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> Top 10 most viewed WR threads!, The topics that got everyone excited
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Kato
post Mon 24th September 2007, 8:15am
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With all this talk of "Attack sites" and BADSITES on WP, and descriptions of The Review getting thrown about on the ARBCOM pages, it seems like a good time to go and examine the Top ten most viewed threads in The Review's back catalogue. Though this thread should probably be in the Wikipedia Review Review section, so as not to disappoint our non-signed up members, this one goes out for free on the top section. Here goes:

1
25,838 views Who is Essjay? Epic thread started by Daniel Brandt that continued for nearly a year. Tracing the long Essjay saga from mere Brandtian brain wave to The New Yorker magazine and into the history books of the internet itself. Brandt opens the thread with "Who is Essjay? I would love to ID this guy." Some 20,000 or so posts later we were to find out.
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2
13,844 views Oops, Durova's Mea culpa Durova, wikipedia's self styled "sleuth", comes predictably unstuck when it is discovered that her much cherished "sleuthing methods" are little more than a paranoia fuelled game of Shot-in-the-dark. Convinced that The Review has unleashed a co-ordinated army of sockpuppets to bring down the site (if only), Durova sets to work unmasking the machiavellian meddlers. Inevitably, her prime suspects turn out not to be grisly trolls, but good faith editors, and one in particular is a well respected editor with connections in high places. Oops. An aroma of rebellion against this unchecked power fills the air only days before WP's annual Christmas Pantomime otherwise known as the Arbitration elections. As the story unfolds, it is also revealed that rather than The Review co-ordinating exploits, a Wikipedia clique had been operating a "secret mailing list" to plot underhand missions and spy on innocent users all along. And all this with Jimbo "we-need-more-love" Wales's approval. Reviewers had been shouting this truth from the rooftops since this site's beginnings of course, but it was refreshing to see the media begin to acknowledge that There IS a Cabal. Of course, in a collapsed culture that rewards cronyism, bullying and arbitrary decision making over reason and good practice, this should come as no surprise.

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3
11,512 views Boy Scouts are for spanking?
The Wikipedia Review discover that Wikia, Inc, the for-profit company founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, were hosting a Wiki called Spanking Art. This Wiki detailed sexual fetish practices relating to corporal punishment, but also featured numerous sexualized images of children and photographs of minors uploaded in innocence by editors to Wikipedia and the Wiki-Commons.
Our discovery provoked protests against “Spanking Art” on Wikipedia itself. One editor, a representative of the Scouting movement whose uploaded photo of boy scouts had been transported onto the Spanking Sex site without permission, demanded answers on Jimbo Wales’s Wikipedia talk page. Eventually Wales personally deleted material from the Wikia site. Later, the entire Spanking Art site was removed, with an accompanying statement made by a representative of Wikia Inc.

4
11,480 views Snowspinner muses about stalking and murder
Bizarre tale of admin Snowspinner, who wrote a short story on his blog - a typically youthful kind of Camus meets Chuck Palahniuk thing about a malevolent stalker - and became embroiled in a real life Police investigation over an unrelated incident at his campus. The Review gallery (featuring a surprising number of now forgotten figures) revel in Snowspinner's woes, and despite being exonerated by the cops, Snowspinner appears on the thread himself to mud wrestle with some of The Review's less sympathetic literary critics.

5
10,092 views The Jeff Merkey thread An amalgamation of various threads detailing the activities of the mercurial Merkey. What was the I.T entrepreneur and Cherokee activist Merkey playing at? Was he right? Was he wrong? Was he actually contributing to the thread himself using a pseudonym? Who knows? Enjoy the Merkey mayhem.

