Claims of corruption

Wikipedia is the largest GFDL corpus access provider. It was usurped by Wikimedia from the actual GFDL corpus contributors in 2003.

Since then it has been alleged to have become increasingly corrupt and unresponsive to those contributors and users, and to be serving the agenda of its sysop power structure instead. Many specific allegations have been posted to the Wikipedia mailing list, far too many to list here, and these seem to have increased in number over time. This list includes only the most egregious and legally actionable allegations:

Evidence of Wikimedia corruption includes:

structural corruption

• that Wikipedia violates GFDL notably re attribution and access to source text and all improvements. See text liberation for more on this issue. Access to source text is provided at http://download.wikimedia.org/ even for those users who cannot export due to IP block; however the use of these sources requires significantly more technical skill.

• no actual end user (as opposed to "developer" or "sysop" or "editor") rep on the "board"; while Michael Davis is not a developer, nor a sysop nor even an editor, he is also not an active end user or an advocate of usability - in fact his only qualification is his connection to Bomis corporation.

• no independent board members not affiliated with operations or Bomis - the usual definition of an independent board is one that can judge operations objectively thus does not participate in them, operating as an avenue of appeal for any such decisions;

• Wikimedia Foundation not consulted when legally important decisions made, e.g. in response to Wikipedia being blocked in China, which is the biggest issue it has ever faced, that Jimmy Wales unilaterally "hereby authorize Andrew Lih to make a statement on our behalf", based on usual happy NPOV talk.

Wikimedia claims that this was discussed "offline" but no minutes or any report was made. Abusively, their shills assert that "to be certain that decisions are unilaterally taken, you first need to know whether private discussions took place or not." In other words, there is no such thing as a unilateral decision as assessed from outside - only the actual participants are ever able to say whether it was unilateral or not, and they may withhold proof that it was not at their leisure. This is an obvious and total abuse of process.

This was shortly after the "election" of Wikimedia Board of Trustees who evidently had no opinion that mattered, on this all-important question.

• allegation: users not consulted when user environment changes - suggesting only certain kinds or status of users "count"

False. These are discussed on mailing lists, on meta and more and more on irc. Granted, information feedback is far from perfect. In any cases, the development of MediaWiki is not in the hand of Wikimedia itself. So, this argument, if it were true, would not be the proof of Wikimedia corruption.

Mailing list users are not wiki users. This has been downgraded to an allegation since it is contingent on realizing that.

• solicitation of donations beyond Florida state lines - this violates US federal law which states clearly that only federally-registered charitable status entitles an organization to make such solicitations;

Granted, I do not know if this is true. Please provide the relevant article in the law. The federal registration is under way. If it were true, it would be a legal issue, not a sign of corruption as nothing is hidden. People pay willingly, the near entirety of the money is used according to donators will and the uses made with the money are absolutely transparent. COnsequently, not only is this accusation doubtful, but even if it were true, it constitute defaming to make an accusation of corruption.

We are not your lawyer. We are not your advisor. Ignore this allegation at your peril.

...an issue debated on the Wikipedia mailing list but overruled by legal expert Jim Wales as per usual

An accusation made with no back up links has no validity and cannot be questionned. It consequently constitute defaming. "As per usual" is a fallacious argument as well, with no source.

Trolls will provide evidence to the state of Florida on this issue, not to you. We are not going to do your own due diligence for you unless we are directly paid by you to audit your organization's complaince with the law. You have guaranteed that this complaint will be made with your attitude. If we were to provide "back up links" you would simply censor the evidence itself. We are by no means intimidated by your use of the word "defaming", as you are yourselves liars who defame constantly.

• Allegation: outing and concomitant libel based on echo chamber claims

Beside of being made with no source, I guess that again, this is not a proof of Wikimedia corruption either.

