It's later than I had promised, but it's finally here.

Felon became COO of Wikipedia foundation

by BRIAN BERGSTEIN, of the Associated Press



I wonder how those "The Register is just a tabloid. This is a non-event." people on Wikien-l mailing list will still be singing that tune, as this story gets picked up by (I predict) 200+ mainstream media newspapers.

Greg

Woot.


Submit it to Slashdot, that's the only thing that's left to do now.

Besides sitting back and watching the show, that is.

Oh, dear. We're 30 minutes since this hit the wire, and already 37 publications have re-printed it on their websites.

Should we add to the BADSITES list, the following?

• San Diego Union Tribune
• CBS-4 Denver
• Brisbane Times, Australia
• Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
• Houston Chronicle
• Miami Herald
• The News & Observer (Raleigh-Durham, NC)
• Denver Post
• Newsday (New York)
• Orlando Sentinel
• Forbes
• International Herald Tribune (France)
• Minneapolis Star Tribune

Oh dear, oh dear. This doesn't look like a "non-story" any more, does it?

Greg

Watch for other skeletons to come tumbling out the closet, too.

Hole in one. Ouch.



How long until people begin attacking "BRIAN BERGSTEIN, AP Technology Writer"?

Oh my. That mug shot bears more than a passing resemblance to Nick Nolte.

oh my....to further inflame the cia thing, she didn't just marry for a few days a CIA man, her daddy was CIA. jeez, brandt is going to have a field day with that ;-)

And her husband died of drowning. (Not surf-boarding or water-boarding.)

Now Wikimedia is drowning in bad publicity. (Not chat-boarding.)

Who will be the first to post this on wikien-l or foundation-l, I wonder.

wales's official teenage-mindset opinion is that he "doesn't talk to the Register".
I wonder how that translates to the Associated Press.

Maybe he should get gerard to send over a UK-flavoured "Fukoffffff !!" [said with 2 fingers up, slurred, after a few pints] to the AP.

this is worse than the essjay scandal, in that WP has no idea how to handle PR dirtsturms

I think I'll give you the understatement of the day award. The bigger problem is that when something bad happens with WP, there is NO contrition. Half the time they (WP, Jimmy et al) simply attack whomever isn't them. It's childish. Jimmy Wales is a poor manager.

http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb01?_BOTHWELL_JAMES_L

Submitted to Slashdot. Anyone Digg it yet?

It's been about an hour, and we're up to 61 re-prints in various mainstream media.

I wonder why these esteemed journalistic publications and TV stations would be so quick to re-print something that is clearly a "tempest in a teapot" and really a "non-story"?

Too funny. Although, I do fear for Brian Bergstein's Wikipedia article now.

Greg

Especially in the wake of this recent post from Jimbo...

mantanmoreland can't be happy. a fellow Northwestern journalism grad diggs hard at WP.

Ermm, Jimbo... I'd say that it's merely a forum where critics are getting exhausted due to their inability to keep up with the sheer volume of your idiotic management decisions and lack of any sign of contrition after you make them.

I have to say, Bergstein really did nail the lead sentence:



From the get-go, he casts doubt for all of the people who have ever contributed money to this corrupt monarchy that keeps feeding them the lie to just "trust us, trust us, trust us".

Greg

P.S. For how much longer will this protection be the status quo?

How long until Jimmy or Godwin is on the phone bitching to the AP? How long until secret emails about harassment float around, with all fingers pointing here? Because, y'know, WR put the gun in Doran's hand and said "Go free, be a fugitive."



They'll try to call out BLP1E. Except, er, she's shot people, had famous family, been arrested, been COO of a major organization... they're screwed. She's fully notable.

Hello.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4039600

On a major news network site now! I wonder when CNN, FOX, and BBC News will pick this up?

Fox already did, at least the text report.

Added to the time line.

The Wikien-l has picked this up too...All they seem to care about is "whether she's notable enough for a bio or not"....

Sheez, they just don't get it, do they???

Jimbo weighs in here....saying that since another, entirely unrelated financial scandal doesn't have an article, then why should this be covered in Wikipedia???

Is he therefore suggesting that this IS therefore a financial scandal? What about that audit, Jimbo? Where are we at with that?

The point should be "don't give money to Wikipedia: they can't be trusted"....

And then we have this interesting "catch-22" discussion: If we make an exception for this "notable" but "sad story", then what does this mean in the longrun for bios of living persons??

Another interesting point is that David Gerard is pushing the envelope for professional libel of a journalist...

Does anyone else notice that when Jimbo sez:



What he doesn't even realize he's saying is that he has turned Wikipedia into such a monster, anyone associated with its management is prone to intense public embarrassment for past events, or complete escalation of any otherwise obscure current events.

