Daniel Tobias blundered on his web site when he stated:



I would like Mr. Tobias to show the verifiable proof -- anywhere -- that Arch Coal was ever a paying client of Wikipedia Review.

Greg

This is precisely the kind of lying bullcrap wikipedians are famous for and why I say dtobias should be banned.

Do we know when he added Arch Coal to his little list? Or more importantly, why? It hardly seems like they're "whining" about anything, nor are they in the center of any controversy in their own right, unless the controversy is over how self-contradictory Wikipedia's policies are...

But I will say that it's clearly typical of Tobias to word things in just such a way as to provide himself with maximum fudge-factor. "Let Wikipedia Review take them on as a client in their business to develop Wikipedia articles for pay" would be read by just about any casual reader as "became a paying client," but he'll probably come along in a few minutes and claim you "misinterpreted the sentence" and that he never meant to imply that Arch Coal paid anybody for anything.

Anyway, Mr. Queeran, let's please just give him another week or so. If he does anything really egregious during that week, we'll definitely take the appropriate measures.

You're entirely correct. I got overzealous when I sought to add all sorts of people and companies involved in any way with Wikipedia controversies over their articles, and on further reflection I realize that Arch Coal doesn't belong there; I have no evidence that they, themselves, had any role in the creation or criticism of their article, or reacted in any way to it, and, while I do recall it having some connection to the whole Wikipedia Review affair, I don't have specific evidence of exactly what connection it has. Hence, I have removed it from my page, and I apologize to you and to Arch Coal for including it.

On the broader issues regarding my page, it's true that the way it has evolved over time has gone beyond strictly listing "wiki whiners", and now encompasses all sorts of people (and companies, organizations, institutions, governmental agencies, etc.) who have in any way had a difference of views with Wikipedia over the content of articles about them; some of them had very good reason to disagree with what happened while others seem to me to be unreasonable in their expectations; some dealt with their disagreements constructively and others not so; and reactions ran the gamut from shrugging it off to having a few laughs to ranting about how evil Wikipedia is to filing lawsuits. To reflect this broader coverage, I've done a good deal of tweaking to my headers and introductory paragraphs, though I'm still not eager to drop the "Wiki Whiners" caption, as inapplicable as it is to some of the people on the list, since it's so catchily alliterative.




So you think people should get banned from this site, not for their behavior on here, but for what they say on a different site entirely? That doesn't seem particularly sensible to me.

The issue is very simple. your a liar and fraud (dtobias). To declare those that don't agree what wikipedia is now... winners, is hateful ignorance and simple minded arrogances and your part.
YOUR A SOULLESS PERSON. Wikipedia is a breeding ground of evil and must be destroyed.

You're leaving an insulting pejorative in place because it's alliterative?

Even if we grant that this makes any sense whatsoever, this title of yours shows an almost complete lack of appreciation for browser and search-engine ergonomics. It's not rocket science, Dan-o. Imagine yourself as someone else, and ask yourself, "What words would I type into Google if I wanted a list of people who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they're being screwed over by Wikipedia? by far the more SEO-friendly title would be "Victims of Wikipedia," or if you insist on so-called neutral terminology, "Wikipedia Controversies." But you'd be much better off with the former in terms of PageRank competition.

Right now, the highest-ranked non-Wikipedia, non-scraper Google rank for wikipedia victims is this Anarchopedia category page which has exactly one article listed in it. This is a huge opportunity to grab some much-needed traffic, Danno! No journalist who needs quick information on people who are getting screwed by WP is going to type in "wiki whiners." It just wouldn't occur to them.

C'mon, Dan-man! Do the right thing for a change! It's actually in your own best interests! People will see that you understand basic SEO concepts and you'll be asked to biuld more websites, and therefore make Big Bucks! Imagine those dollars just a-rollin' in!


Wikipedia does it... don't they?


Well, "winners" would be better than what he has up there now. And at least he's not calling them losers! That would be really insulting.

Some good ideas, actually... take a look at the page now:

"http://dan.tobias.name/controversies/cyber/wiki.html"

Well, it's an improvement, I guess... Who knows, in a few more weeks, we'll have you wanting to delete the Brandt article!

And as for what's going on over at WikiEN-L right now, don't worry about it - we don't know who's in charge here on WR either.

It would be grossly wrong. Can you imagine anyone being banned from Wikipedia for contributing here?

By the way, I should probably point out here that the list linked-to above is on Dan Tobias' personal website, so it's conceivable that he might be able to correlate your reading of this thread with IP addresses logged on his webserver, assuming he has that sort of timed IP logging in place.

I'm sure Dan would never dream of reporting WR members' IP addresses to the other Wikipedia folks, but just in case anyone here is trying to be extra-stealthy...

On the other hand, you'd really be missing out if you didn't have a look at his Tiffany fan site at www.tiffany.org.