Justin Berry, Jimbo Wales, and Wikipedia

[Eric Cordian]

A few weeks ago, a NY Times reporter named Kurt Eichenwald wrote a series 
of articles on a 19 year old young man named Justin Berry, who made 
hundreds of thousands of dollars starting at age 13 performing sexually in 
front of his webcam, and subsequently ran a number of pay teen sites with 
sexual content.

There used to be a fairly lengthy article about Mr. Berry on Wikipedia, 
but it was summarily deleted, along with its entire revision history, by 
Wikipedia's owner, Jimbo Wales, and it is represented that Mr. Berry 
called Mr. Wales and expressed displeasure at his portrayal.

Since that time, the article has been reduced to a 2-sentence stub, and 
all attempts to add any additional information to it, no matter how well 
sourced, have resulted in the additions being reverted, usually 
accompanied by various incomprehensible mutterings by Wikipedia admins, 
who, when asked specific direct questions about what was wrong with the 
original article, or why specific information can't be added to the 
current one, become non-responsive and stonewalled.

To the best of my knowlege, no one has successfully added any information 
to the article since Jimbo deleted it, and discussion amongst admins about 
the article is taking place out of band, and not on any of the Wikipedia 
pages where such discussion usually takes place.

Now of course, Wikipedia is a private organization, which can do anything 
it wants on servers that it owns.  Nonetheless, the actions which are 
taking place are in direct contravention of stated Wikipedia policy, and 
there seems to be a deliberate attempt to not be forthcoming with any 
information on the subject.

Everyone who has pressed the issue has gotten banned for various contrived 
excuses like "uncivility" and "trollishness", and even comments about the 
situation on peoples private talk pages have been edited by admins.

While Wikipedia is a private organization, they are attempting to create a 
reputation for themselves as an unbiased source of truthful information.  
Clearly they have a choice of being truthful and being respected, or of 
censoring, violating their own policies, and not being taken seriously.

When things like this happen, our respect for them, and our view of them 
as an authoritative source of information, need to be adjusted 
accordingly.

I found an interesting quote by Jimbo Wales about Wikipedia and the truth.

"If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) 
minority, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia (except perhaps in some ancillary 
article) regardless of whether it's true or not; and regardless of whether 
you can prove it or not."

Wikipedia, in the propaganda it writes about itself, represents itself as 
not censoring even offensive material, and arriving at article content 
entirely through consensus.  The reality, at least in this case, seems to 
be a lot different than the officially stated policy.

I invite Jimbo Wales or someone else who can speak for the Wikimedia 
Foundation, to respond to this post, and give us all a straight answer 
about exactly what is going on with this particular article.

If nothing can be added to Justin Berry's article because Justin or his 
handlers would be displeased by it, do we apply the same standards to 
George Bush's article, or Scott Peterson's?

One wonders why a teenage male sex performer merits such personal 
attention from Wikipedia's owner, allegedly a wealthy married 
heterosexual.

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"