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Posted by: EricBarbour

Kato already http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=12850&view=findpost&p=50179 previously, but I can't help commenting further:

If you ever need proof of SV's insanity, you need look no further than her endless
messing with the David Icke article. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Icke&limit=500&action=history

According to Wikichecker, she has edited it 691 times.......

Probably she was first attracted to it by the (misinformed) idea that Icke's reptile
aliens were a coded form of saying "Jew". Even though Icke himself has disclaimed
any such belief, SV keeps hacking away at his BLP, in an apparently endless campaign
to make Icke look like a nut. (Which is actually a good thing, if you think Icke is a nut,
because most of the other editors of the Icke article, such as Sir Richardson (T-C-L-K-R-D) ,
have spent the last few years trying to make Icke look like a hero. So, endless editwar!)

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

Does PETA have a position on lizards?

Posted by: everyking

I can't see the problem and I certainly don't think it's insane to edit the article on David Icke. (Well, maybe so if you were pushing a pro-Icke POV.) Icke has attracted a good deal of attention, and there's been quite a lot of concern about the possibly anti-Semitic nature of his views, so why shouldn't that be represented on WP?

Personally, I'm not convinced that it's coded anti-Semitism, although it might have been created with anti-Semitism as a mental framework--the ideas have been disseminated in society to such a degree that one could unconsciously form ideas that are ultimately based on it (and people could be more receptive to the ideas because of residual anti-Semitic theory, lurking consciously or unconsciously in their minds). It seems to me that anti-lizardism is a good deal crazier than anti-Semitism, and also far less dangerous. Hell, maybe Icke actually undermines anti-Semitism by promoting an alternative interpretation of the Protocols that is so outlandishly crazy that anti-Semitism itself suffers through association.



I presume so. But these are lizard people--so I don't think they count.

Posted by: Cla68

Similar to the Lyndon LaRouche article, the Icke article reads like a journalist's expose', but it's not too bad. I checked the history and was surprised not to see Will BeBack's participation, since he also appears to like to edit the BLPs of demagogues, such as LaRouche or Rawat.

Posted by: Somey

You're (somewhat surprisingly) close to the mark here, EK. In effect, this sort of obsessing over labeling nutty conspiracy theorists as "anti-semitic" when they're really just "nutty" only helps to promote their ideas (and publications) among anti-semites. Anti-semites who are taken in by these publications, etc., are all nuts to begin with (otherwise they wouldn't be anti-semites), but then when they see how Wikipedia is being manipulated in this fashion, with all the misleading edit summaries and "3RR" blocks and what-not, they only become more convinced that Icke is actually "on to something." And of course, a few of these people also have money.

Obviously some will disagree, but IMO the best way to deal with people like David Icke is to give them as little ink and attention as possible. It's unfortunate, but I suppose Wikipedia(ns), as usual, merely reflect the prevailing culture in general here by having such a needlessly lengthy and detailed article on him.

Specifically, the article itself seems a little overdependent on one particular source, a PDF/paper called The Reptoid Hypothesis by Richard Kahn and Tyson Lewis. Slimmy will presumably argue that this is because the PDF is available online for free, and most of Icke's books are not - but it does avoid the problem of having to source Icke's claims to Icke's own work, which might lead people to read more of it. Long story short, I suspect Slimmy is well aware of the problem she's causing, but as always, is unwilling to solve it the way it should be solved (by trimming the article and reducing the overemphasis/overdependence), preferring to simply get as many digs in on Icke as possible. Sure, it's just one article, but the article (and the "encyclopedia") essentially suffers so that more words and phrases can be brought in to share the WP Google-juice on Icke's name.

Posted by: gomi

This article is another example of Wikipedia's utter lack of scholarship. In general, the nuttier and less well regarded someone is, the shorter their biographical sketch, not longer. This article commits the sin of inadvertently glorifying its subject through the sheer length of the article. Separately, ans equally common on Wikipedia, is the crime of calling someone an "Anti-Semite" in the negative (its first use is in the lead, as "[Icke] strongly denies he is an Anti-Semite"). This is a "when did you stop beating your wife" style of argument completely inappropriate for an encyclopedia.

However, the guy is clearly a nutter, so I have a hard time getting worked up over it. It seems to keep Slimmy out of the bars and off the streetcorners at night, so on balance it might be a good thing.

Posted by: everyking

It would only appear that way if you were locked into the concept of paper encyclopedias that assign valuable space based on the importance of the subject. Wikipedia's coverage of a subject should be just as extensive as its treatment in reliable sources will permit, without regard for its notability relative to some other subject.

Posted by: Somey

You're missing the point, EK - Gomi is talking about lack of scholarship. Reliable sources don't "permit" anything - you either emphasize some subjects over others by article length, number of illustrations, etc., or you don't. Obviously on Wikipedia you do, but all that does is make WP articles a collection of "fact dumps."

The point of exercising editorial restraint is that it allows you to be taken more seriously as a scholarly work, because it shows that you're capable of making sound editorial decisions, as opposed to building a collection of fact (or in many cases, non-fact) dumps. If you simply don't care about scholarship, or being taken seriously as such, then you do what Wikipedia does.

Posted by: everyking

In fact such an editorial decision would have no purpose in the context of a paperless encyclopedia--it would eliminate useful content for no benefit. This is just "but we've always done it that way" thinking. Whether or not something is a "fact dump" depends on the way the information is structured and presented, not on the amount of information provided.

Posted by: Somey

Just when I think you're starting to get it, you post things like this...

What you're talking about is a compendium. It's the sort of thing you see on the walls of the serial killer's attic in slasher movies, the "shrine" where he's been collecting all the photos and news clippings about himself and his victims and scrawling things all over them, until finally the intrepid teenage girl snoops around and finds the shrine and is caught by the serial killer and is forced to flee for her life, only to realize too late that the killer is... herself!

Editorial restraint is what keeps the reader from thinking you're insane, obsessed, and/or hell-bent on revenge. Editorial restraint is the thing that encourages readers to dig deeper and apply their own critical thinking abilities to form their own ideas and opinions. Editorial restraint is what prevents people, organizations, and entire ideologies from being trivialized on the one hand, and needlessly glorified on the other. A real Editor, with a capital "E," knows what to leave out as well as what to keep in.

I understand that there are no space considerations on Wikipedia, EK - unless of course you're considering the reader's attention span or ability to absorb facts in the proper context and with appropriate emphasis, which as a Wikipedian you presumably do not. The fact remains that many articles about whack-jobs and their work(s) are far lengthier, and far more detailed, than articles about people with far greater and more socially-valuable accomplishments, and this article about David Icke is just one (though classic) example. You can "structure" and "present" the information any way you like - if you don't apply editorial restraint, you have a fact dump, a shrine, and that's going to favor the whack-jobs, because more people obsess over them, and to a far greater extent.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

The whole problem is that David Icke has been known to be mad as a box of frogs, and to suggest that his pronouncements are worthy of serious attention is, well, mad as a box of frogs.

That Wikipedian editors, seek, through some distorted sense of editorial balance, give due weight to any of his pronouncements, such as the anti-Semitism non-controversy stinks.

Publishing such an article, documenting his insanity for all to see while treating it as rational argument is a cruel and unusual punishment. Wikipedia should be ashamed, but instead you have twits who seem proud of its content.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

I haven't followed this whole thread, but the sample of comments I've read all seem to miss the underlying dynamics. A given class of loonies — like Slim and her Gang — needs to fixate on other classes of loonies, namely, those they can somehow manage to convince themselves they're at least less loony than.

Of course, that may explain why a lot of us are here …

Jon

Posted by: Gruntled

Is SV's first name Sarah? I've heard another name. Or is it a codeword?

Posted by: dogbiscuit

It is the name she signs herself by on the mailing lists. There is no reason to suppose it is any more her name than Slimfast.



I'll buy that for a dollar. B`

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

For a useful summary of what is known about this issue, see http://berletwatch.freehostia.com/virgin.htm.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

SlimVirgin, Jimbo and the Anti-Defamation League are all *definitely* material for morphing lizard conspiracy theory. It, the lizard self within her, is probably just acting on deeply intuitive and uncontrollable instinct to conspire against Icke, in order to discredit him as an anti-semite, in order stop him exposing them ... and the entire reptilian nest on the Pee-dia.

There is even a citation in one of Ickes books to back them up, so it must be true ... .

Posted by: gomi

T.S. Eliot notably wondered "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"

Your uncritical mind has fixated on the opinion that centuries of scholarly process can (and should) be swept away by technology. Yet the technology is only a tool, it doesn't really change the underlying processes of analysing, synthesizing, and understanding. When I want to be understood, I write clearly, briefly (not my strong suit), and simply, emphasizing key themes and leaving the details aside. When writing (e.g.) a legal contract where I want to hide a particularly onerous clause, the best place to do so is buried in several paragraphs of boilerplate, and worded either so confusingly or so innocuously that the other side never really sees it.

So it is with Wikipedia, whether as a deliberate strategy or as a side-effect of the presence of under-intelligent and under-educated goons such as yourself. When a topic is shown to be complex, controversial, or otherwise difficult, the best scholarly approach is to simplify, simplify, simplify. After all, there are all of those references and citations to look into if someone wants details and complexity. But Wikipedia goes the other direction, clouding these topics with layer upon layer of weasel-wording, superfluous detail, innuendo, and inappropriate emphasis.

Wikipedia is like a precocious grade-school child's book report on Shakespeare: full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Or, simplify.

Your TS Elliot quote was exactly what I was looking for. The Thoreau quote has always been deliciously self-mocking (at least to me).

Of course, I agree with the rest of what you said. Right on.

Posted by: Heat

Yes, well I suppose if Icke has disclaimed something it couldn't possibly be true. I mean if someone says they aren't antisemitic they couldn't possibly either by lying or deluding themselves?

I'm sorry but the guy's barking mad and an anti-Semite.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

As a prime example of WikiTwitterdom, I present the following quote:

Another twit demonstrating the Catch-22 of the Wikipedian honey trap. Oddly enough, even Tony Blair has come to pronounce the nature of the modern world - nothing can have a rational and reasonable explanation any more, everything is a conspiracy, people are not allowed to hold other viewpoints - agree to disagree - there has to be something nefarious behind it.

I do believe that he is mentally ill. It therefore follows that any such pronouncements he makes can hold no legitimate value in terms of evaluating what his beliefs are. This rather undermines the whole premise of having an article that seeks to set out in all seriousness, the lworks and beliefs of David Icke.

I've never understood what caused David Icke to go from being a lively and interesting sports reporter, a minor celeb in the UK, to being an international nutter of the first order. All I know is that it is rather sad, and unfortunately the media eats such people up and spits them out.

I cordially invite Heat into my exclusive club of certified WikiTwits, an award previously only accorded to Everyking.

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

And I challenge Heat to prove that he is not an anti-Semite.

Posted by: The Adversary

Yes.
I'm not too interested in a rather disturbed, eh, "mentally challenged" (is that the the expression?) person like David Icke , but I have noticed the same proccess at work in other wp-articles.

Do you have the expression in English about not seeing the wood, for all the trees?

Take Muhammad al-Durrah incident (T-H-L-K-D)....it has recently become a FA-article..That this article "has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community" leaves me utterly depressed.


The article has http://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/Contributors.php?wikilang=en&wikifam=.wikipedia.org&grouped=on&page=Muhammad+al-Durrah+incident, three times more than anyone else. Though she is certainly not the only one to blame; that article has been a favorite place to hang around for some of the most prolific POV-pushers in the I/P-area, including several notorious socks (Tundrabuggy, Canadian Monkey)

What is wrong with the article? Well, lets start with the name: a boy, Muhammad al-Durrah, is shot and killed, and it becomes an... incident?

And I had to read the intro of the article twice, in order to understand that the boy was actually killed. And the whole article is like that: concentrating on describing, in detail, every single little rotten leaf in the wood, leaving the reader with no understanding of the wood itself.

For example, the shooting took place, because Israeli soldiers were protecting "the nearby Israeli settlement of Netzarim". However; the reader is not informed about the "tiny" little fact that this was an illegal settlement under international law; the Israeli settlers had absolutely no right to be there in the first place...

And the article say that the boy has become a symbol for the Palestinian cause, etc...but it does not mention the obvious reason: because so many hundreds of Palestinian children have been killed. Now, if you look for info about that in the article, you look in vain....

