Feuding Art Masters, Wikipedia makes the Evening Standard Options

[Peter Damian]

A good piece by Sebastian Shakespeare in the London Standard this afternoon. A feud between art dealers Mark Weiss and Philip Mould. Weiss is accused of revising Mould's Wikipedia to put down his abilities, accuse him of extramarital affairs, etc etc. Weiss had to resign form the Society of London art dealers.

I checked out the Philip Mould page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=history and it seems somewhat more complicated. An editor calling themselves EmmaHenderson originally created the, er, flattering article on Mould, then seems to have got into a massive edit war with an editor called Teapot George, who was making the somewhat slanderous allegations.

Interestingly they both seem to have extensive knowledge of Wikipedia editing conventions.

I have to rush off to dinner now, apologies if this has been reported before (although Shakespeare claims this is the first time it has been made public).

[edit] Possibly my mistake - some of the allegations came from an IP

Philip Mould OBE would like everyone to think he is one of the United Kingdom's foremost authorities on British art, and that he is widely consulted by galleries, private collectors and the media.[citation needed] He is under the impression that he is the leading specialist in British portraiture, including Tudor and Jacobean, seventeenth and eighteenth century, and even contemporary commissions.[according to whom?] He is also well known amongst the trade for his numerous so-called discoveries in the area of early British art.[clarification needed]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=302095026

On the other hand 'Teapot George' did insist on reverting back to a slanderous version

The couple separated in May 2009, after Mould started an affair with artist Charlotte "Charlie" Barton
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=319390856

Philip Mould has left his beautiful wife for the sluttish charlie barton
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=319087377

But then it was also in the gushing Daily Mail

MARRIED Antiques Roadshow presenter Philip Mould looks relaxed as he takes a stroll with the new woman in his life.

The multi-millionaire art dealer is said to be bewitched with Charlotte Barton - known as Charlie to her friends - since meeting her a year ago. Mr Mould and the svelte Ms Barton, who was dressed in black and carrying a sheaf of papers, were spotted out together last week.
Read more: http://mail-on-sunday.vlex.co.uk/vid/romeo...7#ixzz1LbDAtzox
http://mail-on-sunday.vlex.co.uk/vid/romeo...tching-68703787

The Standard article also claims that the same person who added the material to the Wikipedia article also wrote the tabloid articles:

The 'press release' was written in breathless tabloid style and provided journalists with salacious details

.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Peter Damian]

The discussion is dragging on. People are talking about software to detect unreliable sources, special flags on sensitive pages and so on. Wales (who often makes good points, even if he fails to implement any of them), gets to the heart of it. He points out that there is something fundamentally wrong with this edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=319300905 , which contains the allegation that Mould is having an affair with someone who is not is wife. True or not, what is it doing in a reliable and comprehensive reference work.

Good point. But then why has no one pointed this out to the editor who caused the problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Trident13 ? And why as I pointed out here http://ocham.blogspot.com/2011/05/wikipedi...in-fiction.html did the subject of the slander have to get into a protracted edit war http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=319390856 in order to try, and fail, to get the slander removed?

And even if Wales gets something done about it - perhaps another policy on what kind of information you can put in articles - won't that conflict with Sue Gardner's aim to tear up all those difficult manuals and policies that are making it too hard for new editors to join Wikipedia?

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Eva Destruction]

And even if Wales gets something done about it - perhaps another policy on what kind of information you can put in articles - won't that conflict with Sue Gardner's aim to tear up all those difficult manuals and policies that are making it too hard for new editors to join Wikipedia?

The BLP problem is inevitable with anything aiming for comprehensiveness, and assuming user-editable sites aren't going to go away even if Jimmy Wales pulls the plug on Wikipedia tomorrow, it's a problem that will always exist. The DNB solution, of not mentioning any living people at all, wouldn't work since people would reasonably expect the Bill Clintons and Paul McCartneys of the world to be mentioned, even if 99% of the minor-soap-actor and drummer-from-a-one-hit-band biographies were zapped.

My personal solution—which I can't envisage ever happening unless the WMF imposed it by fiat—would be that the subject of any biography, provided they can verify their identity via OTRS or something similar, should have the right to request via OTRS that their article be reduced to a bare-bones stub containing nothing remotely controversial, and locked in place. ("Don Murphy (b. 1966) is an American movie producer. He produced numerous films including Natural Born Killers and Transformers.", "Daniel Brandt is an American researcher and social activist specializing in accountability on the internet.") That would avoid the mass of redlinks and the "there isn't a page on this guy, I'll create one" problem, while allowing people who have a grievance to get biographies they feel are inappropriate taken down. It would only work if there were no exceptions to the rule, otherwise it would just displace the problem into endless "this guy is too notable to have his biography stubbified" arguments.

[Peter Damian]

And even if Wales gets something done about it - perhaps another policy on what kind of information you can put in articles - won't that conflict with Sue Gardner's aim to tear up all those difficult manuals and policies that are making it too hard for new editors to join Wikipedia?

[...] assuming user-editable sites aren't going to go away even if Jimmy Wales pulls the plug on Wikipedia tomorrow, it's a problem that will always exist.

No. A user-editable site is simply that. The problem is that Wikipedia, because of its generally reliable coverage of stuff like Boron and set theory, is somehow perceived as a reliable source.

Even a tabloid is not considered an encyclopedia. And note that the Daily Mail did pull the planted article, and this is because you can sue the Daily Mail. But Wikipedia is both a "user editable site" and an "encyclopedia". Hence, the defamatory material remained for more than a year.

The DNB solution, of not mentioning any living people at all, wouldn't work since people would reasonably expect the Bill Clintons and Paul McCartneys of the world to be mentioned, even if 99% of the minor-soap-actor and drummer-from-a-one-hit-band biographies were zapped.

Not to forget this 'film director' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gardner_(film_producer) who made this film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXjPb8rhXuk .

My personal solution—which I can't envisage ever happening unless the WMF imposed it by fiat

You jest. But at least you bothered to notify one of the main culprits (see below). And what about 'Teapotgeorge'? The one who reverted back to defamatory material 5 or more times on the ground that the victim had a 'conflict of interest'?

Since nobody seems to have bothered to notify you…Nobody seems to have actually notified you, but an edit of yours is being discussed at great length on Jimbo's talk page, having made multiple newspapers. You may want to comment there. – iridescent 09:19, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: