Call For Halt To Wikipedia Webcomic Deletions
Posted by kdawson on Wednesday October 31, @05:16AM
from the deletionism-rampant dept.

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes “Howard Tayler, the webcomic artist of Schlock Mercenary fame, is calling on people not to donate money during the latest Wikimedia Foundation fund-raiser. This is to protest the ‘notability purges’ taking place throughout Wikipedia, where articles are being removed en-masse by what many see as overzealous admins. The webcomic community in particular has long felt slighted by the application of Wikipedia’s contentious Notability policy. Wikinews reporters have recently begun investigating this issue, but are the admins listening?”

Crossposted from my comment, which can be viewed here.

by Jazon Bladen (938809) on Wednesday October 31, @12:44PM (#21185389)
(http://www.bladenforce.com/)

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Alright, I’m going to throw my lot into this. This is something I’ve been watching over the past year or so, and it’s only gotten worse, not better.

Case 1: Jenn Dolari, Closetspace and A Wish for Wings.
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Jenn Dolari was an active contributor to wikipedia, as evidenced by her contributions page. Several pieces of information in her comics’ articles were factually inaccurate, so the person that contributed that information invited her to fix it on that page. A particular group of people with administrator backing did not like this, and began a vendetta against Dolari, starting with the first VfD, followed by another which failed, so they started yet another, which succeeded. Several more AfDs came about since then, including this one, this one, and this one just because Jenn Dolari is mentioned in it. Because she was constantly accused of being a vanity editor, she has permanently quit Wikipedia and has specifically denied any permission for Wikipedia to use any of her copyrighted works.

(See also: Jenn Dolari’s Wikipedia User Page.)

Case 2: Kristofer Straub, Starslip Crisis, and “Delete Wikipedia: A Webcomics Case Study”
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After the attempted AfD of Evil Inc and Ugly Hill, Straub decided that enough was enough, and took it upon himself to perform a case study into the dynamics of Wikipedia’s deletionist mindset. He used sock puppets to submit an AfD against his own comic, Starslip Crisis, using misleading data. As Straub says himself,

“What I tried to do was take the popular point of view among Wikipedia’s editors — “delete webcomics” — and then prove that it would be accepted even under fallacious/suspicious circumstances. And it looks like I was successful.”

Only after Straub admitted of his methods of getting his article deleted, did Wikipedia review the deletion.

From just these two incidents alone, you can see that there is a blatant problem with the way Wikipedia handles deletionary policy. For more information about this, you can check out Parker Peter’s LiveJournal.

In my opinion, Wikipedia is essentially Mad Max with computers instead of motorcycles. Roaming gangs of Wikipedia users control different portions of Wikipedia, and if you dare step on their turf, ensue epic motorcycle death battle sequence.

I feel guilty about the site not being updated, so here’s an update!

Ok, not a great update, but still…

Been working on ideas like crazy, as well as getting things organized.

Hm. As for news…

Well I guess were getting closer to winter, when all these legendary games will come out. And there’s already been announcements for great games that won’t be out until NEXT year.

It turns out Hellgate London sucks (or I should say it’s a great game, it just happens that that great game that it is is Diablo II), Halo 3 is…well Halo, overhyped but not without it’s merits. Jericho is far more cartoony than Undying,

Looking forward to Mass Effect and Fallout 3…

And then games that won’t be out until next year or even later, like Spore and that Diablo-esque sci-fi post apoc wild west game with the bajillion randomized gun generator.

Have there been ANY decent RPG’s recently? I guess Soul whatever, the latest game from Nippon Ichi, might count. Heck, the only memorable RPG I’v had contact with before that was that rather inventive game about the singing robot girls (very very very anime, but it was a good game with a rather epic take on the overused “floating islands, giant tower” type setting). Had a mechanism where you “dove” into the consciousnesses of your robot girls to fix their psychological problems and thus unlock new powers for them. Rather Evangelion-esque with a bit of Paprika thrown in.

As for movies, 30 Days of Night, how was it? I liked the first graphic novel but more and more just seem to keep coming out, ala the not-so-great Silent Hill comics.

