David Shankbone - the next Elonka?, Is he going to get away with it? Options

[the fieryangel]

(This is a spinoff of the thread in WRR, at the request of the subject.)

The double standard in applying WP: COI has long been a subject of discussion here. There are instances, as in the case of Mr. Kohs, in which people who have clearly expressed their Conflict of Interest are crucified and others, such as Ms. Dunin, who are allowed to express their conflict of interest in their editing activities with the benediction, even the encouragement of the WPPTB.

Mr. Shankbone seems to be in the later category, even having his own category in Commons. Not only is his name all over these contributions, there are also numerous "contributions" which seem to concerned with documenting....David Shankbone himself :

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Shankbone_2.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Al_Sharpton.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.JPG http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.jpg (by the way, David, that black muscleshirt is at least two sizes too small....) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...00px-Self_2.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...d_Shankbone.jpg

...just to point out a few conspicuous examples. It would seem that this type of activity has been attracting the attention of a particularly vicious stalker...and it would also seem that some Users are beginning to question the validity of the inclusion of many of these contributions.

And although Mr. Shankbone puts his name on every photograph he contributes, he removed the name of a contemporary artist here, suggesting that "artists are credited if they are notable"....so therefore Mr. Shankbone, in insisting that his own name is used, seems to be asserting his own "notability".

It seems to me to be only a matter of time before Mr. Shankbone has his own article: indeed, this would seem to be the logical outcome of this entire process. Granted, he does seem to produce an awful lot of content, but to what aim?

It was suggested on another thread that editors seem to contribute in areas which are of interest to them: classical music, pokemon, grind films of the 1970s, uses for electric knives etc. It was also suggested that since Mr. Shankbone's principal interest is himself that it is only logical and indeed, in his way of thinking, "altruistic" to offer himself as the supreme gift to the project.

The only question I have at this point is whether 1. WP will get tired of this self-promotion and expel him from the system or 2. whether he gets to go for the Golden prize that Durova was trying for and become the official WP media liaison. At this point, either outcome seems possible.

At least at that point, he could then interview himself about how he felt about losing his hair, instead of having to use the pretext of interviewing somebody else to get that valuable information into Wikipedia.

This post has been edited by the fieryangel:

[guy]

Most people who contribute a lot of their photos to Commons have a self-category

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:User_galleries

and indeed it is encouraged.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:...licy#Categories

So we can't criticise Shankbone for that.

[Random832]

And although Mr. Shankbone puts his name on every photograph he contributes, he removed the name of a contemporary artist here, suggesting that "artists are credited if they are notable"....so therefore Mr. Shankbone, in insisting that his own name is used, seems to be asserting his own "notability".

To be fair, the filename is not the same as the caption. DSC_0999 isn't "notable" either.

[jorge]

And although Mr. Shankbone puts his name on every photograph he contributes, he removed the name of a contemporary artist here, suggesting that "artists are credited if they are notable"....so therefore Mr. Shankbone, in insisting that his own name is used, seems to be asserting his own "notability".

To be fair, the filename is not the same as the caption. DSC_0999 isn't "notable" either.

Edwaert Collier 1640-1707 a contemporary artist? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif)

[the fieryangel]

And although Mr. Shankbone puts his name on every photograph he contributes, he removed the name of a contemporary artist here, suggesting that "artists are credited if they are notable"....so therefore Mr. Shankbone, in insisting that his own name is used, seems to be asserting his own "notability".

To be fair, the filename is not the same as the caption. DSC_0999 isn't "notable" either.

Edwaert Collier 1640-1707 a contemporary artist? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif)

No, he removed another artist's name (leaving the image, however) :

mage:bboard.jpg| Contemporary artist Linda Cassels-Hofmann's trompe l'oeil black board.

and then cited "self-promotion" as the motive...Of course, leaving his name on all of his photos is definitely, absolutely NOT "self-promotion", is it???

I suppose that the David Shankbone section on commons is SOP, but quite a few people are getting irked by seeing his bylines all over the place.

