Comment by davidwitt415 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidwitt415 | Hacker News Reader

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As someone who has contributed regularly to Wikipedia over the years, I stopped recently due to another cancer that Wikipedia has, called 'Philip Cross.' Supposedly an individual, he has made roughly 150,000 edits since 2013 without taking a single day off.

Anybody who is not aware of 'Philip Cross' can read about 'him' here:

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Philip_Cross

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-c...

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-c...

"According to Craig Murray, whose Wikipedia page has been repeated edited by Cross remarked that "the purpose of the “Philip Cross” operation is systematically to attack and undermine the reputations of those who are prominent in challenging the dominant corporate and state media narrative. particularly in foreign affairs. “Philip Cross” also systematically seeks to burnish the reputations of mainstream media journalists and other figures who are particularly prominent in pushing neo-con propaganda and in promoting the interests of Israel."

Wikipedia management, all the way up to Jimmy Wales are well aware of 'Philip Cross' and yet 'he' continues to operate freely as an editor. Despite the basic usefulness of Wikipedia for non-controversial topics, I decided that I cannot and will not support an organization that allows this kind of astroturfing.

Full disclosure: I am the author of the Wikipedia essay "Wikipedia has cancer".

See https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=21700802 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_C...

First off, the above comment is an example of hijacking; using a discussion about one thing to try to get attention for something else. You see this a lot with Abortion, Gun control, and US presidential politics. I am not saying that those aren't important topics, but do they really need to be inserted into a discussion about how much money Wikipedia is spending?

I would strongly encourage the person trying to hijack this discussion to start a new discussion

I would strongly encourage all HN readers to not give the poster the attention he wants and to downvote any comments that are not about WMF finances

I also would strongly encourage all HN readers to not respond to this sort of thing and to stay on topic.

For those who are interested, here is what Wikipedia has done about this situation:

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests...

Philip Cross is indefinitely topic banned from post-1978 British politics, broadly construed. This restriction may be first appealed after six months have elapsed, and every six months thereafter. This sanction supersedes the community sanction applied in May 2018.

Passed 11 to 0 at 18:34, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Amended by motion at 20:08, 9 August 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia's relevant policy states:

"The purpose of a topic ban is to forbid editors from making edits related to a certain topic area where their contributions have been disruptive, but to allow them to edit the rest of Wikipedia. Unless clearly and unambiguously specified otherwise, a topic ban covers all pages (not only articles) broadly related to the topic, as well as the parts of other pages that are related to the topic, as encapsulated in the phrase 'broadly construed.'"

If anyone thinks Wikipedia should do more, they should bring it up at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests -- not on hacker news.

Again, I encourage all HN readers to not respond to hijacking attempts.

Extremely relevant to Wikipedia's finances, since my framing was why I am not contributing to Wikipedia anymore. People deserve to know what they are funding.

Also not helping your cause, you had to try to negate my argument with a false assertion: Philip Cross HAS NOT, in fact, been been banned, and just last month made 49 edits to James LeMesurier's page (clearly a post 1978 British political figure):

https://archive.ph/2019.11.14-204004/https://en.wikipedia.or...

Although you may not agree, this is holistically part and parcel of Wikipedia's ongoing funding saga. Plenty of people have tried to appeal to Wikipedia about this, so it is disingenuous to state that option while dismissing the topic here. We are on HN, not Wikipedia, so one man's 'hijacking' is another person's 'information.'

Reply on news.ycombinator.com