6
9,644 views Illustration of Muhammad
A petition to remove the perennially controversial images of Muhammad from Wikipedia's article on The Prophet gains 1000s of signatures, and becomes a hotly debated topic in Wikiworld. Wikipedia is "the wisdom of the crowds", but what happens when the crowds sign a petition to make a change to an article? "Wikipedia is not censored". What about the stuff that is removed from articles all the time, is that not censorship? "Wikipedia makes changes based on consensus, it is a fundamental tenet". Then seeing as they have a consensus of 1000s, can't they change the article? "Wikipedia is not censored" etc etc etc.

7
9,395 views Can Jayjg be stopped? Endless speculation as to the motives and identity of WP's highly evolved Octopus, an editor so prolific that he apparently sprouted tentacles and beak to handle a watchlist that grew to the size of the Pacific. Some of it seems plausible, much of it isn't. The thread ends with our own Lamontstormstar sagely noting, "Someone will just take Jayjg's place." And he is probably right. Somey pays tribute to our tentacled friend on a subsequent editorial piece.
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8
9,365 views What we know about SlimVirgin A comprehensive exposition of the backstory behind SlimVirgin, Wikipedia's most mysterious and (according to the watchers) most corrupt administrator. The evidence trail leads us through what Slate Magazine calls "Daniel Brandt's matrix". Slate tells its subscribers to "read about how he uncovered a likely MI-5 agent operating on Wikipedia under the alias Slimvirgin. The winding road starts here." Follow that long and winding road yourself and tell us what you think.

9

9,345 views ColScott Says Hola
Natural Born Killers Movie Producer Don Murphy roars onto the The Review board like Ollie Reed in a bad mood to denounce WP and several of its teenage editors. All kinds of issues spill out: Notability issues, the young age of WP editors, "stalking" of article subjects, Dan Tobias's mensa score. The Review attempts to salvage some common sense out of WPs irresponsible mess-ups. Very little changes. Bliss provides a write up on The Review's blog.
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10
9,025 views Mantanmoreland RfAr
Two years of deceit and simply outrageous corrupt behavior by the Wiki-elite in support of a writer who had been feuding against Overstock.com comes to a head. Furious good faith Wikipedians demand answers from the Arbitration Committee as to how this was allowed to happen. What did the Arbitrators decide to do? They fudged it. Join the post Arbitration seething to share in the anger at the Committee's lack of integrity.

________________________________________________________

Threads lurking outside the Top Ten:

11
8,852 views Giano Arbcom case
Imagine a process where decisions are made to benefit a project by consensus after a transparent process of open discussion. Wikipedia? Think again. While copy editors and article writers slave under the hot sun of the clumsy Wiki-software to protect their work, the real business is being hammered out in smoke filled Internet Relay Chatrooms controlled by the most aggressive bully boy administrators. Forget about transparency and all that stuff Jimbo tells his audience in Taiwan. Imagine a chat room where police gather to get their stories straight, swap evidence for planting, exchange informers and snitches, plan cover-ups, talk sports and relax after a hard day. Surely no law abiding citizen object to such a private forum? Giano, a prolific article writer does object. And he keeps on objecting. For his troubles, he is sent before the Arbitration Committee to face his Arbitrary show trial. The Review observe the kangaroo court proceedings through the wire fence.

12
7,871 views Please help me and Seth get our bios deleted Brandt's plea for assistance from the The Review faithful to end the stalemate regarding both his own shabby biography and Seth Finkelstein's article. The thread turns into a sockpuppet hunt on the Brandt deletion discussion, with The Review sleuths attempting to identify any potential Denny Colt sockpuppet stalking horses that may have arrived to railroad the process. The deletion debates also see the appearance of the Charlie Manson defense, a classical wikipediot argument which asserts that our two obscure internet figures should be afforded no more privacy than George Bush, Bill Clinton and convicted murderer Manson himself. Despite this typically trite logic, Seth's article is eventually deleted outright. Brandt's becomes part of a "complex merge" that seems like an improvement.