Instead, what you do get is every detail about a libel-trial in France, a film from Germany, etc. And the wp-article is used(?) as a basis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Muhammad_al-Durrah_incident#New_article. Just bloody wonderful.

I have said it before, and I repeat it: though BLP is a very important issues, I am not sure it is where, in the long term, wp does most harm.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Fine analysis, Adversary. Very few people get through the first skins of the onion —¤ sniff sniff ¤— much less anywhere near the root of the problem with Mackie Messer and Her Gang o' Hoods.

Yes, the Anglish have both hylomorphisms:

• Not seeing the wood for the trees.
• Not seeing the trees for the wood.

Jon

Posted by: Lar

It IS a great analysis. Thanks Ad...

I think the aphorism I've heard the most often is

"not seeing the forest for the trees"

(wood can mean both a part of a tree or if plural, woods, a stand of trees)

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

I'll also congratulate The Adversary on his analysis. It's important to remember the principle of WP:NOT:NOT!, which is to say, Wikipedia is a soapbox for propaganda, and the various factions are honing their propaganda skills, including "news management." The evidence suggests that SV is in fact Linda Mack, who came to Wikipedia after some early misadventures in news management on the Lockerbie Bombing, and is using WP to craft a fantasy "career" after her real one crashed and burned.

Posted by: Heat

Well, I guess if you can't refute something go for a personal attack. Calling someone a 'twit' is hardly a refutation.

I haven't read Wikipedia's article on Icke - I have read enough about him elsewhere to draw the conclusion that his theories are way beyond the fringe and anti-Semitic. If you really want me to go into details, I can, but frankly he's so marginal that he's not worth the time and effort.

As I recall, it was this article, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27b/132.html, that first alerted me to Icke and just looking at his website which carries articles with charming titles such as "Were Illuminati Jews Responsible for Holocaust?" and "Satanic Verses of The Jewish Talmud" I think the burden of proof is clearly on Icke to show how he's not an anti-Semite.

But yeah, I know, if SlimVirgin says it the opposite must be true. Just remember, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

Nah, it just shows you are not listening. It is not a question of whether things were actually published, or whether SV said something, it is the principle that you do not give serious coverage to the views of a deranged person. Simply put, if someone states in all seriousness that we are populated by lizard men controlling the country, why would you give any serious credence to his pronouncement on Jews?

Yes, the statements may be ill-informed tasteless anti-Semitism, but the guy clearly has no functional critical faculties and it is doing the person a disservice to report his views as having any validity. The kindest thing to do is ignore him, not to repeat the nonsense.

It's another "Can you see the wood for the trees?" WP article. So busy reporting nonsense in tedious detail, it fails to do the right thing, which is to write an article that simply summarises that he has produced numerous conspiracy theories, some of which are potentially offensive, but that as a minor celebrity nut-job they carry as much weight as the combined political outpourings of the S Club 7.


You miss the point. If you accept that he is an unbalanced individual, there is no burden of proof on Icke. In court, the defence of insanity means that the court accepts that he is not responsible for his actions. Where your ire should be aimed is those around him, those who publish his works that make him a zoo exhibit, those who interview him on TV and so on. Regardless, the fact that he gives equal credence to lizard people from the planet Zog as to Zionist conspiracies should be enough for anyone with functional critical faculties.

Posted by: Heat

Well, I never said there should be an exhaustive article on Icke, in fact I said I hadn't bothered reading the WP article on Icke and didn't think it's worth expending a lot of energy arguing about him given his marginality- I just agreed that he's a flake and anti-semite and for that I get called a 'twit' and am asked to prove I'm not an anti-Semite. Although I guess, as always, there are a number of conflicting agendas in this discussion. I'm not surprised that given Lyndon LaRouche's history Herschel would want to set the bar for anti-Semitism up a couple of thousand miles.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

Here is Icke on Icke ... it seems to me that he made the mistake of being an ordinary man trying to understand things beyond his ken and got sucked in and addicted to the celebrity of it all. A sort of poor man's Noam Chomsky, or a Limey Alex Jones, who speaks to gentile audiences who could never understand the former.

Off the planet in places, for sure, ... but not anti-semite at all.

