Semi-OT: Wikipedia's "Big Apple" vandalized again

James Harbeck jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA
Thu Nov 22 02:59:21 UTC 2007


>Wikipedia, where any seven-year-old can vandalize any entry at any
>time. Ain't Wikipedia great?

Oh, it's safe -- it's under the expert supervision of older
teenagers, many of whom are very eager to delete content that seems
in any way possibly remotely "not notable" to them. See
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml;jsessionid=TWNZWG2RMQPEXQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/connected/2007/10/11/dlwiki11.xml
for an article on this -- here's a clip:

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Short articles intended to be a seed for future edits (known as
stubs) might not state why the subject is important, say the
inclusionists, but that does not necessarily mean that it's
insignificant. It might just need expanding.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, created a stub entitled Mzoli's
Meats. It was one sentence: "Mzoli's Meats is a butcher shop and
restaurant located in Guguletu township near Cape Town, South
Africa", with a link to a blog.

It was deleted in 22 minutes in a unilateral action by Chad Horohoe,
a 19-year-old Wikipedia administrator who goes by the name ^demon.

The two weeks of furious debate that followed was summarised by user
Kelly Martin, who said: "The Wikipedia that Jimbo [Wales] originally
created takes short stubs like the one he created and turns them into
articles; stubs should only be deleted when there is no reasonable
hope that they will ever cease to be stubs. Unfortunately, in the
past few years Wikipedia has changed; it now takes short stubs and
throws them in the trash can, and excoriates those who have the
temerity to create them. This stub is being saved only because it was
created by Jimbo."
----

On the other hand, you could always go to Conservapedia! See
http://revjph.blogspot.com/2007/11/gay-on-brain.html , which reports
the following stats from
http://www.conservapedia.com/Special:Statistics:

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User statistics
There are 15,474 registered users, of which 27 (or 0.17%) are Administrators.

Most viewed pages
1. Main Page? [1,901,632]
2. Homosexuality? [1,536,614]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis? [516,527]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity? [419,643]
5. Homosexuality and Parasites? [387,810]
6. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence? [348,728]
7. Gay Bowel Syndrome? [340,005]
8. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea? [330,640]
9. Homosexuality and Mental Health? [274,116]
10. Homosexuality and Syphilis? [264,583]
----

James Harbeck.

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