Another sign that WO is declining

[ericbarbour]

So far as I can tell, the nabobs (knobs?) and mandarins of WO have not noticed this.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/4/15919 ... aid-update

When Billy-boy started Wikipediocracy, he had to hack up bulletin-board code to suit their needs. One restriction he placed on users was that embedding photos had to be done via Photobucket, which was pretty good at censoring "nudity and sexual content". It was free too, for up to 2 GB of content.

With this change, the vast majority of images posted on the forum since 2012 by users will now be error messages. Do you see Billy adding other image websites instead? Nope. They might be muttering about it in the private "Campaign room"--given that Imgur was enabled as a photo host. Imgur was NOTPERMITTED in the past, because "there's rude content on it"....

[Strelnikov]

They will be forced to switch or suffer linkrotting, and we all know it will linkrot to shit in the style of the old Critiques of Libertarianism website.

They should just lock their board now; there is a lot of useful info on it, and that stuff turned into pdf document files.

[ericbarbour]

They should just lock their board now; there is a lot of useful info on it, and that stuff turned into pdf document files.

Won't happen. It will crash and burn first. In the past I've repeatedly begged WP critics to take captures of significant websites and fora. They never do--then it falls apart and all the information is lost. I tried to capture some of the old WR forum and blog (the latter thanks to Bill Burns using a script to save old blog entries back in 2012, it was too late anyway) but a lot of things are now disappeared and inaccessible anywhere else.

I just checked the WO forum, it's gotten a little more traffic in recent months but is still close to being abandoned. Poetlister is now their most active contributor, and that's really not a good idea. And we should probably take bets on how long Graaf Statler's account there will last.

[Kumioko]

Well they haven't gotten too desperate. My account there is still locked.

[Flip Flopped]

Well they haven't gotten too desperate. My account there is still locked.

That is just stupid. Then again with the mood of the forum the way it is I can just imagine someone leaving in a huff if you're un-muted. They need people. I think Rogol and Vigilant may have both left. Smiley was admitted to the Campaign Room (apparently briefly), but now he and Tippi (apparently) no longer have access.

[Kumioko]

For those who haven't been watching our sister criticism site, Wikipediocracy seems to be going through a lot of trouble with their community.

First, Very few people are posting or commenting anymore and it's largely the same 3-5 commenting. For a site that once boasted a pretty large community and was frequently reviewed by the media, it's really fallen a long way.

Additionally it seems there is a movement in the community to remove Greg Kohs as the keeper of the keys although some of the trustees have jumped to Greg's defense. Personally I think Greg is the core reason most people don't comment anymore with his outbursts, insults and tendency to out people. So maybe if someone else takes over and he steps aside, maybe some of those folks might come back.

There was also a vocal concern that no Wikipedia admin should be the one to own the domain which is hypocritical since there are admins as trustees and I think moderators as well on the site already.

Plus, in this day and age the owner can be secret, no one need even know who the actual owner is.

[Mutineer]

WO as a genuine WP criticism website has already been dead for a couple or three years.

It had Wikipedia-like tendencies among the trustees and moderators and administrators. At times, one could read some of their comments and they're basically quoting Wikipedia policy and applying it to their own forum. As I've pointed out before, WO was staffing its administrative slots *with* *WP* *administrative types*. SBJ, Hex, Kelly Martin, I'm sure there are a couple more. I read somewhere, can't recall exactly where, assert that the entity "Jim," who I've argued is likely the WMF's "James Alexander," was in tight with and communicating with the WO staff behind the scenes.

And then WO (Zoloft acted as spearhead on this stuff) was systematically retiring, muting, and banning the more severely critical and genuine members, in many cases it blocked the writers who'd bother to put to put together front-page articles for WO. It misappropriated their work, and even reran their articles post-ban (and by the way of course, those articles still generate some traffic for the site without even being rerun). It's not too much to say that WO thieved their work. If site management here is concerned about the previous sentence, I say truth is is an absolute defense to a claim of defamation, as well those are my words, not this site's.

The truth should be gotten out to writers: do not furnish your work to Wikipediocracy.com because there is a real risk the management there will confiscate it, publish it (often after mutilating and perverting it on the whim of one staff insider or another), and then expel you and pretend you never existed.

I guess it was a couple years ago now when the WP:AN/ANI set were joining WO because they sensed a friendly environment to the them, not critical in the slightest. Kww and Dennis Brown, a couple of the arbs, others. It was "oh, this place is now in our pocket as well, coolios!"

