Wikipedia Evolves as Weapon of Mass Defamation
Workaround Tool for Wikipedia Cyberstalkers
The whole point of using an open source "encyclopedia" to portray an adversary in a false and unflattering light is that the defamation will bask in the legitimacy of the encyclopedia moniker. It’s an encyclopedia, folks. I have been accustomed over the years to seeing people defamed in various message boards, including Usenet’s tastefully-named “news groups” and a web-based urban dictionary. But if you really want to get under someone’s skin, or in their public affairs, nothing says “Gottcha” like a message board masquerading as an organized body of knowledge, especially one that floats on the surface of Google’s search results like your average bar of Ivory soap.
Go ahead. Google “Vietnam War.” Wikipedia’s Vitenam War page is the first thing you see. That’s right. It’s ranked # 1 of 55,600,000 web pages! Now what if I were to google something of significance to the scientific, literary, and even the commercial world, something like “spider.” Wikipedia’s “spider” page is # 1 too. In fact, a Google search of 7 in every 10 randomly sampled objects produced – you guessed it – top-ranked results from Wikipedia.
This is not a nod to Wikipedia’s status as a scholarly medium. The search engine optimization is a product of the way Wikipedia pages are organized. First, you have separate web sites for each language in which Wikipedia is written. And that doesn’t include the foundation site. All these sites are inter-linked. This cross-linking among discrete web sites creates the tide that raises all boats. And this kind of open microphone is just too seductive to turn down, especially for people who want to promote their products and points of view. But Wikipedia also presents an opportunity for rival bloggers or flame warriors to strike a blow against their adversaries.
Once upon a time, it was customary for a character assassin to make an adversary the subject of an article in Wikipedia’s faux encyclopedia. Right up there at the level of "spider" and "Vietnam War" would be an article about "John Seigenthaler," "Daniel Brandt," or "Barbara Schwartz."
Wikipedia made salacious headlines when a prankster identified colleague and journalist "John Seigenthaler" as a suspect in the Kennedy assassinations. Despite sustained efforts by the aggrieved Seigenthaler, the article remained active for 132 days. I have to admit that, not having heard the term “open-source encyclopedia,” I too mistook Wikipedia for a joke. Sheesh! If any string of letters screams “clowning around,” it’s “Wikipedia.” I mean, it sounds like one of Nickelodeon’s original cartoon series, or like a Dr. Scholl’s product designed for Wiccans. Besides, someone introduced me to the enpsychlopedia by sending me a link to an article about the Usenet “news group” alt.usenet.kooks. Much like the news group itself, the eponymous Wikipedia page identified by name as “kooks” individuals Usenet bulletin-board users ganged up on in flame wars over the years. How seriously could this “Wikipedia” possibly take itself? And if Wikipedia doesn’t take itself, or for that matter basic standards of citizenship, very seriously, I sure was not about to take it seriously. But then it seemed Wikipedia suddenly became the subject of serious journalism when the major news portals like CNN.com reported on the defamation of John Seigenthaler.
What all the attention doesn’t tell you, is that a lot of Wikipedia defamation does not “slip past the censor” as founder Jimmy Wales would like you to believe, but rather occurs with the knowledge and expressed consent of Wikipedia administrators (to include Mr. Wales). Just ask Wikipedia critic Daniel Brandt? Hold that thought … I’ll ask him myself … uh … Mr. Brandt, do I risk attracting the journalistic attention of Wikipedia administrators by writing this article you are reading now? See the page about you in Wikipedia, you say?
The history tab of the article written about Daniel Brandt reveals that many folks sympathetic with the Wikipedia critic tried to have the article edited or removed, but in the end the page reads exactly the way the Wikipedia administrators composed it. And when all their reverting gets them a little out of breath, they temporarily freeze the page so no changes could be made to it.
