Why aren't they going after the Wikitruth article, and links to the Wikitruth.info website? A super-quick glance at the site reveals we have a variety of "outed" Wikipedians:

* Six real names.
* Four home towns.
* Two alleged transexuals.
* One university.
* One person's sexual quirks.

How is that not a BADSITE?

Because it's run by Wikipedia admins?

That's the only reason I can think of. What's more, they're intransigent and unapologetic, too... I recently asked them to delete their article on FCYTravis, and they just flat-out refused. At least we're fairly reasonable about removing stuff like that, assuming the people involved actually ask, and don't make hostile legal threats.

At least 3-4 of them, and "strongly" rumored one Checkuser, from a very, very off the record grapevine I previously heard.



I'm just flabbergasted in hindsight that not one person has gone after links to the website. I wonder what would happen if someone just deleted the link back on the article, citing BADSITES...

At least they responded. Usually they ignore you.

Hmmm... maybe my being an admin here means I have some "juice"!

I thought about making a fuss about it, but they have a policy of not "attacking" other critics or critic sites, which seem like a fairly good idea. Things like that can escalate very easily... And really, I can hardly say I dislike them, as there's plenty of good material there.

But it is rather questionable that they're never included in all this proposed link-banning the WP'ers seem to have such a hard-on for these days.

Hey, apparently User:MONGO sincerely believes that everyone watching the current WP:NPA discussion is a complete moron!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=136444172

What a lying sack of shit this guy is! With comments like this, I'd almost wonder if he isn't personally involved in Wikitruth, except that I seriously doubt they'd want someone like that around.

If he "fails to see" these things on Wikitruth, then I guess he must be blind or something. And where are these "addresses" here that he's talking about? And IP addresses? Any IP addresses displayed on this website are taken from Wikipedia itself - it's not like we go out and find things like that ourselves. MONGO appears to just be making stuff up at this point.

I cannot believe this! It's like he thinks everyone else is fucking brain-dead!

I mean, look at this!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=136455437

You stupid shit, why do you think it's "common knowledge" in the first place? BECAUSE THEY MADE IT COMMON KNOWLEDGE!

FCYTravis was completely anonymous before Wikitruth posted that attack page on him. Woohookitty never revealed his real name on Wikipedia, as far as I can determine - they did that. Nobody knew Kelly Martin was a transsexual until they wrote a huge story on it! And that whole bit about Tony Sidaway's wacky online sexcapades? That came from them too!

And where are these people, to correct these egregious factual errors? Nowhere to be found. Frankly, this just adds more support to the previously-silly-seeming notion that Wikitruth and "the cabal" are actually the same people.

I'm flabbergasted that they haven't gone after the Wikitruth article.

It's good to see that someone is listening, but that's no problem for MONGO - he'll probably reply by saying that all those name changes, gender changes, real names, sexual fetishes, and predilections for net-sexing hijinks were "common knowledge" the whole time! Hey, it's not like they were exposing IP addresses!

By the way, I should clarify this business with what he says at the end. I personally think FCYTravis is a stand-up guy, one of the most principled people WP has at this point (though admittedly, still not in quite the same league with, say, #1 Wikipedian User:Sbharris). When I asked them to delete the article in question, the Wikitruth folks declined (somewhat respectfully - my use of the word "intransigent" above was probably a bit harsh), claiming that he was highly abusive during his first months as an admin, and that his recent efforts on behalf of BLP victims and so forth don't excuse what he supposedly did in the past.

I won't disclose precisely what they wrote, since I'm assuming it was supposed to be confidential, and I haven't pointed it out before now because I didn't want to draw more attention to that article. It's possible that they're sincere, i.e., they don't simply hold a grudge against him for some past insult. They're clearly coming at this from a different direction - anti-censorship, mostly - but I still hold out hope that someday they'll reconsider, since I personally believe in forgiveness and redemption, once someone does something genuinely deserving of it.

Admittedly, though, he should probably get rid of that moustache.

During my (brief) dealings with Travis, I never had a problem with him either, and he was always nice to me and everyone I saw. Whatever his Bad Actions were, it was either under my radar or before my time. Granted, he's a bit strident in the BLP language on matters now, but who isn't? I love Badlydrawnjeff, but on a lot of the BLP things I have to agree with the cloud that's forming. Just, mind you, not in the horrible totalitarian approach and language that's being used to implement it.

Feathers win wars with the delicate Internet egos, not verbal and button-based cudgels.

From MONGO:



Huh? So it's OK to post personal info on Wikipedians, as long as you don't make a show of pursuing it?! Can someone please ask him legitimately on-wiki what the difference is between posting personal information and "pursuing" it? Logic just took a left turn at Albuquerque...

Godwin! Or considering that this MONGO, perhaps "Asshole!" will suffice.

MONGO seems to have taken our point on this issue! At this very moment, he's up late removing links to wikitruth.info all over the website. Looks like User:Nigosh has some sort of crystal ball working for him...

I wonder if they'll revert any of this? If not, it could actually start to become media-worthy. And can there really be much doubt now that MONGO and DennyColt are, in fact, the same person? If not, then they're clones of each other. And they both misspell the word "consensus" in the exact same way.

Can't somebody just ban this lying dickhead? For a good, long time?

Hehe I wonder if Citizendium goes next. I would love to see Citizendium getting removed as an attack site; nothing against them, just that it would cause controversy.


Also DennyColt and MONGO both have self pictures and I saw the MONGO ones when they were more detailed. They can't be socks at least because MONGO doesn't wear glasses -- just like Clark Kent and Superman. Hmmm Runcorn socks had pictures, too.

I have an alternate explanation.

You are an unruly mob with no editorial standards. You coddle psychotics, fall for hoaxes, and constantly cry wolf. Every instance of someone editing a BLP is the horror of all horrors and worthy of comparison to Hitler and/or terrorism. Some call for the straight-up destruction of Wikipedia. Sometimes Johnny Cache says something funny. Sometimes Daniel Brandt makes me weep when he's the voice of thought and reason. SlimVirgin is obsessed over with constant back-handed compliments hurled her way amid creepy stalker behavior.

They are a reliable organization that doesn't bitch and whine about every little thing. They don't publicly plot and encourage vandalism. They don't call for the destruction of Wikipedia. I don't believe they 'out' editors - I searched Wikipedia for all of their named editors and in every case they used their own name in an edit. They attack and mock users with the goal of making people laugh. They usually succeed.

In other words, you are Wikipedia and they are The Hitchhiker's Guide.

Welcome Chris. It's always good to get an alternative viewpoint. Do remember though that WR isn't a monolith; it's a group of people with disparate views.

Not true; you just don't see what gets deleted because we don't save everything in "revision histories" for all eternity. Trust me, we delete (and redact) a LOT of stuff.


And Wikitruth doesn't? Take the blinders off, man! They put up the Parker Peters "Goodbye" e-mail, with a big link on the front page.


Editing, or vandalizing? Now it sounds like you're just exaggerating... something we've seen plenty of in the past.


Of course. Is that wrong? There are people who genuinely believe that Wikipedia seriously damages world culture, costs people jobs, and stifles learning. Read Cult of the Amateur.


Slimmy is the most unpopular admin on Wikipedia, by far, among the users. What do you all expect? It's absurd to think you could have a site like this and not obsess over the single most unpopular admin... And as I've pointed out many times, identifying her was something Brandt wanted to do in case he wanted to include her in a lawsuit against the Foundation. The only issue is whether or not it was necessary or advantageous to publish it. Even so, we've offered to remove the identifying stuff, as we have for others, but this was met with a legal threat, and since then, refusal to reply to our request that she restrain herself from claiming that our removal of that material constitutes an admission... Not much to ask, in my opinion, but instead she prefers to lie about it.

Wikitruth calls Slimmy a "demon," by the way. I'll look it up later today, when I have more time... There's a redlink or two for her, but nobody so far has had the guts to write the article, apparently.


"Reliable"? How so? And of course they don't "bitch and whine" - they only have half a dozen people, there's no diversity of opinion whatsoever, and nobody else can edit anything. That's a superb recipe for community harmony, I'll give you that much.


Do we? I don't think so. We discuss it, and speculate on the future of it, but "encourage" - that would be very rare indeed, I should think.


That's debatable... Besides, in their case, the word "they" actually applies, but in our case it doesn't.


Diffs? On FCYTravis and Woohookitty, specifically, prior to the creation date of the Wikitruth articles. And if what they did to Kelly Martin and Tony Sidaway doesn't constitute "outing," then you've got a rather skewed set of definitions.


So having the goal of "making people laugh" somehow makes it alright, then? And as for succeeding, well... opinion, opinion, opinion.