13
7,274 views Honest admins, Another opportunity for us to be of service. The Review passes the hat round the bar for names of honest admins. FCYTravis gets a free drink and three cheers. But according to Jonny Cache : "There are only two types of admin. (1) Evil Bastards (2) Good Minions Doing Nothing." In the melee of confused identifications, the term ghoul is coined for the first time to describe the worst of the Wiki Adams-family. And apt it was to be.
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14
7,188 views JzG, How he helps Wikipedia No figure on Wikipedia has matched the open animosity and bumbling buffoonery exhibited by Jus-zum-Guy. Read on, as relations between Guy and The Review deteriorate from Love / Hate to simply mutual loathing. On the thread, Wikipedia Review owner Gregory Kohs, long a victim of the increasingly erratic Guy, takes the Englishman to task for his absurd campaign of persecution. At first Reviewers just laugh along with Guy's antics. He had put in good work improving the hideous BLP situation on Wikipedia, surely he wasn't going to.... oh yes, he was. Guy lurches towards delirium and quits WP three times during the thread, only to return to his addiction apparently more rabid each time. He is last spotted running around Wikipedia half naked wearing a bandana and waving his arms hysterically for our benefit. With his judgement in tatters, Reviewers these days simply call him "liar" to his face. Or worse, gleefully egg him on to do more damage to the ailing Pseudopedia than any Reviewer could manage themselves.
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15
7,106 views Voting begins The annual pantomime that is the Arbitration elections gets underway amidst a flurry of scandals. Clueless sleuth Durova is forced to retire even before voting begins. A populist swing to support article writer Giano against traditional bureaucrats and power gamers means he stays in the running. Loathed admins such as POV pusher Will Beback, abusive sockpuppet JoshuaZ, and tyrannical controller Raul are humiliated as voters reject their manifestos in droves. Will the election of a new committee lead to reform? Of course not. It's all about the drama.

* updated April, 2008
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Nathan
post Mon 24th September 2007, 8:28pm
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I've blogged it, fixing some typos and fixing the font of the numbers so that it doesn't overlap with the post count below it.