[jorge]

I guess he removed Edwaert Collier by mistake as he was clearly notable and I don't think he's up to much self promotion being dead for 300 years. The other artist is contemporary so removing the name was fair enough.

and then cited "self-promotion" as the motive...Of course, leaving his name on all of his photos is definitely, absolutely NOT "self-promotion", is it???

But artists hope to sell their work and AFAIK Mr Shankbone does not wish to sell his photographs?

[the fieryangel]

I guess he removed Edwaert Collier by mistake as he was clearly notable and I don't think he's up to much self promotion being dead for 300 years. The other artist is contemporary so removing the name was fair enough.

and then cited "self-promotion" as the motive...Of course, leaving his name on all of his photos is definitely, absolutely NOT "self-promotion", is it???

But artists hope to sell their work and AFAIK Mr Shankbone does not wish to sell his photographs?

Well, that's the question. What is Mr. Shankbone selling? And why is his name more notable than the artist that he removed?

[Kato]

I'm going to come out in broad support of Shankbone here. He's a blatant self-publicist and perhaps naive to the dangers Wikipedia presents, but at the end of the day he is a creative spirit just doing his thing and not some agenda fueled asshole.

[wikiwhistle]

I'm going to come out in broad support of Shankbone here. He's a blatant self-publicist and perhaps naive to the dangers Wikipedia presents, but at the end of the day he is a creative spirit just doing his thing and not some agenda fueled asshole.

I wouldn't quite describe it as that. He's an egotistical spirit doing his own ego-boosting thing as witnessed by his words "I send the mainstream media to you" and his visit to Israel as an ambassador of wikipedia or whatever. And his constantly going on about the 20 hours a week I have contributed to wikipedia and the numerous pictures I have uploaded (which incidentally are often pictures of himself.)


On the other hand, his motivation towards praise etc. does mean he does a lot of 'work'.

This post has been edited by wikiwhistle:

[David Shankbone]

Answers:

The self-promotion argument is so old, so tired, that I don't mind it because it is *so* easy to refute. It's been done time and again. Here's a conversation that I did *not* take part in. I can assure you, every time the self-promotion argument comes up, it goes a similar direction. Who cares if someone puts a name in the file name? I like to see how my work is used (if at all). For instance, my photo of a chest was used by an art class when they were learning figurative drawing. The site is now down, but they didn't credit me, they just uploaded the file from the Commons and it had my User name, so I found it.

It's very satisfying to be able to create something that other people want to use.

Is there a Conflict of Interest? This argument has also been discarded, such as here. If you look at that page there is a lot of heavy argumentation on my part, and I think I did not need to be so aggressive. I still have room to grow, although the discussion at Christian right is not an example (his arguments made no sense). I think what shows I have grown is that I have not taken part in any further Lower Manhattan arguments about one of my photos there (over which one person got blocked). It happens to be one of my favorite photographs, even though it's not of particularly high quality.

What I consider a Conflict of Interest?is what Robin Wong does. I'm not fucking off Robin here; she's a better photographer than I am. But that's just it: she's a professional. She has uploaded much needed photographs, with her name in the file name. But they are all essentially thumbnails, around 54KB. All of the image pages contain links to her photography site, where you can hire her or buy the better resolution versions of her work.

Fine, we don't have alternatives for her work. But you could argue this is more of an effort to "advertise" on Wikipedia than actually contribute to the project. I don't have a web site. I upload the largest size possible. I don't argue on behalf of photos I don't believe in. I thought the Sean Combs current lead was better than mine.

Is a COI to argue aggressively for my photographs? No, but it's not good form. That said, making arguments on behalf of my work is perfectly fine. As fine as someone arguing for a new section they wrote for an article, or a source they want to use. It would be insane to expect other Wikipedians to argue on my behalf every time someone makes a nonsensical argument, such as that guy on Christian right.

