95
edits
Changes
Hi
Hey Greg - Just wondering if gmail has been down for you today. --[[User:OmniMediaGroup|OmniMediaGroup]] 11:14, 30 September 2008 (PDT)
Hey Greg - Just wondering if gmail has been down for you today. --[[User:OmniMediaGroup|OmniMediaGroup]] 11:14, 30 September 2008 (PDT)
:No observable problems on my end. -- [[User:MyWikiBiz|MyWikiBiz]] 12:23, 30 September 2008 (PDT)
:No observable problems on my end. -- [[User:MyWikiBiz|MyWikiBiz]] 12:23, 30 September 2008 (PDT)
== Hi ==
You are Thekohser +/- any affiliates of his, right? Anyway, good job. I was only wanting to comment on your idea for a new improved Wikipedia Review. I don't know if you will pay attention to what I said at all. I do think that WR wasn't ideal, but I do not think that multiplaying (sock puppeting, whatever you want to call it) was an issue. Rather, I think that they allowed too many people in, people whose sole aim was to destroy the site - Wikipedia administrators and other people that think that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with Wikipedia. IMO such people should never have been allowed in. The Poetlister incident proved that we should listen to ED more as they are at times a good resource, and that we were for the most part right the whole way along, that Poetlister was a good, helpful user who was roleplaying online, like most everyone does. We don't need a solution by people using real names, as that can create more problems than it solves. I think that that would be dangerous. Rather, you need to keep with WR's ideas to allow people the choice. Choice is important. There is no need, however, to allow people in who are only aiming to destroy the site. Let them do that on Wikipedia sites or the like. Most importantly, however, get rid of the power struggle element. I don't care if Igor Alexander was satan himself - he founded the site and he should be able to keep going to his own site. Founding members shouldn't be able to be banned, period. It is just wrong on so many levels to do that, to steal a site, and those bans against good people are a big part of what went wrong with the site.
With that being said, WR was and still is a resounding success. It has created a big warning label, it has achieved overall in spite of the problems. It has made a difference to how people view Wikipedia, which was the aim.
I am concerned that a new site may either move too far away from WR's original aims and hence make a bad site, or that they may fail to deal with WR's problems.
As for MyWikiBiz, you know, per my user page, that I originally objected to it, and even encouraged for them to be banned from Wikipedia, before Jimbo banned them. My reason, of course, was because I was concerned about truth changing. I think that truth changing is a big deal and is the biggest problem with Wikipedia. Paying someone to edit articles, in my opinion, represented truth changing.
With that being said, the whole reason that Wikipedia is able to encourage truth changing is with regards to 2 rules: WP:NPOV and WP:OWN: both theoretically impossible to enforce and in practice cause a lot of problems. They are also wrong! Bias is a good thing, and furthermore articles should be controlled by experts on the topic. As I now understand it, this is what MyWikiBiz is all about: allowing people to write articles about themselves, or their companies. This is a good thing. If Wikipedia did this, then truth changing wouldn't be an issue. If people write things about themselves, of course they are biased and they may even be false in some ways, but at least then you can account for the biases, and get to the truth of the issue. That is the issue with Wikipedia - we don't know who has inserted the lies.
You can tell with the Port Arthur massacre article on Wikipedia that what is written is blatantly false, but you don't know who is responsible. It took me ages to work it out, and ultimately it was controlled by Robert Merkel since 2002, with help from various others including Tannin, and then ultimately taken over by Thebainer, who added disinformation. But you wouldn't know that from looking at the history. It takes hours to piece it all together as to how it happened. Even once put together, the article that explains the truth changing in that one individual article is enormous. Yet that is one of the most obvious and devastating examples of truth changing that is out there, and on an issue that I am personally an expert on. What hope do others have in finding out about truth changing on other topics?
Look, WR needs redoing. If a new site was created that then became more popular, then that would be a good thing. I hope that you invite me along, but that is your choice. I won't insist on it. I tried to make a new one, but of course I have no way to talk to people to get it going, so I can't. I just hope that it adds to the good things of WR, not detracts from them. [[User:Blissyu2|Blissyu2]] 23:54, 11 October 2008 (PDT)