Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-04-12/Sanger allegations

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• Does anyone even use Citizendium? They have pretty much the ugliest, busiest, least-user-friendly interface ever. I've looked at their main page twice and looked at one of their articles once. Even if I respect their ideals, their site pretty much sucks, IMHO. Burpelson AFB (talk) 00:47, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

• I once looked at one of their so-called "approved articles". It was written by a non-expert, had pitifully few, outdated and unreliable sources, and - though I did not immediately find any outright mistakes - was horribly superficial and banal in its writing. The corresponding WP article is a GA, and about ten times better. Lampman (talk) 18:36, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

• That is just plain wrong. Fine to do something about it ( could have instigated a discussion first though ) and report concerns of this nature to the relevant authorities... but to word the complaint in a self promotional way and then publicly announce it ... that's just twisted! Lee∴V (talk • contribs)] 01:14, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

• Having now reread Sanger's comments I'm even angrier - If there was material one felt was inappropriate and knew there was an easy and quick way to remove it, say a deletion tag ( I suppose you'd have to be experienced with wikis to know that) this would be much quicker than churning out pages of complaints and reports of complaints, and whatever you do - don't publicise the links to those images or the number of people who see them will go through the roof. Then one could complain quietly to authorities. There's a right way and there's Sanger's way.Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 01:41, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

• Sanger replied on that point - "It's WM Commons, not WP. I have no authority to delete the images, and few in authority there would agree anyway." -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:39, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

• So the excuse was 'it wasn't going to work so I didn't bother trying!' and I see no attempt on sangers behalf to clean anything up before publicising the images existence. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 14:55, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

• I saw this in the news earlier, and my first thought was how pathetic and desperate Sanger must be if the only way he can promote his Citizendium thing (which I've never been too, and now never will go to) is with such a blatantly BS accusation. The images he points out are not "porn" nor "child abuse". And is claim that he isn't doing it to promote Citizendium....right...that's why every time to say it in lovely "let me trigger parental terror" language, you immediately follow up with yep "Wikipedia has this porn stuff, but hey, not MY Citizendium"? Really too bad he could not act more mature about the split and just move on instead of being so bitter. -- AnmaFinotera (talk · contribs) 01:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