Do you know where your right, FieryAngel? The interviews *are* about me. They are about things I want to know. I have no responsibility to make sure I talk about one thing or another. Maybe Diane Sawyer's producer says, "You really should ask Whitney Houston about her drug use," but in the end it's up to Sawyer to decide. If she doesn't ask, people will wonder why not, because it was around the time there were photos of Whitney coming out of crack dens, etc. Why else would you have her on your show? She hadn't done anything recently.

The difference is, Diane Sawyer is paid and on broadcast television. I'm a volunteer who wants to get some recordings of their voices and I will ask what I want to ask. Even though you don't pay me, FieryAngel, like Sawyer's producer you can suggest I ask about certain topics. That's what happened when I interviewed the Dalai Lama's ambassador. Do you think I know the first thing about Shugden worship, or care about when the Dalai Lama is going to Latin America? No. They were questions people wanted me to ask.

Interviews are not easy, and I am empathetic to people. There is a lot of nuance in the world and a lot of things hit people out of left field, and they try to handle those things as best they can, given the circumstances. Sometimes, in hindsight, their best was not particularly good. Mistakes happen. It's part of life. I try to discuss current hot issues, but I'm not casting stones. I am not going to pillory someone when I really just want to have a conversation with them. One person on the talk page felt Senator Sam Brownback got away with a comment about Hugo Chavez that should have been challenged. I think I let him get away with not answering why God would have a problem with gay people. He started talking gay marriage. That's not what I was talking about, but fine, I let it slide. I thought it spoke for itself.

[David Shankbone]

One last thing, FieryAngel, you spend time here complaining about how nobody on Wikipedia takes responsibility for their work, and how the anonymity makes it such an ethically flawed project, but what do you do when someone *does* take responsibility for their contributions? Self promotion and Conflict of Interest. Make up your mind what you are asking of people on WP: to take responsibility, or become part of the nameless, faceless Wikipedia Borg. Your arguments are all over the place.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[Proabivouac]

I'm going to come out in broad support of Shankbone here. He's a blatant self-publicist and perhaps naive to the dangers Wikipedia presents, but at the end of the day he is a creative spirit just doing his thing and not some agenda fueled asshole.

I can agree with that generally. Nor do I entirely disagree with Fieryangel's assessment: everyone has motives to do the work they do, and a feeling of importance is a common one. Because Wikipedia is a volunteer project, this is one of the few rewards WP has to offer to most contributors. Even so, Shankbone comes across as peacocking and preening, and rather full of himself. But that's not misbehavior, per se.

This post has been edited by Proabivouac:

[David Shankbone]

To me, David, it's the photographs of yourself and your various body parts that, more than anything else, give me this impression. As a simple matter of good taste, I do not believe Wikipedia should publish them, nor do I think it helpful for contributors to be subjected to photographs of one another's pubic hair. I wonder if you realize how this will come across to many onlookers.

It has long been consensus that body parts are photographed, and sex acts are illustrated. I can't point you to this, and maybe it's just a Wiki legend, but nobody has raised it again for clarification so it has stuck.

If you disagree with that consensus, then that's the question.

They aren't my body parts, and everyone else knows this except the occasional weirdo who sends me an e-mail complimenting my balls. We had a situation where every little "dude" and "bro" who starts working out thinks *their* bicep should illustrate what a bicep ought to look like. Or chest. Camera phone cock shots, every Brazilian waxing you can imagine. There's a site called WikiFilth that documents some of these uploads.

I have a friend who is a model, and I approached him if he would mind. That I would leave him unidentified. It was also an artistic effort on my part. It is just not often a person comes across an opportunity to do a nude photo shoot with a purpose. Or to photograph a professional BDSM dungeon, and the ladies spanking each other, etc.

I'm an experience junky. I don't know if I created a body of nude photos that could stand against the every-growing body of boobs and asses we get. I am curious, and sometimes I am surprised at the things I'm seeing. Yes, my photographs are the leads on Pornography, Pornographic film, and in many of the BDSM articles. I have around--this is a rough estimate--2,000 photographs on Wikipedia. Around 15-20 do people find objectionable. That really is not so bad.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[Proabivouac]

They aren't my body parts, and everyone else knows this except the occasional weirdo who sends me an e-mail complimenting my balls.