Needless to say, with exceptions like this, the practice of creating defamatory articles about individuals (or slipping defamatory remarks into articles) declined in the face of all that international media attention. Also, flounder Jimmy Wales also in the midst of a campaign to recruit donations for additional infrastructure, and while his efforts did not net very much throughout the world, hundreds of thousands of dollars from the technophile nation of Japan alone – exporter of child cartoons for adults, extreme parodies of sports (Viking challenge), and imitations of all things American – carried the day. However, this did not spell death for the use of Wikipedia as a defamation delivery device. Character assassins searched for a workaround, seeking to preserve the value of Wikipedia as a cyberstalking tool with the same fervor with which the average mobile professional prayed to save the Blackberry from patent infringement. And their prayers were answered ... in the form of the User Page.
User pages function just like regular articles (see above screen capture). They look just like articles. They even have tabs for History and Discussion (a place where disputes spill into flame wars). And most importantly, they're indexed by search engines and given the same ridiculously privileged status they give to your average Wikipedia article. The user page featured in the screen capture above opened in the number 5 spot of 994 results returned on a search of my name in Google. User pages are traditionally created by users about themselves; but in rare cases, a character assassin with the aid of other users and administrators can usurp control of the content of someone's user page and use it as a vehicle to portray the user in a false and/or unflattering light. In cases like mine, a libelous user page may be created where none existed before.
So what's the point of this? Well, over a year ago I abruptly ceased contributing content to Wikipedia. Despite my credentials and verifiable facts, all of my contributions were deleted from Wikipedia by a gang of Wikipedia addicts who took issue with my ... (pause) ... my ... Web page criticizing Wikipedia and my criticism of alt.usenet.kooks, which offended my sensibilities as a research scientist. (Crackpot.net sets the standard for a truly scholarly, and non-malicious catalogue of kooky claims and text on the Web).
In a transparent gesture of retaliation, the Wikipedia admins, led by one individual who had been stalking me under another alias months before Wikipedia graced my consciousness, created a user page in my name which asserted that I made contributions to Wikipedia under aliases to optimize the ranking of my web site in search engines. (More on this later). But I really drew their ire when I thought I could keep this page from coming up in a search of my name by inverting two letters in the name as it appears on the Wikipedia user page. At that point, I morphed in their eyes from an SEO violator (search engine optimization) into a vandal.
They even learned I published a book and dragged my publisher into the fray. But what I did was not really vandalism, was it? I left the text of their defamation intact, switching only two letters in my name. And it's not like I was modifying the text of an article. It's a Discussion page. It’s a discussion page about me … one on which they would not accord me the customary right of response. So the only people likely to read any of this libel were individuals who searched on my name in Google, which is exactly what the User page, as a weapon of anti-personnel propaganda, is designed to do. Here is this page, which contains nothing but a couple sentences of worthless drivel, and it ranks anywhere from #1 to #3 in a search of my name in Google.
This cyberstalker needed this info to show up in order to control me and in order to punish me for having criticized Wikipedia's defamatory tendencies. One does not dare criticize Wikipedia.
The User page defaming me is fiercely managed by someone calling himself Calton, which is odd when you consider the USA Today article about Wikipedian culture in which Calton is actually quoted as being opposed to these user pages:
Wikipedians apparently enjoy their "user pages," homepages where they can post "userboxes" with personal information and affiliations. Some oppose this practice for a neutral encyclopedia. An American expatriate called "Calton" apparently doesn't like the political userboxes. "Kill them, kill them with fire, nuke them from orbit, salt the earth behind them," he wrote on one deletion-review page.
I could only guess he is opposed to the user pages because he has to fiercely monitor his own from other subject matter experts he’s offended with his hard-line tactics. But then again, can you think of a better way an ordinary person can assert authority over more accomplished citizens? (The USA Today article was authored by Nicole Gaudiano of the formerly reputable Gannett News Service).