Zoloft, that fake and freaky mouse rustling about behind the scenes, was off chilling with the Wikipedia crowd at a gathering in San Diego. He actually said "by working together, WO can help improve WP, and WP can help improve WO." Now I'll accept that Wikipedia could possibly improve by hearing some outside criticism, but what does a critic site gain from Wikipedia? Zoloft has issues. His "we can all work together" is not criticism, he just bows to the Wikipedia Way.

I hope that this forum WS2 keeps up its acid-throwing brand of criticism, both with regard to Wikipedia and to FAKE criticism websites like Wikipediocracy. In my view our role is not to "help Wikipedia improve" (kudos, Zoloft) but to burn it with fire. The place still needs to get its footing I think. WS1 was steaming along, had very decent participation, before getting derailed and vanished by Proboards with no explanation. I gaze with contempt at little punks that secretly complained to Proboards help desk about who-knows-what we supposedly did wrong. Those punks should come here and speak up if they want credit for taking WS1 down. They won't be blocked for that.

To finish on the subject, yes WO is very close to flat-lining on the heart-rate monitor right now. I guess it'd be good to poach some of their members, but so many of them are tainted by that site, and of course we benefit not at all by encouraging the giggly grammar and spelling and punctuation nitpickers (like Kohser, like Zoloft) to join, and certainly not by encouraging the straight-outta-ANI set there.

[Kumioko]

Yeah that all sounds about right.

Personally if I were unblocked I would probably comment there occasionally as I do here and that would be another poster but I never really cared much about my ban. Rarely do they ever comment about anything I am interested in anyway and I can still read the comments which is all I really need and has removed the need for me to create an alternate account. Most people don't like Greg or a couple of others including some of the trustees. Zoloft and Mason used to have a lot of respect from people but I have sensed that slipping.

Personally it appears to me that they don't really trust him, but at the same time no one wants to be the front man for the site and put their name on there as the owner so the easy win there is to back him up, say he never did anything wrong and to let him continue to pay for the site and be the named owner. Makes sense really, I wouldn't want my name on it either.

[Strelnikov]

WO as a genuine WP criticism website has already been dead for a couple or three years.

It had Wikipedia-like tendencies among the trustees and moderators and administrators. At times, one could read some of their comments and they're basically quoting Wikipedia policy and applying it to their own forum. As I've pointed out before, WO was staffing its administrative slots *with* *WP* *administrative types*. SBJ, Hex, Kelly Martin, I'm sure there are a couple more. I read somewhere, can't recall exactly where, assert that the entity "Jim," who I've argued is likely the WMF's "James Alexander," was in tight with and communicating with the WO staff behind the scenes.

(.....rest cut away with a chainsaw.....)

Well, that's cute, because that means I was "double-tapped" from the beginning when I went to WikiConJob 2016 - fatboy Alexander probably read whatever "doxxing" tarantino leaked out about me (if James Alexander actually was Jim) and the email sent by the real Joe Naiman was confirmation that I was the Wikipedia Sucks! guy. At the time Eric Barbour was of the opinion that Alexander thought he had thrown out a sockpuppeter from the Project. If my conjecture is true, then this is proof that Wikipedia is working along the cult mentality of Scientology, because Hubbard's people hate journalists - like gay people they are on the lower end of the "tone scale" (so Tom Cruise is a "higher being" then the entire writing staff of Harper's, America's oldest continually-published magazine*).

Wikipediocracy can't fall apart fast enough.

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* Mark Twain, Philip Roth, Ernest Hemingway (posthumously), Kurt Vonnegut, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack London, Barbara Ehrenreich, Herman Melville, J. D. Salinger, many, many others have been given space within the pages of Harper's.

[ericbarbour]

Generally agree with all the above. I'll keep adding my own occasional injections of hydrochloric acid to this forum, so long as I can stomach rehashing facts and rumors from such a well-documented dysfunctional "cult thing".

It remains COMICAL to me, that Wikipedians continue to deny they have serious internal problems. Even David Miscavige isn't that stupid and clueless. Wikipedia--and everything relating to Wikipedia--draws in very petty lunatics and makes them think they "have some kind of power".

I haven't gone thru the archives of Jimbotalk and captured the visible censorship since June 2016. There are probably, no make that unquestionably, several dozen new examples of censorship and outrageous lies in the past year-plus. I really hate going thru that vast pile of narcissistic shit-talk, it's a big job and only makes me want to strangle idiots like Smallbones, Guy Chapman, Jytdog etc. Bad stress results. Would anyone else be willing to do it?

(PS--moved this thread to the WO area and merged it with an existing thread.)