• The funny thing is, I had a similar, erm, "discussion" with Sanger earlier on Twitter. You can work backwards from here or read the discussion below (wikilinks added for context):
  lsanger: Enormous & growing amts of porn on Wikipedia...no reliable way to whitelist "safe" pages...how could K12 schools justify not banning WP?
  wikinihiltres: @lsanger "[…] porn on [Internet]… how could K12 schools justify not banning [Internet]?" Whitelists defeat the point of the Web, & can fail.
  lsanger: @wikinihiltres hey--I said enormous amt of porn on WIKIPEDIA, not "the Internet." Get it right, Einstein.
  wikinihiltres: @lsanger You miss my point. Wikipedia is like a microcosm of the Internet. It's a reductio ad absurdem. Get it right… :p
  Shortly after that point (without any further reply), Sanger blocked me on Twitter, much to my annoyance as I had been "following" him. It was interesting to see the redux on a larger scale, but I'm divided on how much of it was a play for attention (and there's certainly something there) and how much of it is genuine concern (whether or not it is misguided, I suspend judgement).
  Ultimately, sure, we shouldn't have child pornography, but there certainly isn't anything illegal on Commons, so far as I can tell. Tasteless? Perhaps. Illegal? Highly doubtful. But then taste has never been a key factor, it's about culture, history, education, all that. We're not censored, and while I do think we go a bit too far on some fronts for my tastes, I'd rather that than some sort of anti-nudity, anti-sexuality iconoclasm. Knowledge comes in all forms, and though some of that knowledge may be regarded as obscene in some contexts—for example depictions of Muhammad are considered offensive by Muslims (see previous Signpost story)—it is knowledge nonetheless and shouldn't be blocked, on principle. I do think we have a ways to go—balancing tastefulness with educational value, with non-censorship, with varying ideas of the level of obscenity involved, is no easy task and we've certainly not done as well in this regard as we might like. {{Nihiltres|talk|edits|⚡}} 01:30, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
• Sanger's antics are always hilarious. —Dark 01:58, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
• I find the comments to be too self-serving. While he may have a point (if indeed illegal images are being hosted by WP, we need to report their uploading and potentially help the authorities. WP is not an image hosting service...especially those who would exploit children), he basically stated it in the worst way possible. However, I find it interesting that the images aren't linked at all. Shouldn't we be able to see these images and judge for ourselves whether Mr. Sanger is an idiot/someone with an axe to grind or someone who has a valid concern with Wikipedia? Furthermore what is the status of User:Larry Sanger with regards to WP:LEGAL? "If you make legal threats or take legal action over a Wikipedia dispute, you may be blocked from editing so that the matter is not exacerbated through other channels. Users who make legal threats will typically be blocked from editing while legal threats are outstanding.". — BQZip01 — ^talk 02:02, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
  • Actually, there really is sort of a logical paradox in "be able to see these images and judge for ourselves". If he's right (and I'm not saying he is, just hypothesizing for the sake of discussion), then according to the law, you're now guilty of "knowingly possesses" and have to worry about defenses. Note - part of his message is he felt he had to made a report for such a possession defense, so he was indeed caught in the paradox, thus it's consistent (disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and please don't argue with me that the paradox is absurd, I didn't write the law in question) -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:52, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
  • And it isn't a legal threat, since he already filed the FBI report, and was notifying the Trustees about it. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:58, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
    • "...or take legal action" Sole Soul (talk) 12:21, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
• Lets only include sanger comment the Criticism of Wikipedia only if we mention how much he had to back peddle. I think i was more shock by the allegations than the images in question. So blown out of proportionWeaponbb7 (talk) 02:09, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
• Sanger the "co-founder"? That's a BIG stretch of the imagination. Jimmy employed him, and it was Jimmy who did the conceptual work and saw it through (not to mention put his money where his mouth was, unconditionally). Very sour grapes on show, Mr Sanger. Tony (talk) 05:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes, Sanger the "co-founder" (please read!). You've been taken by Jimbo's PR campaign to rewrite history. It was in fact Sanger who did much (though not all) of the conceptual work. Anyway, say what you will about him being right or wrong, reading through all his material should make it clear he is sincere. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 05:38, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
    • Q: Why did Larry Sanger cross the road?
    • A: Larry Sanger didn't cross the road, he had no role in road-crossing Jimmy Wales crossed the road, it was entirely his idea, Larry was just an employee. DS (talk) 12:07, 15 April 2010 (UTC) (entirely my joke, all my idea, no one else came up with it)
    • Sanger ideas were behind much of Wikipedia, but he later thought Wikipedia was a bad idea and is doomed to fail. When Wkipedia did not fail, he became so bitter about it. Sole Soul (talk) 12:30, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
      • He didn't come to the conclusion that Wikipedia was a bad idea per se -- but he's clearly bitter about his experience here. He was hired to run Nupedia (which wasn't going as well as expected), Wikipedia was an accidental development which Sanger wanted to run more as he had Nupedia, however he felt he wasn't being supported by the community, suffered WikiBurnout, & left. I suspect that had someone directly explained to him how his emphasis on credentialed expertise & how he was applying his beliefs were not beneficial to the project, he would not have left on the bad terms he had; however, since then he's only repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn't understand how Wikipedia works & became increasingly marginal to the project. This incident only proves he's failed to move on with his life & career -- hey, when all is said & done, it's only a website -- & his bitterness has soured into anger. -- llywrch (talk) 16:14, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
• I was in a radio debate with Sanger a while back and I had to resist laughing at some of the things he said. Seems little has changed. Stifle (talk) 08:44, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
• Doesn't he realize that Wikipedia disowns any rights to the images themselves? (And I love his shameless advertising: "I have founded Citizendium, a 'more responsible' website.") Tarheel95 (talk) 13:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I have been concerned to see that dominant wikipedia users (of course not all users) think they can upload any photo to the wikipedia despite the copyrights on the material and just mark it "fair use" and think they're above the law. So Sanger seems to be right on that point. Pennypennypennypenny (talk) 17:03, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Can you provide an example of this? In my experience, keeping any Fair Use image, no matter how important to the article, is an uphill struggle which has only been growing more difficult as time passes. -- llywrch (talk) 19:59, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Uphill, with the introduction of bots to the task its been a death march, for a few months I'd be doing cleanup duty on images I thought were entirely fine, but were tagged as fair use back in the day. - RoyBoy 01:56, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes Llywrch. I was thinking of pop album covers. Copyright means you have to have the copyright owner's permission. There's no fair quoting in photos. Not in U.K. law (or international copyright agreements as far as I know). I think the wikipedia's breaking the law with such cases. Pennypennypennypenny (talk) 18:29, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

