arrived to railroad the process. The deletion debates also see the appearance of the Charlie Manson defense, a classical wikipediot argument which asserts that our two obscure internet figures should be afforded no more privacy than George Bush, Bill Clinton and convicted murderer Manson himself. Despite this typically trite logic, Seth's article is eventually deleted outright. Brandt's becomes part of a "complex merge" that seems like an improvement.

13
7,274 views Honest admins, Another opportunity for us to be of service. The Review passes the hat round the bar for names of honest admins. FCYTravis gets a free drink and three cheers. But according to Jonny Cache : "There are only two types of admin. (1) Evil Bastards (2) Good Minions Doing Nothing." In the melee of confused identifications, the term ghoul is coined for the first time to describe the worst of the Wiki Adams-family. And apt it was to be.
(IMG:http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb311/Kato90125/Admin-glasssmall.jpg)

14
7,188 views JzG, How he helps Wikipedia No figure on Wikipedia has matched the open animosity and bumbling buffoonery exhibited by Jus-zum-Guy. Read on, as relations between Guy and The Review deteriorate from Love / Hate to simply mutual loathing. On the thread, Wikipedia Review owner Gregory Kohs, long a victim of the increasingly erratic Guy, takes the Englishman to task for his absurd campaign of persecution. At first Reviewers just laugh along with Guy's antics. He had put in good work improving the hideous BLP situation on Wikipedia, surely he wasn't going to.... oh yes, he was. Guy lurches towards delirium and quits WP three times during the thread, only to return to his addiction apparently more rabid each time. He is last spotted running around Wikipedia half naked wearing a bandana and waving his arms hysterically for our benefit. With his judgement in tatters, Reviewers these days simply call him "liar" to his face. Or worse, gleefully egg him on to do more damage to the ailing Pseudopedia than any Reviewer could manage themselves.
(IMG:http://image.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Travel/Pix/pictures/2006/07/13/fawltytowers360.jpg)

15
7,106 views Voting begins The annual pantomime that is the Arbitration elections gets underway amidst a flurry of scandals. Clueless sleuth Durova is forced to retire even before voting begins. A populist swing to support article writer Giano against traditional bureaucrats and power gamers means he stays in the running. Loathed admins such as POV pusher Will Beback, abusive sockpuppet JoshuaZ, and tyrannical controller Raul are humiliated as voters reject their manifestos in droves. Will the election of a new committee lead to reform? Of course not. It's all about the drama.

* updated April, 2008

[Jonny Cache]

Pretty nifty, probably should go on the blog, but when you get rite down to it, the number of replies is probably a slightly better measure of popular interest than the number of views — as I can almost hear the mad cliquing away of that search-engine-opportunist and shameless auto-promotionist Greg Kohs trying to ↑ his deja views even as we speak.

Jonny (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cool.gif)

This post has been edited by gomi: