Template:Wikia is not a part of Wikimedia, Certainly not. No connection. Entirely s Options

[Kato]

Have you seen the Wikia article?!?

Take a look at the template added here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=188335402



I know they badly need to distinguish between the two groups, especially after the Spanking Wiki / Child abuse images scandal but is this really the norm on articles?

[Robster]

That seems like a waste of a template. If it's notable (and I guess it is), it should be in the text of the article.

[guy]

It's only worth having a template if they intend to put the same text in lots of articles. Maybe they have, or propose, an article on each of the larger Wikia wikis.

[dogbiscuit]

I like the Wikia Search paragraph...

Now let's see how long that lives, starting from... NOW!

[thekohser]

And, of course, the Wikia is not Wikimedia template was created by the highly conflicted UK Wikimedia chair Alison Wheeler. So, an agent of the Foundation itself writes and installs the template. And this is accepted without WP:COI scrutiny, why? Note, the template is not to be removed "without permission"!

I could just as easily create a template stating that Wikia is Wikimedia, complete with pictures of Jimbo lecturing Wikimania in his Wikia t-shirt, copies of the Form 990 stating that there is ownership/Trustee overlap, and the story of how Jimbo hired Essjay to Wikia and appointed him to ArbCom in less than 35 days' timeframe.

How would they like them apples? The entire Wikipedia/Wikia system is a corrupt joke.

Greg

This post has been edited by thekohser: Wed 6th February 2008, 7:51am

[dogbiscuit]

And, of course, the Wikia is not Wikimedia template was created by the highly conflicted UK Wikimedia chair Alison Wheeler. So, an agent of the Foundation itself writes and installs the template. And this is accepted without WP:COI scrutiny, why? Note, the template is not to be removed "without permission"!

I could just as easily create a template stating that Wikia is Wikimedia, complete with pictures of Jimbo lecturing Wikimania in his Wikia t-shirt, copies of the Form 990 stating that there is ownership/Trustee overlap, and the story of how Jimbo hired Essjay to Wikia and appointed him to ArbCom in less than 35 days' timeframe.

How would they like them apples? The entire Wikipedia/Wikia system is a corrupt joke.

Greg

In true Wikia/Wikipedia form, the template does not even read unambiguously*:

Please do not move or remove this template from any article where it has been placed without permission.

So we can remove from any article where it has been placed with permission? Or are we to understand that someone has been placing this template all over the place without permission and that as evidence we are to leave it alone?

Interesting also, that either the WMF or Wikia are taking ownership and responsibility for Wikipedia content when they always deny they are responsible for content. It is supposedly the community that owns the content, not WiMkFia.

*[Edit]Bah! Don't you just hate it when you nitpick over someone's English and don't check your own?

This post has been edited by dogbiscuit: Tue 5th February 2008, 4:46pm

[KamrynMatika]

Also note the seemingly innocuous edit where she removes info that shows one of the ways in which Wikia and Wikipedia are connected. I guess you can say they're seperate if you hide all the evidence, eh?

This post has been edited by KamrynMatika: Tue 5th February 2008, 4:42pm

[thekohser]

Everyone, keep your eye on what's happening on the Wikia page and the Template discussion page.

Now is the time for all sane Wikipedians to stand up for Truth and not Whitewashing. Do any such Wikipedians still exist?

Greg

[Kato]

Rich Farmbrough writes during the template deletion debate

Delete in addition to the proposers reasons above:

1. Wikipedia is not here to serve the board, foundation of committee, rather the other way around.
2. Wikia and Wikimedia are in lots of ways related
3. This template amounts to special treatment of both Wikia and Wikimedia, such as we have always avoided in the past.

Rich Farmbrough, 20:40 5 February 2008 (GMT).

That is pretty much what I thought when I first saw it.

But preferential treatment of Wikia is bountiful and easy to find on Wikipedia.

Greg, how many outbound links are there to non-notable Wikia sites on Wikipedia again?

[Kato]

Rich Farmbrough has added a Conflict of Interest tag to the article now. Damn right.

Why don't they just give up the charade and call the whole site ConflictOfInterestapedia? It's just one massive accountability and conflict of interest disaster zone. You've got the chair of Wikimedia UK placing proclamations at the top of Wikia's article, who herself has two admin accounts and went onto Wikipedia using a sockpuppet to argue for her own vanity article to be kept on the site, without declaring her interest in that venture.

Meanwhile, this dude got slapped by Wikiminions for uploading a few of his own pictures of himself to his own biography, which he didn't want in the first place.

[Derktar]

From the template deletion page:

Strong Delete. Sure, you may be an admin, but this doesn't mean your exempted from the WP:NPOV and WP:COI guidelines. Per CordeliaHenrietta, you are just disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point. The point being that we are not Wikia. ViperSnake151 21:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Ouch!

[dogbiscuit]

Nothing on the Communications committee page that suggests that their remit includes censoring Wikipedia - and quite rightly too because we all know that censoring Wikipedia is the biggest evil that there is - far worse than supporting paedophilia or undermining those who seek to defend us against the Muslim hoards.*

...unless it is content about WiMkFians. Has anyone got a petard handy? I feel some hoisting coming on.

(*Just in case, as people are getting confused, that is satirical)

[Kato]

Alison Wheeler has gone on record as saying that the absurd template is a neccessity, as "This is a matter of *law* not of opinion."