Look at the best they and Icke's detractors get ...

So, if I say I hate bananas ... and the ADL or some whacko leftie group decides that by "bananas" I really mean a code word for Jews ... I become an anti-semite criminal 'by effect' (even if I had no intent) ... and even if I really, really, really mean I hate bananas .

There are some weak groups and individuals, mainly on the left, desperate to find or create enemies to justify their existence and make them appear useful or more important. If they need an uneducated ex-goalkeeper who believes the world is run by morphing lizards as an enemy ... they are more weak and desperate than they even look. It is pretty pathetic stuff ... and yet Icke's topic is 50% longer than, say, Thomas Paine.

Here they are our saviour ...


The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has to have a 'BAD BOOK' status in the same way that Wikipedia Review has to have BAD SITE status within this little world. It is just 'a book'. It may have turd status in the minds of many (who probably have not even read it) but it was 'a book' of its time and whoever wrote it knew something about the shenanigans of power ... Evil Iguanas aside.

And, believe me, some of my best friends are lizards too!

I had a quick scan of the topic ... it is equally desperate and tortuous comic shite. A game of 'negative status by association'.

Leave the poor man alone ...

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

More like a poor man's Ezra Pound, without an Eliot or Frost in sight to say a kind word. Anything evil about this man is almost certainly the product of mental disease.

Posted by: everyking

The purpose of a lead section is to summarize the article's contents in such a way that the general reader, uninterested in the details, will be satisfied. The lead section should essentially do what traditional print encyclopedias do: provide a tidy and elegant summary that touches on the most important facets of the topic. That's why this "forest for the trees" criticism is baseless: in a properly written article, details should not obscure a general understanding of the topic. A criticism regarding the organization of content should not be applied to the existence of the content. One of Wikipedia's most important attributes is its ability to adequately address the needs of readers looking for varying level of detail.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

...and this relates to what is actually presented in that supposedly excellent article how?

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Some of you will recognize the International Symbol for Blowing Bubbles Out Uranus …

Jon

Posted by: Cla68

Remember not to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AHekerui&action=historysubmit&diff=343450839&oldid=343235310 with the images in the Icke article.

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

Horrors!

Posted by: everyking

So it seems she wants to get the Icke article up to FA status. Good, right? But apparently that's not a laudable goal here on WR. Some people might wonder why, so let's run through the reasons again:

1). Icke is crazy, so anyone interested in editing his article must be crazy too.

2). Icke is crazy, so an encyclopedia should not give attention to his views, no matter how much real-world attention they've attracted.

3). Icke is crazy, so it is a violation of his human rights to discuss his views in an encyclopedia.

4). SlimVirgin is involved.

Did I miss any?

Posted by: The Joy

It's a BLP article and Wikipedia has no means of responsibility to maintain BLP articles.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

Featured for what, or why? A fair and "good" article on Icke would be a single line mention ... or perhaps a paragraph. Featured as a global stitch up to salve the self-importance of the Pee-dians?

It is just more BLP "pulling the wings and legs off a fly" type behaviour from the insane Pee-dians, of which I am having to admit Slimvirgin appears to be one of the more hyperactive (... why?). Pee-dians, for whom 'Anti-anti-semiticism' has high kudos devoid of any importance to the sincere practise of Judaism, are driven like the Richard Warman s of the world.

I think your breakdown of the topic is actually pretty fair too. On one level, it is like watching the village kids pick on the village retard. Only, the level that the game is being played is a global one.

One of the silly games they play is "Pin the Protocols of Zion on a Donkey".

I actually did not know about anything about all this and these people until last night, and I really do not know who the players and what the issues are all about, but I loved Ezra Levant speaking on Richard Warman here ... my feeling is that this describes very well the type of personality unleashed on Jimmy Wales' Psychoto-pedia.

This is hysterical ... but this is how these people are. And I tell you, there is a global conspiracy of herpetological Richard Warman s, and now SlimVirgins, all over the world feeding off David Icke's butt.

A good comparison Richard Warman's own wiki page.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

If this guy was not a such an intelligent, well qualified and sincere human rights lawyer, he would have had a great career in standup comedy; Richard Warman in "Neo-Nazi drag" ... another jerkoff under the guise of false identities and anonymity, hammering away furiously at his keyboard.