Calton hijacked my User page and is using it as a billboard to broadcast that I contributed to Wikipedia under what is known as a "sock puppet," a pejorative synonym for what is more commonly known as an "alias" or "pen name." ("Nom de plume" among card-carrying members of the author's guild and other literati). (Also see my reports English Literature B.A. Spreads B.S. in Amazon.com, Wikipedia and Built for the Hijacking: Open Source "Encyclopedia" Complicit with Libel). If we examine Wikipedia, we find that the vast ... vast majority of contributors use aliases much in the same way most individuals use handles when communicating on message boards and especially news groups. Using aliases is a safety precaution recommended by cybercrimes officials as well as by anyone who has ever used an Internet forum to introduce an unconventional point of view or, God for bid, criticism of a company / institution. As much as Wikipedia strives to be authoritative, even its own administrators ... administrators like SlimVirgin ... use a "sock puppet." (Did you think Slim Virgin was her legal name?) And lo and behold even the creator of my User Page ... and the others who seem bent on keeping me from making any edits to it ... menacing boons who go by names like Crypto and Uncle G use "sock puppets." So does it make any sense to you that these individuals would use "sock puppets" to deploy and enforce criticism implying my use of a "sock puppet" is some kind of Internet misdemeanor?
Again, an odd choice when you consider Calton himself uses an alias ("Charles Graham of Japan") to write fake reviews of books in Amazon.com. His anger toward me was fueled in part by the fact I had his fake review of my book purged from Amazon and in part by the fact I screen captured for my web site an entry from his live journal in which he discussed his fraudulent acts.
To ensure the Wyatt Ehrenfels User page would rank high on a search of "Wyatt Ehrenfels" in Google, Calton linked the User page to other Wikipedia pages, including pages titled "Protected against Vandalism," "Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of 67.129.121.253," "Suspected Wikipedua sockpuppets," "Suspected Wikipedua sockpuppets of Tai Streets," and "Suspected Wikipedua sockpuppets of Wyatt Ehrenfels." To think that this "encyclopedia" has this much junk in it.
Wikipedia is the product of mob rule (i.e. I'm sorry, "democracy"), and despite all the talk of procedures for formally appealing to administrators, no administrator has ever so much as acknowledged me, reputedly because Wikipedia maintains a list of its critics (e.g. Daniel Brandt). But naturally, this conferedation of Wikipedia addicts have added my User Page to their watchlist, which means they receive an automated notification when I touch it and, within minutes, it is reverted to their copy.
Let's examine the history here. The page was actually created January 6 by someone calling himself "Uncle G." On February 15 our uni-named Calton (i.e. shades of "Cher," "Iman," and "Topol") officially assigned it a category and elaborated the subject field to ensure everyone knew that "Wyatt Ehrenfels" was connected with the name "Tai Streets." This is definitely a thug operation. Notice that the history tab records every action from the user or administrator who reverted the page to their original draft. What's missing? Not only did they revert the copy to their draft so that no one could see my contributions to my own User Page (censor level 1), but they also deleted my old drafts from the history tab so that no one could do any archival research into how I had once replied (censor level 2). This is an extraordinarily repressive measure you seldom see in Wikipedia. Even in instances in which a vandal writes something libelous, completely inaccurate, or vulgar, the history tab is permitted to archive these drafts once they are deleted from the body of the current article. But the censorship doesn't end here. To preserve the defamation behind bullet proof glass, they banned me from participating in Wikipedia (censor level 3) and then, as an added measure, they write-protected the page so no one else could edit it (censor level 4). (Banned me along with the every member of the United States Congress). Moreover, when they reverted their copy to an old draft, they decided to throw some false and unflatterring quips into the title field. Note the reference to my publisher as a vanity press, which is not only false, but even if had been true, they insinuate that somehow the identity of the publisher is all you need to know to evaluate the intrinsic worth of an author's work.
Also note that the User page is captioned to indicate it has been temporarily disabled to protect it from vandalism. Well, it has been "temporarily" disabled for over two months. Knowing that the only person who'd be interested in making any changes to it would be me, they made the protection permanent and said as much.
I found the exchange between Wiki admins on a rather strange Web page (http://www.danceage.com/biography/sdmc_Wikipedia:Protected_page that contains lists of Wikipedia links censuring users. The relationship between the page and the root URL (dangeage.com) is suspicious, as Wikipedia appears entirely out of place on a music and animation site.
