3 ms·

Why don't you engage with the substance of the criticism rather than who's made it. He's made over a hundred thousand edits on Wikipedia in almost 15 years. I'm

by k1m 8y ago

Why don't you engage with the substance of the criticism rather than who's made it. He's made over a hundred thousand edits on Wikipedia in almost 15 years. I'm sure some of them are well justified. We're highlighting the ones that aren't and in which he has a serious conflict of interest.

notahacker 8y ago
To be brutally honest, the fact he's made over a hundred thousand edits on Wikipedia and the examples you choose to highlight of alleged bias include following WP policies and removing an unsourced claim about a libel suit from a biography underlies the fact that beyond Galloway et al moaning about it and Murray actually suggesting he's part of a government ' “cyber-war” op aiming to defend the “official” narrative against alternative news media', there's not a terrible amount of substance to the criticism. I'm pretty sure I've sided against him (and many other editors) in talk page disagreements over more substantial issues of possible bias than that. Similarly the screenshot suggesting that despite obviously politically disagreeing with them he apparently contributed the majority of the very fair and balanced introduction to the MediaLens article would be a point in his favour for anyone interested in the substance of the encyclopedia rather than going down the Murray rabbit hole . Admiring a figure is not a prerequisite for writing articles on them. Sure, he has political opinions and wears them on his sleeve, but that applies to pretty much everybody else involved in political Wikipedia.
- k1m 8y ago
  Admiring a figure is not a prerequisite for writing articles on them... Sure, he has political opinions and wears them on his sleeve, but that applies to pretty much everybody else involved in political Wikipedia. Who said you have to admire them? He's openly hostile toward them and taunts them on Twitter. Then makes blatantly unfair edits as we've shown. Remember, we're not talking about posting your political views on your blog. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure the set of people who (i) know about and (ii) are neutrally disposed towards most of the political figures highlighted here is an empty one (maybe one can feel neutral towards Kamm, whose foreign policy views in the early 2000s were very wrong but I've never felt to have behaved in a particularly loathsome manner). And it's perfectly possible to contribute in a dispassionate manner about people and organizations you fundamentally dislike, as funnily enough the diff of the MediaLens article linked in the OP appears to offer evidence for... Traditionally, Wikipedia's approach to "unfair edits" is to make a case for their reverting on the talk page, not to offer rewards for doxxing the responsible editors, launch campaign websites against them and blog about how it's likely he's part of '"cyber-war” ops aiming to defend the “official” narrative against alternative news media' and Jimmy Wales is implicated too... (I'm not exaggerating: here's Craig Murray's take on the same thing. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-c... I could insinuate that "fivefilters" must surely be part of some shadowy organization coordinating to release information hostile to Philip Cross, but I live in the real world where sometimes people have common political views and wish to share their take on things they read online...)
    - k1m 8y ago
      I'm really not sure where you're going with all this. We haven't offered rewards for doxxing anyone. We've written an article highlighting a problem with a particular editor's behaviour on Wikipedia where he has a conflict of interest and Wikipedia is refusing to act. You seem to be talking about anything and everything except this.
      - notahacker 8y ago
        George Galloway offered the reward, according to RT in the article posted above (and various other sources generally supportive of Galloway). That's... not usual behaviour. And as I pointed out above, having a negative opinion of a subject is not a "conflict of interest", and several of the diffs, of literally thousands you could have chosen, are entirely unobjectionable. I even pointed out one above was actually removing something editors are required to remove according to Wikipedia policy. I'd expect the ratio to look rather different if he was a disruptive or agenda-driven editor, as opposed to one whose choice of commentary to include I don't always agree with. If the real interest was in the edits as opposed to promoting conspiracy theories about Wikipedia colluding with conflicted editors to damage the good name of Messrs Murray and Galloway, presumably people would be devoting their time to reasoned explanations of why X is important or Y is irrelevant in talk page discussions on article wording rather than inviting people to astroturf HN as part of their #ditchwikipedia campaign instead... https://twitter.com/newsyc50/status/997927206167941120 https://twitter.com/newsyc50/status/997927206167941120
- TheForumTroll 8y ago
  There is no He. It is them. "He" has made edits every single day in more than 1700 days. It is clearly a group.
  - nneonneo 8y ago
    There are far more productive Wikipedians (Cross is 308th) who are easily attributable to individuals. 30 edits a day is literally nothing - Cross probably has WP open in a tab at work and checks it like email. Someone makes a negative change to a page he's watching, and he reverts. Easy way to rack up hundreds of edits in a week. (Source: I used to do exactly this for about a year).
    - notahacker 8y ago
      He's also one of the people that often posts a separate edit for almost every sentence he copy edits, which results in long strings of edits of a page over the space of an hour, when someone else with a similar amount of time on his hands might just rewrite the whole section or page, and pastes infoboxes into lots of articles he thinks its relevant for. This whole thing is reminding me of just how time consuming that was... Of course, there theoretically could be a team being paid by number of edits to films and jazz musicians to distract from their real agenda to discredit people already enjoying roughly the same reputation as Lyndon LaRouche within the British political sphere. Some people are paid to post to social media. Equally, if anyone can be bothered looking at the diffs of the allegedly offensive edits it could be that he's a guy whose Wikipedia obsession goes further than most and has a watchlist set up on pages he's edited and a set of brand new accounts edit warring the same unsourced claim about a Guardian journalist's beef with a Russia Today journalist into an article are the organised, if not necessarily paid, group...
swebs 8y ago
It just seems like this guy is one of the more benign power editors if that's the worst that can be found among the thousand of edits. I think his bias might be overstated due to the fact that it's right leaning bias. However there are also editors such as Volunteer_Marek that I see in almost every political or current event topic inducing a heavy left leaning bias. These bias in these edits are much more extreme and unrestrained. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Volunteer_Marek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Voluntee...