I'd say it's more like we're the speaker's corner in Hyde Park, while they're a cell meeting in an abandoned warehouse.

Oh we're far from being "an unruly mob".
Ever taken a look at Wikipedia lately? There's the unruly mob. We're kittens in comparison.

"Some call for the straight-up destruction of Wikipedia."
Yeah, I am one of them. So what? It's beyond repair. Take a look at some of those "admins" treat people they don't agree with, then you tell me how acceptable that is on a REAL Wiki (which Wikipedia is not, it's corrupted the meaning of the word). For example, the whole scandal surrounding my block never would've happened on a REAL Wiki.
Are we right in calling for Wikipedia's destruction? Absolutely.

Have you ever visited another NON-Wikipedia-related Wiki (MeatBall, AboutUs, WikiWikiWeb, Wikitravel, wikiHow, etc) and compared it to Wikipedia? No? I didn't think so. Try that, then we can see you come back with "Oh I'm sorry, I was wrong"...

Wikipedia is not the centre of the wiki-universe. If you think that, remove blinders from eyes.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: Wikis were meant to be collaboration & community building tools. That is all a Wiki was meant to be. Wikipedia has failed in both of those aims. It doesn't deserve to be called a wiki.

This is bullshit.

Take a look at this pathetic attempt by wikitruth to publicly ridicule the appearance of a private person who suffers from Crouzon syndrome. You think that is funny? I call it cowardly and obscene.

Much of wikitruth seems to be in the brattish "no censorship maaaan..." mould. A usual rallying call of the morally stunted - alongside that brattish idiot-ology of blarney "libertarianism" which seems to permeate these sites. Most of these advocates are still going through the youthful phase of oppression/repression by parents and teachers, and idiot-ologies like "anarcho capitalism" and "libertarianism" sound tempting. Hence when confronted with a serious adult moral issue such as human decency on the internet, they lack the tools to respond beyond the childish "no censorship maaaan..." bleatings. The crusade against censorship - sticking it to the straw man by publishing deleted articles on wikitruth - is embarrassing.

And, as Somey notes, of course wikitruth has outed editors. It's an ATTACK site for goodness sake.

Wikitruth meets EVERY one of their definitions for an "attack site/BADSITE". WR I suppose does, as well as WW, antisocialmedia.net, the anti-Chip Berlet site, ED, and now donmurphy.net as well. But that mess was tailored and designed to go after the sites that went after Slim, Jay, MONGO, Tony, et al. And they're winning. The 'wiki way' is that whatever becomes practice become policy. So they're just doing it again and again, and by virtue of being intractable they'll win in the end unless they're all slapped down hard. It'll go RFAR in the end. I can't see it going any other way with how they get more militant each week about it on both sides.

Now, I will grant that directly linking to individual attacks isn't a good thing to do from a simple policy and user-support perspective. If I register "Wiki-admin-John-Smith-is-a-douche.com" and and then proceed to offer bulletproof evidence on his real name being Tony Romano, from Whichway Arkansas, and toast him... no, that's probably a safe link to exclude. Until it becomes 100% notable enough for an article. Linking to a random thread here, or a random Wikitruth page? Sure, do it. But, linking to the "Where is Jayjg?" thread that tries to figure out where in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Jayyg lives? Not so good, no.

It's a fine line, and for those that aren't aware it began when ED put up the MONGO article. Contrary to myth, I barely knew anyone from ED at this point in time, when EDgate began in July 2006. I was e-buddies (somewhat) with a couple of users there via Livejournal. I read it sometimes, but the WP-related stuff was barely on my radar. The "screenshot" image on the ED article on Wikipedia had been some random shot of their front page. Then came the day they made MONGO Featured Article status on ED. Someone uploaded a new screen shot to Wikipedia's ED article showing this. Someone else told MONGO, and all hell broke loose for weeks. He went berserk, and supported by Tony Sidaway, Netscott, and Hipocrite (which is why they became big ED "favorites") eviscerated the ED article, fought tooth and nail to discredit every last source--which did allow it to pass WP:WEB--and then put it on AfD. That AfD was the singular most unpleasant Internet experience I've ever had.

Along the way, during the edit warring on the article, MONGO et al repeatedly removed the "External Link" to the ED site, until MONGO's Featured Article status expired three days later. Their rationale? It was an "attack and outing site". I don't recall who coined the phrase, but BADSITES was born the day MONGO nuked the ED link. Anyway, I do agree with the toned down, rationale version. If you want to have people contribute, you need to offer them at times at least the illusion of protection. Removing specific URLs--ok. Removing whole sites? No, that's just retarded.