Yes, I realized that only minutes after I'd posted, having intended to link to the thread where this was discussed, only to find that several posts down, Mr. Kohs had corrected the accusation. I apologize for having uncritically accepted it, and for having allowed it to influence my opinion of you.

[Milton Roe]

I'm an experience junky. I don't know if I created a body of nude photos that could stand against the every-growing body of boobs and asses we get. I am curious, and sometimes I am surprised at the things I'm seeing. Yes, my photographs are the leads on Pornography, Pornographic film, and in many of the BDSM articles. I have around--this is a rough estimate--2,000 photographs on Wikipedia. Around 15-20 do people find objectionable. That really is not so bad.

It is a little odd that Wikipedia bows down to the demands of photographers to have their works signed, but does its best to degrade the efforts of its writers. Likewise a bit odd that photographers like yourself do not want to contribute to the effort anonymously, but think that others from a different media should.

I, too, BTW, am an experience junkie of a sort, so I find Wikipedia's claims that it's uncensored, except when it is, to be hilarious. There's always something censorable by somebody. Everybody has their taboo lines. My quote for that comes from my beloved professor Farnsworth on Futurama: "Everyone's always in favour of saving Hitler's brain. But when you put it in the body of a great white shark, oooooh, suddenly you've gone too far..." And likewise everybody's always in favor of showing naked body parts, but when you show an erect penis with a Scarlet Macaw perched on it, ooohh, suddenly you've gone too far. Even though (whatever it might be) it's surely more art than pornography. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

[bluevictim]

I have removed this comment, references to slavery by Shankbone is wrong, inappropriate, and untrue.

This post has been edited by bluevictim:

[Somey]

One last thing, FieryAngel, you spend time here complaining about how nobody on Wikipedia takes responsibility for their work, and how the anonymity makes it such an ethically flawed project, but what do you do when someone *does* take responsibility for their contributions? Self promotion and Conflict of Interest. Make up your mind what you are asking of people on WP: to take responsibility, or become part of the nameless, faceless Wikipedia Borg. Your arguments are all over the place.

You're thinking of someone else, aren't you? Or else just making assumptions. The fieryangel hasn't generally been one of those people demanding personal accountability, or that everyone should use his/her real name... When s/he first joined us, the main issue s/he was into involved people like User:Makemi and User:Mindspillage, and how they've had a history of uploading audio files of themselves singing, playing the oboe, or whatever, as public-domain recordings that then become exemplars of the craft, almost by default. IOW, they could tell people, "if you want to hear a sample of my singing voice, just look up the word 'singer' on Wikipedia!" Which could be quite a calling-card for a musician, given the search-engine ubiquity factor.

I also vaguely recall TFA being rather unhappy with User:Moreschi and User:Folantin over their rather biased and heavy-handed ownership of opera-related articles, but of course, opera isn't exactly one of those "hot-button" topics. Moreschi actually turned out to be not so bad in the end... (though he could always be really horrible in the front...)

Anyway, there's a big difference between accepting responsibility for one's opinions, vs. engaging in a campaign of self-promotion. Though I should also say that I personally don't see this as such a big deal. Wikipedia needs photographers desperately, almost as much as it needs technical and scientific illustrators. If I were going to become a WP contributor, that's probably what I would do... except for the genitalia shots, of course. It just seems like overkill, considering how much of that is available elsewhere on the internet.

[Kato]

***Contents removed at the request of Bluevictim.***

I heard the Macaw was furious about not getting his credit. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

[David Shankbone]

Contents removed at the request of Bluevictim. No worries. We all make mistakes.

The Brooklyn Rail just published their interview with me about what I do on Wikipedia. It may explain more, or give more to criticize.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone:

[bluevictim]

I would like the quotes of my post to be removed by Kato and David Shankbone. David, thank you for explaining. I consider the accusations of slavery to be inappropriate, wrong, and untrue. Out of respect, can David Shankbone and Kato please remove these?