Charles Matthews

They are therefore guilty of taking the material produced by people free of charge (often stolen from other people's websites). Jimmy Wales cannot put advertising on his own website because people would understandably complain that he is making money from his volunteers. However, there is nothing to stop Answers, paying Wales money for taking Wikipedia material. Would be nice of them. Under the GFDL license (Wikipedia's form of 'public domain') the material from Wikipedia can freely be used by others, as long as the source is properly acknowledged. Nothing 'stolen' should remain on Wikipedia. I have posted before about copyright violation.

To clarify: this policy change at the English Wikipedia ('no follow' used to apply only to Wikipedia's Talk pages) is not intended to affect the usage of outgoing links. Such links should remain. The 'no follow' is only a traffic sign put up that search engine spider programs will follow. Human users will notice nothing. The point is to deter spammers who are only after better page ranking for their own sites. Wikipedia being an almost entirely volunteer operation, 'editors can deal with spammers' is true only up to a point. By the way, the Answers.com mirror site (one of many WP mirrors) is run by a NASDAQ-quoted company: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answers.com

Try concision. Works wonders. It certainly beats bloat. Strangely enough, anyone is allowed an opinion on anything at Wikipedia. We don't, for example, require them to plough through the neokantian works of Rickert, Windelband or others of that school of late-nineteeth century philosophy, that stated that historical facts were different in kind from scientific fact, before editing the site. Wikipedia has procedures that allow it to operate with an open door. The fact that you clearly do not accept the result of one instance of the application of those procedures does not invalidate them.

What I described was not a "page move." It was a significant title change to propagate a CIA fiction. Propaganda by redefinition of terms is also a CIA gimmick. 'Title changes' are only carried out by 'page moves' on Wikipedia. You can't edit titles. I'm using the correct terminology, and you are not. Can you support your contention? What was said was that the length put it in the top 100 articles. Therefore leaving 99.99% of articles shorter. Not a single actual example was given, only claims that the sources "didn't adequately support the claims." So post an actual example instead of simply repeating a false claim, and I'll be happy to discuss and document facts, not answer recitations of generalized and unsupported allegations. That's what injustice thrives on.You don't want to champion such egregious injustices, surely. I had a look. One book was cited 24 times, without a single page reference. That's creating a labyrinthine task for anyone. That was reference 94 cited. Another false and unsupported allegation. Repitition of false generalized charges don't make them any more true today than they did in Salem in the seventeenth century. Same tactics, different day. Come now. I was merely summarising the relevant page and what was said there. I thought we had a truce on religious allusions, also. Looking at the article I see plenty of 'asides' that would likely count as OR.

(1) There were no "Watergate burglaries" (plural). That's the entire point: There was no "first break-in." Apparently you don't yet comprehend even the most fundamental material fact at issue. <snip> (2) Wikipedia has allowed the very title of the original Troth article to be changed so even the title now is a complete fiction. It's willful deceit. That's all. And that's always indefensible. That's always difficult to answer. The appropriate response from any responsible organization devoted to factual information would be alarm at learning that they were peddling fiction as fact and effective action to get it corrected—not blasé, supercilious one-liners. (3) I expect in response more blasé, supercilious one-liners. (4) Speaking of which: Regarding the Remote Viewing Timeline, you wrote: One man's "due process" apparently is another man's lynch mob. I've seen that page of drooling hysteria, thanks. There isn't a single valid comment anywhere on it, and the timeline was deleted anyway. You could usefully put the vitriol away, also. (1) I was requesting the exact title of the article about which you had the beef, was all. (2) Page moves happen all the time. They can be requested or contested at Wikipedia:Requested moves, if they are contentious. In other words, a forum is provided to discuss the point. (3) I can do defence-in-depth, too. I have found that less useful, at times. (4) Actually there is plenty to be gleaned from the deletion discussion there. There was essentially no support for keeping the article as was. The issue of length was raised: at 145 K the article was four times as long as the level (32 K) where a warning comment kicks in on length. The issue of sources was aired: it was felt that the cited sources didn't adequately support the claims, and that the article was tarnished with 'original research' (WP term for synthesis going beyond the sourced material). One person was suggesting a rewrite, from scratch though. In other words it didn't look like an encyclopedia article, to almost all the folks discussing it there; bear in mind that the AfD procedure is not delegated to anyone, it is open to the 'community' (as we say). Some suggestion that there was an encyclopedia article in there, struggling to get out. A skilful editor used to WP expectations on style and tone might have saved the day for that article. General advice: learn the ropes at Wikipedia before getting to edits of contentious material. I did that for quite a time; and I'd had a year of solid editing at another wiki, before arriving at WP.

