At 11:20 AM 9/3/2009, you wrote:
Jed spoke of this on the list. He has been falsely accused of
printing articles without the author's permission.
I'll give some detail on that. It's a little more complicated.
The basic reason for blacklisting of the site was that it was "fringe
advocacy," and the blacklisting administrator was involved with the
article, and should never have been the one to make that decision, as
the Arbitration Committee later confirmed. However, also added to
that were a series of claims, allegations that:
1. The site hosts copyright violations. "Author permission," which
Jed *always* has, isn't enough, legally, though it might protect
against lawsuits, i.e., host with author permission, you might be
asked by a publisher to take it down, and you'd be in hot water if
you didn't, but if you did, it would be very difficult to prove
willful copyright violation. However, Wikipedia policy does not
require that a linked site have no copyright violations, it only
prohibits a site that has "massive" violations, perhaps where the
purpose of the site is to bypass copyright, such that linking to it
could be considered contributory infringement. More on this below.
2. The site alters documents. This was a phony charge by JzG that Jed
had edited the 1989 DoE report. In fact, he had simply prepended an
editorial comment, which republishers of historical material often
do. He had not altered the actual body of the report, and his comment
was clearly distinguished. Wikipedia *prefers* that copies of
documents altered like that not contain possibly prejudicial
comments, but this would not, in itself, prevent a linke.
3. Jed had "linkspammed" his site. That was highly misleading, but
easily "confirmed," because Jed was always signing his IP
contributions with "Jed Rothwell, librarian, lenr-canr.org." That
wasn't linkspam because it wasn't a link, and real-world titles are
allowed in signatures. But someone looking at a diff of an edit,
which is raw wikitext, might overlook that, and apparently did,
because the evidence of linkspam presented was not noticed to be
misleading by the administrator who eventually made the decision at
the global blacklist at meta (a separate site where that list, and
other issues that affect all WikiMedia Foundation sites, are considered).
4. Even though the Arb Committee ruled that "fringe" should not be
used for blacklising, that the purpose of the blacklist wasn't to
make content decisions, where a single administrator or a small
handful of them would be making site-wide content decisions,
obviously dangerous, but only for preventing linkspam and a few other
obvious uses, like preventing links to sites hosting malware, or
other illegal content (including extensive copyright violation).
So the current situation is that, while it was originally blacklisted
at en.wikipedia, when I challenged that, JzG went to meta, where he
was well-known and trusted, and requested blacklisting there, and it
was immediately accepted. I requested delisting, and ultimately that
was denied. I've seen many such requests denied, when sites were very
useful, because there is an administrative cabal of sorts that runs
the blacklists, and they are very reluctant to undo blacklistings. I
was able to get sites whitelisted on en.wikipedia, such as
lyrikline.org, where the blacklisting was blatantly bad, but even
administrators from de.wikipedia were unable to get lyrikline.org
delisted, an obviously useful site that was never abused, the only
problem being that an enthusiastic de.wikipedia began massively
adding links, which technically is linkspam *even if the links are
legitimate.* Once it's listed, they will say that they need to keep
it listed because "maybe the spam will start up again." And they are
impervious to argument, most of the time.
There is a path for lenr-canr.org: continue to whitelist pages; so
far, I'd been successful with every one, only one exception, where
lenr-canr.org has an actual copy of an Elsevier paper, with the
Elsevier logo. The paper is by a major author (Spzak?) who gave Jed
permission, and Jed is at no legal risk because of that, and Elsevier
apparently doesn't really care, but I doubt they'd want to open the
door, and they can always change their minds and ask for the paper to
be taken down. But this, then, creates a prima facie violation of
Wikipedia link policy, but just for that paper. Everything else was
accepted, in spite of determined efforts by Cab editors to keep the links out.
Most of them remain unused however, because I was banned before
completing the task. (They are "convenience links" to peer-reviewed
papers, almost entirely). When more pages were whitelisted, I'd have
gone to meta and proven, with the links, that the site was useful,
I'd have challenged any attempt to reassert the old canards by
pointing to the article on Martin Fleischmann, where I ran an
excruciatingly careful process that established consensus that pages
from lenr-canr.org could be used, with all those spurious arguments
being challenged and rejected as false or irrelevant.
However, do not go to the whitelisting page and request whitelisting,
unless you have an established account with some history of general
edits. You are likely to be wasting your time, they get tons of
requests from spammers and they will easily think you are one. You
might even be blocked, I've seen it happen.
Jed had been telling me that Wikipedia was a waste of time, it was
useless and wouldn't change. I had to find out for myself, that's how
I work; I could see what he was saying, but also saw possibilities
for how to work beyond the current situation, and I still think that,
but it's also clear to me that the current situation is worse than I
thought. I'd seen a shift in the Arbitration Committee, and that
shift was real, but it hasn't gone far enough. The Committee majority
is still caught in the old and misguided wiki battles, still
imagining that it can find consensus -- which is the basis for
judging neutrality, the only one that works -- with bans for pushing
points of view. The truth is the opposite. That energy needs to be
harnessed and channeled into consensus process that is both thorough
and efficient. It's known how to do it, but it was Not Invented Here.