• Oh, goodness. Given everything that Sanger has done for Wikipedia in the past, I don't want to say "don't feed the troll" despite that being the first thing that went through my mind when I read this, but I do have to wonder just what he is actually trying to accomplish and whether he's not just trying to "stick it to Wikipedia, come what may" at this point. Quite sad, really. 82.83.134.79 (talk) 23:17, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, roughly, I believe he is trying to get the Wikimedia Foundation to attend more to the issues he raises. On a strictly pragmatic basis, I can't really fault him. While people might say to go through channels and trust process, that path tends to lead to being ignored, or drained by endless "discussion" (read, ranting). -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 04:51, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah, perhaps that's his intention. At the same time, while I can appreciate that he might want to avoid the strife that on-wiki discussions seem to entail all too often, I'm not convinced that going to the FBI is a better approach; it's not exactly constructive, it won't lead to anything but animosity, and the FBI probably has better things to do anyway and won't be happy about being used as a tool in this conflict. All in all, if his concerns are genuine, I'd really have hoped for something more constructive, and I'm not at all convinced this would've been impossible. 82.83.134.79 (talk) 10:22, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

And what issue is that? He claimed that there was kiddy porn on the Wikimedia Commons, & when his allegations were investigated they did not prove correct: none of the images he reported to the FBI fit the definition of child pornography. Yes, going thru the usual process can be frustrating & slow, but in clear cases the community can respond with amazing speed: had Singer found an example, it could have been handled much more quickly had he alerted an Admin there who could have deleted it upon inspection. Sanger was simply trying to besmirch Wikipedia's reputation & failed. (Not that the various WMF projects are without problems -- but unknowingly hosting kiddy porn is not one of them at this time.) -- llywrch (talk) 23:41, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes, in a complicated situation, one's choices range only from bad to worse. Considering his goals for the sake of discussion, I really don't see what he could possibly do "more constructive", given the realities of how he was likely to be treated in anything he did. The extensive personal attacks on him have convinced me of that. Anything he did within the system, he would be faced with a faction that would try to acquire in-group status by accusing him of bad faith and arguing with him on the law. The only thing that works in these cases is someone with power making a decision and enforcing a policy, and he thinks that's not being done well now. Basically, again, considering the assumptions he's using about the law (i.e. I'm not endorsing it, but taking them for the sake of discussion), then combining the practical impedements, I don't see that he has any effective strategy except to "go over heads" as much as possible, putting pressure on the Wikimedia Foundation -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 03:03, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

With all due respect, that is not a constructive answer. Until this little antic, Sanger had my sympathy: he was the overlooked yet key figure of the "Wikipedia Revolution". (And I suspect anyone who has an opinion worth listening to on the matter agrees with that estimate.) However, this ill-considered act has convinced me that his criticism of Wikipedia has gone pathological, & his only interest now is to destroy it. What you have written above, Seth Finkelstein, does not convince me any other interpretation of Sanger's motives or reasoning than what I have just set forth is worth considering; & anyone trying to defend that action only makes her or him equally suspect of pathological & irrational hatred for WMF, & Wikipedia. This conversation has ended. -- llywrch (talk) 07:08, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Note - "anyone trying to defend that action only makes her or him equally suspect of pathological & irrational hatred for WMF, & Wikipedia" - you've proven my point about how Sanger had no realistic option for working-within-the-system. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 08:30, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

That's a non sequitur. If someone meets harsh criticism (or even hostility) for choosing option A, this does not "prove" that it was impossible for him to choose option B.

Are you aware of any instances where a request for administrative action which would otherwise have been uncontroversial was denied just because it came from Sanger?

