Wikipedia’s powerful editors: our history is being written by Anon
Circulating the Wikipedia community is a blog post about an editor and administrator who allegedly spent an immense amount of time on Wikipedia manipulating the system to promote their biases.
The author of the blog argues that over a twenty-year period, the accused editor relentlessly used the reliable sources policy on Wikipedia to deprecate sources they didn’t like and prop up the ones they did like.
This editor would then, it is alleged, use these sources to defame people.
In one such case, the editor is said to have fed information to a news outlet that published content drawn from Wikipedia articles in what is known as conflict-of-interest editing. The Wikipedia editor was subsequently reprimanded for doing so.
The takeaway message is summed up by another Wikipedia editor:
‘…that anyone who edits a lot and has opinions is going to inevitably end up pushing those opinions one way or another. This is probably a bad thing but cannot really be fixed: the most we can do is take care of the more egregious episodes.’
As much as I want to agree with the above sentiment, it becomes harder and harder to trust the Wikipedia community to take care of its internal problems.
Wikipedia has its own page titled, Why Wikipedia is not so Great, which highlights its lack of transparency, restrictions on freedom of speech, increasingly complicated rules with a hierarchy of privileged users who enforce them, and a culture of conflict rather than cooperation which pushes new editors to basically not want to edit.
To an outsider, Wikipedia editing is riddled with laborious wiki jargon. People do not want to read through essays of talk pages on why one sentence is better than the other. For example, take the newly created page Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump and a talk page section below. The section is some 700 words all about how many times Trump’s ‘raised fist’ is mentioned in the article.
That is just one section of one article. There are now over fifteen sections on this page and growing fast. To an editor in the depths of Wikipedia, these wiki talk pages are the everything of the internet. They are the result of an editor’s immense dedication of time, specific interests, and relentless debate. This is what determines what millions of people read every day on the site. For a Wikipedia editor, they know what it means to have their edit stick.
This takes me back to a Wikipediaocracy post on why people contribute to Wikipedia.
If you have never heard of Wikipediaocracy, it’s a forum for editors and administrators to talk about Wikipedia – the tag line: Because you can’t talk about Wikipedia’s flaws on Wikipedia. Actually, you can, at the Village pump, The Signpost, Administrators noticeboard, Reliable sources noticeboard, and the multiple talk pages on articles themselves. And if you don’t want to discuss it on any one of the numerous Wikipedia pages, there’s always the r/wikipedia subreddit – one of the largest on reddit.
But I digress.
Considering Wikipedia’s ‘Google footprint’, Wikipedia is a significant platform to influence public opinion that has a strong anonymous username policy. Editors are not required to list their real name, email address, personal identity, or any unique identifier to connect an editor to someone outside of Wikipedia.
Other than an IP address, which only administrators known as ‘checkusers’ can see, there is no way of knowing who sits behind the computer editing the internet’s most read encyclopedia unless the editor discloses it as such (which some do).
An old reddit thread entitled Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People argues how most internet users are passive – scrolling pages, clicking randomly, and never contributing – whilst those creating the content range from 1-3 per cent of internet communities.
Some Wikipedia editors spend up to 16 hours per day creating hundreds of edits. It has been pointed out that this is an ‘insane’ amount of time to devote, especially when compared to the general population of editors. This figure alone raises important questions about the quality of the content, its biases, and distortions.
Back to the editor accused of being one of these Wiki power users… Do I think that some of the claims are fabricated or false? Probably not. Do I think the editor in question is a super bad guy? Likely they are not any worse or any better than any other editor. Do I think that Wikipedia is a politically driven encyclopedia with no hope for improvement? Of course not.
The point is that no matter how robust the rules of Wikipedia’s neutral point of view and good-natured ethos of volunteer editing, it is only as a good or as bad as its community.
This is perhaps why more people should edit Wikipedia, contribute hours, learn the rules (even though they rarely matter), and put in effort to improve the encyclopedia.
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JK Rowling hails ‘humane’ ban on puberty blockers
JK Rowling has described as “humane” and “considered” the new British Labour government’s decision to ban the private prescription of puberty blockers for under-18s.
The Harry Potter author said “the times they are a-changin’” after Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said that the government would make permanent an emergency stop on the prescription of the drugs.
Mr Streeting said he was “treading cautiously” and putting children’s safety first in his decision but has faced a backlash from left-wing MPs and LGBT+ Labour.
Victoria Atkins, Mr Streeting’s predecessor in the Conservative government, used powers in the Medicines Act 1968 to stop private or European organisations from prescribing puberty blockers to people under 18, if the drugs were intended to help with gender incongruence or gender-affirming healthcare.
