Comments on: Another Essjay Essay

By: Jason Scott

Jason Scott — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:37:11 +0000

The creative commons license on the essay permits people to take copies of the essays I write and remix them for purposes, of which “bowdlerizing for the consumption of children” certainly applies.

You realize you signed your call for less profanity “jayrtfm”, right?

By: Internet Esquire

Internet Esquire — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 03:13:47 +0000

FWIW, I say leave the fucking profanity in. Fuck ‘em all if they can’t take a joke.

By: Matthew Skala

Matthew Skala — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:49:36 +0000

Get a Wikipedia account, post your essays there, and let readers edit out the profanity themselves. They might even make other improvements in your writing, too.

By: beoba

beoba — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 09:28:38 +0000

Or implement an alternate url which merely replaces all profanity with 1337sp33k variants. Then everybody’s happy!

Re Angie: Oh, yeah, I forgot about the defaming-of-reporter bit, I see your point.

Feature request for site: When previewing a comment, have content left-aligned, rather than center.

By: jayrtfm

jayrtfm — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 08:40:14 +0000

Any chance that you can post alternate versions of your essays without the profanity? This way high school computer classes could still access it, otherwise. Symantec’s filter will block it based on content.

By: Robster

Robster — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 08:08:23 +0000

Thought you might want to see this… http://wikiangela.com/blog/a-sad-loss/ — when one of the Lord High Poobahs of Wikipedia rationalises a false resume by saying “everyone does it”… is she speaking for the entire organization?

People get fired every day for falsifying resumes… so why is this so heartrending for the Wikiborg?

By: AngiePen

AngiePen — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:26:29 +0000

beoba — I didn’t get that he was being damned to hell for screwing around on Wikipedia per se, but rather that he was being damned to hell for lying, for taking advantage of people’s trust, for splattering his own mud on other people and on a large project a lot of people are devoted to, and for trying to drag the rep of a Pulitzer winning journalist down with him as he sank, just to make himself look a tiny bit not-quite-so-bad. I’m with Jason — this guy gets a cubicle in hell.

Jason — there’s a lot of this going around lately. :/ It reminds me in particular of the MsScribe blow-up in Harry Potter fandom a few months ago, another case of lying for power and position, this time with the help of a box full of sockpuppets. As with the fake doctors, it drew a bunch of people saying, “But she was so nice!!” and defending her for literally years until the castle of blocks was finally demolished by a very few determined people. And again there were those who don’t get it saying, “So what? It’s just [blank]” where in this case the [blank] was fandom instead of Wikipedia.

But lying in order to manipulate people’s feelings and sympathies is the actual crime, no matter the setting. Along with abusing the trust of a lot of honest people for the sake of power and influence, and making those honest people who supported them look like either partners in crime or gullible idiots. To me, that sort of behavior is worth a good damning, no matter how “trivial” or “frivolous” the setting. :/

Angie

By: Jason Scott

Jason Scott — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 22:26:05 +0000

Whoops, I was linked to the wrong page. I’m now linked to the page where I went nuts and mirrored everything locally.

By: Samuel Erikson

Samuel Erikson — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 21:48:16 +0000

On the John Paul Aleshe article:
It looks like the only off-site article that still works, or can be found in working form at archive.org, is the one from Network World Fusion. The Indianapolis Star seems to have a few articles in its archives if you search for John Paul Aleshe, but you have to pay for them.

By: beoba

beoba — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 21:43:33 +0000

I dunno, damning someone to hell for screwing around on Wikipedia seems a tad .. old testament. Sure, the guy was an asshat, but he’ll indirectly help people to take Wikipedia (and its contributors) with a grain of salt, which is something that should have been done all along.