Boring...."Wikipedia bans the Daily Mail as a source"

[Strelnikov]

From The Independent in the UK: "Wikipedia bans the Daily Mail as a source for being 'unreliable'; 'Sensationalism and flat-out fabrication' are given as reasons for the move." Link.

Quotes:

....A fiery debate on its suitability as a source ended with a consensus view that the Mail, and Mail Online, were "generally unreliable" and their use "is to be generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist".

The statement added: "The general themes of the support votes centred on the Daily Mail's reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism, and flat-out fabrication."

.....But others were strongly opposed to the move.

User The Four Deuces said: "Editors are supposed to always use judgment when choosing sources. Usually the broadsheets are better than the tabloids but there are circumstances when tabloids provide better coverage such as sports and crime. And if we exclude the Mail, there are a lot of other publications of lower quality that would still be considered reliable."

***

Anybody else getting a vibe of "fiddling while Rome burns" from this?

[Strelnikov]

And now the Daily Mail fires back in a Basil Fawlty-like rage:

The making of a Wiki-Lie: Chilling story of one twisted oddball and a handful of anonymous activists who appointed themselves as censors to promote their own warped agenda on a website that's a byword for inaccuracy

Wikipedia’s editors decided that the Mail’s journalism cannot be trusted

The ban was supported by just 0.00018 per cent of site’s ‘administrators’

The Mail is the only major news outlet on the face of the Earth to be so censored

Ban sets a dangerous precedent, raising troubling questions about free speech


Michael Cockram is a ginger-haired 35-year-old from Bournemouth who, like many men his age, offers a window into his soul via Facebook.

Here, you will learn that he’s ‘single’, is a fan of graffiti and folk music, and has worked variously as an ‘artist’ and ‘education management professional’.

Cockram boasts 153 online friends, and claims to live in Angoisse, a village in the Dordogne in south-western France. He also appears to take great pleasure in regularly circulating obscene images and racist sentiments via the social network.

His Facebook page includes an image of two gay men performing a sex act in public, a photograph of a naked, dark-haired man having oral sex with himself, and a painting that depicts bestiality between a man and a sheep.

Three years ago, Cockram wrote on his timeline that ‘all Muslim men admitted to Paradise will have an ever-erect penis and they will each marry 70 wives, all with appetising vaginas’.

Around the same time, he declared: ‘If you gently lick the outside of a Kinder Egg, you can slowly recreate the changing skin tones of Michael Jackson.’

It’s lubricious, utterly unedifying stuff. Indeed, a casual observer could be forgiven for pigeon-holing Cockram as a bigoted oddball who spends rather too much of his life in darker corners of the internet.

Yet in the modern world, bigoted oddballs who are over-familiar with the internet can wield tremendous power — and this potty-mouthed man is a case in point. For when he’s not posting obscene images or racist sentiments, Cockram is a regular editor of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, where (according to multiple posts on his Facebook feed) he operates under the alias ‘Hillbillyholiday’.

Last month, ‘Hillbillyholiday’ was the architect of a cynical PR stunt which saw this newspaper publicly smeared by damning its journalism ‘unreliable’.

He and 52 like-minded anti-Press zealots, almost all of whom remain anonymous, collaborated in a vote which persuaded Wikipedia, the sixth most popular website in the world, that it ought to ban the Daily Mail.

The move by the online encyclopedia — which was founded in 2001 and has in a few short years become a hugely influential source of information — was revealed in the pages of the Left-wing Guardian newspaper.

It reported that Wikipedia’s editors had decided, in a democratic ballot, that the Mail’s journalism cannot be trusted.

No statistics were offered in support of this claim, which, incidentally, came days before the Mail won Sports Newspaper Of The Year for an unprecedented fourth straight time, and was shortlisted for 15 awards at the British Press Awards, the news industry’s Oscars. (Indeed, as we shall see, the Mail has an enviable record on accuracy.)

Neither did Wikipedia, nor The Guardian, bother to shed much light on how this decision was reached.

If they had, then it would have become apparent to readers that this supposed exercise in democracy took place in virtual secrecy, and that Wikipedia’s decision to censor the Mail — the only major news outlet on the face of the Earth to be so censored — was supported by a mere 53 of its editors, or 0.00018 per cent of the site’s 30 million total, plus five ‘administrators’.

Curiously, though it has now placed a ban on this paper, the website remains happy to use the state propaganda outlets of many of the world’s most repressive and autocratic Left-wing dictatorships as a source for information.

Wikipedia has not, for example, banned the Chinese government’s Xinhua news agency, Iran’s Press TV or the Kremlin mouthpiece Russia Today.

(And it goes on from there....)


Bonus: Article features that goofy photo of Jimbo in his red Chinese jacket!

[ericbarbour]

This is how Ed Buckner and I ultimately summarized it for the book notes.

January 2017: Wikipedia editors voted to ban the Daily Mail as a source for the website in all but exceptional circumstances after deeming the news group “generally unreliable”. The absurdity was started by Hillbillyholiday, and helped along by Guy Chapman, Travis Mason-Bushman, Guy Macon (who repeatedly screamed "Kill it with fire"), and a few others. It was NOT a well-attended discussion. SlimVirgin, Andy Dingley and Michael Neylon tried to counsel a more balanced approach but were ultimately ignored. There was some talk of a "reference revert list", and an editor who appears to be an actual scientist (DrChrissy) pointed out that this list did not exist.

Didn't mention Collect fighting with his long-term enemies about it; decided that was "business as usual" and of little importance. Lol.

Prior to this bullshit, English Wikipedia linked to the DM thousands of times. I checked the external links search today; it now links to the DM (without the "www") 13 times, and 52,578 times with the "www". Someone has been "busy", I guess.

Posted today on AN/I:

The Daily Mail has finally responded to the recent RFC that editors determined that the paper was generally not to be used for sourcing on WP.

I would link it, however, it outs the real-life identity of the RFC initiator, User:Hillbillyholiday (who since has retired), and mentions both User:Slatersteven and User:Guy Macon. However for sake of those looking for it, it was posted online on March 3 and written by Guy Adams.

It is very much an attack piece on Wikipedia, plus gets a number of facts wrong (claimed that we have 30 million "administrators" so that the 57 support !votes in the RFC represent a tiny tiny fraction of administrators). I don't know if this will cause any problems here (it doesn't quite invite people to maliciously edit WP in revenge, but there's an undertone of disrupting the establishment here). --MASEM (t) 13:47, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it appears that the "brony" admin wants to mock the Daily Mail. Triple lol.

Allow me to "out" you, Masem. Suck it, Masem.
https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Masem

[ericbarbour]

Lol

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2017/03/that-v ... ally-fake/

The DM makes it up AND OTHER OUTLETS REPEAT IT. That is the problem--not that the DM is fast and loose.
Wikipedia is no better than its sources--and "good" sources are more difficult to find than Wikipedians seem to realize.

[Mutineer]

As above, The Mail really went at this "Hillbillyholiday" person: "Michael Cockram is a ginger-haired 35-year-old from Bournemouth who, like many men his age, offers a window into his soul via Facebook. Here, you will learn that he’s ‘single’, is a fan of graffiti and folk music, and has worked variously as an ‘artist’ and ‘education management professional’. Cockram boasts 153 online friends, and claims to live in Angoisse, a village in the Dordogne in south-western France. He also appears to take great pleasure in regularly circulating obscene images and racist sentiments via the social network. His Facebook page includes an image of two gay men performing a sex act in public, a photograph of a naked, dark-haired man having oral sex with himself, and a painting that depicts bestiality between a man and a sheep."

Hillbillyholiday denied he was Cockram (well, he said "wrong, natch" and linked to this picture http://oi64.tinypic.com/k220s3.jpg and then signed as "Twisted oddball"). That was 25 days ago. He says he's retired from Wikipedia, so that may be his last edit.

He said The Mail sent a reporter to ask questions of his mother: http://archive.is/ACtpw. "Dacre can't find me, so sends his goons after my mother. For what? Intimidation, pure and simple. We have different surnames and I haven't lived with her for twenty-plus years. She doesn't even read the papers. Hey Paul, you truly are one classless piece of shit."

Lot of drama. Personally, I like The Mail. It's easy enough to see what you're getting. You just have to read it critically. A lot of times the reporting is very good. Its blacklisting by Hillbillyholiday and the administrative coterie that showed up is not particularly warranted in my view.