The specific echo chamber lies including the spun death threats of certain "high-ranking" Wikipedians, don't need to be mentioned here, as it was not Wales himself that necessarily did this (though he doesn't stop it or keep other such stuff from happening). This is however one of the most serious indications that their management problems are unsolvable with present people involved. This problem has been commented on by a lot of other people, including James Day who says "only a fool would fail to remove obvious malicious libel", e.g. claims about others' motives, spun death threats, as part of explaining the many legal issues involved in the various Wikimedia projects.
Removed claims that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia - it isn't. A "serious encyclopedia" has no visible "stubs", certainly does not let ad hominem rule over content in selection of articles, doesn't permit massive holes in key areas to persist for years, and doesn't let the community point of view of its employees overrule the good sense of historians, mathematicians, and etc.
Removed claims that Wiktionary is a dictionary - it isn't. A dictionary must define the simplest words in terms of other simple words, and it must define complex words in terms of the simpler words. Wiktionary has no such discipline. It has no w:defining vocabulary even for w:idiom dictionary purposes.
Further, the Simple English Wikipedia by failing to use staging or to apply such a defining vocabulary discipline (which would require about 2000 words), cannot serve as a basis for translation for culturally-rich articles. So this too is a fraud.
Failing to actually BE an encyclopedia and dictionary and basis for translation are the biggest issues anyone could reasonably raise with Wikimedia's projects, which are at this point simply pilot projects that have failed to satisfy the most basic requirements of the products they seek to replace. "Being free" is about all they can claim, and maybe not that, as it seems unlikely they can ever release a CD or print version due to copyright problems. Without, that is, pulling unethical tricks like Wikipedia suing itself, organizing contributors to pretend to fight the board, etc., etc.
Here is more proof of Wikimedia corruption, as if any is needed. These deletions were not discussed anywhere. "Eloquence" (self-declared as Erik Moeller) is a sysop vandal:
- (diff) (hist) . . Meta:Deletion log; 23:35 . . Eloquence (Talk) (deleted "Wiki lawyer": content was: 'A Wiki lawyer is someone who argues the rules incessantly with the sysop power structure. Sometimes this is worse than having a [[priestly ...')
- This article refers to an previously unknown term and therefore can be deleted as something that someone just thought up and decided to write an article on
- That's not the process on meta. Nor was the article written by the troll whose work was being censored at the time. Likewise this next one on WIPE. Erik Moeller (Eloquence) simply took the opportunity to destroy work that was offensive to himself and his chosen policies. It was political censorship, only:
- (diff) (hist) . . Meta:Deletion log; 23:35 . . Eloquence (Talk) (deleted "WIPE syndrome")
- (diff) (hist) . . Meta:Deletion log; 23:33 . . Eloquence (Talk) (deleted "Troll-friendly")
- (diff) (hist) . . Meta:Deletion log; 23:33 . . Eloquence (Talk) (deleted "Sysop power structure")
- (diff) (hist) . . Meta:Deletion log; 23:32 . . Eloquence (Talk) (deleted "Sysop vandalism")
- Sysop power structure is de facto in place and serves the majority of users just well driving off vandals and too agressive-possessive trolls
- That is not an excuse to make it impossible for anyone to discuss such issues as WIPE syndrome, troll-friendly, sysop power structure or sysop vandalism. The only reason to do this is to ensure that no one ever has vocabulary to question these decisions.
- Sysop power structure is de facto in place and serves the majority of users just well driving off vandals and too agressive-possessive trolls
- (diff) (hist) . . Meta:Deletion log; 23:32 . . Eloquence (Talk) (deleted "Developer vigilantism")
- Hmmh?
- developer vigilantiism (yes it is one of those rare words like "skiing" that has an "ii" in it) was actually noted by Brion Vibber originally. Obviously Erik Moeller (the name he himself has attached to Eloquence) is in favour of such vigilantiism, and wishes Vibber's issue never to be discussed.
- Hmmh?
- (diff) (hist) . . Meta:Deletion log; 23:32 . . Eloquence (Talk) (deleted "GFDL text corpus")
- The whole concept of GFDL text corpus is errored in it's assumption that all GFDL'd material somehow belongs to a "corpus" that does not distinguish between places of editorship such as Wikipedia, Wikinfo and Disinfopedia. All these places have been complained to be "corrupt" simply because they excersise editorial restraint so that all the noise does not render the signal useless, which is exactly what we intend to do a little for Research Wiki and more for Publish Wiki.
- That is legally wrong. GFDL Corpus does legally exist - it is that body of (almost entirely text) which permits cut and paste copying with no copyright inhibitions. Now, there are other requirements that apply to a GFDL corpus access provider, and yes, there are editorial standards specific to those providers or their product. It is only when those providers fail to enforce the standards required to ensure them, that they become corrupt in the sense of Wikimedia corruption. For instance to desysop the sysop vandal or developer vigilante, or put controls on sysop vigilantes. It is Wikimedia's total failure to do this which has led to them being "corrupt".
- In any case, the issue is clearly complex enough to require discussion. If you go to en: Wikinfo: GFDL corpus you find they are not so dedicated to destroying the idea of one corpus with some unified standards. But they are not trying to monopolize and control the corpus - notice that Moeller himself is actually the Wikimedia representative for "content relationships", meaning, in a conflict of interest when some standards neither Wikimedia nor he himself define are discussed.