by k1m 8y ago

notahacker 8y ago

To be brutally honest, the fact he's made over a hundred thousand edits on Wikipedia and the examples you choose to highlight of alleged bias include following WP policies and removing an unsourced claim about a libel suit from a biography underlies the fact that beyond Galloway et al moaning about it and Murray actually suggesting he's part of a government ' “cyber-war” op aiming to defend the “official” narrative against alternative news media', there's not a terrible amount of substance to the criticism. I'm pretty sure I've sided against him (and many other editors) in talk page disagreements over more substantial issues of possible bias than that. Similarly the screenshot suggesting that despite obviously politically disagreeing with them he apparently contributed the majority of the very fair and balanced introduction to the MediaLens article would be a point in his favour for anyone interested in the substance of the encyclopedia rather than going down the Murray rabbit hole . Admiring a figure is not a prerequisite for writing articles on them. Sure, he has political opinions and wears them on his sleeve, but that applies to pretty much everybody else involved in political Wikipedia.

k1m 8y ago
Admiring a figure is not a prerequisite for writing articles on them... Sure, he has political opinions and wears them on his sleeve, but that applies to pretty much everybody else involved in political Wikipedia. Who said you have to admire them? He's openly hostile toward them and taunts them on Twitter. Then makes blatantly unfair edits as we've shown. Remember, we're not talking about posting your political views on your blog. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia.
- notahacker 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure the set of people who (i) know about and (ii) are neutrally disposed towards most of the political figures highlighted here is an empty one (maybe one can feel neutral towards Kamm, whose foreign policy views in the early 2000s were very wrong but I've never felt to have behaved in a particularly loathsome manner). And it's perfectly possible to contribute in a dispassionate manner about people and organizations you fundamentally dislike, as funnily enough the diff of the MediaLens article linked in the OP appears to offer evidence for... Traditionally, Wikipedia's approach to "unfair edits" is to make a case for their reverting on the talk page, not to offer rewards for doxxing the responsible editors, launch campaign websites against them and blog about how it's likely he's part of '"cyber-war” ops aiming to defend the “official” narrative against alternative news media' and Jimmy Wales is implicated too... (I'm not exaggerating: here's Craig Murray's take on the same thing. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-c... I could insinuate that "fivefilters" must surely be part of some shadowy organization coordinating to release information hostile to Philip Cross, but I live in the real world where sometimes people have common political views and wish to share their take on things they read online...)
  - k1m 8y ago
    I'm really not sure where you're going with all this. We haven't offered rewards for doxxing anyone. We've written an article highlighting a problem with a particular editor's behaviour on Wikipedia where he has a conflict of interest and Wikipedia is refusing to act. You seem to be talking about anything and everything except this.
    - notahacker 8y ago
      George Galloway offered the reward, according to RT in the article posted above (and various other sources generally supportive of Galloway). That's... not usual behaviour. And as I pointed out above, having a negative opinion of a subject is not a "conflict of interest", and several of the diffs, of literally thousands you could have chosen, are entirely unobjectionable. I even pointed out one above was actually removing something editors are required to remove according to Wikipedia policy. I'd expect the ratio to look rather different if he was a disruptive or agenda-driven editor, as opposed to one whose choice of commentary to include I don't always agree with. If the real interest was in the edits as opposed to promoting conspiracy theories about Wikipedia colluding with conflicted editors to damage the good name of Messrs Murray and Galloway, presumably people would be devoting their time to reasoned explanations of why X is important or Y is irrelevant in talk page discussions on article wording rather than inviting people to astroturf HN as part of their #ditchwikipedia campaign instead... https://twitter.com/newsyc50/status/997927206167941120 https://twitter.com/newsyc50/status/997927206167941120
TheForumTroll 8y ago
There is no He. It is them. "He" has made edits every single day in more than 1700 days. It is clearly a group.
- nneonneo 8y ago
  There are far more productive Wikipedians (Cross is 308th) who are easily attributable to individuals. 30 edits a day is literally nothing - Cross probably has WP open in a tab at work and checks it like email. Someone makes a negative change to a page he's watching, and he reverts. Easy way to rack up hundreds of edits in a week. (Source: I used to do exactly this for about a year).
  - notahacker 8y ago
    He's also one of the people that often posts a separate edit for almost every sentence he copy edits, which results in long strings of edits of a page over the space of an hour, when someone else with a similar amount of time on his hands might just rewrite the whole section or page, and pastes infoboxes into lots of articles he thinks its relevant for. This whole thing is reminding me of just how time consuming that was... Of course, there theoretically could be a team being paid by number of edits to films and jazz musicians to distract from their real agenda to discredit people already enjoying roughly the same reputation as Lyndon LaRouche within the British political sphere. Some people are paid to post to social media. Equally, if anyone can be bothered looking at the diffs of the allegedly offensive edits it could be that he's a guy whose Wikipedia obsession goes further than most and has a watchlist set up on pages he's edited and a set of brand new accounts edit warring the same unsourced claim about a Guardian journalist's beef with a Russia Today journalist into an article are the organised, if not necessarily paid, group...

swebs 8y ago

It just seems like this guy is one of the more benign power editors if that's the worst that can be found among the thousand of edits. I think his bias might be overstated due to the fact that it's right leaning bias. However there are also editors such as Volunteer_Marek that I see in almost every political or current event topic inducing a heavy left leaning bias. These bias in these edits are much more extreme and unrestrained. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Volunteer_Marek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Voluntee...