Based on this, I couldn't disagree with link removal to specific attack pages, but not to the whole shebang. The "attacked" want it all gone. Speaking for troll friends, I'd venture that they prefer the full version, since it just leads to more chaos the more it's enforced. Stupid. It's like the pro-BADSITES people don't even care that they just push ever more people to read stuff like Wikipedia Review, Wikipedia Watch, Wikitruth, Encyclopedia Dramatica, and Antisocialmedia.net to see what all the hubbub is about, the more that they push to snuff out all mention of them.

ED, especially, they hate so much that even arbiters go out of their way to deface links to ED. Dramatica becomes damatica, just to break even internal links. Go look at the MONGO ArbCom--Fred broke all the internal links there even to things like the ED AFD. That's why I'm unfortunately resigned to never being unblocked on Wikipedia. Fred is a notable case, and I'm shocked that he doesn't militantly support the mess. ED (or Wikitruth, I can't recall which) found this gem after all.

It should also be pointed out - again - that MONGO isn't just deleting the links to the sites he doesn't like, he's deleting the names of those sites as well. I suspect he'll cause at least one or two license violations by doing that.

Anyway, it looks like MONGO has now completely taken over:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=136793439


MONGO in charge! MONGO in control! MONGO say do this, you do it! MONGO make policy! MONGO run Wikipedia! MONGO own big website! MONGO have total authority!

And here on WikiEN-L, it's Jayjg revising history:

Once again, total misuse of the term "straw man" by someone who supposedly should know what terms like that mean. (Is it any wonder that we suspected him of being a teenager?)

Isn't it much more likely that the reason the article was nominated by a SPA "troll account" is because the last person to nominate that article, User:Woohookitty, was later "outed" by Wikitruth for just that very thing?

Naaaah, can't be!


"Advertising"?

The current business with MONGO and the past with DennyColt does feel like deja vu, but Denny's thoroughness with keeping the Brandt article doesn't square with MONGO's tendency to say things like "I haven't looked into it but here is what I think..."

This is an important thread, I certainly do not want to derail it, but I hope that this isn't turning into a WR vs Wikitruth INTARNET WAR. It is appropriate to ask why Wikitruth hasn't entered the BADSITES conversation at all but I hope there is no bad blood as a result of this between the sites. There should be some solidarity and empathy™ between the sites.

This post could be longer, but in fear of derailing this thread, my personal commentary is minimum.

Indeed! Will no one rid me of this turbulent lying dickhead?

Good point. We'll have to see how they react, but their general policy so far has been to not react to other criticism sites at all...

I really have nothing against them, despite the FCYTravis thing, and to be honest I don't really care all that much about the delinkings and the censorship in general - in fact, they often serve our purposes, not WP's. But if they're going to be hypocrites, we should certainly point that out (as we often do, which is why this is such a busy forum).

Also, comparing the two sites is basically apples and oranges. We're an open forum that just about anyone can join, and they're a closed wiki that only they can edit. Our software is better for various levels of discussion than theirs - they can't even hide pages from search engines, much less non-users. If they cared about privacy, they wouldn't be using MediaWiki, at least not with its current feature set. Same goes for WP, of course.

So I suppose that MONGO can no longer be accused of hypocrisy WRT Wikitruth, but that doesn't mean he's doing the right thing, and he's still guilty of lying about us, obviously... Nevertheless, if they want to erase all trace of our existence from Wikipedia, that's their privilege. I do think it makes them look bad, and will probably draw more attention to us, not less (at least in the short term), but at the end of the day, it's their website.

Oops! I meant it's MONGO's website.

Still, doesn't it seem odd that when a website is accused of "outing" WP'ers, everything about the site is aggressively erased from WP, but when a person does it on another website, they fight tooth and nail to keep their article about the person intact, like their very lives depended on it?

What's the deal with that?

I thought they posted his pic and called him a big fat hairy gay man when he speedy deleted it when it was new. I think Tawker was the last to speedy it and then someone restored it and did an AFD which ended in keep.