American Gangster comes out this week, for some odd reason Denzel Washington as a badass gangster has an allure to it

oooh, the most interesting movie thing I’v seen recently is that commercials have started to air advertising an upcoming Sweeney Todd movie starring Johnny Depp.

I wish we had a forum or something to discuss webcomics, as that’s a subject I could talk about all day, but I don’t participate in the Penny Arcade/PvPonline driven webcomic drama community of the internet. Ironically the PA guys and Scott Kurtz neither encourage nor participate in that stuff, but it’s mainly centered around their fandom. I guess it’s the community of people that listen to that heirarchy, and who really believe that PA and Pvponline are the most popular/best webcomics on the internet.

I simply don’t get the idea of people arguing over the digital equivalent of newspaper serials and sunday morning funnies.

I’m much more interested in the online graphic novels, which range in quality of art from clearly someone’s first attempt at drawing to epic-level proffessional art. They range from teenagers still in school trying to tell a cool story for the first time, to fan-works, to proffessionals who do it for a living, off of the merit of their art and story not on high-updating serialization and lots of merchandise, like the so called “big names”.

Really, outside of the art communities like Deviant Art that have a lot of these people, there doesnt really seem to be much internet community around the online mangas and graphic novels that don’t really qualify as the same beast as the constantly ranked sequential cartoons most people limit their webcomic experience to.

Anyways, part news part rant, that seems like a good update.

This is Coyote, signing out.

Shownotes: To be uploaded later.

http://www.smashbros.com/en_us/characters/sonic.html

HOLY SHIT.

I didn’t think they’d actually do it, but they DID.

Hey guys, I’m updating the site to the newest version of WordPress. If anything is broken, just hold on.

4:19pm - UPDATE: The main site is upgraded. Now for the comic.
4:22pm - UPDATE: Comic now upgraded. Send us an e-mail report if anything was broken by the upgrade.

THE EMMYS CAN LICK MY BALLS.

Heroes won jack shit, and Jericho wasn’t even nominated.

It seemed like well past do for an update, so look, I updated!

Hm. These days things seem stuck in complacency. The console wars continue as people argue over Lair and Heavenly Sword and debate the upcoming merits of Blue Dragon. I wonder where the good will a good game like Bioshock should of brought on is gone? In fact, the day it was released there was a bunch of complaining about it’s screen size and it’s DRM copywright protection bullshit stuff. Spore, Mass Effect, and Fallout 3 seem too distant to have an effect on the mood. The “pre-it mattering at all” political race for presidency is still going on just as it’s been going for months. Summer shows are ending, and fall shows are right about to start to pick up the slack.

Everything is just continuing at the same crawling pace.

I think the world deserves more right now. Mainly because I’m bored. I want a MMORPG that’s good enough to actually be worth paying for monthly. I want a computer game that’s SOOOOOO awesome it’s worth upgrading my computer for. I want a movie to blow my socks off and I want an awesome tv show that isn’t advertising every 4 minutes.

The only real consistent front lately has been anime, and that’s personal tastes for me. Darker than Black and Claymore have been keeping up where Death Note’s ending has left off, as far as awesome viewing is concerned. I feel sorry for the people that have to wait for DeathNote to come to Adult Swim. Not out of dub-snobbery, simply out of them having to wait and them probably getting an editted or disjointed cut. At least it’s AdultSwim. If it was regular cartoon network then somebody would have to die.

Essentially on the computer front it’s like there’s nothing good that can be paid for and lately everything in the internet’s stream of information (news, webcomics, ect) seems stale. The only salvation comes from having your little niche of the internet and milking the hell out of it. I like the flash games Nodwick links to when it updates. I have my pirated anime streaming site where I keep up with DTB and Claymore. I have 4-chan, which is a horrible thought I know.

And I have this place. And more that is, the comic and related enterprises.

But more on that later.

For now let the point of this post be that the whole internet and RL socio-politico-culturo situation seems to be in duldrums.

Don’t wait for it to get better by itself. Go out there onto those webz and create excitementz!

