•Wikipedia lies, slander continue
WND.com, OR -2 minutes ago
"Joseph Francis Farah is an Evangelical Christian American journalist and noted homosexual of Lebanese and Syrian heritage." – the first line of my current ...

View the article

•Wikipedia lies, slander continue
WorldNetDaily, OR -46 minutes ago
"Joseph Francis Farah is an Evangelical Christian American journalist and noted homosexual of Lebanese and Syrian heritage." – the first line of my current ...

View the article

•Wikipedia lies, slander continue
WND.com, OR -46 minutes ago
"Joseph Francis Farah is an Evangelical Christian American journalist and noted homosexual of Lebanese and Syrian heritage." – the first line of my current ...

View the article

Wikipedia lies, slander continue

Commentary by Joseph Farah

We've noted this little problem of the expert on WR, as regards BLP especially. Turns out anything you know about yourself which isn't in print, is OR. Too bad, can't use it.



Well, a shame. He obviously missed out on the full treatment in the Wiki-mud, which would have included an indef block for legal threats. That would have been even more educational for him. But I suppose somebody at WP is handling these cases sometimes with more commonsense than they used to. Now, they barely do what they need to do, in order to get out of time consuming and moderately expensive messes.

But one of these days, some Federal judge is going to figure out that Sec 230, as applied by courts historically in case law, releases all internet-published material from defamation suits and just about every other kind of responsiblity except copyright, and is going to realize that this wasn't the law's original intention, and take a much narrower interpretation of it. That's going all the way to the Supreme Court, I would guess. Some BLP like this will be the test-platform. So let's get with it, people!

The crucial diff is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=256521318

Note that the AnonIP, 76.210.68.126 (T-C-L-K-R-D) (geolocated to Madison, WI), uses the time-honored technique of entering the word "typo" in the edit summary to cleverly confound recent-changes patrollers. By doing that, he managed to keep the edit in place for four hours, instead of Wikipedia's claim of a "typical" 5 minutes.

What's even funnier is that the anon undid the revision later and it lasted for over two days until Sarcasticidealist cleaned it up.

The edit summary "clean up, using [[AWB]]" also works well.

I'm sure he deserves it. He's an evangelical nutjob.

Besides the number of people sharing Sylar's point of view on this, the most appalling aspect of this whole episode is the following, which more or less proves correct everything that's ever been said on WR about the BLP problem: [1].

Note as well that the I.P. who reported me at ANI was the same one that vandalized the article in the first place. It's okay, though, because he assured us that it was a dynamic I.P., and that he wasn't the person who'd committed the vandalism.

Lol, HalfShadow. Maybe he meant "libel" rather than "vandalism."

He made it clear later that he meant "vandalism". Basically, his position is that it is difficult to prevent defamatory vandalism on Wikipedia, and therefore the victims of defamatory vandalism can't really complain. Essentially, his first principle is that the way that Wikipedia works is good, so any complaint that isn't actionable without changing the way Wikipedia works must not be valid. That fallacy - applying Wikipedia rules to rule life, on the assumption that real life rules are subject to "consensus" by The Community on Wikipedia, has been identified a lot on WR in the past. I don't think it's quite as widespread as a lot of others here do, but it's still depressing to see such a clearcut case of it.

In any event, I've watchlisted [[Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/HalfShadow 2]], which is still a redlink.

Note that after the matter has been raised on the admins noticeboard, the few people who turn up are the BLP extremists.

So on the page there is JoshuaZ (T-C-L-K-R-D) , the boy who became obsessed with targetting BLP victims who wanted to OPT-OUT from WP, abusing sockpuppets to double up on BLP deletion debates, and generally harassing article subjects by any means necessary. He received certain BLP topic bans, but by rights he should be banned altogether because he keeps sticking his beak in.

Then there is that Seraphimblade (T-C-L-K-R-D) lunatic again. He was the guy who, during the election votes, wanted his preferred candidates to offer more protection for anonymous Wikipedios and at the same wanted less protection for BLP victms. Calling the BLP policy "moral panic", and mocking the kind of complaints seen in this thread as "SOMEBODY'S FEEWINGS MIGHT BE HURTED!!!!".