- (diff) (hist) . . Meta:Deletion log; 23:32 . . Eloquence (Talk) (deleted "Trollherd")
- Trollherd is not relevant to Wikipedia mission in Eloquence's mind. Whether this is bad judgement is up to oneself to decide.
- This is not the process of deletion followed generally on meta. This is a usurper, usurping.
I removed all of the following from the main article, because it is mostly nonsense.
- Refusing to release Most Clicked Links information on any Wikipedia, even the small ones, where tracking this information would be quite simple, and would assist authors in supporting real end user interests. [It is claimed that this information is withheld specifically for the use of Bomis' search engine development.]
- Actually, this claim is completely and totally false. There has been no refusal of any kind to release any data of this kind. Additionally, I can find no evidence that anyone is even asking for this, or that any one has ever been critical (except here on this page) of us for this imagined fault.
- It is true they are not "obligated", but given the extreme usefulness of this information to editors of an actual encyclopedia, it must be concluded that not releasing it is motivated by a desire to keep it mostly useless as one, with a small clique in charge of what types of subjects are encouraged vs. discouraged - there being no way to use user interests as a guide to what to work on. A responsible support group would release this information. It is a lie, of course, that "no one is asking for this", it's been asked for at least a dozen times. The reason no evidence of that is easy to find is because it is specifically suppressed. Those who run search engines know exactly how useful and valuable this data is, and it is certainly Bomis policy to retain this data for inhouse use:
- Releasing only very limited page visit information - maybe due to the performance cost it adds
- Again, completely false. There is no truth to this at all.
- Whoever wrote this 'false' comments is himself a liar. There used to be numbers published on per-page visits. Now there are not, there is a list of most visited articles per month, but of course it doesn't go down to more than the top 1000, and it doesn't say where the user clicked from, or to, most often. (the issue above)
- Treating use of ISO language codes in mediawiki's interwiki link conventions as if they are invocations of Wikipedia in that language, not simply references to "that page in that language".
- But the interwiki links point to the page in another language
- This complaint is completely incoherent. If the original complainant could explain himself, I'm sure that any such problem would be eagerly addressed.
- It's easy to understand and has been clearly explained in many places at many times, it won't be done again. Whoever says it's "incoherent" is simply too stupid to understand it by example, which means they should not be involved in Consumerium Services either.
- Banning, harassing, attempting to "out" and permitting (if not deliberately attempting) framing users who point out any of the above. This sometimes reaches the bizarre extreme of echo chamber assertions being cited in Wikipedia articles as if they were true.
- The most common criticism of Wikipedia is that the community is too open and welcoming and tolerant of people who have no willingness to work together in a healthy way with others. Such people are indeed angered when, after months of agonizing deliberations and attempts to find ways to compromise, they are eventually banned. Most wikipedians seem to feel that Jimbo has always been too lenient about such matters.
- When genuine experts in a field are blocked by those with a clear conflict of interest or political bias, that is not an "encyclopedia", it's a social club.
- Not supporting the default standard wiki URI that Wikipedia itself uses, in Mediawiki releases to other parties. This makes the URIs of non-Wikipedia pages more difficult to remember and impossible to recall offhand, and shifting with each mediawiki release. Since Wikipedia's don't likewise shift, this makes it almost certain that Wikipedia pages will be linked to, not those other pages.
- This complaint may be out-of-date: there's some documentation about apache-modrewrite rules.
- "Some documentation" is not the same as making it the default published URI for a new site.
- Promoting its own community point of view as if it were actually a neutral point of view, ignoring systemic bias questions, and letting sysop vigilantiism and sysop vandalism occur freely against outsiders. This sometimes reaches the bizarre extremes of assuming that the Wikipedia mailing list consensus on legal issues overrules the best legal advice of actual qualified legal experts (witness James Day and Jimbo Wales debating). (may be wikipedia-specific?)
- Anthere says that legally important "features" are added without any consulting of the so-called "foundation", and certainly Wales seems to think himself qualified to actually judge legal questions, which is amazing, when there are contributors like Larry Solum around to ask such questions of! But he has probably been blocked by now...
w:User:Enforcer is making legal threats against Wikimedia: "Investigation of non-compliance with Florida charitabale solicitations law" -- see w:User talk:Enforcer. Jim Wales has commented here and here. The user has been blocked by w:User:Eloquence with reason: "trolling / libel against Wikimedia foundation"
- This just proves that any attempt to call this "foundation" to even its bare legal requirements of accountability will be met with censorship, name-calling and libel chill as a response.
- Also see this from Anthere which clearly demonstrates that decisions are made by usurpers doing developer vigilantiism (Erik Moeller, Tim Starling) who don't consult with this "foundation" before making legal and usability and other decisions. The whole thing is a front group for Moeller and Starling now. It has no credibility.
- How can Consumerium Governance Organization avoid being hijacked by some similar gang of thugs?
Moved from article for unclear reasons. Seems to document some useful history of the project:
As recently reported at w:Talk:Fallujah: "His work under the title " "GodKing" for several years encouraged new Wikipedia leaders to use cult-like language that discouraged opposition to his views, and to disparage those who offer counterveiling policies. Bomis's owner Jim Wales set the direction away from a peer-reviewed encyclopedia, and presents as a primary pundit against the feasibility of reviewed encyclopedias in numerous interviews." This much is factual and verifiable. Less clear is the impact of this policy, which "driven by Bomis' desire for rapid development, made Wikipedia more available to those who present election-time and war-time misinformation." Obviously this has become an issue in a US election year when there is an ongoing war in Iraq.