*This is a letter sent to a few newspaper editors.* *The Letter starts here, ** * Dear Sir, Perhaps, you are aware of the fact that Jimmy Wales (aka Jimbo Wales), "the founder" of Wikipedia, is to visit Chennai on February 25. I suppose the media will watch his visit as a celebrity coming to town. I don't know if he has any appointment with the media. Some sort of interaction with the media is sure to occur. I have wondered why this second visit within months. I would like to draw your attention to certain facts.
1. Jimbo Wales who himself shamelessly claims to be the founder of Wikipedia is a blatant liar. You can see his claim to be the sole founder on his user page and other edits he made to articles like Wikipedia, Larry Sanger, Jimbo Wales etc. However, Larry Sanger who was the co-founder (in fact, the real architect of the project since Wikipedia is his brainchild) who had left the project in March 2002 recently made certain comments on the talk pages of Jimbo Wales and Wikipedia article. He pointed out the facts with relevant links to refute the false claim of Jimbo Wales. His arguments have not been countered or refuted by Wales who apparently has no defence against them. Please see relevant pages in this regard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger (Wikipedia article on Larry Sanger) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Larry_Sanger#co-founder (the talk page of the article on Larry Sanger) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimbo_Wales (Wikipedia article on Jimmy Wales) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jimmy_Wales (the talk page of the Jimbo Wales article) user page/talk page of Larry Sanger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Larry_Sanger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Larry_Sanger Jimbo Wales's recent fulmination on another user's talk page against Larry Sanger being named co-founder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Just_H/Archive_2#A_quick_comment(also read the following sections; you can see the arguments refuting Wales's claim by the user Just H on Wales's talk page) In spite of all the false claims by Jimbo Wales the question of founding was settled for good by the true founder Larry Sanger in one his rare recent edits on December 16, 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jimmy_Wales#Links_of_interest Sanger has given irrefutable evidence whereas Wales keeps on harping the same tune flying in the face of facts. 2. The fascist/Hindutva revivalist domination of Wikipedia: Most of the Indian administrators of Wikipedia are rightist Hindus. They are on Wikipedia with a mission to propound the revivalist Sangh Parivar ideology. Wikipedia still doesn't have a decent article on Arundathi Roy, Romila Thapar, etc. Vicious and venomous vituperations against them are referenced while even their real contributions are forgotten. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romila_Thapar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arundhati_Roy However, a book by Arun Shourie has this article dedicated to it, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_Historians:_Their_Technology%2C_Their_Line%2C_Their_Fraud Please look at this article also to see the edit wars going on between Pro-Hindutva campaigners and others http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afzal_Guru An admin based in Chennai belongs to this Pro-Hindutva camp. If you feel like having a bit of fun, follow contributions which in most cases are A+ stupid. Here is the party http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bhadani 3. Raw deal given to Pakistani editors: Please see, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/India-Pakistan I doubt if there are any Pakistani administrators. Indian admins (so they are called) harass and edit-war (a Wiki coinage, I suppose) with Pak editors over content and block them. Pak editors are a minuscule minority in comparison with Indian rightist admins. As a last resort they have taken recourse to the last stage of dispute resolution process in an Arbitration case, where the result is a foregone conclusion. One of the Arbcomm members with the user name Blnguyen **is of Indian origin and is always on the alert to pat his rightist compatriots and rap the dissenters. 4. Teen domination: One of the major criticisms levelled against Wikipedia is its teen domination. Although in theory it is a free encylopedia that anyone can edit, the formatting and policy aspects make it very difficult for a layman to contribute to the project. It takes months to wade through the often mutually contradictory policies and guidelines to get a preliminary understanding of its working. Teens who have the world of time to spend on Wikipedia naturally dominate in this scenario. However, most of the good articles (admittedly 80% of the whole of Wikipedia) are contributions from experts in the respective fields who are neither administrators nor partisan editors with political or religious agenda. Very often these teens are unscrupulous wannabe supermen who drive away academics or subject experts with their lame edit-wars. An excellent case in point is an Ahmedabad based teen known as Nearly Headless Nick or Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington. Here're his user page and talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nearly_Headless_Nick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sir_Nicholas_de_Mimsy-Porpington You would get an idea of the admin abuse if you follow his contributions to Wikipedia. The teen domination and their unscrupulous behaviour have frustrated many genuine contributors who left Wikipedia and discussed their frustration on various Web forums. (Please look up the websites Wikipediawatch, Wikipediareveiew etc.) I would also suggest various Wikipedia related articles on an attack site called Encyclopedia Dramatica which tells some home truths in its own fashion (Please see http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/Wikipedia for example. The morbid fear of Wikipedia admins for this site is famous. Those who refer to Wikipedia never care to look behind the scenes process. It calls for a lot of time to look through the maze and get an idea how this thing which is known to be the "the largest human collaboration" in the entire history of human beings works. In fact this is crumbling institution. I myself used to edit Wikipedia and got banned because some stupid teens found fault with my edits. And a number of editors who had nothing to do with me was banned along with me because a stupid teen admin suffered much from paranoia. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kuntan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Kuntan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Kuntan Please note that many of the frustrated users of Wikipedia are expecting the Citizendium project envisaged by Larry Sanger to take off as an alternative to Wikipedia. http://citizendium.org/ If your newspaper's representative happens to meet this big shot, it would be good if he could raise some pertinent questions. *Letter ends here (name and address part truncated). * *One of the reporters did meet Wales and had a "free-wheeling chat" with him to produce this arch-stupid piece.* http://www.hindu.com/2007/02/26/stories/2007022607290400.htm *"Bhadani, Sundar and Ganeshk have won the appreciation of Wikipedia users the Wikipedia way. They all received barn stars as photo files from other editors that they display in their user pages." Also don't fail to see the pleasure old man had from the news reports, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bhadani#Congrats * --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ greenyouth mailinglist is the activist support mailinglist for kerala run by Global Alternate Information Applications (GAIA) To post to this group, send email to greenyouth@googlegroups.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
