Ron Livingston Lawsuit Discussion, the beginning of the end? Options

[Tarc]

RHETORICAL QUESTION: Why are we doing Wikipedia's work for them? Why not let the Binmores of the world do their thing to Wikipedia? The web will be a worse place for a while if we ignore the Binmores, but after Wikipedia folds, it will be a better place.

The world and the world wide web would be a better place, indeed if Wikipedia folded.

I agree.

ITT: victim misunderstands "rhetorical".

[victim of censorship]

RHETORICAL QUESTION: Why are we doing Wikipedia's work for them? Why not let the Binmores of the world do their thing to Wikipedia? The web will be a worse place for a while if we ignore the Binmores, but after Wikipedia folds, it will be a better place.

The world and the world wide web would be a better place, indeed if Wikipedia folded.

I agree.

ITT: victim misunderstands "rhetorical".

Tarc, the official wiki mascot

[SirFozzie]

Looks like one of Binmore's attempts to insinuate himself into the WP-world had stuck for a year and a half.. some obscure LGBT channel in France. "English Presenter Mark Binmore"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=195027235

I'm surprised no one did a search of the site for that name.. didn't take me that long to pick this one up. Allie took it out, tho.. but still 18 months... *grumbles*

[Daniel Brandt]

I've linked to both this thread and to Somey's summary on my Binmore page.

This WR thread isn't getting enough Google juice; it ranks around 200 for "ron livingston" — I guess WR is no match for Hollywood. I'm going to see if I can do better for my Binmore page for a search on "ron livingston".

Obviously, no one is going to search for "mark binmore" unless they're already up to speed on the issue. We need some love from the mainstream media, which is usually not up to speed on anything. I'm going to try for juice on "Ron Livingston's lawsuit: John Doe identified".

Yeah, yeah, Random32 will complain because I'm trying to "manipulate" Google. What do you think Wikipedia's been doing for years now? And what do you think Google's been doing to me and the rest of the world? Sheesh!

[Random832]

ITT: victim misunderstands "rhetorical".

Now, that's just unfair - to misunderstand 'rhetorical' would mean e.g. providing an actual answer as to why - not just agreeing to the sentiment. For example, if his response had started "we're doing it because...", that would mean that he misunderstood 'rhetorical'. But it didn't. It doesn't mean "don't respond at all", after all.

tl;dr: ITT: Tarc misunderstands "rhetorical".

Yeah, yeah, Random32 will complain because I'm trying to "manipulate" Google.

Uh....? My point was simply that it can be manipulated - in the other thread you seemed to be making the argument that a page's place in the search rankings is set in stone forever. Does it not logically follow that if some changes to a page's content can increase it's ranking, that other changes can decrease it?

This post has been edited by Random832: Sat 12th December 2009, 5:48pm

[Doc glasgow]

I've linked to both this thread and to Somey's summary on my Binmore page.

This WR thread isn't getting enough Google juice; it ranks around 200 for "ron livingston" — I guess WR is no match for Hollywood. I'm going to see if I can do better for my Binmore page for a search on "ron livingston".

Obviously, no one is going to search for "mark binmore" unless they're already up to speed on the issue. We need some love from the mainstream media, which is usually not up to speed on anything. I'm going to try for juice on "Ron Livingston's lawsuit: John Doe identified".

Yeah, yeah, Random32 will complain because I'm trying to "manipulate" Google. What do you think Wikipedia's been doing for years now? And what do you think Google's been doing to me and the rest of the world? Sheesh!

I'm just wondering if it is possible to use Wikipedia's google juice to help your page. There would be some irony in it, but it might help. Can't quite think how to do it, though.

[Somey]

I think that was me, right after I posted a notice of this thread at the Huffington Post, but it looks like someone deleted the suggestion?

I suggested it too at some point, I think.

Right, you both suggested it, along with two or three others... I didn't mean to make it seem otherwise, I think some stuff just got moved/removed during the triple-banana thread split yesterday.

Also, I fixed the bit about "his resume" - thanks for noticing that, MR... I did put something off to do that (it took about 6 hours or so), but it wasn't urgent, and it's not like I'm going anywhere this weekend anyway - we just had a 16-inch snowfall here over a 48-hour period (apparently this was almost an all-time record), and the roads are still pretty dicey.

As for impressing the opposite sex, admittedly I'm not dating anyone at the moment. If I could only find someone who really understood me, someone who knows how to choose just the right actors for a major motion picture production or music video while still somehow managing to maintain at least 6 or 7 serious celebrity relationships at the same time... but I guess people like that just don't exist.

[Somey]

I'm surprised no one did a search of the site for that name.. didn't take me that long to pick this one up. Allie took it out, tho.. but still 18 months... *grumbles*

Someone did, but that's OK, I certainly wasn't going to change it back myself...!