I wasn't quite sure what category to add it to, though! I guess it's General Information-like.
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Posts in this topic
Kato   Top 10 most viewed WR threads!   Mon 24th September 2007, 8:15am
Alex   Interesting stats! :blink:   Mon 24th September 2007, 1:29pm
thekohser   This was a great roll-up, Kato. Thank you. (I...   Mon 24th September 2007, 2:04pm
blissyu2   Very good, the pictures and bolding helped. Where...   Mon 24th September 2007, 2:47pm
Poetlister   We've been about for close to 2 years (it...   Mon 24th September 2007, 7:29pm
the fieryangel   This needs to go on the blog. I think that it pro...   Mon 24th September 2007, 7:56pm
Jonny Cache   We've been about for close to 2 years (it...   Mon 24th September 2007, 7:56pm
Poetlister   Guy Fawkes I don't suppose he cycled either, ...   Mon 24th September 2007, 8:09pm
Jonny Cache   Pretty nifty, probably should go on the blog, but ...   Mon 24th September 2007, 2:56pm
thekohser   Pretty nifty, probably should go on the blog, but...   Mon 24th September 2007, 3:22pm
Kato   [quote name='Jonny Cache' post='51538' date='Mon ...   Mon 24th September 2007, 3:54pm
blissyu2   Fair call, there also should be a top 10 most repl...   Mon 24th September 2007, 4:02pm
Kato   Fair call, there also should be a top 10 most rep...   Mon 24th September 2007, 4:07pm
Jonny Cache   Fair call, there also should be a top 10 most re...   Mon 24th September 2007, 8:18pm
GlassBeadGame   [quote name='Kato' post='51550' date='Mon 24th Se...   Mon 24th September 2007, 8:24pm
GlassBeadGame   10 3,941 views [url=http://wikipediareview.com/in...   Mon 24th September 2007, 4:23pm
Nathan   I've blogged it, fixing some typos and fixing ...   Mon 24th September 2007, 8:28pm
Jonny Cache   With all this talk of "Attack sites" an...   Mon 24th September 2007, 8:36pm
Nathan   I've often forgotten about those myself.   Mon 24th September 2007, 8:40pm
Rochelle   This is kind of depressing. I'm so new that on...   Mon 24th September 2007, 9:08pm
blissyu2   Actually, if possible, for the blog, could it have...   Tue 25th September 2007, 2:19am
guy   This list has been updated.   Tue 4th December 2007, 11:05am
the fieryangel   This list has been updated. It needs to updated...   Mon 4th February 2008, 10:21pm
Derktar   General http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/ge...   Wed 3rd September 2008, 10:40pm
Anonymous editor   This list has been updated. Poetlister 47,883 E...   Wed 14th January 2009, 6:02am
Anonymous editor   the Essjay thread is all the way up to 34,214 view...   Wed 3rd September 2008, 11:06pm
Random832   Is the "Taxwoman a fake" thread the firs...   Wed 10th September 2008, 5:11pm
gomi   Is the "Taxwoman a fake" thread the fir...   Wed 10th September 2008, 5:22pm
Kelly Martin   I'm not sure this is a good measure, however -...   Wed 10th September 2008, 9:38pm
the fieryangel   [quote name='gomi' post='128690' date='Wed 10th S...   Wed 10th September 2008, 9:57pm
gomi   [quote name='gomi' post='128690' date='Wed 10th Se...   Wed 10th September 2008, 11:05pm
the fieryangel   [quote name='the fieryangel' post='128784' date='...   Wed 10th September 2008, 11:08pm
gomi   I'm sorry about my statements last night, whic...   Wed 10th September 2008, 11:16pm
the fieryangel   [quote name='the fieryangel' post='128811' date='...   Wed 10th September 2008, 11:21pm
Anonymous editor   Is the "Taxwoman a fake" thread the fir...   Wed 10th September 2008, 10:29pm
gomi   Yes! Oui! Pax! All is forgiven, if t...   Wed 10th September 2008, 11:25pm
the fieryangel   Yes! Oui! Pax! All is forgiven, if ...   Thu 11th September 2008, 8:08am
Milton Roe   Yes! Oui! Pax! All is forgiven, if ...   Thu 11th September 2008, 8:20am
Anonymous editor   The Taxwoman thread passed Essjay a few hours ago....   Fri 12th September 2008, 4:15am
Kato   People do realize that the thread-views-counter pi...   Fri 12th September 2008, 5:01am
Milton Roe   People do realize that the thread views counter p...   Fri 12th September 2008, 5:13am
Anonymous editor   People do realize that the thread views counter p...   Fri 12th September 2008, 5:31am
Jon Awbrey   But we'll never close the Auto-Reverence Gap (...   Sat 13th September 2008, 7:54am
Anonymous editor   39,387-34,977 now, in favor of Taxwoman, who final...   Fri 19th September 2008, 1:08am
Anonymous editor   Sam Blacketer joins the party with 15,458 views an...   Mon 22nd June 2009, 4:13am
Derktar   The most recent, updated count. I included the ran...   Mon 22nd June 2009, 6:59am
It's the blimp, Frank   Should this be updated?   Tue 30th November 2010, 5:17pm
Ottava   Should this be updated? Yes. And that black s...   Tue 30th November 2010, 5:29pm
Milton Roe   Should this be updated? Yes. And that black ...   Tue 30th November 2010, 6:24pm
Derktar   Should this be updated? If I can find some time ...   Tue 30th November 2010, 6:36pm
Zoloft   Should this be updated? If I can find some time...   Tue 30th November 2010, 6:45pm
thekohser   Should this be updated? If I can find some time...   Tue 30th November 2010, 9:54pm
Ottava   [quote name='Derktar' post='260583' date='Tue 30t...   Tue 30th November 2010, 10:17pm


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