Regards, HaeB (talk) 18:53, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

That's a far better response to Finkelstein than what I wrote, HaeB. It was late when I wrote the above, & because I couldn't think of responding in a constructive way to what Finkelstein wrote than some variation on "if this made more sense, I'd dismiss this as bullshit", you can see what I ended up writing. While my innate cynicism leads me to believe that the procedures used by the Wikipedia community have to fail once in a while, in the vast majority of the cases where failures are alleged to happen are reviewed by an uninvolved party it is clear that claims that the procedure have failed are simply another way of someone protesting that some offbeat opinion is being removed from articles for good reasons. The system at Wikipedia does work -- at least not worse & not less frequnetly than in the Real World (tm). -- llywrch (talk) 01:20, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

HaeB, since we are dealing with a counterfactual question, then the word "prove" must be taken to have an inductive meaning - i.e. obviously, literally, we can't know what would happen since that was a road not taken. But that's a trivial objection to the point that the reactions on display show the futility of the path. The same triviality can be worked on the clause "otherwise have been uncontroversial", by claiming any proffered evidence would have been controversial anyway. Note also the matter is not about specific administrative action, but rather, approximately, a charge that the process overall veers too close to accepting dubious, even perhaps illegal, material. I'm just going to rest my case about not working-within-the-system on "anyone trying to defend that action only makes her or him equally suspect of pathological & irrational hatred for WMF, & Wikipedia". That seems enough, in showing what happens. And if it's not enough, I can't think of what would be. -- Seth Finkelstein (talk) 02:26, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. So if A reports to the FBI that B is distributing child pornography, & this report is found to be obviously untrue, & if C then argues not only that B had to do this due to make clear certain unmentioned "issues he raises" but that anyone who finds fault with how A acted towards B condones anything B does, no matter how objectionable ... well, does anyone else see the logical fallacies here? Can one not suspect that C is acting out of passionate dislike, if not bad faith, towards B? Maybe "pathological & irrational hatred" would be an overstatement in the generalized case of C's defense of A, but in your case, Seth Finkelstein, I believe it is very accurate. And if you dislike Wikipedia & its related projects, why do you spend so much time here? Especially since Sanger's goofy accusations do not involve you personally. Until you can provide a plausible & coherent explanation for that -- get a life. -- llywrch (talk) 06:14, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Please, let's keep it civil. Seth is one of the few long-term critics we have who tries to engage consructively, and we should be able to disagree with him without making it personal.--ragesoss (talk) 11:05, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Replying to Seth's comment above... philosophical questions of whether we could hope to be able to conclusively prove what would've happened in a hypothetical "road not taken" scenario aside, the claim that if Sanger had gone through the proper channels on Commons, actual child pornography would not have been deleted despite being illegal for no other reason than that it was Sanger reporting it is difficult to believe at best. And even if it were true, or if Sanger had suspected it might turn out to be true, what would've kept him from reporting them anonymously? Alternatively, what would've kept him from eschewing on-wiki reporting in favor of turning to commons-l or directly getting in touch with the WMF (e.g. Mike Godwin)?

And since the story doesn't make it clear, I'm actually curious - DID he go through the proper (on-wiki or off-wiki) channels before? If so, what was the response? 88.70.207.69 (talk) 09:47, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Love or hate Larry Sanger, he has a potentially valid point. The mechanisms for deletion of images is poor. I came across a copyright violation but it remained for months despite discussion. Wikipedia could use a senior editor but that would go against the anyone can edit philosophy. However, teachers keep order in the classroom. It's not just a consensus among the students. Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 17:20, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

• Personally, I feel that if The Register wanted to get the whole story, they should have looked at our article on homeopathy and Citizendium's. Sanger was claiming that his own project was a lot more "responsible" than ours -- what kind of responsible project could call that an encyclopedia article, and an "approved" one at that? Yet you could probably convince most schools to allow Citizendium and block Wikipedia, or at least disallow its use in schoolwork. I also concur with most of the sentiments expressed above (i.e. "What kiddy porn? What are you talking about, Sanger?"), although I am not actually going to look at the categories in question (my parents might notice and, well, wonder). --NYKevin @079, i.e. 00:54, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