These people are really bad news, and either need a wake-up call, or need to be booted off the project if it is to lift itself out of its shameful malaise.

(PS:This thread needs moving - BLP noticeboard?)

To their credit, both endorsed my stubbing.

When I started, intelligent people seemed mostly to improve WP.

Now, they vandalize it.

Abusive Personality Disorder


Remember these lyrics, sung by Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics?


Elsewhere I had pulled up this related item...

The Naming of Evil

One of my favorite authors is the late M. Scott Peck. He was a clinical psychologist in Connecticut who is best known for his upbeat first book, The Road Less Traveled. I relied on his third book, Different Drum: Toward Community Making and Peace when I was building online learning communities back in the early 90s. His fourth book, Civility Rediscovered: A World Waiting To Be Born is intimately applicable to the needs of the Wikisphere.

But I want to talk about his second book, published 25 years ago. It's a dark book entitled People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil. He recounts stories from his clinical practice of patients for whom his therapy sessions were entirely unproductive. He collected those failures and distilled from them the contents of People of the Lie. For the most part, these were clients who fall into the category of Cluster B Personality Disorders — Sociopathic Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Histrionic Personality Disorder.

On page 129 of People of the Lie, Peck proposes that Cluster B should include a distinct new diagnosis, Evil Personality Disorder, defined as follows:


It occurs to me that Peck was pretty close to characterizing the kind of figures that Kato is wont to shine a spotlight on.

By the way, I'd propose calling it Abusive Personality Disorder (or Mean-Spirited Personality Disorder or Vengeful Personality Disorder) rather than Evil Personality Disorder, Demonic Personality Disorder, or Jimbonic Personality Disorder.

I don't think any of these people are "evil", nor have "Abusive Personality Disorders". Being a non-Spiritual mumbo-jumbo, non-psychobabblist kind of guy who wouldn't like to create a Haphazard Theory of Mind about these people, I just think they hold ideological positions that are untenable and ultimately harmful!

Okay, I've become more convinced that all or most BLP articles (with perhaps some very narrow exceptions) need to be semiprotected at a minimum. To accompany the "vandalism study" links that some of you were kind enough to furnish me with last week, I could use links or descriptions of specific incidents where identifiable real people were injured or defamed by the content of a Wikipedia article. Of course I'm aware of Seigenthaler and the Turkish professor who was detained in Canada, and this thread. Thanks.

I'm aware of some examples that aren't public, and that I imagine the subjects don't want public. Are those helpful?

E-mail me and I might be able to discuss a couple in the essay I am writing, with the identifying details omitted. (I hope I have enough credibility on Wikipedia that people would accept that my summaries are accurate.) Thanks.

1. Vandalism to Seigenthaler's bio after the scandal (bottom of page)

2. Fuzzy Zoeller

3. Jens Stoltenberg (scroll down one page)

4. picture of Bill Gates (scroll down three pages)

5. Nancy Zimpher

6. Robert Mugabe's daughter (see also the portion of this page above the Mugabe section, for more info on vandalism)

And then with all the lists around you are not safe even if you control the bio 100%. Would you like to be listed, for days, on the List of transgender people? Well, Seighenthaler was. Or will you feel comfortable being listed on List of Playboy Playmates (I´m not sure if Rosie O'Donnell ever found out that she had been a Playboy Playmate.. )
If you go to [[Category:Lists_of_people]], you will find endless possibilities; just take the sub-categories of "Lists of people by sexuality ", "Lists of people by physical attribute", and, my favorite: "List of mummies" (they forgot a few )

Well, I see that they now demand a source before they list anyone on the transgender people -list, Good! (perhaps a fall-out from the Seighenthaler affair?) But as everyone can see, there are other lists just as ..."special"..that do not demand sourcing at all.

There are all sorts of ways the situation can be made to seem more complex, including that one... but at least in that case, one might simply propose that "Lists of.... people" could all be semi-protected too, at least until a general edit-approval feature is enabled. (Or rather, if ever. )

Personally, I still think the "dead tree" opt-out policy idea is better than semi-protection of all BLP's, if it were a choice between one or the other, but since it's not, and since semi-protection of all BLP's would be a good thing no matter what happens on the other front(s), why do I even mention it? Other than frustration, that is.

