Jimmy wales launching a twitter and facebook rival

[Kumioko]

There's a new article out that explains the new project by Jimmy Wales as a rival to Twitter and Facebook. So another company doomed to failure. When will people learn that Jimbo isn't a good leader?


URL: https://www.ft.com/content/9956ff9c-062 ... bacad9e7dd

[FlatSnout]

The FT article is behind a paywall, so ...
But, by Jimmy Wales (11.Oct.2019): WikiTribune is moving!
Well, there are echo chambers, there's dating yourself, and then there's Jimbo, who married himself.

[CMAwatch]

The FT article is behind a paywall, so ...
But, by Jimmy Wales (11.Oct.2019): WikiTribune is moving!
Well, there are echo chambers, there's dating yourself, and then there's Jimbo, who married himself.

http://archive.is/m9MQe

[CMAwatch]

Let's hope B. B. B. 23, also known as B**23 never becomes an administrator there.

Bbb23 is the highest scumbag of Wikipedia.

[JuiceBeetle]

The FT article is behind a paywall, so ...

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

[FlatSnout]

The FT article is behind a paywall, so ...

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

Off-topic: Interesting that the "Bypass Paywalls" extension "works best alongside uBlock Origin", because I've been using uBlock Origin for years. It works great!

[ericbarbour]

Don't bother fighting with paywalls, usually not worth it

https://www.techspot.com/news/82780-wik ... itter.html
https://www.zdnet.com/article/wikipedia ... l-network/

Another Jimbo flop in the making. My suspicion: the only major users it attracts will be his idiot fans.

"The business model of social media companies, of pure advertising, is problematic," Wales told Financial Times. "It turns out the huge winner is low-quality content."

AND HE'S THE EXPERT ON LOW-QUALITY CONTENT!

Meanwhile, this was totally ignored. The ongoing purge of Slowking4.
https://www.wired.com/story/socked-into ... wikipedia/
Classic Wiki-Sperging.

His response was almost immediate, assuring me that, while the term sock puppet was being thrown around, anyone who read the wording of the takedown notice—“Created by a banned or blocked user (Slowking4) in violation of ban or block”—would recognize that this wasn’t a case of a vain tech writer but, rather, a response to misbehavior by a specifically Wikipedian type of bad actor.

Beetstra wrote that slowking4 had repeatedly uploaded images to Wikipedia that ran up against Wikipedia’s licensing rules; as those images were discovered and taken down, that user account was blocked, and ultimately banned, from making any further contributions to Wikipedia. In due time, slowking4 would create new identities to evade the authorities. That is, slowking4’s sock puppetry had nothing do with my article, or with the hundreds of other articles that Queen-Washington had created—and that Beetstra was deleting. Slowking4 was a persistent rule-breaker and the punishment in such cases had to be comprehensive and a warning to others, Beetstra wrote in an email: “Their work should be erased, their actions made futile. They should grow tired, knowing their work will always be eradicated.”

It appears that Dirk Beetstra had any AFD or other discussion of the Cohen article completely obliterated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... /Slowking4

Cohen first wrote about WP biography abuse back in 2006, so he can't claim "ignorance":
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/week ... ref=slogin

[JuiceBeetle]

Meanwhile, this was totally ignored. The ongoing purge of Slowking4.
https://www.wired.com/story/socked-into-the-puppet-hole-on-wikipedia/

https://genderdesk.wordpress.com/2019/11/11/wired-magazine-beetstras-secret-war-on-women/

“Their work should be erased, their actions made futile."

Somebody's not here to improve the encyclopedia, but to demonstrate a point.

[Abd]

Meanwhile, this was totally ignored. The ongoing purge of Slowking4.
https://www.wired.com/story/socked-into-the-puppet-hole-on-wikipedia/

https://genderdesk.wordpress.com/2019/11/11/wired-magazine-beetstras-secret-war-on-women/

“Their work should be erased, their actions made futile."

Somebody's not here to improve the encyclopedia, but to demonstrate a point.

Well, I know Beetstra. If he was deleting articles that had only edits by a blocked/banned users, that's legitimate, even though it violates at least some of the spirit of wikipedia. But if he is deleting article creations that others have edited, without process, unilaterally, he's violating deletion policy. The punitive attitude itself violates the long-standing principle that sanctions and actions are not to be punitive, but preventative. Punishment is "making a point," that's correct.

But admins like him burn out and become less and less patient. He was at one time, and in certain ways, one of the better admins, less knee-jerk and more willing to consider alternative ways of doing things.

The system burns people out. There is no way for a non-admin to check his deletions, whether or not the articles were properly tagged, or if he simply started wielding a meat-axe. So I looked. Can-o-worms. It appears he is sometimes identifying a sock, not bothering with any independent verification, blocking the sock, and deleting all the page creations using a bot, so fast that it is impossible he is checking for other contributions. As it happens, the page on Noam Cohen, he undeleted after receiving email. But that's the tip of the iceberg. It appears to have begun 08:35, 28 November 2016, and it eventually became the bulk of his block action log. 2629 deletions after that date. I don't know how many of these are SlowKing4 related, but it appears to be the large bulk of them.
102 deletions, mostly images and drafts. ... then 1067 page deletions in 2 days, he was running at up to 9 deletions per minute. I doubt he was checking for other edits to the articles. And the problem with tagging for speedy deletion would be?

This is an appalling waste. He is not globally banned, but I saw a block on Wikidata. No disruption there was alleged, only socking. Yet socking there would not necessarily be a policy violation.

Is Slowking4 banned? I was unable to find a ban discussion. He was blocked for sock puppetry. Beetstra did ask on AN, after the fact, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Archive301#mass_deleting_edits_of_a_banned_editor. There appear to be some there who realize that this is not actually proper.

What I come to: Slowking was unwilling to abide by license policy, so preventing him from uploading media files was at least arguably appropriate. Beetstra knows how that could be done. However, what did this have to do with his article work? Now, did anyone in the community intervene, and attempt to negotiate with Slowking? It was sometimes possible to convince a user to follow policy. But the way that problems are addressed tends to be entirely heavy-handed and will be seen as bullying.

It is possible for non-free content to be used, and Slowking was correct that the procedures for fair use can be tedious, more or less designed to force volunteer work in order to make re-use safe for commercial users. Like Wikia?

The policy is to allow it if it is machine-readably tagged. And then wikignomes go after every possible defect, this is what I found on Wikiversity. The purpose of the site did not matter, what mattered was to get rid of as much non-free content as possible. Those wikignomes were mostly defeated at Wikiversity, and I don't know the situation on Wikipedia.

But this kind of mess is what is created by having incompetent management, or no management.

[JuiceBeetle]

It is possible for non-free content to be used, and Slowking was correct that the procedures for fair use can be tedious

Yes, "fair use" is generally allowed by the non-free content policy - except on German and related wikipedias -, but in practice, it's designed to be very hard to get approval, thus minimizing accepted non-free content.

Beetstra totally lost self-control in this case and went on a revenge-rampage. Back when the Fram case started and he did the drama-queen quit "in protest", he also disabled his much-needed spam-bot, to disrupt wikipedia. The cracks in his conduct started showing up back then.