Arbitrary Editing Decisons in Colonial Parkway Murders Wki

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billthom56
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Arbitrary Editing Decisons in Colonial Parkway Murders Wki

Post by billthom56 » Sat Nov 10, 2018 11:21 pm

We are sorry to announce that Wikipedia has made an arbitrary decision to delete dozens of articles and interviews on the Colonial Parkway Murders page with no notice to the Colonial Parkway Murders families.

These are articles and interviews that many of us have shed considerable tears over 32 years.

Some Wikipedia editor who calls himself "Spintendo" has decided that families of 8 murder victims are somehow promoting ourselves by putting up articles about our loved ones unsolved murders.

We ask that you refrain from using Wikipedia in our case, and we will provide an alternative page in the future.


Bill Thomas,
Brother of Cathy Thomas
Colonial Parkway Murders

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Re: Arbitrary Editing Decisons in Colonial Parkway Murders W

Post by Strelnikov » Sun Nov 11, 2018 7:21 am

billthom56 wrote:We are sorry to announce that Wikipedia has made an arbitrary decision to delete dozens of articles and interviews on the Colonial Parkway Murders page with no notice to the Colonial Parkway Murders families.

These are articles and interviews that many of us have shed considerable tears over 32 years.

Some Wikipedia editor who calls himself "Spintendo" has decided that families of 8 murder victims are somehow promoting ourselves by putting up articles about our loved ones unsolved murders.

We ask that you refrain from using Wikipedia in our case, and we will provide an alternative page in the future.


Bill Thomas,
Brother of Cathy Thomas
Colonial Parkway Murders


Sorry that Spintendo is giving you grief. Wikipedia has never been a good online encyclopedia, and now that it is in its 11th year of decline, the editors play cruel games out of a Mad Max film or Lord of the Flies. My condolences.
Still "Globally Banned" on Wikipedia for the high crime of journalism.

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Re: Arbitrary Editing Decisons in Colonial Parkway Murders W

Post by CrowsNest » Sun Nov 11, 2018 5:31 pm

A classic Wikipedia edit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =866851474

A shit load of useful material removed, for dubious if not downright retarded reasons, but performed by an editor who cannot in any way be given any good faith regarding not knowing how suboptimal his edit was.

Jytdog was of course also following up to make a similarly poor edit, for an even more retarded reason....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =868092088

My condolences to the families, but it is our sad duty to report that there is no solution that would work, except to ignore Wikipedia and absolutely create and maintain your own website. Mark it with a clear and obvious copyright notice that allows anyone else to reuse the content for non-commercial purposes (and negotiate individual terms of commercial reuse yourselves). This will help you to stop Wikipedia stealing your content, while ensuring it gets distributed far and wide by anyone else who wants to use it.

Any effort you make to fix this article, will only result in frustration and further harm. It may be hard to accept all your hard work was for nothing, but that is the sick truth of Wikipedia. If anything, leaving it in a poor state, incomplete and out of date, only makes it more likely people will find your site.

The Wikipedians don't care about your case, they are not building an encyclopedia. Don't make the mistake of writing it for them. And most importantly, tell everyone you meet in the media, that this is how the site works.

Everything you wrote in your attempted discussion with Spintendo about what you have heard about Wikipedia and what you have now experienced, is sadly accurate. They dispute the way they are perceived, but they would, wouldn't they?

His arrogant approach, that he can hack the article to bits in a single edit, excising even parts he himself concedes were probably useful, and then inform you though an impersonal template that your closeness to the case means you are too stupid to edit directly, that you couldn't possibly understand the purpose of Wikipedia, so you must propose your changes to him for approval, all that is exactly what Wikipedia is all about.

They have shit for brains, every last one of them. It doesn't occur to them for second how offensive it might be to suggest your purpose was to memorialize victims or that you have been paid to make these edits. They assume these things can be waved away because it is a standard template. It can't. Nobody is making him use that temllate, he does it to save time, because his time is more precious to him, than yours is to you.

You are quite correct to assume there is a healthy overlap between your interests (keeping pressure on authorities to investigate the case) and Wikipedia's interest (host an up to date summary of the case). This is the theory of Wikipedia. It is theoretically useful. It is theoretically possible for anyone to edit it. These are sick lies.

You appear to have made the right decision already, but I will repeat, there is absolutely no chance that you might succeed in finding the right balance between your needs and Wikipedia's by doing what this dickhead suggested, or by trying to do so via any other route.

He has marked you out as a threat to Wikipedia, so ultimately everything he does from now on, will be designed to trip you up so he can get you banned.

If you try to expose or embarrass him on Wikipedia, he will only try harder to get you banned, as revenge.

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Re: Arbitrary Editing Decisons in Colonial Parkway Murders W

Post by billthom56 » Sun Nov 11, 2018 5:49 pm

Thanks so much. It is enough for the Colonial Parkway Murders families to try to buiild awareness of our case involving the murder of 8 young people and build pressure on the FBI and Virginia State Police without power trips by editors at Wikipedia.

Creating our own Colonial Parkway Murders website has been on our list for some time now in addition to media interviews, podcasts, public appearances, maintaining a social media presence, oh and working and taking care of our families; this will provide the impetus for doing it.

Many thanks for your insight.

Bill Thomas
Brother of Cathy Thomas
Colonial Parkway Murders

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Re: Arbitrary Editing Decisons in Colonial Parkway Murders W

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Nov 12, 2018 3:01 am

You're welcome. You have saved yourself a lot of time and a lot of stress. Good luck with the website.

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