Friday, October 14, 2016

Where information goes to be buried

An interesting discussion on Wikipedia about Infogalactic. Notice that the Wikipedians have not only buried the contributions of the contributors about whom they affect to be so concerned, but they have ensured that no one can retrieve it.

Now, why would Wikipedians want to completely bury a page about Cultural Marxism?
== Attribution for deleted content ==

[http://infogalactic.com/info/Main_Page Infogalactic] is a new Wikipedia fork set up by Breitbart as [http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/10/10/anti-thought-police-infogalactic-launches-as-wikipedia-alternative/ "an alternative to biased Wikipedia"]. I have been asked to supply a copy of the page deleted at [[WP:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Cultural Marxism (2nd nomination)|this MfD]]. Since Infogalactic's standards for notability and for COI are intended to be more relaxed than ours, it is likely to want to keep many articles that we delete, and we can expect more requests for copies.

My concern is, how should attribution be handled? Under CC-BY-SA we promise contributors that their contributions will be attributed, and any copies carry the same obligation. It does not seem right to accept contributions to a page, delete it, and then provide copies without attribution. Forked articles in Infogalactica are correctly linked to the original here, but where our page has been deleted there is nothing to link to.

Where an existing article is copied by Infogalactica and later deleted here, attribution will be lost anyway, and of course there are sites such as Deletionpedia which specialise in deleted content; but the fact that those sites are breaking the terms of CC-BY-SA doesn't make me happy to do it.

The best I can think of is to supply a list of contributors extracted from the history and require that the link at the bottom of the Infogalactica page which reads "''This article's content derived from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (See original source)''" is modified to say "''See list of contributors''" with a link to the list in a subpage. Any ideas? [[User:JohnCD|JohnCD]] ([[User talk:JohnCD|talk]]) 10:42, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

:My reaction would be "no thanks". I see no reason to provide anything to ''unbiased'' Breitbart. If they want an article on Cultural Marxism, they can write one. If they can't even do that, then how are they planning to make an alternative to Wikipedia in the first place? [[User:Fram|Fram]] ([[User talk:Fram|talk]]) 11:13, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

::Agree with Fram. I see no need to supply alternative encyclopaedias with content that isn't in our own encyclopaedia! -[[User:Roxy the dog|Roxy the dog™]] [[User talk:Roxy the dog|bark]] 11:26, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

:::I agree with Fram also. Despite the hype, this is a tiny fork ([https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&offset=&limit=500 ''every'' registered editor there]), and while I appreciate that they're making an effort to do things the right way rather than just copy-pasting, there's no reason for us to be spending time assisting on a project which will almost certainly no longer exist in a few months when the [https://infogalactic.com/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers&offset=&limit=500 half-a-dozen people responsible for every edit] lose interest and drift away. If Breitbart can't write an article on one of their own pet themes, I don't see how they can consider themselves a credible rival to Wikipedia. ‑ [[User:Iridescent|Iridescent]] 11:33, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

::::Let me echo what has been said above.  Wikipedia's license ''allows'' mirror sites to ''take'' content from Wikipedia at any time.  It in now way ''obligates'' Wikipedia editors or admins to do any work to ''give'' them content, however.  No one should be obligated to undelete anything or to find old revisions or anything like that.  If they want to take it, let them come get it.  If they can't find it, or it has been deleted, that's not your, mine, or anyone else here's problem.  --[[User:Jayron32|<span style="color:#009">Jayron</span>]][[User talk:Jayron32|<b style="color:#090">''32''</b>]] 11:45, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

:::::Are the deleted versions in the datadump? then they would have access anyway. [[User:Agathoclea|Agathoclea]] ([[User talk:Agathoclea|talk]]) 12:06, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

::::::If deleted versions are in the datadump, then that needs an urgent fix. I don't believe they are, however. Otherwise the WMF would be providng countless BLP attacks and copyright violations this way. [[User:Fram|Fram]] ([[User talk:Fram|talk]]) 12:35, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

*Unilaterally doing this would be a misuse of the admin tools since it was deleted out of Draft space by a community decision after the main space was SALTed.  To me, this isn't an administrative decision but a community one, which means [[WP:DRV]] is the right venue.  I doubt it would fare better there, however.  [[User:Dennis Brown|<b>Dennis Brown</b>]] - [[User talk:Dennis Brown|<b>2&cent;</b>]] 12:21, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

: Yep. Send him to DRV and let him take his chances. I've got other things to do than run around fetching deleted articles for a POV fork. <span style="color: #9932CC">[[:User:KrakatoaKatie|Katie]]<sup>[[User talk:KrakatoaKatie|talk]]</sup></span> 12:39, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

9 comments:

  1. So is this the laughing phase or the fighting phase? It sure isn't the ignoring phase.

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    1. They mock what they don't understand. But the fear is evident.

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  4. Someday, soon, Wikipedia will be but a footnote, itself but an historical entry - with proper attribution to be sure.

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  5. I hope you include this info on your "Cultural Marxism" page:



    The Cultural Marxists were just cultural theorists and in fact warned against the dangers of a fake/manufactured Culture Industry driven only by the commodification and falsification of genuine culture (hence their concept "The Culture Industry").

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_industry

    With the British Cultural Marxists wanting to defend local community cultures against this "massification" of culture (hence their concept of massification).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Uses_of_Literacy#Massification_of_culture

    ...and they were in fact ANTI-CENSORSHIP; with with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams of The Birmingham School standing up against censorship at The Lady Chatterley trial. A censorship trial which is thought to have made Britain in the 1960s into a more permissive society.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Chatterley's_Lover#British_obscenity_trial

    Adorno was even PROTESTED by feminists in his day, and the modern incarnation of The Frankfurt School is still writing AGAINST Identity Politics; pointing out that economic class is a more important factor to oppression than the social categories of identity politics.

    https://konspektikaust.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/nancy-fraser-rethinking-recognition/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jobrot/sandbox/Cultural_Marxism_(culture_studies)#Relationship_to_Feminism

    You might also want to note that one of the key critics of Post-Modernism is also from The Frankfurt School. Namely Jurgen Habamas:

    http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/#9

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  6. It turns out that the original content is available at https://web.archive.org/web/20140102001635/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism and they surely have no problem with a cut-n-paste and fixing up the headings.

    It is likely also available at later dates, and could form a good base for this.

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  7. I have partially recreated it here: https://infogalactic.com/info/User:OldCaliber/test

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  8. Wikipedia deleted their page about Todd and Clare ( https://archive.is/H5hLX ) on 10/17, just as this story was breaking https://wikileaks.org/Background-and-Documents-on-Attempts-to-Frame-Assange-as-a-Pedophile-and.html . Is it in the InfoGalactic database, and if so, what does it even say?

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