http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/03/patrick_byrne_cast/

"Some 15-year-old kid from Iowa got on and manipulated the article on Martin Luther?"

Jeez, Patrick, how could you say such a thing? After all we've done for the, uh, crusade...

Other than that, though, I guess it was pretty good.

In the recorded interview, Byrne and Metz touch on some of the things that interest me. A deregulated economy that has plunged us into chaos, and its parallels with an unregulated Wikipedia.

Wikipedia critic Andrew Keen discussed this recently; how deregulation and the adoption of Web 2.0 standards means placing even less trust in traditional democratic solutions and more trust in unaccountable cliques. According to Keen, "the truth, of course, is it is anything but open, anything but democratic, anything but accountable or transparent."

Byrne acknowledges that there have been improvements in the Naked Short Selling article and namechecks SlimVirgin as a controller responsible for its previous woes by protecting Weiss. I'm not sure that is entirely true. Slim's involvement was minor compared to that of David Gerard - who remains the biggest culprit. Phil Sandifer was another far guiltier party. Either way, the saga continues to discredit Wikipedia, and no one responsible has offered any contrition. Gerard continues to have access to important parts of the site and power over other contributors - while Sandifer ran for Arbitrator this month, seemingly lacking any qualms or shame.

Hi Somey,

You are 100% right. That was thoughtless and insensitive of me, and I apologize to all of you here who have been my allies in this weird fight.

That said, I do suggest that there is something unique about the battle over the naked shorting page. Many of the other wikibattles of which I have heard (e.g., the Martin Luther fight) concern people who were manipulating the discourse over the proper interpretation of a historical issue. In the case of naked short selling, however, Wikipedia has been being manipulated in the furtherance of an ongoing crime. Most literally, it has been used in the cover-up of a crime that has been implicated in the financial Chernobyl we are presently enjoying, and which is, with each passing month, being implicated further and further. I fear that story being lost among the general "Look how inaccurate Wikipedia can be" stories, because I do think it is qualitatively different.

However, I do recognize that every pet issue is especially important to someone, and I will be more sensitive to that fact in the future.

Most respectfully,
Patrick

Ahh, well, that's OK, don't worry about it... apology accepted and all that. (I'm not really a native of Iowa anyway... Heck, technically I'm not even a Lutheran!)

We'd better keep a close watch on that Ponzi Scheme (T-H-L-K-D) article - it's only a matter of time before they get to that one too:


And y'know, there really isn't much in the way of critical material in the Mortgage-backed security (T-H-L-K-D) article, is there?