I even added a new smiley for it...

It's not a choice between one and the other; both proposals address somewhat different, although obviously overlapping, aspects of the BLP situation.

Isn't that what I said? Sort of?

Anyhoo, I think a lot of it also boils down to which is "easier" - as most things in society do these days. The fact is, it's probably easier to semi-protect all BLP's from a technical standpoint, and once it's done all you have to do is address the occasional complaint, most of which are likely to be ignorable. I suspect they could semi-protect all the articles in the BLP category, at least, with one SQL command.

The opt-out policy would require a lot of procedure and requirement-checking and such, but it would probably have a far lesser impact on how Wikipedia is edited, developed, and (to some extent) administered. I for one have always maintained that there would be 100-200 opt-outs in the first year and maybe 20-30 per year after that... out of roughly 200,000 BLP's, or whatever the number is. But I can't guarantee those numbers, obviously. The fact is that the effects of such a policy are unpredictable, and that scares people, though I'm not sure what they're scared of other than the possibility that Wikipedia will become less useful as a... wait for it...! revenge platform.

When I post my proposals on Wikipedia I will try to get input from OTRS volunteers and others who deal with these issues frequently, but I can't imagine that a limited opt-out policy (or some reasonable variation thereof) would be more difficult or time-consuming that responding to a series of requests by an article subject relating to a whole series of edits. I presume that there is checking that goes on to make sure that those requests are legitimate before they are acted on (unless they are just pointing to obvious vandalism or nonsense), so I don't see that there would be a big incremental change in the workload.

There are some other issues raised by how these proposals could be implemented, which I have been thinking through for the past couple of months and haven't fully solved, which is why I haven't posted my thoughts on-wiki yet. My goal is not to trigger another round of endless discussions, but to actually accomplish change that will substantially reduce the number of people hurt by enemies or vandals or opponents screwing around on Wikipedia, without the proposals being too complicated or too damaging to ever get accepted.

That's what makes the whole issue so complex - you just don't know, really. Daniel Brandt and Rachel Marsden (and to a lesser extent, Siegenthaler, Seth Finkelstein, and other long-term critics) are the exceptions, people who make a lot of noise over, essentially, one article each. (Apologies to Daniel for mentioning Rachel M. along with him in this particular context, but in terms of sheer mayhem caused, she's almost certainly got the number-two ranking at this point. )

It really depends on how widely publicized such a policy becomes, doesn't it? My assumptions are based on the idea that there would be several articles in the techie press, maybe one or two in the mainstream media, and that would be enough to cause the 100-200 first-year figure. Afterwards, you'd only get people requesting an opt-out if they'd already taken the trouble to find out that the policy existed, and had a fairly legitimate grievance, hence the 20-30 per-year figure.

But right now, when someone comes along and asks to have their BLP removed, there might be an AfD, but that's a "nothing" event - Wikipedians enjoy that sort of thing, after all. There's currently no requirement that the requester's identity be verified if it's just for an AfD, but for an opt-out policy to work you'd almost have to have some sort of verification procedure - otherwise people might simply use it as another revenge weapon against the vast majority of people who actually want their BLP articles to stay in.

I remember a day a few months ago when there were two consecutive discussions on AfD. In the first, a BLP subject was complaining that someone wanted to delete the article about him and stressing how terribly important he was and what a travesty it would be if his article was deleted. In the very next discussion, a BLP subject was complaining even more bitterly that he was a private person and wanted nothing to do with an article on Wikipedia and why couldn't it be gotten rid of. I thought to myself that perhaps I should just suggest that they change places. More seriously, I wondered whether there are more people with articles wishing they could get out, or people without articles wishing they could get in.

Definitely the latter. But among people who are actually the subject of considerably public attention - i.e. those who clear [[WP:N]] - there are more of the latter, since the novelty of being Somebody has worn off for them (if indeed it ever had any appeal).

