Cash for spam, functionary involved? Options

[Viridae]

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...8#Cash_for_spam

(Perm link)

[thekohser]

Oh, wow. Now there's a story about it on the front page of Slashdot -- with a handy link to Wikipedia Review, right in the article. Getting about 75 to 100 additional uniques on my site, just in the past 2 or 3 hours. I hope the server can handle it!

Slashdot News Story

[EricBarbour]

Oh, wow. Now there's a story about it on the front page of Slashdot -- with a handy link to Wikipedia Review, right in the article. Getting about 75 to 100 additional uniques on my site, just in the past 2 or 3 hours. I hope the server can handle it!

You're lucky this happened on Saturday night. The Slashdot traffic will be minimal.
If they had posted that on Monday morning, your server would be melting right now.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

I think the idea someone had recently of an "editors union" is a wonderful idea but a wasted one to be as limp and impotent as an "association" of established authors.

Where you have an unaccountable system of abuse, that even involves minors and vulnerable individuals (I am thinking a mix of borderline personality disorders and psychopaths), it is the responsibility of any upright member of society to push their way in and confront it ... or if they cant be bothered confronting it, at least alert others and ridicule it.

Having created a "global community" the size of a corporation that will probably stick for a while, the Wikipedia now needs something more than just "pastoral care" for its frontline troops. It needs militant social workers, welfare agencies and a real workers' union to create and protect rights. These should be funded by a share of all those bucks spent on evangelism, or taken for the purpose of personal benefit by the likes of Jimmy Wales, David Shankbone and others.

The Wikipedia is someone's business. Albeit one using the cultic model of the abuse of others goodwill. I would not suggest doing it, unless one was paid to do it. A common element within cultic business models is to appoint adherents with low self value to apparent leadership positions (as in those willing to work for free or less than the going market rate), keep them vulnerable by the odd symbolic "public hanging" and retain real power elsewhere.

So, how to get them to the responsible point where they will consider paying people to do that is the obvious question ... ?

(As an aside, what was going on in the shift of "pedophilia apologist" Erik Möller from unpaid (but potentially powerful) to paid (but potentially sackable) and has it been covered here?)

This post has been edited by Cock-up-over-conspiracy: