An amusing story from Wikipediocracy, the Wikipedia criticism site. A user at Wikipedia has now banned any link to Wikipediocracy from Wikipedia, by adding the site to the “spam” blacklist. Of course Wikipediocracy is not spam; this is censorship of an external site.
Since Google privileges Wikipedia so much, this reduces traffic to Wikipediocracy and therefore reduces the number of people who are aware of the criticism site. Which is, of course, terribly convenient to evildoers at Wikipedia, of whom there are rather a lot these days.
And why, we may ask, was it felt acceptable for Wikipedia to impose a ban on another legitimate internet site?
WO has regrettably decided to out a Wikipedia user on its pages (the link is available from its main page, and several sub-pages that link to what’s on the front page) and several en-Wikipedia users have gone on a crusade to mention this site as much as possible to push drama and in some cases to further the outing.
That’s right. Someone in Wikipediocracy dared to mention the real name of one of the editors hiding behind a pseudonym in Wikipedia. This is strictly forbidden in Wikipedia — where abuse is so endemic that it is unsafe to use your own name — and, apparently, Wikipedia feels that it has the right to forbid any other internet site to do it either. Or else.
Dear me. And I thought Wikipedia was all about sharing knowledge?
The serious point is that the people in power in Wikipedia today are unfit to hold such a role, as such impudence demonstrates. Wikipedia is too important to the internet, and has too much power over Google ranking, to be left to the administration of fools, trolls and children. It’s got to stop, and needs regulation now.
Yes, crowdsourcing content is a marvellous idea, and I have used it myself for translation projects. But there is no point whatsoever in trying to “crowd-source” control of such projects. Doing so merely allows the most determined trolls to self-select themselves as kings and lords of the project. Rarely will such people be fit to hold such a role. What follows will be mainly a “Lord of the Flies” experience.
It is now time for the administrators of Wikipedia to be retired. Instead a group of paid administrators should be introduced, with transparent, fair and adult administration.
Until this happens, sleazy events like anonymous users banning other internet sites for daring to leak information will continue to occur.
Thanks for raising this, Roger, and I will share the link on my FB page. You’d think that Wikipedia would know that this sort of news travels very quickly on the Internet, and that it’s just not practical to get the lid back on the Genie’s bottle. Wikipedia may well lose out as a result of this – oh what a shame!
Well, I suppose as always it’s about money, especially once Google ratings get involved…..
The story continues at the Wikipediocracy link, and it seems that they thought better of it! It was a classic mistake for the Powers That Be at Wikipedia to make; a site that flourishes purely through the free access and open-source movement.