Well its Monday, I say this after a pretty horrendous weekend dealing with a bunch of very nasty Wikipedia editors who have both blanked all credible information about me and replaced it with one source of criticism by a woman who withheld relevant qualifications when writing an article about me. This is totally against the principles of Wikipedia and also makes you realise how dangerous individuals with a little bit of power can be.
Two enormously positive things have occurred during this experience. Firstly, I have received the most amazing messages of support from my twitter family; I genuinely have few words that can express the love I have been offered. Every message I have received has eased the stress a little and reinforced the genuine love I have for the majority of human beings.
Often people are surprised that I respond to all my twitter messages, for me however I remain consistently amazed that people care enough to share a point of view with me, me returning an opinion, sentiment or daft picture is the least I can do.
Secondly watching my partner spend his entire weekend fighting with this group of individuals, tirelessly and without complaint; watching him sit frustrated and sad at the computer where he was repeatedly blocked and threatened and generally treated with complete disrespect made me feel so unbelievably blessed.
You see that’s what really counts in life; belongingness.
I could have gone through this experience feeling wounded, harmed and bullied (as was this group of individuals intent), but instead I feel invigorated, enthusiastic about human kindness and genuinely warmed by the people I know as my friends both on and off the web.
I will get the Wikipedia page sorted as it’s a distorted and biased perspective which is against the rules, (not that the editors in question follow any themselves). I have contacted lawyers regarding an individual who made libellous comments, (this is already being dealt with) and I will continue in spite of their lies to work in the media on and off screen as a Psychologist, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it Wikipedia police!
Today I have seen three clients already and every one of them has reminded me of what really matters, my therapeutic ability, kindness and common decency.
Finally to all of you who took the time to fight my corner and to show me support, I hope you recognise the power of those 140 characters on Twitter, they really did mean the world.
A million kind wishes to you all x
Emma:
ReplyDeleteFor what little it's worth, I can give you some free advice on dealing with Wikipedians and defamation thereby. I'm co-authoring the first really neutral book about Wikipedia's history, and have spent the last 2+ years performing massive amounts of research on the subject.
Once you make any kind of legal threats, they will close ranks and vilify you. So don't do it. I've seen quite a few bad bios on Wikipedia pass through this sort of dysfunctional 'process'. It is why crazy people love to use WP to attack their personal and professional enemies -- if you don't have a couple of WP administrators on your side (at very least), the nuts can fight you to a standstill. This is a major reason why Wikipedia is starting to decline.
If you've got a bad bio, contact the WMF directly. Make the legal threats to THEM, directly. An official looking C&D letter on an attorney's stationery, especially an attorney in the US, will cause them to panic and blank everything out as a "WP:OFFICE action". It worked for Damon Dash, at least for a while. Even he failed, because "oh, there are "reliable sources" for this".
The other thing to do is to try to control the "reliable sources" they use. If you can get blog posts or other non-mainstream-media items pulled down, they lose some of their ammunition. Wikipedians tend to be arrogant but lazy, and will let Google do all the work for them. If it's not in Google results it "doesn't exist".
Short of finding out their real identities and breaking their legs (possible though difficult and not recommended nor even guaranteed to be effective), at a certain point there's nothing else you can do. The WMF hides behind US law whenever situations like this come up, and they come up regularly. I have nothing nice to say about the WMF's management. They are remarkably two-faced and dishonest in any number of situations involving bad Wikipedia content. All of which flows from their great "founder" Jimbo Wales.
You can see our notes and a summary of the book here.
http://www.logicmuseum.com/x/index.php?title=Main_Page
You are welcome to email me with any questions, or come over to Wikipediocracy where we are discussing your situation.
http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3807