This is how Wikipedia products (articles / discussion pages / user pages) get to be so highly ranked in a search of anything and everything. Web masters for all kinds of web sites from pop culture sites like Dance Age to scholarly blogs and even other online reference tools (e.g. Reference.com), feel it is hip to add a gratuitous Wikipedia search tool to go along with their Google mini. But what's not clear to me (and I'm no cybermaven) is how the results of a Wikipedia search end up populating a page on the site bearing the search tool. When you google [Wyatt Ehrenfels Wikipedia], you are referred to this Dance Age site that contains the results of a search of Wikipedia for the keywords [Wyatt Ehrenfels Wikipedia].
Cryptic by the way, the user name of the individual who write-protected the page, no longer exists. The link to his user page is dead. Cryptic may have removed it because it has been vandalized by users who feel they've been mistreated by him. Cryptic may have abandoned this alias for another. Perhaps Cryptic found Christ and bugged off Wikipedia altogether. You never know, maybe he was one of those employees whose jobs/careers have been adversely affected by his addiction to Wikipedia. Regardless of exactly what happened to Cryptic, he leaves behind a series of "products" that will remain part of Wikipedia's and Google's archive forever.
I have heard people I know use the term "Wikipedia administrator" as if it were a High Office. But not only is Wikipedia administrator not a real job, but I've read cases where individuals have been terminated or censured by their real employers for editing Wikipedia on company time. What influence they fail to enjoy in their place of employment is gained by asserting themselves in an open source encyclopedia. What affiliation and sense of belongingness they lack in life is gained by joining a gang of editors who collaborate to harass or libel would-be contributors (subject matter experts among them) who they do not like. If Wikipedians worked in one place, I'd bet my house there'd be a fight club. This film is precisely what comes to mind when I think of the juvenile ego-challenged rowdies addicted to Wikipedia.
Coincidentally enough, the individual calling himself Cryptic who write-protected the page shares an interest in Japanese with Calton, fueling speculation as to whether the two personages are really one or whether the two individuals enjoy a friendship. Calton is the given name of a graduate of Berkeley's bacceleaureate program in English Literature and; more notably, he is a Westerner born and raised in Japan. A review of their user pages reveals that "Calton" and "Cryptic" also share a crusade against Wikipedia "vandals."
All this seems rather abusive. You'd think some ranking Wikipedia administrator would allow me to contribute to my own User Page. Calton is permitted to assume ownership of his own User Page. You better believe they'd never allow me to touch that. And now he and some fellow gangbangers have created, and assumed control of, mine. This kind of control is facilitated by the use of scripting, and a review of Cryptic's User Page reveals the talent and temperament for this sort of trade. Moreover, in all but one of my edits to my user page, I did not attempt to remove or even alter their content. I simply appended my own reply to what was already there. And I thought the content I added was quite congenial:
"Okay, so you'd spend the bulk of your days (if necessary) making sure the world knows that Wyatt Ehrenfels is an alias for Tai Streets. (It's been a few years. I suppose there's no harm in that now). The only audience whose opinions mean anything to me are regular visitors to my Web site, which is devoted to two subjects primarily: dreams and cyberstalking.
http://www.fireflySun.com/news.html
http://www.fireflySun.com/cyberstalking_news.html
This explains why I ever dabbled in Wikipedia to begin with, to improve the quality of pages devoted to subject matter on which I am qualified to opine. That is what I sought to accomplish once I realized Wikipedia wasn't a "gag web site," in the words of Brian Chase who composed the infamous Wikipedia article defaming Seigenthaler as a prank for the benefit of the Seigenthaler family, with which he maintains a relationship. Chase eventually resigned in the wake of being identified by cybersleuthing privacy activist Daniel Brandt, but Seigenthaler lobbied his employer to rehire chase. Is it possible Seigenthaler understands how a true scholar could mistake an "open source encyclopedia" for a farcical contradiction in terms? Anyway, I too spent a few minutes messing around with pages I didn't think I should be permitted to edit, and I patted myself on the back for my atruistic gesture in altering Wikipedia to what I assumed was either a hacking or some kind of database malfunction. While I was at it, I also thought some career slanderers in the alt.usenet.kooks news group had discovered and exploited the opportunity to create an article defaming a number of individuals they'd been harassing in Usenet. When I learned the open source encyclopedia was for real, I was even more outraged by what appeared to be Wikipedia's complicity with the harassment and character assassination.