The National Health Service had already stopped prescribing the medication, which suppresses young people’s natural production of sex hormones to delay puberty, to children because “there is not enough evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness”, according to the health service.
Mr Streeting said he supported an NHS trial to find out what effects puberty blockers had, and said: “The evidence should have been established before they were ever prescribed.”
He said: “Children’s healthcare must always be led by evidence.”
Labour is preparing to introduce legislation which would ban so-called conversion therapy, including for transgender people.
This has raised concerns about the potential of teachers and parents being criminalised if they do not affirm a child’s gender, however the party is convinced it can protect professionals with exemptions.
Rowling, an outspoken campaigner on women’s rights and single-sex spaces, has been critical of Labour’s position on gender issues, accusing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during the election campaign of having “abandoned” her and other women.
But she said on Monday that Mr Streeting’s position came as a “relief”.
Sharing a thread on X where the Health Secretary had set out his position, Rowling said: “It is a mark of how febrile and often vicious the discourse around child transition has become that this humane, considered thread from @wesstreeting comes as such a relief.”
She added that Mr Streeting was “doing the right, rather than the easy thing”.
Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, said she agreed with Mr Streeting and added: “I’ve read the Cass review, and in it, it’s very clear that there are serious concerns about the long term impact of puberty blockers on young people. We don’t know enough about the long-term impact on physical health, on mental health.”
(Chair of the Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people, paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, reported serious concerns about the long-term impact of puberty blockers on young people.)
Ms Nandy told TalkTV she wanted “far more light, far less heat” in what she called a “very polarised and toxic debate”.
Rowling once said that Ms Nandy was “one of the biggest reasons many women on the left no longer trust Labour to defend their rights”, but sharing her interview on Monday said: “The times they are a-changin’.”
However, activists have said Labour’s position would put transgender young people’s lives at risk.
Jolyon Maugham, the founder and director of Good Law Project, which is supporting campaign group TransActual and a young person who cannot be named with a High Court challenge to the original ban, said the measures would “kill trans children”.
Mr Streeting unfollowed Mr Maugham on Twitter/X after he had posted 25 questions that he said the Health Secretary needed to answer, suggesting if he did not do so “the trans community and its allies will reasonably conclude they are regarded by Labour with contempt”.
Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, said: “A blanket ban is wrong and not what Cass recommended. Careful, clinical provision is the way forward, not this politicisation.”
Apsana Begum, the MP for Poplar and Limehouse, said puberty blockers were “a life-saving measure”, and Nadia Whittome, the Nottingham East MP said she would fight the ban.
Zarah Sultana, another backbencher, said she supported ending the ban and Stella Creasy said the Cass review “recommended caution, not exclusion”.
Mr Streeting said: “The Cass review found there is not enough evidence about the long-term impact of puberty blockers for gender incongruence to know whether they are safe or not, nor which children might benefit from them.
“The evidence should have been established before they were ever prescribed. The NHS took the decision to stop the routine use of puberty blockers for gender incongruence/dysphoria in children.
“They are establishing a clinical trial with the National Institute for Health and Care Research to ensure the effects of puberty blockers can be safely monitored and provide the evidence we need.”
Mr Streeting said clinicians can prescribe blockers to children who begin puberty too early because this has been “extensively tested”, and added: “This is different to stopping the normal surge of hormones that occur in puberty. This affects children’s psychological and brain development.
“We don’t yet know the risks of stopping pubertal hormones at this critical life stage. That is the basis upon which I am making decisions. I am treading cautiously in this area because the safety of children must come first.”
Following his posts on social media, LGBT+ Labour published a letter to Mr Streeting, signed by the organisation’s trans officer Dylan Naylor, and Willow Parker, the trans officer for the party’s student wing.
They wrote: “In line with the review’s recommendations, steps must be taken to cut waiting lists for trans youth, address long-term staffing issues, move towards a decentralised, equitable system for accessing care (including through the provision of regional centres), provide comprehensive training for NHS staff on how best to support and work sensitively with trans and questioning young people, and better address the current toxicity of public debate which is actively harmful to young people.”
The authors called on the minister to “urgently set out the timeline, scope and nature” of a clinical trial and added: “We hope that under this new Labour government progress can be made to reset the public discussion on trans rights, centring on the humanity of, and compassion for, each individual trans person.”
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The Artemis Accords and China
China’s recent moon landing, and its return with lunar rocks, is the first since the 1960s, when America and Russia competed in the space race. After planting the American flag on the moon, and returning five times, they lost interest.
After a gap of 50 years, landing on the moon is still a spectacular feat for a supposedly ‘developing’ nation, but one which, inevitably, has a potential threat attached. Japan and India have also joined the moon-landing club. It seems the industrialisation of space is the next frontier. In 2020, NASA developed, the Artemis Accords, hoping to promote peaceful cooperation in space.
