Valleywag's accusations against Erik Moeller, Claims WMF Deputy Director is "a defender of pedophilia" Options

The solution? Get serious and aspire to be COPPA compliant.

But that would require self-examination, honest evaluation., and responsible, responsive, corrective action.

And we all know that is wrong.

Perfection cannot be altered or improved. (dammit)

It's like the prose in Shakespeare's sonnet about love. Wikipedia is an ever fix-ed mark.

More seriously: I agree that there should be free speech on the thing (Wikipedia) but if they are so clever, why don't they have a child-safety button? You know, an on-off switch for non-kid content? (runs to write a patent).

Shankbone's attempts to divert the attention and deny that there are both problems and solutions already outlined in this thread is risible.

But it's so normal. SOP, standard operating procedure.

This post has been edited by Disillusioned Lackey: Wed 7th May 2008, 6:35pm

So how is that for being on the record and sticking my neck out? Most of that *is* on the record - you just make assumptions that are...again, incorrect. Typical Wikipedia Reviewer!

How about "sticking your neck out" and acknowledging that an organization that professes to "liaise with schools and educationalists to disseminate information" displays shocking lapses of judgment with regard to basic Child Protection?

Or is that a step too far?

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_...SChildrenUK2007

What exactly is the issue you want me to comment on?

How about you address the matter of an organization that professes to liaise with schools and educationalists to disseminate information while displaying shocking lapses of judgment with regard to basic Child Protection?

What do you think of that?

I disagree with the premise that Wikipedia has displayed "shocking lapses of judgment with regard to basic Child Protection"

What exactly is the issue you want me to comment on?

How about you address the matter of an organization that professes to liaise with schools and educationalists to disseminate information while displaying shocking lapses of judgment with regard to basic Child Protection?

What do you think of that?

I disagree with the premise that Wikipedia has displayed "shocking lapses of judgment with regard to basic Child Protection"

Read this thread about the Lolita Category on the Commons where people were adding pictures of Children. This only stopped because we intervened.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=74492

Read this thread as well, you get a mention

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=15438

and read this edit by WAS 4.250, who guards Jimbo Wales's talk page, and who called us "lunatics" for protesting about pictures of pre-pubescent boys uploaded to Wikipedia being used to endorse Child Abuse on Wikia's Sex fetish site. The edit above WAS 4.250's is from a hapless editor who innocently took photos of Boy Scouts that were later subverted in this fashion. Placed in a sexualized fetish setting to sell adverts for Jimbo Wales's Wikia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=186211884

The potential for abuse of images, making wiki look bad, condoning child porn here is huge. Please act, Jimbo. If such use is condoned, I will no longer submit images of children to wiki. <span style="font-family: verdana;"> — [[User:Rlevse|<span style="color:#060;">'''''R''levse'''</span>]] • [[User_talk:Rlevse|<span style="color:#990;">Talk</span>]] • </span> 22:13, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

You guys are arguing against freedom. Against free speech. Against free culture. Against the free reuse of media. Against WikiMedia and Wikipedia. Go sell your love of slavery elsewhere. [[User:WAS 4.250|WAS 4.250]] ([[User talk:WAS 4.250|talk]]) 22:24, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

What exactly is the issue you want me to comment on?

How about you address the matter of an organization that professes to liaise with schools and educationalists to disseminate information while displaying shocking lapses of judgment with regard to basic Child Protection?

What do you think of that?

I disagree with the premise that Wikipedia has displayed "shocking lapses of judgment with regard to basic Child Protection"

Read this thread about the Lolita Category on the Commons where people were adding pictures of Children. This only stopped because we intervened.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=74492

Read this thread as well, you get a mention

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=15438

and read this edit by WAS 4.250, who guards Jimbo Wales's talk page, and who called us "lunatics" for protesting about pictures of pre-pubescent boys uploaded to Wikipedia being used to endorse Child Abuse on Wikia's Sex fetish site. The edit above WAS 4.250's is from a hapless editor who innocently took photos of Boy Scouts that were later subverted in this fashion. Placed in a sexualized fetish setting to sell adverts for Jimbo Wales's Wikia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=186211884