I understand your point that insofar as I could offer no proof of credentials (Wyatt Ehrenfels as pen name), my contributions are subject to skepticism (although I respectfully submit that pertains to the vast majority of content published to Wikipedia).
Once I understood the social and political dynamic that drives how Wikipedia actually works, I realized this is not the scholarly enterprise I imagined and I abruptly ceased and desisted all efforts toward making contributions. The recent history only reveals my efforts to remove my own name (i.e. no real "vandalism" as you claim, and no new content).
Wikipedia also has no internal controls (i.e. policies and procedures) for dealing with the kind of Internet tracking and defamation that you have practiced under the alias of Calton.
You seem like a bright guy. An english literature B.A. from UC-Berkeley with an interesting and international history. I hope you take this in the spirit in which it's intended, but have you thought of focusing your efforts on a large-scale project (i.e. work of fiction, non-fiction)? This policing of Wikipedia (and Amazon.com) is beneath someone of your education."
One day after composing this report, my Wikipedia / Amazon.com cyberstalker Calton addressed the following to me:
While this provides some clue to the cyberstalker's motivation, it raises more questions than it answers. He is apparently distressed by the fact my contributions to Wikipedia may have been part of some deliberate strategy (i.e. "campaign") to elevate the ranking of my Web site in search engines like Google (i.e. "SEO" refers to "search engine optimization"), and he appears very pleased that his actions have vandalized the results of a Google search of my name, claiming that "SEO campaigns cut both ways." But there is really no way for me to guage whether any contribution to Wikipedia benefited my site. My site, which has been around since 2001, had already crept into the top page of results of a Google search on "psychology news" and "news psychology." I'm not the sort of person who would go through all the work of dropping links in Wikipedia to move up to # 6 from # 8 all for but a week or two. More to the point, my contributions are appropriately topical. Unlike "Calton," my actions are not designed to harass or defame an individual.
Calton also insists that my external links are commercial (i.e. designed to sell the book he spuriously indicted in Amazon.com) when, in actuality, the pages have been sanitized of the navigation bar that features the book's bibliographic data. Not only would you have to do some drilling to find a reference to the book, but my Web site is just too large to be considered a book marketing tool. In any event, I think it's clear that my intentions were not to hawk a book and that the intellectual functioning I exhibited in Wikipedia (in areas appropriate to my expertise) is at at a higher level. Now when I learned more about Wikipedia, particularly that it strove to me a Joe Friday "nothing but the [consensus] facts" outfit (which excludes original research and excludes verifiable facts that support a point of view), I publicly conceded that some users were right to delete some of my content. I still maintain, however, that these so-called "policies" are selectively enforced and that there is a great deal of malicious users and administrators who indulge some originality and bias of their own when they abuse to term "vandal" by applying it indiscriminately to anyone they do not like. Calton's motivation for watchlisting me in Wikipedia (and dropping my name on all these Wikipedia "policing" pages) does not stem from my actions in Wikipedia, but from an incident that took place on the Web. The sequence of events is detailed below:
Abuse Timeline
- Someone referring to himself as "Charles Grahm of Japan" happened upon fireflySun.com/news.html.
- For reasons unknown, he didn't like what he read. So he composed a negative review of my blog in Amazon.com. Not only had he never read my book, but the "book review" did not address any of the ideas in my blog. The review appeared to maliciously glean characterological flaws (e.g. arrogance) from the design of my blog and from the dissemination of the blog in message boards (which he must have learned from googling my name or or the name of my domain).
- I referred the matter to Amazon.com customer service representatives, and the fake review was removed.
- I reported the incident on my blog. By educating visitors (and prospective customers) about potential abuses on the Web, I could innoculate them against similarly suspicious attacks on my character in the future. In my report, I included a screen capture of a live journal entry from an alias of Calton in which he admitted to the fake review.