Both. For editing, I was very specifically thinking of this thread (scroll down to the first instance of 'shit') and this. In the first, I've no idea what even the BLP problem is supposed to be. In the second, it really is just pointing out the context to who Paul Johnson is with a quote from his campaign. It would be like writing "I was a friend of Jacob Rubenstein." without pointing out who Jack Ruby was.

If it isn't wrong, it certainly makes you hard to take seriously. I've no idea what you could mean by 'damages world culture' - Are you saying it homogenizes cultures? Costing someone a job is not necessarily a bad thing. Businesses are as much about image as money and competence. Hiring someone who famously chainsawed off a dog's head back in '04 would be an exceptionally bad move, especially if you happen to be PETA. Finally, there's no reason to think it 'stifles learning'. If anything it makes it easier to learn by collecting piles of information on even the most obscure topics. If you're interested in learning more, you can usually go check out the sources.

I've no experience with SlimVirgin as a person outside of reading a few isolated messages on the mailing list so I find the stalking rather creepy. I'm waiting for Brant to post a satellite photos of her home, or maybe a picture of her mother.

When they say something, I can feel moderately comfortable that they're not photographing a mole hill from a low angle with a wide-angle lens or just jerking my chain. For example, Wikilove's recent "Irishguy is DELETING USERS!!!111one" bit made me wince with pain.

I was thinking of this thread.
User 1: I don't vandalize often, but...
User 2: Blah.
User 3: Hey, that vandalism was kind of funny.
User 4: Man, it's bad that your vandalism lasted so long.
It continues for a few more posts, but no-one ever says "Vandalism is bad."

No, it isn't. They're pretty clear in the FWQ. They don't say "Wikipedia = Vandalism", they say "There are serious problems with it as-is, but we don't hate it for existing."

Sure.
Diff for Travis.
'Diff' for Woohookitty - Sorry, but I'm not willing to trawl through the entire ANI archives looking for that one diff from WooHooKitty.
RE: Kelly - I don't believe they 'out' Kelly. I've examined both of their pages on her and neither mentions anything about her gender. Did I miss one?
RE: Tony - His 'outing' is much closer to the popular usage. I wouldn't have done it, but I do find it pretty hilarious. But while embarrassing, is there any possibility of Tony receiving RL retribution for it?

Nobody has experience with SlimVirgin as a person -- she won't allow it -- so all we can go by is her actions in Wikipedia. And those actions are awful. She is a selfish, boorish, power-mad, agenda pusher. She and a few of her friends are working on seizing control of the administrative processes of Wikipedia, and they're making incredible progress. Right now, you can argue that the faceless, nameless SlimVirgin is more powerful on Wikipedia than its founder, Jimbo Wales (who does have a name and a face).



Sorry, I guess I thought it was obvious, but for the record, Vandalism is bad. I really don't think you combat the asshattery of a few self-important Wikipedia admins by being just as childish. You combat it by being better than they are. It's a slow process, but eventually it does pay off. And you have cleaner hands.

It's not part of an actual BLP article, but you have to admit, it's pretty nasty! Maybe the guy deserves it, but stuff like that shouldn't be out there for the whole world to see, unless Wikipedia wants to descend to the level of supermarket tabloid. Remember, the subject doesn't necessarily discern a difference between the article and a bunch of nasty talk pages. Libel can appear anywhere.


Hmmm... Nobs is nothing but trouble, but the fact is, including that information about Johnson was an unwarranted attack. If Cochran is a racist, prove it. Guilt-by-association doesn't cut it, and it isn't something Wikipedia should be encouraging in any case.


There are lots of ways in which WP damages world culture, including homogenization to some degree - though I would probably use the term "reduction of opinion-diversity." It's discussed all over the website, but the most direct way is simply that it lowers the overall quality of general reference materials. Encyclopedias have been an important cultural and educational tool ever since they were invented, but now... maybe not.


Strawman argument. If fewer people choose careers in professional journalism, publishing, or education because free competition drives companies into cutbacks or out of business completely, making it impossible to find jobs, that's bad, no matter how you slice it. If people who could have been brilliant writers and educators end up becoming insurance salesmen or restaurant managers, that's bad too, and there's no way to quantify it either, is there?


That's just it - making it "easier to learn" does stifle learning. Research and weighing of diverse viewpoints are essential to learning. And putting aside the reliability aspect, Wikipedia is like a fast-food approach to education. People don't go out and actually learn things as long as they can say, "oh, I don't need to know anything about that, I can just look it up on Wikipedia." With all the attendant problems that creates...


