APPEAL to the AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT
Wikipeedonya; this poor American excuse for an Encyclopaedia Britannica has no real role in our society with respect to living persons.
It merely provides the disgruntled with an anonymous on-line outlet for their spleen against individuals.
Fact is not required. Primary sources are not used nor referenced. Instead newspaper and magazine gossip is the order of the day. Accuracy is not checked, let alone confirmed. If they can find it on a web-site somewhere, anywhere, then it will be used, most particularly defamatory gossip. The more sensationalistic the better. Contrary articles are repressed as �fakes� by the wikipeedonya editors. Legitimate corrections by the subject of their spleen are all removed as soon as they are posted because the wikipeedonya editors won�t accept �self-interest� articles no matter how accurate or important.
In dealing with these people one gets the impression of dealing with a team of four, five or six editors all hell bent on the destruction of their current target. One gets the impression that they are not �volunteers� but are being �paid� to do their current hatchet job. One observes them in action, one sees their modus operandi, one gets to anticipate their responses, but one never gets to change a single word.
One makes a comment. Their first response is for one of their team to ascertain who you are and to advise the others as to whether you�ve made previous comments. Then at least two of them will attack your comment as being irrelevant, worthless, incorrect, fake, or other. They use sarcasm a lot. They use wikipeedonya jargon a lot and require you to abide by it but do not do so themselves. It is clear that outside contributions are not wanted. If you manage to make a legitimate comment another of their team pops up with �I spotted that earlier�. Time progresses, tempers fray. Then they really gang up on you. They give you warnings about your conduct, and they threaten you with disbarment. Then an �administrator� steps in and removes your editing and commenting rights for a three month period; presumably to give the editor team a rest. None of the editing team gets banned, only you. You don�t actually have to do anything except be argumentative; they can�t stand that. Then another member of the team engages an outside I.T. company to search for and ascertain your I.P. address; why? Then you are placed on a list of their undesirables. Its all good fun and perfectly predictable when you know what�s happening but it can be frightening for the uninitiated.
And you never get to change a single word.
We submit to the Australian Government that wikipeedonya is out of control and deliberately doing hatchet jobs on many of our most distinguished living Australians. They deliberately set out to use sensationalistic articles before truth and will not correct their entries merely on account of �truth�.
We submit to the Australian Government that regulation is required.
We submit that:
(1) There must be accountability.
(2) Newspaper and magazine articles are insufficiently accurate to be used for such biographical purposes about living people.
(3) Primary sources must be adhered to � such as official records, tribunals, courts, etc.
(4) Wikipeedonya�s requirement that articles must be on-line somewhere is unfair, particularly when dealing with persons who made their name before the 1980�s.
(5) Only sensationalistic articles are reproduced on the internet anyway, and are so reproduced by persons with usually reprehensible purposes. It is insufficient cause for wikipeedonya to include an article simply because it appears somewhere on the internet.
(6) The subject of the biography must be given editing rights.
(7) The subject of the biography must be given the right to demand the removal of the biography about him/her from the internet, and the biography must be removed from the internet when so demanded.
(8) When an article is in dispute the entire biography must be removed until the dispute is settled to the satisfaction of the subject of the biography.
(9) Costs must be granted to the subject of an offending biography where (5) and (6) above have not been adhered to.
(10) Internet filters must be enabled to prevent defamatory articles and biographies about living Australian citizens being accessed from Australia. [What comes first � the right of the individual to be protected against false information, or the right of the masses to view false information to the detriment of the individual].
(11) Statutory fines be enacted which may be used against both wikipeedonya and their editors for the inclusion of factually incorrect information.
(12) The onus of proof of fact must be placed upon both wikipeedonya and the specific editor who included the information.
(13) An editor who includes incorrect information must be banned from further editing of the subject biography.
(14) Penalties must be tripled for editors who come back and re-offend under another name.
(15) It is not sufficient defence for an offending editor to plead ignorance or to put false information in the form of a question.
(16) An editor may safely include information provided, or agreed to, by the subject of the biography.
(17) An editor shall not without good cause suppress or delete information provided by the subject of the biography. |
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