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So Fox News is the best source because they're the ones creating the story? Are you being ironic? Hey, I'm not an expert, but does calling up major supporters

by neilk 16y ago

So Fox News is the best source because they're the ones creating the story? Are you being ironic? Hey, I'm not an expert, but does calling up major supporters with incendiary allegations strike you as the behavior of a news organization? Are they doing this to bring important information to the public? I work at the Wikimedia Foundation. I do not speak for the organization -- I'm just a programmer -- but these are my own impressions. First, I've heard from our press guy that Fox News hasn't called the WMF once for any comment on this story. Also, the atmosphere in the office isn't exactly "chaos", as the article alleges. Lots of other business is proceeding normally, like the revamp of the Wikipedia interface that went live last week. I'm just a hired hand, and not much of an expert on the Wiki* communities, but it seems to me that Fox News is reigniting an existing debate about how to manage the tiny, tiny minority of Wikimedia Commons images that could cause offense to people. We're talking about a website where the biggest news of last month was that some guy donated his collection of images of rocks and minerals. Jimmy Wales decided to do a purge on his own authority, but was widely criticized for overshooting what was needed. This provoked another meta-debate about founder authority. So he voluntarily gave up his "founder flag" rights, so the debate could get back on track. There's been a lot of very frank discussion, which is how Wikimedia lists are all the time, but Fox News is focusing on only the divisive aspects, which are already way out of date in my opinion. Some (not all) community members who were very vocally displeased a few days ago are now happier with how things are proceeding. And are back contributing to the main work of the site, you know, that whole free knowledge thing. And that's where things sit as of this moment, to my knowledge. People are still working out what changes to practices are necessary.

ZachPruckowski 16y ago
No, Fox News is the ONLY source because they're the ones creating the controversy. It's how they work. They manufacture controversies if they don't have something to talk about. Look what happened with places like ACORN. Those "ACORN tapes" were heavily edited and manufactured. Like I've literally seen 90-minute action movies with less fakery than those tapes. Or look at the "Tea Party" rallies - they were like a fraction of the size of prior immigration and anti-war rallies, but they're covered like they're the largest of the century.

by neilk 16y ago

ZachPruckowski 16y ago

No, Fox News is the ONLY source because they're the ones creating the controversy. It's how they work. They manufacture controversies if they don't have something to talk about. Look what happened with places like ACORN. Those "ACORN tapes" were heavily edited and manufactured. Like I've literally seen 90-minute action movies with less fakery than those tapes. Or look at the "Tea Party" rallies - they were like a fraction of the size of prior immigration and anti-war rallies, but they're covered like they're the largest of the century.