The potential for abuse of images, making wiki look bad, condoning child porn here is huge. Please act, Jimbo. If such use is condoned, I will no longer submit images of children to wiki. <span style="font-family: verdana;"> — [[User:Rlevse|<span style="color:#060;">'''''R''levse'''</span>]] • [[User_talk:Rlevse|<span style="color:#990;">Talk</span>]] • </span> 22:13, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

You guys are arguing against freedom. Against free speech. Against free culture. Against the free reuse of media. Against WikiMedia and Wikipedia. Go sell your love of slavery elsewhere. [[User:WAS 4.250|WAS 4.250]] ([[User talk:WAS 4.250|talk]]) 22:24, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

It was entirely due to your comments (Kato) that we got rid of the rape victims category as well. Strangely enough there was opposition to that too

I was reading the thread linked to above about the category:lolita . Then I came across this pic, which is entitled http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Hmmmmyez.JPG How old do you think this lady is, to have hmmmmmyez as the title of a pic of her? I am unsure. What is obvious however is that User:Kjetil r who first uploaded it from the norwegian wikipedia is "a friend of Jimbo", an admin on commons, with a pic of him with Jimbo and another admin on his userpage.

If I was a bloke I'd avoid dealing with files like that named hmmmmyez.jpg , without renaming them, perhaps?

This post has been edited by wikiwhistle: Wed 7th May 2008, 9:25pm

I was reading the thread linked to above about the category:lolita . Then I came across this pic, which is entitled http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Hmmmmyez.JPG How old do you think this lady is, to have hmmmmmyez as the title of a pic of her? I am unsure. What is obvious however is that User:Kjetil r who first uploaded it from the norwegian wikipedia is "a friend of Jimbo", an admin on commons, with a pic of him with Jimbo and another admin on his userpage.

If I was a bloke I'd avoid dealing with files like that named hmmmmyez.jpg , without renaming them, perhaps?

...very educational, a Google later and I know what a Gothic Lolita stereotype is called, so the intent is clear. If I make the wrong move now, I get the "research is no defence" gambit. While somewhat ambiguous, this is straying into territory that gets sticky to justify.

If Wikipedians want Wikipedia to implode, then do no more than ignore this sort of abuse - people seeing how close to the edge they can walk. The trouble with walking on the edge is that sometimes you trip up.

...very educational, a Google later and I know what a Gothic Lolita stereotype is called, so the intent is clear.

I had to look it all up on wiki - but "hmmmmyez" ? Classy lol.

There was a case only the other day where someone was removed from the site for being underage,

I believe this person is an admin on Wikipedia and a bureaucrat on some other Wikimedia projects. It is really quite irresponsible to give such authority to minors.

The perspective is that the analogy to the RC church for Wikipedia is BLP. It's been brought to their attention, believe me. They know it's bad, inasmuch as it violates the golden rule and they wouldn't want it done to themselves, so they have no excuse of "tastes differ". Tastes differ here only insofar as which end of the dirty stick you have to suck on.

I think you are partially right there. Wikipedia is faced with a clueless and/or uncaring community about the reputations of people. I have on-wiki and off-wiki supported Jorge's three proposals, but I am vehemently against the OptOut and I support the resurrection of Daniel Brandt's article.

The problem is: there is no leadership on Wikipedia. There is a terrible need right now for a trustworthy voice or voices to illustrate to the community that there are problems that need to be fixed. Unfortunately, those who currently have that kind of trust have no desire to use it to fix the problems. They endanger the whole project.

I have argued that the WMF can skirt the whole legal problem by issuing opinions that hold no force. Sort of like "friend of the court" briefs in court. This should meet the requirements of the WMF's special legal status, keeping it protected, while also allowing for the community to turn to it for advice.

The Arbitration Committee has proven hopeless.

That remains valid. "Wikipedia" is a website and you can't attribute ever lapse in judgment of every "Wikipedia User" to "Wikipedia". You are smart enough to make that connection without my needing to take the time to explain it to you; come on.

These "lapses of judgment", where children were being degraded, never happened on Encyclopedia Britannica. Why not? And if they happened in any other organization in the world that purported to "liaise with educationalists and schools", what the hell do you think would happen?

Yes, Kato, we didn't have these sorts of problems when we were children before the Internets, and there were no car accidents when people rode in carriages, and men were men and women were women, and the world is so much more complicated...

