Difference between revisions of "Chapter 13"

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[[File:Chapter 12.jpg|thumb|right|240px| The computer has turned out to be the greatest single advance in the history of pedophilia]]
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[[File:Chapter 13.jpg|thumb|right|260px| You pass through a range of emotions when you are blocked, none of them pleasant.]]
  
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<blockquote>It was ''almost'' the perfect place.  Say ‘Mexico’ and the northern mind thinks of arid desert with its irregular carpet of scrub and cactus.  Yet the highlands to the south and west, such as here by Lake Chapala, are green and temperate, warm all year round with no painful extremes. It was this, as well as the cheap housing and medical care, that had attracted an army of Canadian and American retirees in the 1950s, who came to build a replica of American civilisation along the shoreline of the lake, and it was this, too, that had drawn Jon Schillaci from New Hampshire. That, and the fact he was being hunted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.  It was almost like home.  There was a large expatriate community, although he avoided them for obvious reasons. All that marred the perfection were the grisly remains left on the state border by the warring drug cartels, as they battled for control of the drug routes. ''Et in arcadia ego'' – there is death in paradise too.</blockquote>
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<blockquote>He stared at the screen in disbelief.  “You are currently unable to edit Wikipedia”.  “You are still able to view pages, but you are now not able to edit, move, or create them. Editing has been blocked (disabled) for the following reason(s): ''Vandalism''” .   For the first time in three years of literally ''stellar'' contributions to Wikipedia (he was a specialist in astrophysics and astronomy), he had been blocked.  
  
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The computer, as Mark Gado said, has turned out to be the greatest single advance in the history of pedophilia.  According to Holmes and Holmes, there are four ways in which pedophiles use the net: to traffic in child pornography, to locate victims, to communicate with potential victims, and to communicate with each other.  
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You pass through a range of emotions when you are blocked, none of them pleasant.  
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With the advent of Wikipedia, we can now add a fifth way: to normalise, to justify and to celebrate adult-child relationships in articles published on the sixth largest website on the planet. Leaked emails show that the Wikipedia pedophile campaign was conducted openly between 2004 and 2007, and less visibly after the administration secretly introduced a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in 2007. “I am not an advocate of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the US military. I think it is a bad policy in that case. But in OUR situation it seems to me to be just about right”, says Jimbo.
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The relationship between the ‘Wikipedian’ community of administrators, and the ‘content creators’ who contribute the actual material to the encyclopedia, has always been strained. In 2007 the first shot is fired: an administrator blocks a high-profile and highly regarded content creator called ‘World traveller’, in real life an astrophysicist who has contributed to many of the Wikipedia articles on astronomy.
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It was not always like this. There were basic administrator capabilities under the original UseModWiki system introduced in January 2001, but the password was given out freely. Blocking would be rare, said Jimbo, and confined to the type of person who goes around inserting foul language randomly. “If you’ve merely ''offended'' someone, that’s no excuse for an IP block.  Everyone who they knew should get sysop status ‘unless they are a total jerk’.
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With the rapid growth in the project between 2005 and 2007, this changes. The administrative community restricts its growth by creating a series of increasingly difficult obstacles to membership. The struggle between the content creators and administrators has a profound effect on the project, most of all on morale. In the beginning, for many, it really had been about bringing the sum of human knowledge to every person on the planet. But that is eventually overtaken by a different ethos which defines Wikipedia in terms of the defensive purpose of fighting vandals and protecting at all costs the self-image of ‘the community’. This also brings into prominence and authority a different kind of person, skilled only in the low-skilled work of vandal-fighting and patrolling.
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Worldtraveller leaves at the beginning of March 2007. His final questions are no less relevant to Wikipedia today. “Why has the system failed to produce a quality reference work? What can be done to change the system? Is radical change required, or just small adjustments to the current set-up? Does this matter, given that Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world?”
  
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After that, the campaign is largely carried on in secret, using an army of ‘sockpuppets’ – disposable accounts facilitated by Wikipedia’s policy of ‘anyone can edit’.  “When they talk about trying to solve the ‘pedophile’ problem, my only message is this: You can’t. You’ve already lost”, says one activist.  “Ask Ernie Allen and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: more of us are having sex with your kids than ever before. All your money, all your laws, all your daytime talk shows, and all your therapy: worthless. There are more of us than ever; ''you’re fighting a hydra. Cut off one head and two more spring up in its place''”.
 
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==See also==
 
==See also==

Revision as of 11:39, 7 December 2013

You pass through a range of emotions when you are blocked, none of them pleasant.

He stared at the screen in disbelief. “You are currently unable to edit Wikipedia”. “You are still able to view pages, but you are now not able to edit, move, or create them. Editing has been blocked (disabled) for the following reason(s): Vandalism” . For the first time in three years of literally stellar contributions to Wikipedia (he was a specialist in astrophysics and astronomy), he had been blocked.

You pass through a range of emotions when you are blocked, none of them pleasant.

The relationship between the ‘Wikipedian’ community of administrators, and the ‘content creators’ who contribute the actual material to the encyclopedia, has always been strained. In 2007 the first shot is fired: an administrator blocks a high-profile and highly regarded content creator called ‘World traveller’, in real life an astrophysicist who has contributed to many of the Wikipedia articles on astronomy.

It was not always like this. There were basic administrator capabilities under the original UseModWiki system introduced in January 2001, but the password was given out freely. Blocking would be rare, said Jimbo, and confined to the type of person who goes around inserting foul language randomly. “If you’ve merely offended someone, that’s no excuse for an IP block. Everyone who they knew should get sysop status ‘unless they are a total jerk’.

With the rapid growth in the project between 2005 and 2007, this changes. The administrative community restricts its growth by creating a series of increasingly difficult obstacles to membership. The struggle between the content creators and administrators has a profound effect on the project, most of all on morale. In the beginning, for many, it really had been about bringing the sum of human knowledge to every person on the planet. But that is eventually overtaken by a different ethos which defines Wikipedia in terms of the defensive purpose of fighting vandals and protecting at all costs the self-image of ‘the community’. This also brings into prominence and authority a different kind of person, skilled only in the low-skilled work of vandal-fighting and patrolling.

Worldtraveller leaves at the beginning of March 2007. His final questions are no less relevant to Wikipedia today. “Why has the system failed to produce a quality reference work? What can be done to change the system? Is radical change required, or just small adjustments to the current set-up? Does this matter, given that Wikipedia is one of the most popular websites in the world?”


See also

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