Personally, I believe WP has a weakness with respect to both non-English-speaking culture and gay culture. There just aren't enough people on WP who know that kind of detail about French cable TV, and nobody wants to be seen as a gay-basher (or if they do, they usually don't last long). Binmore took advantage of both of those weaknesses, though I'm still not sure if he did so because he was clever, or if he just happened to be correctly situated for it.

Overall though, the Pink TV thing probably didn't do any real harm, unless it helped Binmore convince some poor sap or other that he really was a minor celebrity, and... well, I suppose we'll just have to use our imaginations!

[Jon Awbrey]

I posted updates to HuffPost and TechDirt. Both of their articles on Ron Livingston rank high in a Google search on his name.

Jon

[jayvdb]

User XinJeisan (T-C-L-K-R-D) has been removing Binmore/Dennison references from other Wikipedia. e.g. Italian and Hungarian page United 93, Indonesian page Pink TV, and Portugese page for Ron Livingston. In all of those cases, the problem was inherited by translation of the English Wikipedia page.

[Somey]

User XinJeisan (T-C-L-K-R-D) has been removing Binmore/Dennison references from other Wikipedia...

Fine work, Mr. Xin! Maybe Mr. Livingston or his attorneys will send us all one of those Harry & David "Tower of Treats" boxes.

Also, I hadn't mentioned this in the thread here, though I did add it to the blog post today - the folks at WikiAnswers (wiki.answers.com) have actually been handling this pretty well for the last several months. My guess is that Mr. Binmore and his friends would get drunk (or whatever) some nights and just have fun asking silly and/or stupid questions - some of them (most have nothing to do with "Lee Dennison") are actually pretty funny:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Special:Contribu...ip:ID3562343635

There's at least 9 pages of these, 50 questions to a page, many of them repeated across multiple categories. My favorite is probably "will you stop bombing people," which nobody seems to have answered. (There's also "what is kept in a butt," and so on.)

As for the "Lee Dennison" questions, the "No!" answers for those probably came from Livingston's publicist, though of course we may never know for certain.

[xinjeisan]

User XinJeisan (T-C-L-K-R-D) has been removing Binmore/Dennison references from other Wikipedia...

Fine work, Mr. Xin! Maybe Mr. Livingston or his attorneys will send us all one of those Harry & David "Tower of Treats" boxes.

I try. I'm thinking they'll just send us a thank you card on a post it note, though.

Anyways, I took off a reference to the lawsuit on the Japanese wiki, as well.

But, Binmore has come back to the internet, and is still looking to housesit for someone. Although I don't understand how one would have time to house sit for someone when you are running your own B&B that is so popular that it is booked throughout the holiday season. Isn't any free time needed to plan the many parties to be held in the jardin for friends near and far. However, maybe he has reason to try to go somewhere where he can't be found for a little while.

Somey, you might be interested in this research (an article and here is the professor's lab homepage). Basically, it says that people try to put up an ideal of themselves, but it ends up reflecting themselves, in the end.

People are just bound by their experiences and personality, and, really can't see beyond that, no matter how many different names of people who they say are living in different places they use as aliases. (those that can become artists or writers or filmmakers, I guess). Mark Binmore tried to create several different personalities and personas online, but, he couldn't pull it off. They are all pretty transparently him. One could speculate that is probably why he failed as an actor.

Also, I'm beginning to think that Ben Humble actually exists. First, you don't need an office to by a hypnotherapist. You can just go to someone's house, I would think. It actually might be the one legitimate business in the whole thing. It would also explain how Mark Binmore could run a B&B while in London. Humble could be the person managing the place, and Binmore could go down whenever he was off of work.

Just speculation, of course, but, at this point, that's all there is. I think we've found everything that can be found, and, unless Binmore starts posting elsewhere on line, its just wait until the lawyers move forward or some journalist feels this is interesting enough to follow up on, I would think.

ps why can't i quote other people's articles properly...what am I doing wrong..

This post has been edited by xinjeisan: Sun 13th December 2009, 9:26am

[xinjeisan]

This is new..

The Mark Binmore facebook page is down.
I just realized that he spent the time to get all his facebook friends personalized facebook addresses.

The Lee Dennison page is down, as well.

Maybe he really is looking to house sit because he needs to go somewhere else fast...



This post has been edited by xinjeisan: Sun 13th December 2009, 7:38am

[Milton Roe]

ps why can't i quote other people's articles properly...what am I doing wrong..

Count the "quote"s in your message. The must equal the number of "/quote"s

This is new..