- The live journal entry disappears from the Web and any trace of it disappears from Google's cache.
- My contribution to a Wikipedia article about dreams was challenged by a user calling himself "Calton." As a PhD in Psychology whose area of expertise is dreams, I took an interest in improving what seemed like an impoverished article. My contribution was so appropriate and educational that it remained untouched for months until someone calling himself "Calton" complained that my use of an alias made it impossible to verify my status as a subject matter expert (even though most contributors to Wikipedia use some kind of handle). Calton, who has no background associated with dreams & dreaming, also took the opportunity to attack my book in this article (I never mentioned the book), claiming that its publisher was a vanity press and distributing the text of a complaint against the publisher he found on the Web.
- Without attacking Calton the man, about whom I knew nothing at the time, I criticized his approach to undermining my credibility with other users.
- Within days, Calton had removed all the work I submitted to Wikipedia on another area of expertise (cyberstalking). He accused me of spamming and search engine optimization and placed me on a watchlist so that he would be notified automatically of any edits to Wikipedia originating from my name or IP address. Having composed a Web report criticizing Wikipedia's support of an article that defames specific individuals (alt.usenet.kooks), the administrators allied with Calton in his personal vendetta.
- In a review of Calton's user page, I learned that he is an American citizen who lived most of his life in Japan. A google search on certain keywords revealed more about Calton, allowing me to verify that Calton (a given name) is a graduate of a UC-Berkeley bacceleurate program in English Literature whose own blog reveals a fascination with Amazon.com. (My book was one of many books for which "Charles Grahm of Japan" submitted fake reviews in Amazon.com).
- I used his full name in 1-2 complaints about his behavior in Wikipedia. In a rare maneuver, Wikipedia administrators complied with his request to delete archived drafts containing his name from the history tab.
- Calton drops my name on a number of Wikipedia pages containing vandal list, and rejoices in the fact two of these pages rank 3rd and 4th in a Google search of my name.
The nature of Calton's psychological connection to me is not fully known, but he has protested the design of my blog, its arrogant views, and what he regards as its inflated ranking in the search engines. This incident is fascinating to anyone interested in social psychology, abnormal behavior, and computer-mediated communication. I attempted to make adjustments to my style that would accommodate his sensibilities / sensitivities, but like most cyberstalkers, he is unwilling or unable to adjust to changes in the stimulus and his behavior remains out of proportion. This Internet Road Rage would drive Calton to purge from dreams my contributions about Jung. I claim to be what I am: a Jungian scholar. Calton demands of me what he does not demand of other contributors to dreams: that I prove it. A peer review of the dream page requested by a rather fair-minded, even-handed user resulted in a request for more information like the kind I composed about Jung (oops).
Calton has not articulated a criterion that would provide any guidance to a Wikipedia contributor. He leaves his decision-making rules amorphous to give his free-floating rage more room to roam. For example, he did not declare that, given the benefit to search engine optimization, he'd like to see all external links provided by third parties. Even if I did harbor some motive like search engine optimization, it's a strange thing to police, not to mention very presumptive. I can tell you that it is quite a common practice for a subject matter expert with a Web site to drop a link to his own Web site in Wikipedia. I don't do it indiscriminately, as Calton's irresponsible use of the term "spam-listing" would suggest. I dropped a link to my cyberstalking news page in the articles devoted to stalking and cyberstalking, and only after these were deleted did I test the resolve of my cyberstalkers (i.e. were they really tracking me?) by dropping the links in related articles cyberterrorism and cyberbullying. I was operating purely in reactive mode, and they were necessitating or inspiring the very behavior they found deplorable. For example, I'd drop 2-3 links or contribute text to 2-3 articles. They'd eliminate them wholesale (i.e. no discussion, no editing, no conditions for retention). Naturally, at that point, I'd move on to another Wikipedia article, at which point they'd seize on the opportunity to depict me as a spammer by complaining that I was adding yet more content. What content? They eliminate everything I write.