On planet Earth, China has demonstrated its ruthless expansionism, starting with its takeover of Tibet which the communist party reclaimed as part of the country. Tibet had been independent for a hundred years, but was taken over in 1949. The invasion, by Chairman Mao’s PLA in 1950, resulted in the loss of thousands of lives, with no meaningful response from the United Nations. Subsequent importation of Chinese citizens and restriction of the local language and customs have resulted in its forced integration into Greater China. This expansion has led to further activity along the disputed Tibet border with India. Small-scale wars took place in 1962 and 1967 and further skirmishes in 2021-22.
Future Chinese intentions were revealed following the UK’s hand-back of Hong Kong in 1997. Despite its promise to maintain the HK government under the ‘one country, two systems’ until the agreed 2047 under Treaty, democratic institutions have rapidly been removed and authoritarian law instituted.
Meanwhile, the threat to Taiwan increases by the day. Now a thriving, independent democracy, the island’s history is of brief Chinese possession before being ceded to the Japanese in 1895. Its re-involvement with China occurred only in 1949, with the KMT forces escaping the communists and fleeing there. The mainland’s claim for re-possession is becoming increasingly menacing, as its military rapidly increases in size. It freely admits that, as in Hong Kong, it will use force if necessary and will no longer accept democracy. Again, the UN fails to comment.
Aggression has occurred, not only on land, but at sea. China’s claim to the historical ownership of the South China Sea, the route of 20 per cent of the world’s trade, as well as fishing and oil and gas resources, has been rejected by the UN Convention on The Laws of the Sea; the disputed area also involves Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Despite rejection of its claim, China, which now has the largest navy in the world, has built military bases on coral islands in the sea and has attacked other nations’ vessels. Again, the world authority fails to respond to these actions.
Still on planet Earth, the next unauthorised activity is taking place in Antarctica. China has opened a fifth ‘research station’ on Australia’s doorstep which has significant strategic and surveillance implications. A dual-purpose satellite tracking system has already established. These bases provide access to the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.
The Antarctic Treaty, originally signed by only 12 countries, is now recognised by 57 countries, including China. It prohibits militarisation inside the Antarctica area, but Chinese military personnel have already been involved. Increased Chinese fishing activity is threatening stocks of krill. China already has a history of over-fishing. A plan by Chile and Argentina, in partnership with the 27-member Commission for Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, was proposed to establish marine conservation areas. This has been boycotted by China and Russia. Mining may be next.
There is also an undersea mining rush is on, with 168 countries signing up to a treaty dividing up the seabed for mineral resources exploration, again under The Law of the Sea Convention, with China planning to dominate. China already has a stranglehold on mineral exploitation and this move could increase its dominance. America has not signed up to the plan, believing deep sea mining is not an economically viable option.
At the other extreme, the Outer Space Treaty was first established in 1967, under the auspices of the UN, spurred on by the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and orbiting satellites, in the 1950s. It had been preceded, in 1963, by the UN prohibition of weapons of mass destruction in outer space. The ban prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons and installation of military bases in space or on the moon. It does not extend to conventional weapons or newer technology. Russia and China are signatories.
In 1979, the Moon Treaty was an attempt to formulate rules for space exploration but it was never formally ratified. The debate became heated with Ronald Regan’s Strategic Defence Initiative, the Star Wars program, planning to destroy missiles from space. The technology was not ready at the time, but laser and other researches continued and the option re-emerged in 2019. As technology improves, what was once referred to as Star Wars may become a reality.
The latest stage, the Artemis Accords, are a series of non-binding agreements, initiated by NASA in 2020. As of June 2024, they had been signed by 43 countries, not including Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea. Their purpose relates to plans to put a man back on the moon, send a man to Mars, and more significantly, the agreement covers mining and commercial activity. There are four stages of the Artemis plan. In 2022, an unmanned lunar flight took place. Stage 2 is a manned launch in 2025. Stage 3 a return of humans to the moon, although there is no clear date for this. Stage 4 is the establishment of a lunar base. NASA is faltering with its own plans. Four astronauts have completed a year in isolation to simulate life on Mars, but there is no date set for Mars or the Moon.
Russia has finally admitted that the US reached the moon in 1969. Russia’s unmanned flight was a failure, crashing on the moon in 2023. Russia also has plans for a similar moon base to be started around 2031. China plans to be on the moon by 2030. India was the fourth country to reach the moon in 2023. Japan came in fifth in 2024. The race is on once more. The International Space Station, in use since 1998, is in its final years and will be gone by 2030, replaced by a private international venture. In 2021, China started building its own Tiangong station, with subsequent launches to extend its operation and completion by 2027. It is not open to any international involvement in contrast to the joint mission of the International Space Station.