Yeah yeah, preachy I know.

Anyways, over and tehout, from your friendly neighborhood Coyote-Man.

It came to my attention after reading a particular article on Slashdot today that it seems the music cartel is thinking of watermarking songs to track them as they explode all over the Internet. Of course, nothing on Slashdot is actually an article, but a link to an actual article, so for the brevity of conversation, I’ll quote the whole damn thing here: At first, you may think “Oh good for them!

Watermarking to replace DRM?

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August 16, 2007
by Matt Rosoff
CNET News
Watermarking has been in the news twice in the past week. First, Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk revealed that Universal will insert watermarks in the DRM-free files it’s distributing through Rhapsody, Amazon.com and other online stores.

Then, Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it’s licensing audio watermarking technology developed by its research division to a company called Activated Content. (Microsoft Research used to be devoted entirely to building technology that would later be incorporated into Microsoft products, but a couple of years ago it began to license technology through its IP Ventures program.)

So what’s watermarking? It’s the insertion of extra data into an audio stream that can help identify where that audio came from. It’s not enough to attach data to a digital audio file–users can just burn that file to a CD and then re-rip it, changing the file format and stripping off all the data associated with the original file. (This is also the classic way users get around DRM.) Instead, the data is inserted into the audio track itself. It’s inaudible to human ears, but detectible by various other tools.

In the case of Universal, the watermarking data won’t identify each individual file–a method that would allow the company to trace pirated files back to their first purchaser. Instead, it will only identify the particular song. Eventually, Universal will look at popular file-trading networks, and see which of the DRM-free songs released through its experimental program ended up on these networks. Universal can then use this data to help decide whether the risk of piracy outweighs the increased sales from DRM-free MP3 files, segmenting this decision by particular markets. For example, it might find that new Top 40 singles are more likely to find their way onto file-trading networks than classic rock from the 1970s.

Activated Content hasn’t explained exactly how it’ll use the Microsoft technology, but the company’s Web site promotes a very interesting service called ActiveNow. The idea: whenever a watermarked file is played on an ActiveNow-enabled device, the service could dynamically insert some sort of advertising–presumably audio, but perhaps video or text depending on the device being used. (This service sounds a little like techno-voodoo to me, and the Web site doesn’t really explain how it works. However it does have some interesting white papers on watermarking and why Activated Content believes its watermarks are superior.)

I could see watermarking eventually taking the place of DRM, which is both ineffective and alienating to consumers. Instead of trying to prevent users from copying and sharing audio files, content owners could simply trace the paths of these files, then establish some sort of remuneration system. Activated Content’s idea of dynamic advertising is interesting, but it seems more reasonable to me to build some sort of pooled payment system (for instance, a blanket charge on Internet service and audio software), then distribute the money from these pooled payments to copyright owners based on usage.

Well, I think you get the gist now, except for instances of tl;dr. The problems I have with Watermarking is that if your music were to be stolen, you are responsible for it. Say you have someone come and fix your computer because you are too incompetent to do so yourself, and they steal your music catalog. What do you do? You can’t do anything but feign ignorance of the infringing deeds and hope the wrath of the mighty music cartel doesn’t strike down upon you.

The issue here is that CNet is incredibly off-base. This has nothing to do with paying artists more, or stopping infringement, it’s about tracking. They want to be able to invade your home and computer, take an inventory of each and every music file you have on your computer, and be able to use this information to gauge how popular a song is. This is as much a privacy issue as it is an issue of consumer rights.

The labels need to realize we want our music free of their bullshit. Of course, they’re too busy making massive profits to realize this.

Shownotes: To be uploaded later, for now, here’s some shit we mentioned, shameless plugs, etc.

BLOGGING IS TO NEWS AS THE SPECIAL OLYMPICS IS TO THE OLYMPICS.

THAT IS ALL, GODDAMMIT.

Yahoo Personals is complete and utter shit, and let me explain why. I got bored one day and accidentally stumbled into it while I was checking my e-mail and I decided that, what the hell, I’ll take a look at it. I found a few profiles that matched my tastes, and couldn’t message any of them, so I went, maybe I’ll sign up just to message them, it would be pretty cool.