The Mark Binmore facebook page is down.
I just realized that he spent the time to get all his facebook friends personalized facebook addresses.

The Lee Dennison page is down, as well.

Maybe he really is looking to house sit because he needs to go somewhere else fast...

Bruhahahahah. The Dennison page going down is admission of being sunk. Hole in one. Nailed perfectly. Hoist with his own petard.

[Daniel Brandt]

This is new..

The Mark Binmore facebook page is down.
I just realized that he spent the time to get all his facebook friends personalized facebook addresses.

The Lee Dennison page is down, as well.

Maybe he really is looking to house sit because he needs to go somewhere else fast...

He will have a harder time getting the Dennison pages out of The Wayback Machine (archive.org). I think they will tell him that Mr. Dennison needs to fax a request on company letterhead, based on my experience with The Wayback Machine. Since he doesn't control the ukscreen.com server, a robots.txt entry to block archive.org from showing those pages is not likely. Such a robots.txt would have to be placed in the root directory of ukscreen.com, and the site owner won't be interested in doing that.

Somey, you should change your link in your blog page. But rather than use the archive.org page, which will break nearly all of the links on that page, you should use the copy I grabbed this week at wikipedia-watch.

Maybe we should start collecting his pages and put them on WR in a special directory. Here's how it's done: Use Curl or Wget to grab the source, and then insert a meta in the headers. This is the one I inserted for the Dennison page:

CODE

<base href="http://www.ukscreen.com/crew/">

The base command picks up any style files and other eye candy from the original site. The same technique is useful for saving Wikipedia pages, and usually all the links still work on that page.

I didn't grab the Facebook page.

[Jon Awbrey]

I posted updates to HuffPost and TechDirt. Both of their articles on Ron Livingston rank high in a Google search on his name.

Jon

Not a single peep or wiki-peep out of anyone else since I posted these.

It's e-mazing how quiet the usual gang of blowhards gets when the truth starts to come out.

Jon

[Kelly Martin]

The Cabal's wheels are spinning overtime while they try to come up with a shore story to explain this one that doesn't require that they admit having been duped. You see, it's not possible for Wikipedians—who are by definition the smartest people on the planet—to be wrong about anything.

[Milton Roe]

The Cabal's wheels are spinning overtime while they try to come up with a shore story to explain this one that doesn't require that they admit having been duped. You see, it's not possible for Wikipedians—who are by definition the smartest people on the planet—to be wrong about anything.

Yes, damn them. The issue is not just one of insight. It's always appropriate to remind ourselves that we are, as JFK was wont to say about civil rights, confronted with what is essentially a moral issue. WP does not follow the Golden Rule on the issue of BLP. WP's policies for treating BLP are not those that anybody voting for these policies would want for him/herself, or their loved ones or family. The WMF crew makes sure their own BLPs either do not exist, or are watched with a care which is not available to the public. Jimbo did one BLP-wash (or had it done by JzG, same thing), as a favor to a sexual partner. WMF personnel who mess-up in real life (Carolyn Doran) have their BLPs expunged and salted-- another favor not available to other semi-public figures. Wikia people who lose enthusiasm for the WMF project (Angela Beesley) but still retain influence, have their BLPs reduced to a minimum corporate fact-set, even while WP allows personal details into the BLPs of similar corporate people from all walks of life, IF they have no Jimbo-connection. BLPs are not even semi-protected, so that they are edited by anonymous vandals and rumor spreaders who have no sense of responsiblity, and WP continues to allow this, alone among almost all website BBSs which deal with information about real live people. Finally, a legion of anonymous WP editors hide behind their usernames and use an official fear that they'll be "outed" and be subject to DANGER if they get the same BLP treatment on WP that they're happy to help with, when it comes to people they don't know. The most malicious of sockpuppet players continues to influence BLP content, to the detriment of homest people who keep one account. And so on.

All of this violates the Golden Rule, therefore is WRONG. Period. Full stop. We have various names for people who routinely violate the golden rule, including (but not limited to): pricks, sociopaths, evil bastards, malicious fucktards, self-centered narcissists, and selfish hypocritical assholes. Feel free to come up with your own, but they all apply to those who promote WP's BLP policy.

As for Mike Godwin, I don't know if his legal training actually included the concept of the Golden Rule, since (as I understand it) the law and morality are only nodding aquaintances. And as for Jimbo, well, we all know that he missed out on it somewhere. And WP's editors? A faceless mob in pointy hoods without any sense of personal accountability or worry about ever being in the same position as those they torment. Don't look for a fix from any of these people, any time soon.

[Moulton]

Uncle Miltie has nailed it. Full stop.

[Cedric]

Uncle Miltie has nailed it. Full stop.

Yep. Assholery begins where empathy ends.