In Greek mythology, Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, connected with nature and fertility, her name has been connected to several plants; Artemesia annua, Chinese wormwood, is traditionally used to treat malaria and several modern medicines have been developed from it, Artemesia absinthium, Common wormwood, is used to make the green liqueur absinth.
The Accord is named after Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo, the god of the sun, already popularised by the early lunar launches of the 1960s. With increasing political correctness, a female is now reaching for the stars. Will she prevent Chinese intimidation, which has progressively increased from local, to regional, to international levels? The potential militarisation of space could move conflict to an interplanetary level.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/the-artemis-accords-and-china/
****************************************************Biden DOJ Aims to Salvage Jan. 6 Charges After Major Blow at Supreme Court
The Department of Justice is taking steps to preserve charges against Jan. 6 defendants after the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to its efforts.
After the Supreme Court issued a ruling June 28 limiting the scope of an obstruction statute used to charge hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the DOJ would “continue to use all available tools to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy.”
Since then, the DOJ has taken first steps to salvage its charges, including asking judges for additional time to evaluate the impact of the ruling while stressing that the Supreme Court did not entirely reject its use of the statute.
The statute, Section 1512(c)(2), holds up to 20 years in prison for anyone who “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding.” However, the Supreme Court held in Fischer v. United States that to charge an individual under the law, “the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or as we earlier explained, other things used in the proceeding, or attempted to do so.”
More than 355 Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with “corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding,” according to the DOJ.
“The DOJ is not happy about the Fischer decision and is currently strategizing ways to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling,” criminal defense attorney David W. Fischer wrote Wednesday for the blog “Declassified With Julie Kelly.”
For example, in certain cases the DOJ may attempt to recharge using corrected charging language in indictments, which will claim that particular defendants targeted the ceremonial ballot box or other documents used by Congress during the January 6 certification. Creative charging language, however, doesn’t change the evidence, which is quite strong that none of the J6ers were targeting evidence.
In a number of cases, the DOJ is now asking for additional time to evaluate how the ruling will apply.
“The Supreme Court remanded Fischer to the D.C. Circuit for further proceedings and to assess the sufficiency of the indictment on that count,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves wrote Thursday in defendant Taylor Franklin Taranto’s case. “Based on the Supreme Court’s opinion and the forthcoming proceedings in the D.C. Circuit, the government anticipates that it will need additional time to evaluate its prosecution of charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2).”
Graves’ office wrote Tuesday in defendant Tara Stottlemyer’s case that her conduct “may very well meet the changed standard” for the statute, noting that the “government is still evaluating Fischer’s impact on this and other January 6 cases.”
Prosecutors cited Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s concurring opinion, which noted that “it might well be that Fischer’s conduct, as alleged here, involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding.”
“If so, then Fischer’s prosecution under §1512(c)(2) can, and should, proceed,” Jackson wrote.
Jackson joined the majority in the case to limit the statute’s scope, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the dissent, which was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Criminal defense attorney William Shipley, who represents Stottlemyer, wrote on X that the DOJ’s efforts to delay are “very frustrating for Tara and other J6 defendants who rightfully see Fischer as a victory that is now being withheld from them by procedural games.”
However, some defendants have already seen relief. Judges granted several defendants, including Kevin Seefried, Alexander Sheppard and Thomas B. Adams Jr., early release before the Supreme Court even issued its ruling.
The DOJ stated Wednesday in a filing it would not yet request Adams’ return to custody.
A federal judge also granted defendant Jorge Riley release on Friday pending the resolution of his motion to vacate his sentence. The DOJ did not oppose Riley’s request, though it declined to concede he had a “meritorious claim” under the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“In short, the United States’ decision to not oppose Riley’s motion for release should in no way be understood as a waiver or concession regarding the merits of Riley’s Section 2255 claims, collateral attacks based on Fischer generally, or any other January 6 case that may (or may not) be impacted by Fischer,” Graves wrote Thursday.
Likewise, the DOJ did not oppose defendant Katharine Morrison’s motion to terminate her special condition of home detention on Wednesday, but emphasized it should not be “construed as a concession” that she has a claim under Fischer.
Prosecutors requested dismissal of the obstruction count Friday in defendant Mark Sahady’s case to enable the trial to proceed in August on other counts and to “promote judicial economy and efficiency.”
“The vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision,” Garland noted in his statement after the Supreme Court’s ruling. “There are no cases in which the Department charged a January 6 defendant only with the offense at issue in Fischer.”
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All my main blogs below:
http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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