Changes

The lesson here, of course, is not so much that what Heidi Wyss had done was so terribly wrong, but rather that Wikipedia is corrupt from the very top down.  Thus, we should not be surprised as observers when these conflicts of interest are exposed; indeed, we should be surprised that such conflicts are not revealed more often... because what gets publicized is only the tip of the iceberg.

The lesson here, of course, is not so much that what Heidi Wyss had done was so terribly wrong, but rather that Wikipedia is corrupt from the very top down.  Thus, we should not be surprised as observers when these conflicts of interest are exposed; indeed, we should be surprised that such conflicts are not revealed more often... because what gets publicized is only the tip of the iceberg.

==Jimmy won't look at Arch Coal==

==Tolerance of plagiarism==

We'll get some text around this later, but here's the [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=255481782&oldid=255480598 key diff].

The original version of any wiki-formatted article about the Arch Coal company was authored in September 2006 by [[Directory:Gregory J. Kohs|Gregory Kohs]] and released under the terms of the GFDL on this website, [[Directory:MyWikiBiz|MyWikiBiz.com]].  It was then scraped by an independent editor into Wikipedia.  In October 2006, erroneously thinking that the article was paid for by Arch Coal, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales acted to delete the article from Wikipedia, but the Wikipedia community determined that Wales' action had been unjustified.  The article was revised, largely by "User:JzG" (Guy Chapman).  However, in January 2008, Kohs demonstrated to Chapman that the article as modified by User:JzG actually plagiarized many aspects of the original.  Faced with that evidence, Chapman elected to cover up his misdeed by [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Arch_Coal deleting the original edits] on the Wikipedia site, thus making the provenance of the article appear to have come from Chapman, and not from MyWikiBiz.  When Jimmy Wales was notified about this violation of professional ethics and proper GFDL attribution of the edit history, Wales '''very reluctantly''' restored the original edit history, with the childish edit summary, "''might as well restore all of it I suppose''".

 

When later asked to comment on this affair, Jimmy Wales instead relied on one of his loyal followers to [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&diff=255481782&oldid=255480598 erase the uncomfortable question] and to [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User%3AEast_Bradford block the editor] who asked it.

 

When in December 2008, Kohs [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arch_Coal&diff=255480884&oldid=255154863 sought to improve] the article about Arch Coal on Wikipedia, his improvements were [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arch_Coal&diff=next&oldid=255480884 reverted back] by a mindless administrator from Belgium.  This underscores the true system of editorial control on Wikipedia -- it matters not the '''content''' of one's edits, but rather '''who''' authors the content.  (Which, of course, directly contradicts Wikipedia's supposed credo that "anyone can edit".)

==External links==

==External links==