If the ENVIRONMENT of Wikipedia hadn't been so poisoned by Jimbo over the past two years, do we think Essjay would be the (relatively) household name it is now? Would Carolyn Doran be emblazoned on over 80 publications now? Would Taner Akcam have been detained at an international airport? I sincerely doubt it.

Instead, though, Jimbo paints Doran as an "embarassment" (sic) and a "poor woman" -- completely washing his hands of any responsibility for the problem. As a constructive critique, maybe anyone who is hired by the WMF should first go through a short video tutorial about the environment:

1) Welcome to the human resources Training Video for the Wikimedia Foundation. We hope you're enjoying your visit to beautiful San Francisco.

2) Our organization is run by a self-absorbed, truth-evading, globe-trotting weasel who makes a ton of mistakes but is never contrite about any of them. In fact, he blames everyone but himself for most every mistake for which he's responsible.

3) Because of the above point, there are scores of people out there who are hell-bent on finding anything wrong about anyone who works here, just to make our Thought Leader look bad. So, if you aren't about on par with a true Catholic saint, you probably want to fully disclose now any sordid events in your past, or even current personality traits, that may be seen as vulnerabilities for yourself or our organization.

4) This really is a horrible place to work.

5) If you're still itching to work here, please mark the "Yes" box on line 3 of your application, authorizing us to perform a background check on you. This is a brand-new line on the application form, so please remind your hiring counselor to actually do the background check!

Would that be so difficult for them to do?

Greg

here is a very simple call of boolshit on jimmy.

if Carolyn did nothing wrong while employed at WP, why was she fired?

we at W-R know why, the press knows why, but jimmy is prattling on and on like this "poor woman" had hard times before WP, served nobly while there, then just happened to get in trouble after leaving WP.

But why was she dismissed, Jimbo, if she did nothing wrong at WP, and her employment at WP was not detrimental to WP?

Jimmy won't be answering that.

He doesn't answer a lot of questions lately about things that make you go "hmmmm".

Jimmy, Gerard, and JzG are the 3 Stooges of WP right now, and it is high comedy.

The AP story was carried in both the Washington Post and the NY Times.

I thought David Gerard said this was just the media responding to every "fart and puff" that happens on Wikipedia?

I guess the NYT's new slogan is "All the farts and puffs that're fit to print".

The Essjay fiasco should have been their Big Chance to learn how NOT to react to valid criticisms of their organization. Instead, we got even worse responses to the Durova fiascos, and now even more denial of any "problems" with the Carolyn Doran fiasco.

They just DO NOT LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES!

My favorite —


Picture Jimbo, jes lookin for a soul …


Jonny

We are up to 126 reprints in various media. Looks like Australia and India really picked up on this overnight.

Also, the San Mateo County Times, the Oakland Tribune, SiliconValley.com, and the San Jose Mercury News all caught the story in their nets. That will nicely "frame" the Wikimedia Foundation in the minds of the locals, just in advance of the WMF's move to their San Francisco neighborhood. I'm sure the new staffing recruits and big-time donors will be lining up to meet Sue Gardner and the other responsible professionals who will soon grace the City By The Bay.

Remember, everyone -- this is a "tempest in a teapot" and really a "non-story".

Greg

The copyright notice on the AP story forbids local rewrite, so for the time being, all the media outlets which are carrying the AP story are virtually identical, with the exception of the headline and the option to include the mug shot.

I expect that in a few days, other independently written follow-on stories will appear.

Jimbo appears quite contrite now:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jim..._Bothwell_Doran



"Absurdly vigilant"? Vaguely careful might have done the trick just as well.

Brace yourselves for an era of absurd vigilantism.

Perhaps what he really means is that they need to be "absurdly vigilant" about maintaining a tight wall of secrecy so that none of the bad stuff leaks out to the "irresponsible reporters" or "attack sites". (That will do really great next time there's a scandal centering around the secrecy within an organization that claims to be among the openest in history.)

Even when he's offering his mea culpa, there is always a "But...".

For him, he thinks this all boils down to whether THE MONEY IS SAFE (never mind that the audit is months overdue, and the Form 990 from last year falsely indicates that none of the Trustees have "business relationships"). It's more than the money, Jimbo. It's that you boobs don't know how to run a Foundation properly, and that you should step aside and let take over a team that has experience running non-profits and publishing encyclopedias. WHO GAVE JIMBO THE AUTHORITY TO MANAGE AN ENCYCLOPEDIA? HE'S A FREAKIN' OPTIONS TRADER!

Also, he suggests that this "happens all the time". Sure, I know lots of businesses who have a COO who shot someone, wore a wire to try to incriminate a roommate of a poisoning plot, kited checks, left the scene of a manslaughter DUI, had a dad and a husband in the CIA (the latter drowning on their honeymoon and the coroner not investigating the accident), rose to COO after four months as a temp, had another DUI, then was silly enough to leave the country in violation of probation, and all the while -- never told anyone any of this, and never had her background checked.