And today Barbara Walters talked to NPR about why she left 20/20, because news has changed and when she had the option to interview the President of the United States or Mary Kay Letourneau, a school teacher who had sex with a student, ABC made her choose Lateourneau instead of a sitting head of state. Because people care more about what Lateourneau says than the President.

It sucks that the world is different, and that people don't look through books (who was that jackass in that documentary who described what books are?) but instead Google everything. But your ire is misplaced, in my opinion. The problem is not that Wikipedia is causing the culture to deteriorate - the problem is that the culture has deteriorated. But, it's easier to focus on Wikipedia because it's a name, than to say *we* are the problem, isn't it Kato?

I mean, some of you seem to sit on here all day every day, as if Wikipedia is going to cause the collapse of humanity. There are far bigger problems out there - some of you I question your priorities.

This post has been edited by David Shankbone: Wed 7th May 2008, 10:56pm

I mean, some of you seem to sit on here all day every day, as if Wikipedia is going to cause the collapse of humanity. There are far bigger problems out there - some of you I question your priorities.

Just as well we are here. If we weren't, there might still be whole Rape Victim categories on WP and Lolita categories and a whole Fetish Wiki that had pictures of someone's children and...

Why do we bother? Maybe we should do something else and let this abuse of people's children continue?

It sucks that the world is different, and that people don't look through books (who was that jackass in that documentary who described what books are?) but instead Google everything. But your ire is misplaced, in my opinion. The problem is not that Wikipedia is causing the culture to deteriorate - the problem is that the culture has deteriorated. But, it's easier to focus on Wikipedia because it's a name, than to say *we* are the problem, isn't it Kato?

*We* are not the problem. We don't abuse images of people's children and place them in sexualized context on our website. Simple as that.

No. That happens on Eric Moeller's site. Not ours. We are not the problem.

I think you are partially right there. Wikipedia is faced with a clueless and/or uncaring community about the reputations of people. I have on-wiki and off-wiki supported Jorge's three proposals, but I am vehemently against the OptOut and I support the resurrection of Daniel Brandt's article.

The problem is: there is no leadership on Wikipedia. There is a terrible need right now for a trustworthy voice or voices to illustrate to the community that there are problems that need to be fixed. Unfortunately, those who currently have that kind of trust have no desire to use it to fix the problems. They endanger the whole project.

I have argued that the WMF can skirt the whole legal problem by issuing opinions that hold no force. Sort of like "friend of the court" briefs in court. This should meet the requirements of the WMF's special legal status, keeping it protected, while also allowing for the community to turn to it for advice.

The Arbitration Committee has proven hopeless.

Thank you, David, that is a very clear statement that I doubt many here would disagree with, aside from the obvious bit.

One of the long running themes here is that the WMF have a duty of care and that they need to show imaginative leadership to solve these problems. I doubt that they have the skill set to do this, and that is based on the lack of any obvious signs of leadership skills displayed so far, but I would far rather be proved wrong on that than contemplate the alternative, which is the continuation of matters as they stand until they come a cropper.

I am sure you are quite right that the WMF can do things to influence matters, in just the same way that any ISP issues an Acceptable Use Policy. Rather than waiting for theoretical problems to crystallise, they should be foreseeing them and forestalling them.

Put another way, the WMF should not simply seek to be barely legal, they should be setting a standard for showing how its community could be the best example of co-operation for the common good that there has been. I think that was their dream once. That might mean doing stuff that they don't much see the point of, but it would set the tone. So COPPA compliance would say, "We are concerned, the community should be too." A content board would say "WMF want a quality product" and it might be that if they can't get an agreement between editors, or get a ranking expert to impose a solution, then the article is quarantined. But there is not much point pumping out random solutions, if the WMF, who have the ability to implement them, are not interested in even hearing there might be problems.

Shankbone is beside the point and should be laid aside to address the more important issue:

Who is going to protect the children?

That's the only question that needs to be asked right now.

You are right of course, perhaps the later parts of this thread can be split.

Okay, now that we're back on topic: read this trully creepy blog post by Erik which mixes "Free Culture" and "porn for women" in a truly scary way....

I think that he is...to put it bluntly, insane.

Okay, now that we're back on topic: read this trully creepy blog post by Erik which mixes "Free Culture" and "porn for women" in a truly scary way....

