Wikiman (with only one head) speaks to the INQ

On 22/01/07, Paul Hales wrote:

I understand you're a press contact for Wikipedia in the UK.

That is true, yes. Please note that I do not speak in an "official" capacity, merely as a (senior) volunteer. Also note that there is a distinction, both legal and real, between the Wikimedia Foundation (which owns the servers) and the English Wikipedia community (which is currently hosted by, but is in no way an agent of, the former). Sorry if this sounds obtusely legalistic.

I'm the INQUIRER'S News Editor. You may or not be aware of the controversy surrounding the Everywhere Girl's deletion from your pages. Here's where wiki's discussion has gotten to lately http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Everywhere_girl

I'm am aware, yes; I'm a particular fan of The Inquirer, and read every story you publish. I have been highly disappointed, not only with the resultant decision, but also with the manner in which the various members of the community contributing to the discussion comported themselves.

What concerns me is that I tried to use your pages to contact whoever deleted the entry. I was particularly concerned that he alleged that we at the INQ had repeatedly tried to repost entries on wiki. Not only is this untrue, it adds to a long list of allegations certain wiki-folk have made against us, which - if anyone really believes this stuff - might seriously harm our reputation.

Indeed. I have asked for the log entry to be purged by one of our system administrators. Please note that it would be better if you didn't draw public attention to this; we'd prefer not to be utterly overwhelmed with requests for logs to be altered for reasons generally much, much less reasonable than yours.

Anyhow, in doing this I find that I was banned from the talk bit of the site. It appears to be different now and you'll see on this page

Yes, a sysop user called "Aaron Brenneman" blocked you for making what he saw as legal threats (strictly contrary to our policy, for legal and intimidation reasons).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Halesie a message from my editor Mike, which echoes my original message but seems to receive the response, blah, blah blah from the person who banned me.

Actually, that's from some anonymous vandal; I can confirm that it wasn't a sysop.

Now, frankly I've had enough. I mailed the general press enquiry address last week but received no response.*

That's odd. I can't find your query in our ticketting system database - to which address did you send it? (Just for tracking down.)

I understand something of how the wiki works and support the general notion behind it. However is seems some little revisionist book-burning Nazis take pleasure in continually libelling us in your pages, a situation we can no longer tolerate.

Absolutely.

So perhaps we can begin a dialogue.

Certainly; I hope that we can fix this. Yours,
James D. Forrester

Update
An article in the San Antonio Express-News that mentions the Everywhere Girl may have saved her wikibacon. It looks like she could get her page back after all, judging by the discussion so far here.

Will badlydrawnjeff finally end INQ would-be-nemesis Dionyseus's campaign against the INQ, the Everywhere Girl and civilisation as we know it. All will be revealed...

* A response has since been forthcoming. µ