Sure, THAT happens "all the time", Jimbo.

It's time for him and all his Wikia cronies to leave the project altogether. MAYBE Sue Gardner can rebuild it before it's too late.

Greg

But the Foundation is destined to become the nucleus of a future Galactic Empire... the encyclopedia is merely a pretext! Haven't you read any Asimov?

coo coo 4 coco puffs …

jonny

Deciders, Gubernators, and Donators


Compare Jimbo's thoughts on the matter to Florence Devouard's reflections on transparency...

Interesting discussion taking place on the Carolyn Doran DRV page. "COO of WMF is not that huge a job" is one of my favorites. But "being Daniel Brandt" is a huge job, I guess?

They are such a joke in Wikipediot Land.

This guy had a "huge job", apparently. Four career games with the Pistons, scoring 26 points. What a legacy!

Greg

If WP eventually does carry some kind of permanent article on Doran, one of the ironies is that the article won't be able to carry her side of the story until she publishes her version in a reliable source. That probably won't happen until after her current legal troubles are resolved.

The DRV is interesting. Because it's about Wikipedia, and because Wikipedia gets press, that press shouldn't count.

Why do Wikipedia-centric topics get an out for V, RS, and Notability standards? If WP keeps going as it is, and is the #1 site on Earth in 4-6 years, will WP topics still get this exemption? Preposterous.

If Wikipedia keeps going as it is, it will be Xtinct in 2 years.

Jonny

Yet Another Jimbo Walapropism …


He must be getting all nostalgic for those Balmy Bomis days when he still had that nifty Skipper's Cap.

Jonny

As soon as a new administration takes over in the Whitehouse, the beginning of the end of
"free will" as they know it in the "classroom" at WP will be at hand. The kids will be taken care of just as they were at Facebook this week. The kids were kicked out of school for hurting someone.

That is the real world. Charity or no charity, everyone knows that the WMF is in league with Wikia.

Free speech goes so far and then the adults of the world have rights that take over.

Let the kids go back to playing guitar hero.

That is the name of that tune.

They need to get the United States Naval Observatory in on this.

This woman absolutely should have an article now. "WP:BLP1E" is a ridiculous joke, although I admit it's a weapon deletionists have been able to wield with fairly good effect.

Of course it will carry her side. They will just waive WP:V because of the exceptional natute of the case.

This is yet another demonstration of the old guard not understanding that Wikipedia's actually important in the world.

Jeff, that's just their "cover story". That is not why they attempt to delete things like this. The old guard goes about puffing up Wikipedia-related themes and topics a-plenty -- when they are not embarrassing to Jimbo.

When the subject is embarrassing, THEN and only then do we hear about how "unimportant" Wikipedia is in the world.

Don't fall for them, Jeff.

Greg

Um, when in the history of BLP did Wikipedia give a damn about the opinon of the subject? Not about famous people (Spears, Springsteen, Congressmen) and not about hostage BLPs (Brandt, Levitt).

This is nothing new.



Didn't Durova used to be Naval Officer?

I'm sure if he asked her opinion on Naval Gazing, he'd get a spectacular answer....

Speaking of which Durova qualifies for a BLP far more than Brandt or Finkelstein ever did. Irony of ironies. Maybe they both can run her AfD for her BLP. On the 14th try....

We are up to 288 reprints in various media (including some duplicates). Clearly, this has become a noteworthy story, but the Wikipediots are doing their best to make sure a Wikipedia article about Carolyn Doran never comes to pass. How will the press react when it becomes common knowledge that the Wikipedia "community" salted the article space about this embarrassing scandal?

I would like to call people's attention to multi-author blog site Profy.com, specifically a story by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira.

Note the Comments field, too! Several Wikipediots tried to poo-pooh the whole scandal, then Cyndy points out how "curious" it is that two of these apologists came from the exact same IP address. Well done, Cyndy!

Greg

I am hoping that this is just a weird Sunday software bug at Google, but I'm very suspicious that it's not.

Google News seems to have removed all records of the "famous" Carolyn Doran stories that came out in December 2007.

Still plenty of sources on Google Search, which probably 50 people use for every 1 that uses Google News, but still...

Why the News cover-up? Is this so that an article about Carolyn Doran on Wikipedia might NEVER be constructed from reliable sources?

I'm sorry, but this does seem like someone from WMF reached out (reached around?) to a friend at Google and asked them to "memory hole" the 290 or so news sources that carried the big story.

I have contacted archives-feedback@google.com about this unusual discrepancy. I hope you'll contact them, too, so that they don't think I'm just one crackpot who caught this.

Greg