I think that he is...to put it bluntly, insane.

Yes, if he thinks the best porn is ever going to be mostly free.

You know, I once spent a lot of a pleasant libertarian dinner party talking to Wendy "Porn for Women" McElroy. She's a perfectly level-headed sane woman. In fact, she's a fairly typically boring Canadian. Live with it. Her saving grace is that she'd be outraged at the idea of socialist opensource porn. What's next, state-sponsored taxpayer supported porn? (I know, Mapplethorpe...)

Ever really read Marx's thoughts on what he called the "Community of women"? I think he pretty much put this into effect with his housemaid. I suppose if you figure porn should be community property, then women's bodies should be next. Hmmm?

Whatever Erik's views are (and perhaps the whole thing was simply an immature troll on his part)

I think you'll need to come up with a better excuse for him than that. I've found numerous postings over at least a 4 year period that are all in a similar vein. He argues that children aged 12 can have positive sexual relations with adults. Paedophiles will use writings such as his (and they have as I showed above) to feel empowered to go and seek out children for abuse. Should someone who wrote what he wrote be in charge of a website WHERE 1000s of un-identified adults interact with 1000s of children? I don't think so.

I'm not trying to excuse anything.

It sounds like you are actually, or maybe more of an attempt at pushing it under the rug because it embarrasses you.

But your argument is full of logic jumps. Erik's argument is certainly both silly and reckless. Doubtless it /could/ be use by pedophiles, although, seriously, quoting the Deputy-Director of the Wikimedia Foundation is hardly a clincher in their campaigns. Whilst Erik is a big-noise for WMF geeks, he's still a no-one in the wider world and certainly not a quotable authority in child-psychology. How much intellectual credibility does some silly German teenager lend this? The arguments are dangerous, Erik is not.

Erik doesn't seem to think it's silly at all given the amount of time he spends spreading his propaganda round the net. And he was born c. 1980 and was still writing these things just a couple of years ago so hardly a teenager.

As for: "Should someone who wrote what he wrote be in charge of a website WHERE 1000s of un-identified adults interact with 1000s of children?" Why not?

There is a serious question of whether he may become a PR liability for the WMF, but seriously, what are you implying? How does his post a WMF impact on the 1000s of unidentified adults and children? Please be specific.

If you can't see a problem with someone writing the things that Erik wrote i.e. it being OK for adults to have sexual relations with 12 year olds, being in charge of what is essentially a social networking environment where anonymous adults interact with children (who often identify themselves as such) and in that environment minors are given adult like power and responsibilty then I don't really know what I could say to convince you.

If you can't see a problem with someone writing the things that Erik wrote i.e. it being OK for adults to have sexual relations with 12 year olds, being in charge of what is essentially a social networking environment where anonymous adults interact with children (who often identify themselves as such) and in that environment minors are given adult like power and responsibilty then I don't really know what I could say to convince you.

Sounds like one for the "Hey! It's Not My Problem" Files.

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Thu 8th May 2008, 12:58am

I don’t see any real evidence of Moller actually defending pedophilia, though there are some rather big problems here. The deleted childporn image is a problem and it seems to have been a large error, and has taken far too long to have it removed, and I see that as the sort of thing that happens all too often on WP.

I would like to see WP sunk because it seems to be set up to provide misinformation. I like it when I see good editors who are attached to ethically guided editing. Such editors do tend to get severely punished or banned for acting on such guidance.

e.g. DPeterson, seemed to have received rough justice from the likes of other fringe pushers such as FT2 and others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...r_the_candidate

If you go against pro-fringe pushers, you get added to their “wish-I-could-ban” lists and eventually an excuse is found for revenge. Many other supporters of ethical behavior seem to be banned in the process. The “I intuit that it must be a sockpuppet, and the community thinks so” brigade will tend to push the paranoia buttons to make sure they can punish the dissenters.

I don’t see much evidence to say that Moller is promoting that sort of situation, but he’s certainly not doing anything substantial about it. So many people could actually do something, especially as many of the pervs seem to be contained in the admin group. Such action is looking more unlikely. So many editors and admin seem to be quite content to work with slime. Maybe they're so used to it, they've forgotten its there.