You don't exactly make it easy to reply: you probably mean the Wikipedia article [[Watergate burglaries]]. You probably mean User:Beek100, but you don't give the exact name. User:Huntley Troth hasn't edited enWP since May 2006, it seems. There is a deletion debate with due process at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...iewing_Timeline. With 1,500,000 articles on enWP, it is frankly more than a full time job to reply to everyone's beefs about everything.

You might be interested in a post today to the wikien mailing list: slightly edited it reads "I've been made to feel small a lot in my life by "experts", simply because I didn't have one or two pieces of paper. It's all good now and I love my career and life, but Wikipedia is important to me because it's pretty much the opposite of my past." "People respect my skills and insight here. It's greatly improved my confidence level on all fronts. In fact (why yes, it's quite ironic), I'm planning on going back to school and getting my long-lost bachelor's and masters in Human Services as a direct result of my time here (among other things - my job plays a big part in it too)." "Some of the editors that I've come to respect the most on Wikipedia are not only non-experts, they're teenagers. My teenage collaborators have been extremely active, and have gotten references to things no one else could find. They're also knowledgeable, helpful, and kind. When I say teenagers, I'm talking 14-15, not 18-19. They've impressed me in their editing and insight more than any "expert"." That's from an American (black) woman; the entire mail thread will appear archived on the Web shortly.

(1) All versions are anyway kept in the Page History (assuming the article was not deleted). (2) I have commented before on the Disclaimer. (3) Any chance of keeping religion out of this?

That is to misapprehend how it actually works. (It is all well and good to second-guess WP now there is such a thing, and probably inevitable tha people will assume that some other model would work just as well. Fact is that the 'proof of concept' was five years of the efforts of thousands of people in coming.) No, WP operates with the flattest possible hierarchy compatible with getting the job done. It turned out that our expert on the English aristocracy was 16 years old and living in New Jersey. We have plenty of teenagers doing high-quality work. The initial postings do not equate with the final state of articles. There are concepts, such as 'soft security' and 'post-moderation', into which I could go, that explain why the unobvious solutions can work better than rigid doorkeeping.

At the grand strategy level, Wikipedia is putting its faith in systematic referencing of all its content, to improve quality and thereby credibility. I can't see it moving to 'real names only' as a policy for editors. I use my real name, but I respect the reasons others have for not doing that.

Short summary of the position: the article was started March 2006 by an IT teacher at the IST (as far as we know). This brings the article within the guideline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest on 'conflict of interest' of Wikipedia editors. This covers most of the ground (and actually cuts both ways). To be fair, this guideline was only put together six months later. It does make the point clearly that edits by employees or others acting for an institution are deprecated, when the article is immediately about their employer or client. It also indicates that creating an article about an institution or company is double-edged: critical material may be posted. Further, the creation of an article doesn't confer any sort of control or ownership. What is more, a declaration of interest doesn't mean that one is entitled then to be an 'advocate' on one side. What is well within the guideline is the removal of inadequately sourced defamatory material. The section on the same guideline entitled 'Campaigning' would make it difficult for someone running a campaign on one side of an issue to contribute successfully. Ideally, in a controversy, partisan editing is confined to the Talk page, and third parties make a version incorporating factual corrections and expansions. The position right now at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International...ool_of_Toulouse is that there is a short 'Controversy' section with one external link to an open letter in the Jones-Nerzic case. The path to this situation can be followed in the Page History: not the ideal way to get there, but the recent editing has largely been co-operative.

None and none, is the straight answer. We have plenty of qualified people (we have academics at the equivalent of Nobel Prize level); but there is no _institutionalised_ structure giving them an oversight role.

The rationale is the goose and the golden eggs. Internal debate has always raged on just this issue: but the point that has always won out is this: the mission statement is 'write the encyclopedia', with everything else subordinated. People have numerous reasons for guarding their privacy: some are Internet-related, i.e. general things such as child protection apply. One you might not have thought of is this: junior untenured academics wanting shelter if they disagree with senior academics, who one day will have decision-making power over their careers. The new Citizendium site is set up much more on a traditional academic model. The jury is still out on whether they'll be able to make it work. (They have more cash than Wikipedias has ever seen.)

Well, you'd be right that there is no interest in changing the pseudonymous character of editing at Wikipedia. The standard explanation is this: the editing process is entirely transparent, in that all changes are logged. Editors at the site have little difficulty in assigning 'reputations' based on track record. This is not the academic way, but then it is all more interactive: when puzzled, you can go and ask anyone why they wrote something, do they have a source for those facts, and so on. As far as I'm concerned, there is no 'hidden hand'. There are plenty of editors who have some agenda, but the whole thing is too big (and spread over too many languages, also) for much major manipulation, though people are constantly trying for petty advantages. As for Google, their PageRank algorithm is a secret in the legendary Coca-Cola formula class. The only thing I heard about this was a while back, when it was being said that Google wanted Wikipedia to be ahead of its mirror sites (i.e. the same material posted elsewhere). I have no idea what foundation there was for that rumour. The more people linked directly to Wikipedia, the higher it would climb anyway.

I should make a technical comment, to help clarify the position. "External links" (Wikipedia jargon) occur embedded in pages in quite a number of ways, but there are really two types. Type I is as a Source. Examples are - inline link: topic - endnote link: the upmarket version of inline, topic<ref>+comment</ref>, producing an endnote whereever the <references/> tag is placed - in a section headed Sources or References (myself I keep References for paper sources, but not everyone agrees) Type II is as Further Reading; good practice is to place these links at the end in a section headed External links. Now, if a link is used as a supporting source (Type I), it is treated very seriously if someone just removes it, leaving the topic unreferenced. Editors can get into big trouble for that (other things being equal: of course if the whole topic is going, it's another matter, but well-sourced material has plenty of protection in policy). Type II links are another kettle of fish. It is one of those areas where you can't expect everyone to agree on exactly what should be included.

There is no minimum qualification. Quite a large number of contributors are in high school.

That was answering something quite else, wasn't it? This is not all one thread. The following are not John Simkin's words, but ones he cited on 28 December: "The idea that the CIA was using it for something bigger, to then create an information database, a Wikipedia, makes a bit more sense. That CIA made Google so as to prepare the internet to be taken over by Wikipedia. We know that the CIA uses Wikipedia, that much is obvious (they use Google too). We know that they are in there trying to manipulate articles. But how effective are they? Is Wikipedia complying with this? Or are they just unable to stop it? What would be stopping the US government from calling Jimbo and demanding for him to cooperate with the CIA, or else he'd be framed as a terrorist? They could easily do it, and he'd have no choice in the matter. " My answers. This is pretty much absurd. Even if Jimmy Wales had to 'co-operate' with the CIA, he can only exhort people to do things. I was not 'waffling' when I said 'entryism' is easy on WP. Anyone can come and edit: so the CIA can come and edit. I was not waffling in saying that the edit logs are transparent, and editors who are trying subtle manipulation can be exposed.

The point could have been made better: the formulation was somewhat telegraphic. That much is I think common ground, wiith my Arbitrator colleagues. We normally rule on editor behaviour, and do not relish getting involved in content matters. I'm going to explain below why the issue was actually forced in this case. (ArbCom cases are discussed once; further talk about them is only explanatory. Appeal to Jimmy Wales is the only way that the ArbCom gets over-ruled. Requests to look again are sometimes entertained.) That being said, I have reviewed some of the edits on Wikipedia that led up to the bringing of the case. I would make the following points: - I have already mentioned the use of 'progandistic' here in relation to our guideline Wikipedia:Conflict of interest, 1.5 Campaigning, which I think is directly applicable. - It is not true that this finding of fact is the sole reason the ArbCom made the decision it did. The finding is illustrative of the behaviour that led User:RPJ to be banned, but is not the whole story by any means. - User:RPJ made much of an idiosyncratic reading of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view (NPOV), one of Wikipedia's charter policies. I have been looking at discussion of this between User:RPJ and User:Gamaliel. The point under debate is the clause (explicit on the NPOV page) about 'undue weight'; while all significant points of view should be mentioned, and 'consensus' should not be invoked to exclude a point of view that is arguably significant, it is not envisaged that all points of view are equally addressed. Put it this way: there is no doctrine of 'equal time' or 'balance' attached to NPOV. It is quite acceptable to claim that a page exhibits NPOV when it deals at quite unequal length with different perspectives. What is more, editors are supposed to be collegiate rather than adversarial in dealing with such questions. It is in this context that this (one out of several) points in the case needs to be seen. When editors involved in the page or pages dealing with JFK assassination topics object to excess weight given to a point of view, they are not necessarily being obtuse or defensive about the material. We wouldn't use a crude term like 'hard sell' in proper Wikipedia on-site discussions, because it is not respectful of others, but going into what that might mean gives some clues: - editors don't like constructed narratives (what we term 'original research' in Wikipedia jargon) - editors don't like one-sided pressure on article content - editors don't like the kind of 'getting the word out' that assumes that articles are a vehicle for some attitude - editors don't like selective use of sources to make a case - editors don't like disproportionate emphasis. Now, 'editors' here means typical good and experienced Wikipedians. I would never rule out the existence of partisans, in a group of editors, but actually assuming that there are no fair-minded people around is a basic mistake. (I have seen this lead other editors into deep trouble, in other cases.) It is for that reason that we also have 'assume good faith' as a policy; which sounds aspirational only, but is actually very sound advice. To say that X, Y and Z are resisting changes to an article because of something (in this case, attachment to the Warren Commission/official history) gets that all wrong. Forcing the issue of Spartacus as a source has not succeeded in 'winning' the desired shift in content. A fundamental point is that engagement and compromise works much better.

Given the scale of the operation, 'proving a negative' would be even harder than usual. The production of Wikipedia is equivalent to around 1000 full-time editors, by now. The site has been growing at around 1% per week, for an extended period. Now, as far as I'm concerned, there is no 'central' mechanism at all in this. It is not hard to get an account, to build up a reputation as a solid editor, just by putting in some hours. Therefore there _could_ be all sorts of entryism going on. But since everyone's edits are logged, it is hard to put many fast ones. On the other hand I'm in a position to know something about the disputes on the site. Anything and everything does get contested; but rarely do we see anything subtle or suggestive of a well-concealed agenda.

Taking up John's points: (1) Jimmy Wales himself often says the making of Wikipedia is like the making of sausages: you really don't want to know the details. That's a slight misquote of something always attributed to Bismarck, on sausages and laws (Wurst und Gesetze). Jimmy was saying that again on Tuesday evening, in London (he'd been talking to the LSE, and had an LSE researcher in tow, who is looking at the management of Wikipedia). I really don't think that Wikipedia articles (though some of them are good) can replace academic monographs. If someone does five years of a doctorate, they will come up with something that differs in kind. But those writings are read by very few, and are prohibitive to buy, unless you know exactly why you are looking at them. A good Wikipedia article provides very quick, accessible reading on a topic. (2) I think Orwell is quite shrewd, at least in his own terms. Most active Wikipedia writers treat it as a hobby, in fact. (You can tell from the statistics that many people access Wikipedia at work, and mostly, one guesses, as an alternative to actual work.) My own motivations are not quite that. (3) There is a fair amount on the record about Jimmy Wales; but (as usual) the media often don't have it quite right in parts. Basically he dropped out of graduate school to become a day trader, and did very well. Wikipedia was a surprise development out of Bomis, his dotcom. It was not the first plan for an online encyclopedia, but it succeeded where others had failed. Basically, I think the acceptance of the provisional naure of the articles was a breakthrough. (4) Not quite how I see it at present. Of course Wikipedia articles are not the last word on anything. Thy are developing now a kind of dual nature, with a basic text kept deliberately simple, and many notes hanging off it. (5) Wikipedia is now a big voluntary organisation (it has a paid skeleton staff). In fact Jimmy Wales has founded Wikia, which is a regular for-profit company hosting wikis, and so is back in business. On the business of links to sites with ads: the latest I hear is that there is a big rise in people 'spamming' Wikipedia with unsuitable links. All removals of links ought to be on a case-by-case basis; but there is quite a blacklist of sites that take advantage. In reply to the point about who is tasked with this: there is the group of admins (1000+ strong) who take on such things, under agreed guidelines (there is a WikiProject Spam). I would prefer to be writing articles, myself, but there is a division of labour on such things, and admins find their niches.

In reply to John's points: (1) I can't guarantee that: there is really no centralised control. However I can do the same another time, and take it up on the site with anyone who disagrees. (2) We do have to clean 'spam' off the site. People with something to sell, links to sites with heavy paid ads or intrusive pop-ups. There is a good reason to have a policy against abuse. Like much of our policy-making, there is a grain of salt or two to take with it: sometimes (as here) common sense ought to win out. (3) I really doubt this was the reasoning. My experience is that editors apply policies pedantically. (4) Well, I'm creating new articles at a rate of three or four a day, and they tend to have several external links. I'll not try to speak for anyone else, but there would be no basis for taking out links indiscriminately. Charles

I have made the issue with the Tony Hogg book public in Wikipedia's wikien email forum. Any use of a book like that ought to stay within academic-style 'fair use'; and there is every reason to mention the source. As for the West Ham photo links, two other editors agree with me that the links should stay, and between us we put them back. Technically John was in violation of something mentioned on Wikipedia:External links, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:EL where it is written that "You should avoid linking to a website that you own, maintain or represent, even if the guidelines otherwise imply that it should be linked. If the link is to a relevant and informative site that should otherwise be included, please consider mentioning it on the talk page and let neutral and independent Wikipedia editors decide whether to add it. This is in line with the conflict of interests guidelines." But in this case the enforcement of this seems well over the top. As for copyright beefs in general: reporting typical flagrant copy-and-paste violations has now been streamlined right down. Should take under a minute. Replace the whole page by {{copyvio|URL}}, where URL stands for the URL of the copied page. After saving, click where it says on the template, and follow the instructions on the page you reach. The matter will be looked into on a time scale of a few days. The relevant policy page is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:COPYVIO . Charles

