French novelist loves the WP so much

[ericbarbour]

I missed this last month.

https://archive.ph/9kgiz

It mentions a 2015 self-serving (the only kind they run) blog post by French author Antoine Bello. He gave them $50,000, all the first year profits from his popular book Les Éclaireurs, to the WMF. His tirade sounds like a political mash note.

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2015/09/25/n ... wikipedia/

Diff has been running since 2020, "officially". There was a previous "Wikimedia Blog" that ran from 2014 to 2018 and appears to have been merged into Diff. I can't find any listing for its archives. So finding older posts will be difficult, unless you have a search term. It is dead typical for Wikimedia "side projects"; it's for cult members ONLY and submitting an item to it requires a Wikimedia global account in "good standing". Meaning cult members only.

It did mention something I missed completely at the time, the "WikiCredCon" meeting in February. Assembled to counter problems with "credibility in the Wikimedia ecosystem". A three-day mutual suck-job between WMF employees, the deepest of insider volunteers, and the Internet Archive. Catered by a variety of local fooderies (of course it's in San Francisco and of course they had metric tonnes of food).

They had Craig Newmark of Craigslist along for the "ride". One of the worst liars and self-promoters in Web history. The Craigslist article is still being purged of "embarrassing information". Including numerous instances of human trafficking, murders, and scams involving CL as a conduit. Any such things are either removed completely, or shoved into the "In popular media" section at the end. Newmark loves to sue people who start similar for-sale websites, and that is also lightly skipped around.

It's probably a good thing that the cult nerds care about misinformation, "link rot", and vandalism on their projects. But there's so damn MUCH of it. A three-day meeting with 50-to-100-ish people (I'm guessing) won't even BEGIN to cover it. This was not a "meeting"; it was a "meetup". They were there to socialize and suck up to each other. Admit it.

If they REALLY gave a fuck about "threats" to their little operation, or "issues with credibility", they would invite ME to disgorge my megabytes of notes on Wikipedia history. Including very uncomplimentary articles about attendees like James Hare and Jake Orlowitz. But THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. I might violate their "Friendly Space Policy", oh the horror.