QUOTE(blissyu2 @ Wed 1st August 2007, 12:28am)
In light of
the recent SlimVirgin scandal, and
Wikipedia Review's heavy role in exposing the truth, a lot more people have been looking at Wikipedia Review posts, and we have had a number of new people sign up. To those people: welcome.
Signing up is risky, as Wikipedia currently lists Wikipedia Review as an attack site, hence if you join here, then they are well within their rights to ban you for joining here, and/or to use anything that you say on here against you on Wikipedia (including de-sysopping you, as they did for Guanaco, Karmafist and Everyking). Also note that Karmafist was banned because of a post that he made here as well. However, you can get around this by quite simply not revealing your Wikipedia username. This is up to you of course, and if you plan to make volatile attacks against Wikipedia Review, then its probably a good idea to use your Wikipedia username (Snowspinner never got in to any trouble for posting here, because he never said anything nice about Wikipedia Review). Of course, we won't be too impressed if your only reason to join here is to attack us, and we reserve the right to ban you if it gets out of hand. However, if you're already banned from Wikipedia, then you're free! Free to say what your username was, protest your ban, and so forth. The freedom of being banned!
So then why sign up? Over 75% of people who read this forum do not sign up. But one important reason to sign up is that then you can add your story to all of this. In relation to the current story, if you publish it on Wikipedia then it'll be deleted, if not perma-deleted (e.g. Kylu's posts) and in some cases they have even banned people for daring to post it (e.g. Hexrei). But here you can post freely and not worry about it being wiped.
Wikipedia has given Wikipedia Review a Parental Advisory Sticker, and we hope that you take that in the same way that you would if it was on a music compilation. It means that we are so good that Wikipedia has to censor us!
I'm happy to have signed up too. from my experience on Wikipedia, it appears that they take themselves MUCH to seriously and have lots to learn about the word "community" which, considering the lack thereof on Wikipedia is a joke ~ even today.
The common experience most Wikipedia users have had is that the system there seems to collapse on itself every couple of months. Moreover, Wikipedia hates experts in ANY field, which is usually seen Wiki admins pretending to be able to "overule" something based on a person's "virtual behavior" while at the same time ignoring all the rude activity over there.
Wikipedia is already known for not being a site one can trust for good information. Most people I know who've used Wikipedia and had the experience of trial and error via the poison penners on that site admit to not using or trusting the information based on the fact that Wikipedia does not monitior it's own sight very well (but loves to monitor sites that are critical of Wikipedia) such as some of the admins who read this site daily, and come to complain about Wikipedia here out of fear of being banned from the "Wikipedia community" (if there is such a thing) forever.
What Jimbo Wales misses is a touch of the real world. What Wikipedia has become is an "exclusive" virtual world of its own where haters, poison-penners, and all manner of "expert-haters" in all fields can attack others whom they personally disagree with (without having to personally face those they disagree with.)
Banning, and playing all sorts of "head games" by Wikipedia admins really has the effect of driving down the reliability of Wikipedia. Jimbo should have anticipated this, and corrected it at least three years ago, when all the witch-hunts of hearings were peaking in the years 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008.
Many users who were positive members of Wikipedia got turned off from the site, and this is now in the thousands. You see, what happens is that when you have a group of editors/administrators who are not screened well, they begin to sit on their own fiefdoms, and create cliques, which is what has happened with Wikipedia over the years.
Naturally, a site like this rises, and of course, there are those who continue to use Wikipedia, but who are free to express the problems over there without fear of being shouted down and thrown out of the "community" ~ which isn't a community in reality, but a collection of many (not all, but lots) of Wiki users/editors/admins who just are anti-social when it comes to "community."
One can easily disagree without being disagreeable, but Jimbo Wales hasn't seen that many of th people he has "hired" to manage Wikipedia, most likely are not very good at communcating with others, and have very low tolerance values to be able to actually discern what an issue is without making it so convoluted, to the point of attacking the honest user for doing the very thing that Wikipedia's own guildlines state should be done.
Wikipedia's own admins don't follow their own rules ~ especially being kind to newcomers. They also do not tutor well at all. There is the introductory "hello" ~ and then that's that. You are on your own, and often, this means that the user is open to the poison penners, sharks, and all those who continue to edit pages on Wikipedia as if they actually "own" the very knowledge they edit.
One can certainly have the right to one's own opinions ~ but
not to one's own facts. And that is what Wikipedia doesn't get.