As far as that goes, we actually explicitly disclaim reliability: these words are in our general disclaimer: "Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here. The content of any given article may recently have been changed, vandalized or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the relevant fields" and "Wikipedia is not uniformly peer reviewed". Anyone who works on Wikipedia is aware of its limitations and strengths. Traditionally science, technology and mathematics have been well ahead of the humanities, a situation that is only slowly changing. As far as John Simkin's points on historiography are concerned: WP starts really with the proposition that it is to compile reference material. This will always fail to be 'academic history', anyway, just as pure chronology does. Ideally, for any contentious point, the 'controversy' should be described even-handedly. I don't agree that, as John puts it, "The idea of “neutral history” appeals to those who wish to protect the status quo." We have a lot of good evidence from China, for example, that the whole business of NPOV (editing from a neutral point of view) is quite unappealing to the government, and is also regarded as innovative by editors of the Chinese Wikipedia. (Small case in point: should the war starting in China in 1937 be called 'the Second Sino-Japanese War', or 'War of Resistance Against Japan' as is traditional in China?) In discussing the issue of neutrality, we have distinguished between 'systematic bias' (protecting the status quo would be an example of that, but there are many other relevant variations, for example religious slants) and 'systemic bias', which is caused for example by the demographics of the editing group. Whether or not it is theoreticaly possible to drive out systematic bias completely, it is entirely clear that gross examples can and should be removed; and collective editing can work well to do that. We have less success on the 'systemic' side. John says "It is therefore not possible to check their expertise on the subject they are involved in editing. The same goes for those adding new content. Going by the “talk” pages, some of these people are complete idiots who know nothing about the subject they are talking about." The 'complete idiots' is of course no news to me. Some of them are very young. If we didn't want it to be interactive in this way, we'd make a quite different site (constant debate on this leaves on a minority view for less openness). John also says: "Of course, not everyone is protected. From my experience, the only people being “looked after” are those people from the United States who are part of the power elite. It is very important to the American political system that these people are presented as being “honest” and “patriotic”. Wikipedia, working closely with Google, is at the forefront in promoting a certain view of the past." In any given case, and particularly in the current polarised state of US politics, it would be very rash to deny any such possibilities. My areas of interest are quite different. Living people are more strongly protected under policies against defamation on the site. There was interference of Congress politicians' offices with biography articles a while back, a story broken by Wikinews. That all being said, I don't recognise the description. Wikipedia doesn't (as far I know, and I'm not on the Board) have any relationship at all with Google, despite some well-publicised discussions a while back. We are on somewhat better terms with Yahoo, who apparently donated some clapped-out servers. Charles

Well, I don't see Wikipedia as in any direct sense a competitor of Spartacus. For example, I recently (before all this) created the English Wikipedia's article on Henry Nevinson. I included a link to the Spartacus page on Nevinson, as a matter of course. Sites providing free factual material are not necessarily competitors in a market sense. To address the matter of 'propagandistic' in context, I will cite the enWP guideline on 'conflict of interest' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:COI); namely its section 1.5 on 'Campaigning', which contains "Activities regarded by insiders as simply "getting the word out" may appear promotional or propagandistic to the outside world." We made our 'finding of fact' on a related basis, I believe (I cannot and will not speak for any other Arbitrator); namely that, in effect, the 'aggressive biased' editing of User:RPJ was in the nature of such campaigning. Largely Arbitration is a question of looking at editor behaviour rather than content; as I said before, the ArbCom tends to avoid ruling on content as such. However the logic of what we were saying here required a finding on the material being added. That is because the editing pattern causing the case to be brought up was forcing the issue. The finding of fact, together with the separate clarification, now adds up to a comment from the ArbCom about uneven quality of Spartacus pages. The ArbCom does not have power to make policy in this or any other area. Charles

The words ''Ford had altered the first draft of the report'' appear as I read it live. His changes of name are discussed in the 'Early Life' section. Any factual correction is welcome. The number of editors recently concerned in that one page on Gerald Ford probably runs into three figures. If removals are objectionable, the system is transparent as far as who did that. I think that circumvents the need to use 'they' as an abstraction. Charles