There is where the problem comes in. You can only message them with pre-made messages unless you want to spend $20 on a freaking internet hook-up service, of course, you can’t put any kind of contact info in your profile either, to make damn well sure you have to pay 20$ to make a booty call to the big fat guy that’s pretending to be that cute blonde girl. I knew there was a catch somewhere, and it’s that Yahoo has always and will always suck big donkey balls.

This is what Yahoo actually believes.

Of course, a quick Google, Facebook, or MySpace search will reveal most of their profiles if you’re clever.

Then I decided I’d take a look at OtakuBooty (lord, a bad idea just waiting to happen) and looked for about five minutes and then unlooked. OtakuBooty is to the dating world what 4chan is to the Internet.

“Alright guys, you caught me.”

Since I have no money, I haven’t looked at any of the other crap, but I stand by my belief that Internet dating and dating websites are a giant bucket of ass. It’s just a bunch of people looking to make a quick buck off of the misery and loneliness of others. Be glad I forewarned you, oh Bladen faithful.

My first post on this here new site, to boldly go where…well those other guys went before already.

Anywho, This Coyote, teh Coy-rizzle, here. Keeping it down and making sure the loads are up and whatnot. Jazon and I should be doing the first of the shiny new Bladencasts soon, and the ones after that will hopefully feature our other alumni as well, once broken microphones are replaced and whatnot.

Anyways, just wanted to see if I got the hang of this new system. It’s a bold new day for BladenForce! (*in before slowpoke.jpg)

Indeedy it is!

I drew this on Kilayi’s Facebook :<

I have been investigating the details behind Benoit and the cryptic Wikipedia post and I think I have made a startling discovery. Here is a link to the post in question.

If you notice something interesting, it’s that it happened at June 25, 04:01, Wikipedia time, which is at least 4 hours ahead of our own time, which means that 04:01 would be 12:01, and the bodies were found on the same day at 2:30pm, EDT. We read reports that mentioned the person in question was traced to 3 miles from WWE headquarters in Cramform, Connecticut. From there, Sean and I perused the Internet for more leads. What we found was a forum that was guessing the true identity of this IP Address, and from what we have observed, it is none other than Triple H, or someone associated with him, who was close with Benoit and would have received a text message from him about what transpired. Triple H is billed as being from “Greenwich, CT”, although it says he lives in New York, but here is a map of Stamford, Connecticut versus Greenwich.

We have also determined that there is a larger Wikipedia to censor and silence certain posters, as also talked about by parkerpeters. During a conversation with a Wikipedia poster, an admin removed one of his posts which was a discussion the events that transpired relating to the Benoit murder, and they were promptly also deleted from the archives, proving that Wikipedia knows more about the user than they are letting be known.

I apologize, but since the power supply for my printer basically exploded, I can’t scan anything up to the site. For now, you’ll have to be content with some of the random stuff I’m thinking about putting up there until I can get the new supply. So, what would you guys rather have, stick figures or badly drawn tablet ninjas?

Well, Jazon has finished the new site (or… at-least significantly modded it), and there are alot of changes outside of the side, but inside the comic, and in the (our) media at work. Jazon and Coyote are rehashing some details of the upcoming story, Mason is somewhat MIA in the whole process (but here in spirit - cause he’s cool like that), and I’m working with Brian (and when the time comes Coy - although, those two talk about those all the time) to make the BladenCasts better, and I’m trying to make a (hopefully) permanent theme/intro song for them. So… there’s changes going on, and hopefully any of you who do read about us, and our make-believe lives will stick with us, cause even I (the pessimist-realist of the group) believe that it will be well worth it in the end.

GR

Yes, I’m a goddamn nerd.

Anyway, as you can see, I’ve tried to manually start updating the archives with some of the old posts, but not the comments. I’m going to quit updating the archives on this part of the site and hope to God someone can create that converter that I need. Here’s hoping.

Update: The News archive has been manually updated. I spent an entire morning, since Tuesday is WoW Server Downtime Day, uploading them.