Posted by: EricBarbour

5) Everyking is arguing in favor of the (broken) article.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

I think it is wonderful that people from diverse, even diametrically opposed, views can collaborate together to create such a wonderful paragraph. A monument to atomized content creation. Ok, now whose turn is it for the next sentence? Or are we using those funny shaped dice to decide?

Posted by: gomi

[Moderator's note: At two users' request, posts concerning a certain possibly gay non-lizard were removed to the Tar Pit.]

Posted by: Milton Roe

This reminds me of the apocryphal writing-class assignment, where pairs of male and female students are assigned to write a short story-- no communication between them other than to continue the other's story, paragraph by paragraph. Result:

=================

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The
chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home,
now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times,
that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep
her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she
thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So
chamomile was out of the question.

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron
now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about
than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with
whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to
Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. " Polar
orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he
could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and
blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct
hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt
one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who
had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its
pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4.
"Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,"
Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously
excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her
youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no
newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of
innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one
lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live.
Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched
the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dimwitted wimpy
peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty
through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the
hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race.
Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships
were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the
entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their
diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere
unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine
headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam , felt the
inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My
writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic
whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. " Oh,
shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F--KING
TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads
too many Danielle Steele novels!"

A$$h@le.

B*tch!

F*** YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!!

In your dreams, Ho. Go drink some tea.

======================
TEACHER: Grade: A --I really liked this one.

Posted by: NuclearWarfare

Oh, and Snopes.com does confirm that one to be true: http://www.snopes.com/college/homework/writing.asp

Posted by: Eva Destruction

Well, snopes.com says that "a former teacher living in Winnipeg claims that it was genuine". People claim a lot of things.

Posted by: Lar

On the summary list for the topic area it gets a grey bullet, not a green, yellow or red, meaning they consider it unverifiable one way or the other. There are two other topics in that topic area that get green so it may be helpful to review one of them and see the difference...

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

The Wikipedians' ability to misuse sources and verificaton never ceases to amaze me. Anyone who thought about for even a minute would see why it is not subject to meaningful verification. Textually, however it is just too clean, with every portion serving the purpose of the joke too well. Also toward the end material that would be "off record" but which serves the purpose of parody of collaborative writing is included.

It does make a nice point about collaborative writing. Of course on Wikipedia people conceal knifes much longer and sharper than this "Jane Austin meets DC Comics" couple. Also the orderly turn taking is an exercise in model cooperation next to the atomized word by word, or letter by letter level of play on WP. Plus the writers have no recourse to the really fun nastiness of sock puppets, MMORPG manipulation, trans-internet campaigns of defamation and banning. They only had access to harmless "personal attacks."

Posted by: Lar

Thank you for that informative lesson... And here I thought I was just commenting on Snopes color schemes for bullets. I consider myself fortunate that I was able to provide material that was useful to you in your continuing quest.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

Heat, you never wrote why all this really bothered you ... that is, what your connivance was ... and I am left suspecting that it has nothing to do with a concern for the owners of this website being sued for non-existent threats.

For me, it is just more drama. I find the whole Wikipedia and Richard Warman verus David Icke and now Levant episode, more amusing than watching television. Much of it, was it not for the real human costs involved, is as good as Monty Python was in its heyday.

That one bunch of grown adults go around hunting morphing lizards who want to take over the word is one thing. For another bunch of adults to go around investing hundreds of hours conspiring to destroy them with 'maximum disruption' campaigns, or "Feature articles" on the Wikipedia is another.

As with all other BLP Wiki-dramas, it really just ought not take place in public and an Encyclopedia should not be the place for weak bullies to chew away at people.

I read that the sinful Ezra Levant suffered such a terribly iniquitous punishment of "having to go in and have coffee and chat with a QC" before being exonerated by the Canadian Law Society ... so serious the nature of his "thought crimes".

Anyone who knows anything of the workings of "Law Societies" from real life will know how inept, impotent and self-protecting they can be. I do.

For those who care or enjoy, http://www.popehat.com/2008/04/29/be-careful-making-fun-of-canadian-lawyers-part-ii/.