Right, but that's what the "dead tree" condition is for. Also remember that Wikipedia also gives those people something they can't get elsewhere, namely the ability to edit their own articles. Assuming they're clever (and perhaps devious) enough to avoid getting caught, of course.

It really depends on how foolish and irrational the BLP subjects turn out to be. If you're someone like Daniel Brandt, who believed (with justification) that he was being specifically targeted by one or more established Wikipedians who disliked him for whatever reason, then the arguments in favor of not raising a stink go out the window - you raise a stink, there's nothing to lose, it's a no-brainer. Otherwise, you'd have to be really dumb to raise a stink because you think the deletion will help you whitewash your checkered past - it won't, and it might easily draw more unwanted attention to yourself.

In fact, that's one of the reasons I originally suggested replacing the opt-out BLP's with a template saying, "The subject of this article requested on (date) that Wikipedia not carry a biographical page on him/her. This article was deleted on (date). Please do not re-create it." People thinking about opting out for whitewashing purposes would see those pages and, hopefully, realize that such a page would only raise more curiosity, and lead people to search for them on sites where they have no influence or semblance of control whatsoever.

The thing to remember is that the number of "established Wikipedians" is very, very small in relation to the number of internet users overall. The chance that any given BLP subject has of being the revenge-target of an established Wikipedian is even smaller, and the chances that the established Wikipedian in question is consistently getting away with it, under the current BLP policy regime, are smaller still. That's why I maintain that the number of opt-outs will be so small, but like I say, it depends on how foolish those people are likely to be, and I just can't predict that with any real certainty.

Meanwhile, semi-protection of all BLP's is a good idea, long overdue, but it's the last thing you'd want to see if you're the target of an established Wikipedian who's turning your BLP article into an attack piece - that would mean you'd have to become an established Wikpedian yourself in order to counter him. Which, as we've already pointed out, is an unreasonable burden.

But they won't even allow the use of __NOINDEX__ on mainspace articles, will they?

Blathering Bloviators of Obliviousness


After further discussion, I've decided to rename Peck's analytical diagnosis to something less Darth Voldemortish.

I propose to call it Oblivious Personality Distorter.

Does that work for you?

But I digress.

Returning to Ground Zero for a moment from our fanciful excursion into Oblivia, how would you characterize their untenable ideologies?

Aggressive / extreme Libertarian.

Products of a naive "Geek Culture" with ill thought out values regarding online and published ethics that allow for gross privacy invasions and minimum accountability for themselves. Particular interpretations of "Freedom" are the sole priority. Notions of "responsibility", or your "Ethics in online media" are just not important.

There are people who want the "freedom" to drive at high speed through cities and scorn those who oppose that as "OMG oppressors" - but then there are people who want the "freedom" to inhabit cities without some jerk driving at 70mph and hitting themselves or their families when they step out of the door. I would guess that many Wikipedians would associate with the former notion. This kind of nonsense thinking is completely untenable in a workable society and will lead to massive imbalances, widespread violations, and a return to a less advanced culture.

(Mods can split this thread if it seems to impinge on the mechanics of BLP)

The Jackboot Culture


Hrmm... Asymmetric Libertarian as in "Freedom for me, but not for thee" ?


It's abundantly clear to me that Jimbo, IDCab, Mike Umbridge, Mike.Lifeguard, Ottava Rima, et al, have negligible interest in embracing 21st Century notions of Due Process, Civil Rights, or Mass Media Ethics.

Over on #wikiversity-en, I see this message multiple times a day: "You have been kicked by...", where the jackbooted kicker is usually Mike Umbridge or Mike.Lifeguard. They even laugh about it. This is the shameful Jackboot Culture they are teaching and learning under the umbrella of the WMF Mission Statement.


I agree that Jimbo's Jackboot Cultural Model is anachronistic, unbecoming, untenable, unsustainable, and just plain tacky.

This week in the news from Modern Mesopotamia, we learned that merely showing the soles of your shoes to someone is a gross insult. Taking off your shoes and throwing them at someone is an outlandish act of aggression, even in modern day Iraq. Can you imagine how they must feel about being kicked by a steel-toed jackboot?