This information is from the comments section of Danny Wool's latest blog about Wikipedia as a porn site (....they've finally noticed, huh??)

Anyway, it's interesting given the source and the situation :

Seth Finkelstein said...

anon - "This really is starting to look like a planned smear campaign against Erik, you know?"

The story was started by someone sending around a hit-piece on Erik. A copy found its way to me (but I didn't want any part of it). I assume Danny got one too. So far, Valleywag is the only large-audience site which has run with it.

Did anybody get this document? I'm wondering what else is in it? And who is behind this?

Can we lay off of David? Yes we exchanged emails. Nice ones. Yes he attempted to derail the thread. Yes he is devoted to WP.

If dear Mr. Shankbone would just stay on topic and avoid doing his usual "ME ME ME ME ME MEEEEEE!!!" routine, I don't think that anybody would react so adversely to his comments.

We're talking about Erik Möller and the accusation of pro-pedophile advocacy which is on the Valleywag article. We're not talking about how David Shankbone saves Wikipedia.

This post has been edited by the fieryangel: Thu 8th May 2008, 7:26am

Someone mentioned the Netherlands a few pages back with regard to sex education and teen pregnancies. There are two points:

1. Sex education is taught at a very early stage in school. 4,5 and six year olds generally. Then the children are bombarded with sex education until they are bored by it all.

2. The age of consent is 12. That means that quite a lot of what we would call pedophile behaviour is not even a crime if party is 12 or over.

The Dutch experience tells us very little, since what we are talking about applies usually well below that age. But even so, the European experience of what is called "the age of consent" is by no means uniform or even comparable to the American experience.

When I read Erik's essay, I took it to mean that the hysteria over pedophilia is becoming a cover for trampling over people's rights to free speech, or encroachment on people's privacy by the state. That is far from being a fringe viewpoint in Europe and it should be viewed in the European context, not the American one.

That said, Erik presides with Jimbo over a project that has undeniably been gamed by a pro-pedophilia faction through the use of Wikipedia's labyrinthine laws and customs to fix a slant to articles dealing with the subject, and in so doing, getting anyone who stands in their way banned or suspended. Erik must have watched this happen and either believes that eventually Wikipedia will turn out alright or believes that he is redressing some imbalance in the wider world by letting it happen but it doesn't wash at all.

I don't think its a majority of Wikipedians, but it is a conspiracy of a small cell within Wikipedia that is not going away any time soon. Wikipedia's lax security over editing definitely works in their favour.

I think its irresponsible for Wikipedia to continue to harbour these people under the mistaken view that to deny them to post would be censorship. Wikipedia bans a lot of people because they're out-and-out crazy yet no-one defends the rights of paranoid schizophrenics to write their own delusions into Wikipedia (at least, not often).

But then, who said Wikipedia took responsibility at all seriously? Jimbo doesn't.

THAT doesn't mean that there are not some Wikipedians who do take their responsibilities seriously. But they're not organized and they have no help from the leadership or from Wikipedia's rulebook and I feel sorry for them.

I think only a lawsuit will force the WMF to examine itself. I really think its the only way.

Someone mentioned the Netherlands a few pages back with regard to sex education and teen pregnancies. There are two points:

1. Sex education is taught at a very early stage in school. 4,5 and six year olds generally. Then the children are bombarded with sex education until they are bored by it all.

2. The age of consent is 12. That means that quite a lot of what we would call pedophile behaviour is not even a crime if party is 12 or over.

What?

That isn't true. The AGE OF CONSENT IN THE NETHERLANDS IS 16.
http://sidesplitters.catastrophe.net/arch/...netherlands.htm

If an adult had sex with a 13 year old in the Netherlands, they'd be thrown in jail like anywhere else.

NETHERLANDS LAWS:
1. The age of sexual consent is 16 for all, sex between an adult and a young person between the ages of 12 and 16 is permitted by law, as long as the young person consents.

-----

What Erik and these loons never consider is that adults having sex with minors is exploitation. Minors are vulnerable, and are simply not worldly enough to make informed decisions. They are prone to gross manipulation by the old partner. Erik Moeller and the other droogs who take a purely theoretical position on this do not consider these vital concerns. Exploiting vulnerable people in society is completely immoral and unethical in anyone's code.