It is quite easy to find claims that "person X is user Y wrote text Z" all over the place, and since "Z" is often characterized in ways like "untrue", "false", "death threat", etc., that is a very serious allegation against the character of X, especially if the claims that "X is Y" or "Y wrote Z" are themselves based only on an echo chamber. Many innocent people are being attacked and libelled by slack enforcement of standard of evidence on Wikipedia mailing list and other Wiki-media run by you.

• Allegation: tolerance of extensive sysop vandalism by almost the entire sysop power structure

Do not confuse Wikimedia and Jimbo here. Jimbo has a moral weight on all of us editors, so is in effect tolerant of most matters, which allowed the creativity of all editors to fully express. As for Wikimedia board, it is not supposed to have impact on how the projects are run at the fine level. It is not its role. Its role is to be a legal structure to collect money and decide of its uses. It is also to own the plysical architecture, and to legally protect the project if necessary. It also plays a role in promotion. It does not have the right to take care of fine in-project management. Consequently, this tolerance by Jimbo ay be good or bad, but is no sign of corruption, and is irrelevant to Wikimedia itself.

Oh, so it only "collects money" and spends it, and covers up the fact that the actual mission that motivates the cash and content contributors is being constantly undermined by a clique? That is not governance, it is corrupt.

• Allegation: tolerance of extensive sysop vigilantiism and contemplation of more serious developer vigilantiism

Same answer. Will add that Wikimedia can protect what it physically own. I see not where the corruption stands here either

It does not "physically own" GFDL corpus contributions and has no right to restrict access to them under that share-alike license. Each mirror has the same right to access the same contributions without Wikipedia's own sysop power structure politics undoing improvements and corrections that are provably improving the corpus.

• Allegation: ad hominem delete without process, recently spread to Meta-Wikipedia

Wikimedia is not responsible of micro-management. Board members have separate activity as board members and editors. You may accuse them of wrong doing, but it has no relation with Wikimedia itself. Jimbo basically never come to meta.

If you aren't responsible, you aren't responsible, period. When have you ever bothered to desysop someone for abuse of power? Hmm? Never? How are you doing governance then? That in itself is enough evidence of corruption: a "board" that actually does not supervise anything or anyone, and lets them run amok and do damage to the wiki mission via sysop vandalism.

• Allegation: ad hominem revert allowed to stand, threats of IP blocks against any who reinstate them for whatever reason (including the fact that they are just correct)

same comment. This is micro management. Plus, an accusation without sources has little value.

With literally dozens of liars and thugs and libellers and spin doctors running around removing all links to the sources, deleting them, etc. it is your responsibility, not our responsibility, to keep these Talk page comments visible so that the people who issue the threats and make the ad hominem arguments can be kept out of the sysop power structure. It was MANY times restated by Erik Moeller that those who reinstated troll text would be themselves subject to IP blocks. But Moeller remains a sysop so this must be considered "policy" on your part.

• Allegation: U.S. and U.K. centric editorial policy, set by people who speak only English

false. I see not even the need to argue with this argument. Plus, Wikimedia does not drive editorial policy.

This is a lie. Obviously its policies determine who participates, and Wales writes Secretlondon, and trolls are "banned for life" and so forth, and all of this is MUCH more likely to happen to people who argue against the EPOV - never mind that they must do so in English.

• Allegation: total censorship of Wikipedia Red Faction - not even history now visible due to intimidation of this group

well not answer to this; know not enough about it.

Look up the various "requests" made of English Wikipedia User Bird and how his attempt to suggest wiki regime change was ultimately censored.

• Allegation: attempted libel chill by labelling contents of this page "slander".

By Wikimedia itself ?

It is not slander ?

Parties friendly to Wikimedia are difficult to tell apart. Also it is hard to tell when someone has been intimidated into covering up your behaviour.

Read the definitions of libel and slander they are extremely clear.

• Allegation: several attempts to revert these claims without answering to them, proving there is no adequate response

I answered them. Will detail more if necessary. Fallacious argument : not answering is no proof the claims are correct.