Rather than try to explain it (and yes, it probably does seem "creepy" without any background on the situation), do you think it's unreasonable for us to ask for assurances from her that she won't publicly treat our removal of identifying information about her as an admission of wrongdoing, after we remove it? (This is in response to legal threats made by her in the takedown request.)

Because the lack of a response from her to that condition is the only thing holding up the process at this point. Instead, she's chosen to keep attacking us and, quite frankly, lie about what's going on. I'm sorely tempted to take the offer off the table.


Hmm... I see your point, but they're a wiki, so they can make changes after the fact. Obviously it would be better if every poster here carefully researched every post before posting it, but these things often happen in the moment, and that's just the nature of the beast. For example, with the Parker Peters goodbye message, they were able to go back and remove the links to it, and eventually they might delete it... We could do that too, but we operate on the assumption that people understand what an open forum is and how news gets around.


Me too! Did we not delete that one? I'm definitely thinking delete...


You're actually right about this; there are members here who think certain kinds of vandalism are, by various turns, necessary, useful, and even good. But it also matters enormously what the article is and what the context is. Also, we're not really here to criticize the vandals themselves anyway they're going to exist no matter what. We're here to criticize (among other things) how Wikipedia handles vandalism, which by any description is Not Too Well.

As for FCYTravis and Woohookitty, I could always argue that a revision in which a person is identified, which is reverted after a few minutes, is inherently less damaging to one's ability to maintain anonymity than a web page dedicated to that person that remains in place indefinitely... But that might be seen as hypocritical. Either way, they weren't "outed" by us.


They removed that stuff (and the revisions) after she resigned her adminship, actually. If she regains it, I suspect they'll put it back...


Probably no more than anyone else involved, which is practically none whatsoever. At no point have we (I think I can speak for most members here) suggested that the IRL effects of being "outed" by an "attack site" are anything more than hysterical bluster meant to distract people and cover up the usual ideological warfare and abusive editing that these people are so good at. Nevertheless, their site is Top Ten in the Alexa rankings, so everything they say must automatically be true, huh?

You guys really need to nail a manifesto to a wall somewhere.


She kind of has a point. If she asks you to take down personally identifiable information, that's pretty much an admission that you got her. Have you considered filtering her name? I don't mean "NONE SHALL SPEAK OF SLIMVIRGIN!", I mean you apply a filter that changes every instance of her name to something else. Perhaps "Fair Lady"? You'd also want to filter the shortened version(SV), perhaps only if the letters SV are preceded by a space, . or ) and followed by a , . ? ! ) or space. The information is still there, just only those 'in the know' can find it. Who knows, maybe she'd take it as a sign of good faith. If she doesn't, you can have fun changing it every so often.

I think that perhaps the reason that there isn't such a document is that we don't all necessarily think the same thing.

The general attitude here concerning the "destroys cultural diversity issue" might be that a "consensus" viewpoint tends to be the lowest common denominator and that the ban on "original research" including synthesis of sources tends to factor out any notion of reasoning and trying to see different perspectives. Since the subset of people creating this "consensus" viewpoint hardly represents the thinking of all mankind (ie WP editors are typically male, white, in the technology industry, college educated, English speakers in North America and Europe...So, where's the viewpoint of female Asian, Russian-speaking farmworkers who never made it past grade school?), the idea of using this kind of reasoning creates information which is only valid in this particular subset of people and even then whether or not it is actually "true" is another matter completely.

The idea that the next step is to take this snapshot of how Upper-middle class, white, techno geeks think and send it to "children in Africa" to somehow better their lives and share "all knowledge with them" is, to be quite frank, extremely offensive to me. This supposes that there isn't any "World knowledge " in Africa to begin with and that the life experience there is somehow less valid that the life experience of those who sit on their butts all day in front of computer screens typing stuff that "everybody" already knows anyway....

However, I think that there are many nuances to this position here.

One of the reasons why many people do not perceive "vandalism" on WP as being harmful is because the quality level of the articles is so low to begin with...What's the problem with adding one more piece of nonsense when you see all sorts of nonsense posing as "information" in the text of the article itself?

And concerning "Slim Virgin", that's already a pseudo. It's already a way of speaking of her without using her real name. And just because other people have attached personal information to that name, that doesn't mean that those of us who haven't have to consider this anonymous pseudo as somehow part of her "personal information"....You need to stop drinking the koolaid, my friend...