But this is the game. By eliminating your contributions from appropriate articles (and countering your efforts to restore the old drafts), they drive you into related articles and build a case against you as a spammer or vandal. The assumption here is that if they had not policed me, I would have links in every article under the sun, like some spammer hawking generic Viagra. In actuality, had they not expunged the contributions from the appropriate articles (and done so with the flair of some gradeschooler giving a classmate a wedgie), they would not have seen new contributions elsewhere. And remember, at certain points in these skirmishes, an administrator would not have intervened, so at that time the only will I thought I was thwarting was that of a common user named "Calton" (who lacks the subject matter expertise to edit my contributions). So this "public enemy # 1" status has been inappropriately retrofitted.
Wikipedia's Own Search Engine Optimization Campaign
Why is a trigger-happy net cop like Calton so quick to point his pistol toward people who post external links to Wikipedia? He's obsessed with the tragic possibility that individuals undeserving of fame will hitch their wagon to Wikipedia's own search engine optimization campaign. He thinks of Wikipedia in much the same way some other cyberstalkers think of Google when they write something to the effect of: "he who controls Google controls the world." He originally thought Amazon.com was the hub from which to manage the flow of ideas on the Web. Then he got hooked on Wikipedia, and he seized on the opportunity to assume the role of authority over as much content as he could possibly edit in his spare time.
I don't know how many people out there actually do post external links to their own sites in Wikipedia ... and if this is really a public health issue. But Wikipedia would not be a target of individuals seeking to search-optimize their blogs if Wikipedia itself did not blow a few bubbles of its own. Wikipedia built quite a search optimization platform. Ever wonder why a link to Wikipedia surfaces in the top five results of a search on nearly everything? Wikipedia optimizes its search with massive inter-linking. There's a Wikipedia for just about every major language. Wikipedia Deutsch. Wikipedia Français. Wikipedia Svenska. And so on. The cross-linking among all these sites and through Wikipedia's main foundation page inflates the search ranking of Wikipedia content. This is evident when you google Wikipedia. When I google my own Web site, Google allocates only two search slots (usually the first two) to pages from my Web site. When you google Wikipedia, which is designed as a collection of related but distinguishable web sites for maximum search optimization, the first few pages of results are inhouse Wikipedia pages. This also guarantees that no Wikipedia detractor -- not USA Today, not Wikipedia Watch, and certainly not me -- can ever drop something critical of Wikipedia into a position of prominence in Google Web Search. You have to click, click, scroll to the bottom of page 3 of the search results to find the first critical link (e.g. a Register article titled Wikipedia founder admits to serious quality problems). Now that's search engine optimization!
Cyberstalker Outgrows Old Shell in Amazon.com
This Wikipedia skirmish is clearly an extension of hostilities that began in Amazon.com (see English Literature B.A. Spreads B.S. in Amazon.com, Wikipedia for details). The unaccomplished cyberstalker, despite a degree in English Literature, does not produce original work, seeking employment as an editor of other people's copy and, in his leisure time, "mopping up after the dishonest, incompetent, and fanatical." These are the words he uses to define his mission on his Wikipedia User Page. This statement exemplifies the symptoms of a psychological disorder that manifests on the Internet. For many individuals who suffer from Road Rage (in a manner of speaking, we all suffer from Road Rage), the initial signs of the disorder is a perfectly understandable reaction to being cut off by a careless or reckless driver. But as the sensitivity underlying the disorder begins to swell, the Road Rager eventually finds himself driving aggressively, tailgating others who are driving only 10 miles above the speed limit in the right lane ... weaving in and out of traffic ... becoming what he has beheld (and continues to hold in contempt) ... behaving as if he owns the road. The once-reactive anger evolves into an autonomous agent: all-consuming, indiscriminate, seeking out a target. And that's precisely what we have here in Calton ... Internet Road Rage. The fellow doesn't like my personality and thinks even less of the views he found on my Web site, and so he followed me into Amazon.com where he created a fake review of my book, and his "google stalking" tracked me to Wikipedia, where he erases all my contributions. He invents rationalizations (e.g. "link-spamming", "search engine optimization campaign") for following me on the new information superhighway (Wikipedia) when in all actuality, the behavior that angers him is quite appropriate and no different from the other individuals whose links and text he allows to live in this "open-source" encyclopedia (see Ego Inflation Disorder for details). If he can cut me down to size ... his size ... (at least in the eyes of desultory googlers) ... and in effect expose the rest of the world for frauds (i.e. "mopping up after the dishonest, incompetent, and fanatical"), he can put his own shortcomings in a more pleasing perspective.