This is the FIRST time ANY officer of Wikimedia has answered them, after DOZENS of attempts to simply censor them. Your own response is inadequate in many respects, and includes many attempts to spin things (like labelling as "allegation" the supporting facts themselves which no one has disputed).

recently dealt with

• Allegation: withholding of information regarding link transit at Wikipedia which would be very useful to editors, but also quite profitable for a search engine like Bomis; several attempts to raise this issue have been suppressed; in September 2004 User:TimStarling did some code to start to deal with it.

have no idea of this myself.

since it is the only recent issue listed, I fail to see well how corruption has increased overtime.

Read link transit

individual corruption by officers

• Allegation: Wales intimidating English Wikipedia User Secretlondon and sending email (allegation:) to chill her editorial point of view and become pro-American like Mr. Wales

Not a proof of Wikimedia corruption.

Jimbo Wales, as any human, is entitled to have personal opinions. He rarely voice them on purpose, to avoid intimidating people as he knows he has a high moral weight in the community. He certainly did not do it on purpose. Jimbo apologized to SL immediately after, and again when the issue erupted again.

chilling people is not usually a good weight to force them to become pro-american. This argument is real bad.

He should have said nothing. He should have known that to speak was to intimidate. He chose to pretend that he did not know that. The fact that Wikimedia does not restrain Mr. Wales is proof that it is merely his own vehicle.

• libel chill by Wales, attempting to silence critics of his decisions and appointments, or even just those who point out GFDL violations by Wikimedia, e.g. accusing people who say Wikipedia violates GFDL as being guilty of libel against Wikimedia on the Wikipedia mailing list

uh ? Where ?

There was a specific link to a specific mailing list posting, deleted in one of the usual attacks on this page. Look it up yourself. It's not an allegation, it's a simple fact, Wales said he wanted people to file complaints with Florida's charitable status regulator so he could sue them for libel. That is libel chill, and it is not allegation.

• Daniel Mayer was appointed to the position of Chief Financial Officer on July 4, 2004; Allegation: this individual is hardly credible as a reporter of facts or a guardian of any principles, given his long standing participation in echo chamber and libel pit activities; it strongly detracts from credibility of Wikimedia and Wikipedia when such a person is in charge of the books

Certainly, Daniel is not credible in your eyes, but is credible in other people eyes. If credibility is lower for some people, well, that is unfortunate, but not anyone can be pleased. Credibility, still, is one thing, corruption is another. Do you have proof of corruption from him ? If not, this should be moved as a lack of credibility claim, not a corruption proof.

It is not a question of whose "eyes" are involved: Mayer is objectively guilty of libel and of using false claims to police to intimidate people. You have accepted an incompetent and petulant person in a position of authority, and that is corrupt in itself. Why? Could it be that no one who is competent will take on the task he offered to take on?

For issues with developers and others without official status, see Talk:alleged Wikimedia corruption. The most egregious of these is:

• release of carefully guarded MediaWiki bot code - used as a vandalbot for technological escalation against Recyclopedia and threatened against Wikinfo - post facto, attempted coverup with extremely selective event reporting in Wikipedia, Allegation: false claims in the Wikipedia article nominally about Recyclopedia but with no mention of denial of service attacks or vandalbots that were the actual proximate cause of it becoming unusable, and the clearest example yet of intimidation.

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official response from Wikimedia:

I suggest that all unsupported arguments given as proof are removed. Some of your claims may be right (though, I am not really certain which are), and if so, I think your feedback is interesting, but all the other ones loosen the credibility of those which may be correct.

Besides, keeping unsupported, or even defaming claims in this page, and in others, is threatening Juxo project credibility and viability. I recommand that you consider this issue with due respect.

Anthere.

The threats come from an unaccountable organization that covers up its own behaviour. A bad example. To assert that there are "Threats" to "credibility" is simply to assert that you will use Wikipedia to continue to spread lies and libel about those who expose Wikimedia for what it is, a false front. To assert that its "viability" is at stake is to assert that you are going to pressure MediaWiki developers or others to stop supporting it.