• Don't sweat it, NYKevin. I remember in the late 1970's MS magazine had an article about child pornography -- with illustrations, all of which were carefully selected & none of which were at all similar to the images Sanger is said to have objected to. (AFAIK, MS magazine suffered no backlash for the article -- which is good, since the point of the article was to show how it was harmful -- & neither did I for reading the piece.) -- llywrch (talk) 07:08, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

This is getting offtopic, but you are not the first one to wonder about CZ's article on homeopathy (one of the projects flagship "expert-approved" articles - in this case one of these experts was homeopathy advocate Dana Ullman, who has been banned at WP). Several observers have voiced concern that CZ might favor what critics would call pseudoscience or fringe science, see this short overview in my Wikimania 2009 talk about CZ, this recent Signpost discussion and the scathing criticism of Citizendium as a "crank magnet" at Rationalwiki.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 18:53, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Has anybody stopped to consider why the hell Sanger was looking at pictures of children in categories in the wiki commons anyway? Doesn't that say more about his own seedy behaviour, especially as he has seemigly mistaken child abuse as "pornography". Now why would a "scholarly" person like Sanger be spending his time looking up pictures of children.... This is a classic case of sour grapes. Citizentium is a joke anyway. Sanger is just gutted that they are a major failure, Look at their article on Cardiff. Now compare it to Cardiff. Laughable.. They have 121 approved articles, I bet most of which ours are better than... Attempting to outdo wikipedia or create this controversy is never going to work for him. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 16:53, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

And now it's made its way to Faux News. Why now, I don't know. 192.12.88.7 (talk) 23:47, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

• This charge is surprising, because the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the ban on "virtual child pornography" as a violation of freedom of speech in 2002.[1] The alternative is to go the Australian route, in which possessing photos of small-breasted women, even though they are known to be in their 20s, is now considered child pornography![2] But however silly it sounds, we should remember that censorship always has a dark side. Consider the case of Mike Diana, who in the early 1990s (before the above Supreme Court decision) was convicted of a felony charge for sketching a graphic cartoon about priests molesting little boys. All the angry rhetoric and finger-pointing at everyone up to the Pope and Cardinals today cannot make up for the ground that was lost when sincere protestors were censored when their voices needed to be heard. Wnt (talk) 08:06, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

• It appears that this Signpost is also linked to from Erik Moeller's April 28 blog post where he rebuttals Sanger and Fox's allegations relating to Wikimedia and his own history. Good for him. 174.115.134.69 (talk) 08:08, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

What truly disturbs me about that comment is that he feels compelled to defend himself against allegations that he disagreed politically with the laws against child pornography. Though he did not actually do this, it is his right to do so, and if he did it wouldn't signify anything but some deeper thinking.

Though one expects little from a country that is arming the Mexican Mafia with profits from cannabis flowers and over-the-counter cold remedies, sooner or later people should recognize that this final bastion of censorship is not actually productive - that protecting pictures doesn't mean protecting children. Instead, we continually read stories about a sickening black market, either in money or in traded photos and videos. At the very least we should permit adult survivors of child molestation to hold copyright over photos that were taken and allow them to make use of them for profit or rhetoric if they wish - thereby reducing the profit to be made from new rapes. And as a matter of common decency, there should never be prosecutions of children for manufacturing child pornography of themselves.

We have seen the boogeyman of child pornography paraded behind every effort to ban anonymity, to ban encryption, to ban channels of communication that are not tapped at will by the government, to impose so-called "filters" (automatic censorship) on public forums and national internets. And it's always just an excuse - a way to impose these things so that someone can go after something else that they disagree with. Someone has to stand up to this, and no one should condone the persecution of those that have, or might. Wnt (talk) 21:56, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

• Larry Sander's comments are needlessly inflammatory, and are intended solely to harm Wikipedia, the competitor to his failing online encyclopedia Citizendium. Along the way his attack harms the ability of pedophiles to document their world and history. Given the institutional position of Wikipedia on the web, this is an injustice. I am relieved Wales has been downvoted, but concerned now that every image on Wikipedia that may involve a child, real or imagined, will have to go through an especially stringent review. It is just one more pressure on pedophiles that excludes and limits their activity, and therefore their right to participate. It is crucial in a democracy that we work to maintain the rights of all, especially where that right is contested and unpopular. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.81.107.25 (talk) 18:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)