Kato, do you remember the Keep on Truckin' meme from the 1970s? Methinks that's the iconic image we need here to lampoon the Jimbonic Jackboot Culture.

Optout only addresses the problematic biographies where the subject is aware of it. And it severely reduces the complaint level.

Solutions to the BLP problem need to be across the board, not only serving those with the luck to know about their biography and the inclination to complain. Reducing the complaint level, before a solution is found, is only going to make people complacent.

Brad's almost right to pursue semi-protection all around. I think flagged revisions is the actual answer. Semi-protection cuts down on the problem, albeit less effectively. If Brad's choosing it for pragmatic reasons, he may be right that it will be easier to accomplish.

A proper implementation of flagged revisions would make semi-protection essentially redundant, provided there were sufficient patrollers, and provided there were no slacker patrollers who marked things patrolled that shouldn't be so-marked. Any of those three (proper implementation, sufficient patrollers, no slacker patrollers) seems a stretch to me; all three is virtually impossible.

Of course, as I told Brad in an e-mail to him, it's also more or less impossible to get semi-protection of BLPs, because it's a controversial proposal and controversial proposals can't reach consensus. I'd love to be proved wrong, though.

On a personal level, I do not see "a bit of a backlog in newedit patrolling" as a problem with the same magnitude as "widespread (if thin) libel ruining people's lives and our reputation".

There will, of course, be slacker patrollers. I do not think it is reasonable to hope for a flawless solution. The other two are probably doable. The Germans seem to be making it work, and I am led to believe the Dutch patrol every new edit by keeping a stack of "edits to be patrolled" which you can catch up on. Backlogs are actually not widespread on en.wikipedia today - AfD has zero backlog, IfD has minimal backlog, C:CSD never has much backlog, and so forth. If flagging is part of the game, and doing it right is the key to getting yourself an admin bit - manpower won't be the problem. Implementation probably is not a problem, given the amount of field testing and whatnot. Just training the new edit patrollers remains unresolved - at worst, we remain where we are now.

Yes, agreed. I was explaining why I have a slight preference for semi-protection (if it's one or the other) largely for its relative simplicity. Either one would be a marked improvement on the status quo.

Also, I probably wasn't clear on what I meant by a "proper implementation". There's a contingent at Wikipedia (Bruning and co.) who think flagged revisions is a fine idea as long as the version that's visible to readers is the most recent version. I trust we can agree that that kind of configuration would be worse than semi-protection.

The obvious solution to "slacker patrollers" is Slacker Patrol. They could act as Comarde Commissars and place templates on the user pages of patrollers who have not produced up to expectation. A new level of busy-body-ness would be tonic. Voluntary intermeddling, with enough eye balls, will of course translate into responsible editorial practice.

In practice, both versions should be visible to readers, with flagged by default and "current revision" with red block letters that say "UNVETTED DRAFT, DON'T FUCKING BELIEVE IT".

Semi-protection is probably easier, but less effective. But I think "likelihood you could actually get it implemented" is the most important metric.

By that metric, the two are tied at "not going to happen unless imposed from above".

Frankly, I think that like-minded administrators should just do it. At least for every biography that isn't a public figure.

Enough editors reject any policy proposal such that there isn't WP:CONSENSUS, but I doubt that many admins would want to wheel war on this issue. And if they do, it'll be WP:BRD writ large, where every vandalized edit on every article unprotected can be cited in favor of the motion. After each semi-protection, admins should also look for obvious junk. Those would be cited in favor of the motion as well.

I think semi-protection would win.

This may or may not be true. While this idea has oft been repeated, it has not been shown to my satisfaction. If Brad actually intends to push for semiprot, though, we will see pretty closely if its the total leaderlessness of this that's been holding us back.

Even flagged revs is seeing talk about possibly someday allowing thinking about the possibility of implementing it for featured articles, I believe. I can dig up the discussion somewhere.



If Brad were leading the charge, he might well find dozens or hundreds of admins lined up behind him. But organizing is hard, as #wikipedia-en-admins seems to hate protection of any form.

