Monday, January 18, 2010

Wikipedia: The not so free encyclopedia

You've all read and heard about this so-called "free encyclopedia" that anyone can edit.
Let me give readers a little background. The guy who co-founded this (Jimmy Wales) is a porn merchant and a right-wing racial supremacist.

Well in regards to articles many cabals come and takeover articles and persecute any user.

You see there's a rule on Wikipedia. If you change a section of an article to your liking and another person changes it back then it is called a revert. If you revert back and forth on the same content more than 3 times in 24 hours, you break a rule called the three revert rule. This leads to a temporary block by an administrator. The three revert rule is also called the 3RR for short.

So in the case of South Asian articles, a giant cabal of Indians (many of them right-wing Hindu fundamentalists) surround them all. If a Pakistani editor tries to remove Indian propaganda (ie. ancient India on the Indus civilization article to ancient Pakistan), about a dozen Indians will change it to their liking and take turns reverting it to the Indian version, only forcing the Pakistani editor to break the 3RR.

Also there is an entire category of up to at least fourteen Indian administrators who love to side with their Indian countrymen and block Pakistani users. According to a banned user who wrote to an Indian newspaper one of the Indian administrators there belongs to a Hindu militant group.

The Indian editors there also spend lots of their time writing articles like these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Studies which originally started out as claiming Pakistanis are brainwashed religious fanatics until Pakistani editors modified it.

Or ones like these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mathematics
Claiming the history of Harrapa and Mohinjidarro for India.

This is what they do by spending their life time defaming us while claiming the accomplishments of our ancestors.

When I brought up the subject and got into discussion they then make personal attacks along religious lines "stop showing off your madrassa education." Worse, they even get a free pass to make such comments.

It opened my mind into the Hindutva mind set. Any arguments and these (believe it or not British and American born Hindus) people hurl insults.
I was not aware that even rich and educated Hindus have a such a prejudice against Pakistan.

They persecute any user with full force and unity if he/she dares question Indian propagated content.

Four Pakistani editors got banned for trying to resist. The Indians opened a request for arbitration against them (see 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... a-Pakistan
2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... n/Evidence
3.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... n/Workshop

One of my fellow editors even provided evidence against an Indian user: "Let's talk about Muhammad and pedophilia."

I was surprised at the decision to ban all four of them by arbitrators. It later turned out one of them was Indian while at least two of them were Zionist (jpgorden and kirril loshkin, now I suspect flowguy). I learned this from an American blogger friend who was banned by the powerful Zionist lobby on Wikipedia (check out his blog http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2006/ ... pedia.html)

But coming to the point how does this affect us? Wikipedia has literally occupied Google searches and is branded as an "encyclopedia."
And Hindutvas there have found the perfect opportunity to strengthen their propaganda machine using this so-called "encyclopedia".

And the Hindutvas there have literally occupied all Pak-related articles. Pakistani editors there do not dare challenge this uncountable number of Indian Hindutva editors.

Not only that but we can use facts to prove that India is the one sponsoring terror by hosting Altaf Hussain and yet our government did nothing to accuse them. They have no proof but we have proof:
He was in New Delhi and received an award and welcome.

And it's not just Pakistani-related topics being hijacked by Indians on the encyclopedia. Cabals usually operate like on Wikipedia on topics they are most concerned with. The site is polluted with corrupt and arrogant administrators striving for maximum control.

Here are some links that readers (especially Wikipedia critics) would find useful:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7291382.stm

http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/ http://knol.google.com/k/will-johnson/wikipedia-watch/4hmquk6fx4gu/381#

This post ends with an an email I got when I requested an unblock:


I follow Unblock-en-l and your case appeared in it, hi. Anyone who belongs to the dominant block of opinion on any subject can get anyone else blocked. Wikipedia has no policies, applied consistently.

All the admins who talk on Wiki-en-l (Unblock-en-l was set up separately from it summer 2006) openly admit counting any shred of personal fairness as mattering less than developing Wikipedia as they wish. Blocking of only 1 side when 2 sides have done exactly the same thing that the block is supposed to have been for, is routine. It's what happened to me, and claiming to have any rights against a biased 2-day block actually was the offense that got me permablocked, after only 5 weeks' membership. Look at all these:

a voice from within Wikipedia's own system describes how the ArbCom and dispute resolution systems are rigged with discretionary catch-alls that always enable admin to win
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-June/024230.html
on how force of group numbers dictates Wikipedia pages's content http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/025936.html this is actually called "don't bother reporting abusive admins" http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/025921.html

I was wary of how the umpiring of pages the whole world can fight over could possibly work well, but I was drawn into Wikipedia by a friend who was briefly (and no longer is, already!) having good experiences with sharing his medical concerns on a couple of pages on medical subjects. My Wiki name was Tern, and here are 2 administrators saying to me http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-August/027816.html
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-August/027817.html
saying "You are not entitled to anything" and "Wikipedia is not a democracy."