But the primary thrust for this essay is not to pick on a single Wikipedia addict. Rather it is to expose a common problem with Wikipedia, one that essentially undermines its claim to an "organized body of knowledge." And that is that Wikipedia is infested with administrators and addicts with this kind of mission / motivation (see Ego Inflation Disorder for details). My research has turned up dozens of individuals whose contributions to Wikipedia are monitored and erased because something they said, either inside or outside Wikipedia, tripped someone's psychological trip-wire.
People assume that because of the absence of censorship, that the Internet is the vehicle for new ideas and intellectual freedom. But researchers are learning that the vaccuum created by the absence of moderators or authorities is filled with individuals who use harassment and mob rule to prevail over opposing opinions. Many of the same individuals are outspoken opponents of censorship, wrapping themselves in the language of the First Amendment, but more as a vehicle for anarchy than democracy. The Internet is not a safe place for proprietors / purveyors of unconventional wisdom or, God for bid, institutional criticism.
Before I allowed a group of menacing psychologists to run me out of Usenet, I suspected they harbored a similar Calton-esque motive for their harassment: my Web-based critical ethnography of Psychology ranked too high in a Google search on psychology-related keywords, even higher than most university web sites. This is not the biggest tragedy (or travesty) since the Holocaust (which is how some of my self-appointed adversaries / watchers treat it), not if you consider the scope and longevity of my work as well as my attention-to-detail. Juxtaposed against the university department Web site, which is relatively static, my Web site looks like the second coming of American workmanship. But worse than this perception that my work is assigned too high a rating by search engines is the logic behind the view that if my works are being "over-rated," I then must harbor an over-rated (or inflated) view of myself. You'd think given their allegations of my "arrogance" and "narcissism" that it were not only a quantifiably certified fact, but that pride and passion were misdemeanors.
Cyberstalkers like Calton do it because they can. Because Google and Wikipedia gives them the tools. But rest assured that this is yet more evidence that Jimmy Wales's vision of democratizing knowledge is unctuous. (Motivated by some of the same spirit e-trade used to challenge a closed society of investment trade, Wales ostensibly created an open-source encyclopedia to challenge a closed society of publishers who controlled the means of knowledge production). But what we have in Wikipedia is an oligarchic power structure that, quite frequently, places subject matter experts at the mercy of motivated and less-educated boons and gangs. I spoke to Mr. Wales by phone. As of last month his cell phone number was accurately represented in the registration data for his domain. He is keenly aware of all these abuses but with tongue planted firmly in cheek claims to leave such decisions to his trusted administrators. One thing he cannot claim is that Wikipedia is too big to monitor / moderate such abuses, but his complicity with the corruption calls his mission into question. Does he really want an "organized body of knowledge"? Or does he want a glossy version of Usenet, which also masquerades under a deceptively tasteful moniker. (Are Usenet's unmoderated, unowned flame communities more worthy of being called "news groups" than Wikipedia of being called an "encyclopedia"? Usenet and Wikipedia behave like similiar animals and attract similar personalities. But for now, the public perception of Wikipedia will continue to be favorable.
Even personal information search engine executives play at being George Washington and Albert Schweitzer when they sell your unpublished telephone numbers / addresses in the name of "data democratization".
The author of this user page knows very well that it will "open" (i.e. debute) on the front page of Google results on my name. If his plan is successful, others who dislike my book or Web site will expand this user page into a full-blooded dossier.
Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels*
Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels*
Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels* Wyatt Ehrenfels*