But yeah - if someone with actual clout lead a movement to semi any BLP which gets any vandalism - I would follow. I cannot lead this, though, lacking the requisit community standing.

Ah, but remember, [[WP:WHEEL]] prohibits "repeat[ing] an administrative action when you know that another administrator opposes it." That means that assuming we start with an unprotected article, the wheel warrior would be the one who re-protected after protection was first lifted. Even that policy seems carefully calculated to perpetuate the status quo (note that I doubt that it actually was carefully calculated to achieve that or any other effect; I'm just saying that it seems that way). I already throw on lengthy semi-protections to any BLP that seems to call for it (Farah got a month, despite a low enough level of vandalism that I'm sure it would have been rejected for protection at RFPP - possibly I should have tried for longer, though), but that's only a few articles per week.

I'm pretty sure that if I started indef semi-ing a pile of BLPs, especially with that as my precise reason, it would go as follows:

1. I'd get hauled before ANI.
2. Discussion there would be divided among a number of groups, ranked in descending order of size:
a. this is horseshit, and he should be de-sysopped if he doesn't stop.
b. semi-protection of BLPs is the right idea, but a change this major should have been discussed and agreed upon in advance.
c. it's about time somebody did that.

If I persisted after that point, I'd be hauled before Arb Comm, who would basically have no choice to accept. I'm not sure where it goes from there, but I can't see Arb Comm sanctioning admin actions that go solidly against consensus.

Sarcastic idealist

Yes, you could not go it alone. One is probably right about it happening if ~100 admins just started doing it, however. There simply would not be the will to oppose (see the death of spoiler warnings, the implementation of rollbacker, et cetera), and it would be a fait accompli.

The first few in the charge might get shot down, though. But even then, they might now. Depends on whether the new arbs like desysoping or not, I guess. If multiplie Arbs endorsed it (even as a minority) - forget about it - as long as you did not actively war over specific articles, it would just happen.

That's why I propose coordination. Pick a date, assign letters of the alphabet, and go. They can desysop you, but what about 50 admins including (hopefully) some arbitrators?

If we can change the reality on the ground, it becomes the de facto policy, even if a minority oppose it. At this point in time, I think the minority is small enough that we should just be bold. Let someone else try to prove consensus against semi-protection. It can't be done, I assure you.

Or, sure, we could propose a policy change first. Maybe JoseClutch is right, but I suspect it will fail and just make it harder to change in the near future.

One

If history is any guide - proposing policy changes is maybe not the best way to go. Flagged revs needs a demonstrated consensus for the devs - semis doesn't.

If you look to the history of "Contraversial proposals that succeeded", they were mostly just done, and the loud but tiny group of opposers were not able to do much.

And yes, the support of sitting arb(s) would make it almost certain to succeed, unless there was an enormous, widespread resistance, which seems unlikely.

People need to learn this statistic by heart:


By anonymous editors, they mean IP editors, rather than the even more anonymous editors who are registered, but are far less likely to add drive-by defamation.

30 out of 31 is not 96.77%, of course. It is probably 90%-100% (I could draw some triangles or run some monte carlo codes to be sure, but that seems like a waste of time).

I fully agree with you, even though it makes me feel a little like a Bolshevik.

I'm sorry, my last remark was directed for a comment which I misinterpreted. I thought you suggested that a policy change might succeed with Brad's leadership at the helm. I suspect that proposing a policy (and presuming it fails), will just toughen the resistance of those who might oppose bold direct action.

My first hope is direct action, and I do think a coordinated push would succeed. Maybe we could even start a Wikiproject where our cause can be stated, and have a cute table where admins can sign up for sections of the alphabet. On some day soon, we would begin.

Of course, the number of Wikipedia admins who are open communists ...

I agree with both those statements about policy proposal. Flagged Revs has suffered badly from the need for a leader, and if Brad can't do it, I do not know who can. But a rejection makes things harder going forward (rather than the mushy stalemate that is present today).

But what is really needed is some feeling for how many admins might actually go for it. Which is why sounding it out is worthwhile, I think.