On the nature of Wikipedia: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/025583.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2005/08/322087.html
http://spectrum-fairness.blog.co.uk/ tag "Wikipedia"

another recipient of this message contributed:
Being unfairly branded a target in the midst of Arbitration, with the Committee turning a blind eye,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Nobs02#Response_to_comment_on_Appeal
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Dmcdevit&diff=prev&oldid=96730874

and a former admin, leaving Wikipedia on 6 Oct 06:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054949.html
" Too many admins whose first course is to insult a new user in order to see if they get a "reaction" so that they can spank the new user for talking back to an admin. I've seen too many admins block accounts for infinite duration on flimsy evidence or mere whim.

I've seen more accusations thrown around of someone being a "sockpuppet" of
another user. Time and again, I looked through the edits, and I didn't see
it. Instead, what I saw were users who were systematically hounded until
they finally broke down and broke the civility rules, and then as an afterthought someone came up and said "oh, it doesn't matter, they were a sockpuppet of X anyways", thereby removing all culpability on the part of the abusive users who had spent time hounding and abusing the newbie...

The Wiki is broken. ... We, the admins of wikipedia, broke it. We broke it by being stuck-up jerks. We broke it by thinking we are better than normal editors, by getting full of ourselves. "

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054951.html
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054957.html
We're actually developing a reputation as a place of arrogance and nastiness, a place of heavy-handed thugishness, a place where people treat each other quite badly. That's bad for the project.

In a case concerning an argument about Crusades history, ( http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/private/unblock-en-l/2007-January/002824.html if you can access Unblock-en-l archives) where an editor concerned about historical record came up against some strong religious feelings in favor of the Crusades' and was blocked, she has asked me to add her story to this information. "It shocks me that there are still people out there who are so ignorant and closed minded - they don't know the meaning of logic - yet it is they who write the Wikipedia encyclopedia: ironic." From her first message to Unblock-en-l, 19 Jan 2007:

" My account name is Agnes Nitt, I was blocked by Adam Bishop who banned me for this reason: troll. I will copy and paste the details: Your account or IP address has been blocked from editing. You were blocked by Adam Bishop for the following reason (see our blocking policy): troll. On the discussion page of Crusades, after I was banned, he put this just after my debate: Agnes has been blocked, because I am impatient and she *** me off. Adam Bishop 00:34, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
As is quite evident from the reason why I was blocked, and his rude comment afterwards, it is clear that I have had misjustice done against me. I didn't expect administrators to be so childish, and nonacademic, I mean, just because someone was having a debate with me on the discussions page and I had been proving them wrong, so an admin comes along, disagrees with me, cant counter my argument, and therefore blocks me from editing, and to crown it all, he leaves an abusive message against me and ridicules me (out of context from the debate-he should know that this isn't a regular chat room, where he can poke fun at me, but a discussion page confined to the Crusades and related topics) Just because he knows I cant reply. I broke no rules, I wasn't vandalising, nor was I threatening, and I was banned for no reason (other than troll) except that I have different views. "

She closed "I believe I have put my case in trusted hands, and I hope you reply to me concerning this as soon as possible, as I can no longer engage in any debate." But was told "Please assume good faith regarding Adam Bishop's actions. He may have been overreacting, but is a generally respected administrator. "
"I understand your point of view Herbert, but trust me, some people are brilliant and funny and nice etc, but when it comes to certain topics they become different people, ... And what I am saying is true, this whole idea that the crusaders were not too bad is myth, and shouldn't be in an encyclopedia, it's heavily Point Of View, " (you may know of Wikipedia's policy "no points of view"?)

A send-up by "Something Awful" of the aggressive tone common on talk pages, that creates these situations: http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=4288

Messages of support: "some of the people on there do seem pretty sarcastic and bullying .... some of the right-wingers on there seem to think mentioning anything negative but factual about Reagan or Bush constitutes bias and there do seem to be some nasty characters on there." - from Aspievision, http://s13.invisionfree.com/aspievision/index.php

"You are not the only one who has had problems with Wikipedia taking sides in a dispute, and being blatantly unfair to the other side without even giving them a chance to defend themselves." from FAMSecretSociety, a Yahoo group
"Yes ... this is my opinion of Wikipedia. It suppresses anything that may be considered 'more than marginally controversial'. It's definitely in the same boat as the mainstream media without any shadow of a doubt. " - the forum of the British anti-ID cards site http://www.1984brigade.com/

" of late I've noticed that some independent contributions have been either radically edited or censored. I've not had time to check articles on 9/11, the London Bombings, the assault on Falluja etc, but judging from the way content was edited promptly out of articles on SSRIs, schizophrenia and Asperger's, there definitely seem to be operatives in place ready to clamp down on anything that may cast doubt on establishment canards." from Medialens, http://www.medialens.org/board/

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