Now Alison Wheeler may be steeped in Wiki-culture, but it is becoming apparent that she is very naive as to the reality of the broken format.

First Rule of public Wikis : There is no Law
Second Rule of public Wikis: If you try to enforce a Law then You... Will... Fail!!!!!

[guy]

This is a matter of *law* not of opinion.

WP:NLT!

[Kato]

Worst Arguments Ever made on a deletion debate... She's going to really regret this...

The grounds for this are the long-term stability of Wikipedia and the other WMF projects. To raise money and keep them advert-free we rely on donations, indeed we just finished a recent drive last month. Trouble is the press (be it written, spoken or visual) keep getting us (WMF projects like Wikipedia which are charitable, non-profit, a foundation) muddled up with Wikia (commercial, incorporated profit-making public company) and think that somehow Wikia is our 'commercial arm' and pays lots of money to Wikipedia. This error - which sadly keeps getting repeated all too frequently - will make it harder and harder to keep Wikipedia and the other projects we all know and love going in their present state and *everything* that can be done to try to ensure people realise that though Jimmy started the ball rolling on both he neither owns nor controls either, nor are the two legally connected. Yes, there are lots of little connections, but that is like saying people who shop at K-Mart and also at Walmart must be connected, and they aren't either. It might look like special treatment but every little that helps this message get out helps us raise money to keep Wikipedia going and is to the benefit of this and the other WMF projects. --AlisonW (talk) 21:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[thekohser]

I believe if the proper authorities would actually get off their asses and look into the self-dealing presented by Wikia's involvement with Wikipedia, we would soon learn that "the law" determines that the two organizations are most certainly not "completely separate".

Tell me, if Jimbo, Angela, and Mikey getting together and saying, "Hey, let's spin off a for-profit wiki farm like Wikipedia," is not a "spin-off", then pray tell, WTF would constitute a spin-off?

To answer an earlier question, there are 11,300 external links from Wikipedia to Wikia. I would guess that 65% of them are not from article Main space, but I would also venture a guess that 45% of them would violate the WP:EL (External Links) policy. All but three or four of them violate the code of business ethics. There should be external links to Wikia from the Wikipedia articles about Wikia, Jimmy Wales, and Angela Beesley, and not much else.

Greg

[Amarkov]

I believe if the proper authorities would actually get off their asses and look into the self-dealing presented by Wikia's involvement with Wikipedia, we would soon learn that "the law" determines that the two organizations are most certainly not "completely separate".

Tell me, if Jimbo, Angela, and Mikey getting together and saying, "Hey, let's spin off a for-profit wiki farm like Wikipedia," is not a "spin-off", then pray tell, WTF would constitute a spin-off?

To answer an earlier question, there are 11,300 external links from Wikipedia to Wikia. I would guess that 65% of them are not from article Main space, but I would also venture a guess that 45% of them would violate the WP:EL (External Links) policy. All but three or four of them violate the code of business ethics. There should be external links to Wikia from the Wikipedia articles about Wikia, Jimmy Wales, and Angela Beesley, and not much else.

Greg

The thing is, it's a self-justifying circle. Links to Wikia are justified because people are told to go dump their fancruft there. And why should we encourage them to dump fancruft on Wikia? Well, we have these links to Wikia sites, why not use them?

No matter how legally different they are, the public will probably see Wikipedia and Wikia as the same. And WP editors are part of the public.

[BobbyBombastic]

This template is so ridiculous that I would expect its creation to come from one of our regular whipping posts, like Durova or JzG. It is humorous in the way it looks, what it is trying to express, and where it is placed. This thread should probably be linked from the tagline. This could end up being very, very humorous--and who knows, Jimbo himself (being very careful about commenting about Wikia on WP lately) may pop his head into the discussion with an ounce or two of wisdom.

[Kato]

The thing is, it's a self-justifying circle. Links to Wikia are justified because people are told to go dump their fancruft there. And why should we encourage them to dump fancruft on Wikia? Well, we have these links to Wikia sites, why not use them?

No matter how legally different they are, the public will probably see Wikipedia and Wikia as the same. And WP editors are part of the public.

Hence the need for the big templates. We can all see Alison Wheeler's train of thought, and it seems perfectly logical and legitimate in many respects.

However, she appears to be oblivious to the fact that WIKIPEDIA IS A CRAZED MASS OF SEETHING IDIOCY™. And to start applying logical and legitimate measures to Wikia articles means you'd have to start doing the same to the complaints of people like Greg, or Judd Bagley, or anyone else who found themselves on the wrong side of the looking glass.

At Wikipedia, to be "logical and legitimate" would be to set a precedent.

[Kato]

User Jossi -- who has been described as the most Conflicted-Of-Interested editor on Wikipedia due to his 1000s of edits on articles concerning the Prem Rawat Foundation (which he works for), and whom I once opined was a supporter of BADSITES because of a Conflict of Interest over what critical websites would have to say about his Conflict of Interest on the Conflict of Interest page, where he showed a Conflict of Interest by amending the text to allow for his Conflict of Interest on the Rawat articles -- has stepped in!

He has removed the Conflict of Interest template.

He says it is only there to make a point.

I guess he should know.

____________________

Oh, and by the way, Alison Wheeler has been threatening to block people who have been removing the absurd template and comparing their actions to vandalism.

It is only because your bot shows you as offline that I have not immediately blocked you.