User:Jayen466

'If there is no struggle there is no progress ... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.

'''—Frederick Douglass



 Monday 29 July  [ purge cache] Hi, I'm Andreas Kolbe.

I was a founding member of Wikipedia criticism site Wikipediocracy and am a regular contributor to and former co-editor-in-chief of Wikipedia's community newspaper, the Signpost. My Twitter handle is Wikiland.

Signpost samples:


 * Dude, Where's My Donations? Wikimedia Foundation announces another million in grants for non-Wikimedia-related projects
 * Golden parachutes: Record severance payments at Wikimedia Foundation
 * What's going on with the Wikimedia Endowment?
 * Coverage of 2022 bans reveals editors serving long sentences in Saudi Arabia since 2020
 * Book Review: Writing the Revolution
 * Wikipedians question Wikimedia fundraising ethics after "somewhat-viral" tweet
 * "Wikipedia's independence" or "Wikimedia's pile of dosh"?
 * The Wikimedia Endowment – a lack of transparency
 * A photo on Wikipedia can ruin your life
 * Is WMF fundraising abusive?


 * Signpost author page (with complete index)


 * Samantha Cole, Vice: Wikipedia and Google Identified Wrong Man as a Serial Killer for Years (17 November 2021)
 * Thomas Macaulay, The Next Web: Wikipedia is loaded, so why’s it asking for donations? The site has amassed vast reserves of cash (1 June 2021)
 * Andreas Kolbe, The Daily Dot: Wikipedia is swimming in money—why is it begging people to donate? (24 May 2021) (See also Twitter thread and discussion with ex-WMF CEO Katherine Maher on Hacker News)
 * Andreas Kolbe, The Register: Golden handshakes of almost half a million at Wikimedia Foundation (7 June 2017)
 * Andreas Kolbe, The Register: Happy birthday: Jimbo Wales' sweet 16 Wikipedia fails (16 January 2017)
 * Ciaran McCauley, BBC: Wikipedia hoaxes: From Breakdancing to Bilcholim (3 October 2016)
 * Andreas Kolbe, The Register: It's Wikipedia mythbuster time: 8 of the best on your 15th birthday (18 January 2016)
 * Andreas Kolbe, The Register: Unsourced, unreliable, and in your face forever: Wikidata, the future of online nonsense (8 December 2015)
 * Andreas Kolbe, The Signpost: Walled gardens of corruption (7 October 2015)
 * Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post: You don’t know it, but you’re working for Facebook. For free. (22 July 2015)
 * Andrew Orlowski, The Register: Shapps launches probe into Wikimedia UK over self-pluggery allegs (13 July 2015)
 * Andrew Orlowski, The Register: EU squashes bogus copyright scare as red-faced Guardian slaps down Wiki's Wales (10 July 2015)
 * Andrew Orlowski, The Register: Is Grant Shapps being naughty on Wikipedia – or did a Lib Dem stitch him up? (30 April 2015)
 * Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post: The story behind Jar’Edo Wens, the longest-running hoax in Wikipedia history (15 April 2015)
 * Alastair Sloan, Newsweek: Manipulating Wikipedia to Promote a Bogus Business School (24 March 2015)
 * Andreas Kolbe, Wikipediocracy: Wikipedia: re-writing history (12 October 2014)
 * Ben Koo, Awful Announcing: Guilt by Wikipedia: How Joe Streater Became Falsely Attached To The Boston College Point Shaving Scandal (9 October 2014)
 * Andreas Kolbe, Wikipediocracy: Wikipedia – keeping it free. Just pay us our salaries. (21 September 2014)
 * Andreas Kolbe, Wikipediocracy: Why women have no time for Wikipedia: Thoughts on the online encyclopedia’s gender imbalance (26 August 2014)
 * Andrew Orlowski, The Register: Cracking copyright law: How a simian selfie stunt could make a monkey out of Wikipedia (24 August 2014)
 * Andrew Orlowski, The Register: Class war! Wikipedia's workers revolt again: Bourgeois paper-shufflers have 'suspended democracy', sniff unpaid proles (18 August 2014)
 * Andreas Kolbe, Wikipediocracy: Wikimania 2014 (11 August 2014)
 * James O'Brien, BBC Newsnight: James O’Brien interviews Jimmy Wales, raises the problem of defamatory Wikipedia biographies (6 August 2014)
 * E. J. Dickson, The Daily Dot: I accidentally started a Wikipedia hoax (29 July 2014)
 * Andreas Kolbe, Wikipediocracy: How pranks, hoaxes and manipulation undermine the reliability of Wikipedia (20 July 2014)
 * Andreas Kolbe, Wikipediocracy: Media Viewer fails the grade (13 July 2014)
 * Saarik Gupta, CNN: How reliable is the drug info you find online? (26 June 2014)
 * Fernando Alfonso III, The Daily Dot: Wikipedia editors hit with $10 million defamation lawsuit (24 June 2014)
 * Oliver Duggan, The Telegraph: How The Telegraph identified the Hillsborough Wikipedia vandal (17 June 2014)
 * Oliver Duggan, The Telegraph: Civil servant fired after Telegraph investigation into Hillsborough Wikipedia slurs (17 June 2014)
 * Eric Randall, The New Yorker: How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark (19 May 2014)
 * Tim Sampson, The Daily Dot: One of Wikimedia's largest donors accused in paid editing scandal (14 April 2014)
 * Andreas Kolbe, Wikipediocracy: Why do people contribute to Wikipedia? (2 March 2014)
 * Andreas Kolbe, Wikipediocracy: Wikipedia: as accurate as Britannica? (16 February 2014)
 * Tim Sampson, Mashable: Where Do Wikipedia Donations Go? Outgoing Chief Warns of Corruption (17 October 2013)
 * Simon Owens, The Daily Dot: The battle to destroy Wikipedia's biggest sockpuppet army (8 October 2013)
 * Andrew Orlowski, The Register: Wikipedia Foundation exec: Yes, we've been wasting your money (8 October 2013)
 * Tim Sampson, The Daily Dot: How pro-fascist ideologues are rewriting Croatia's history (1 October 2013)
 * Andrew Orlowski, The Register: Revolting peasants force Wikipedia to cut'n'paste Visual Editor into the bin (25 September 2013)
 * Tim Sampson, The Daily Dot: Wikipedia faces revolt over VisualEditor (24 September 2013)
 * Audra Schroeder, The Daily Dot: Are plastic surgeons nip/tucking ads into high-profile Wikipedia articles? (20 September 2013)
 * Andrew Orlowski, The Register: Wikipedians say no to Jimmy's 'buggy' WYSIWYG editor (1 August 2013)
 * Amanda Filipacchi, Wall Street Journal: My Strange Addiction: Wikipedia (10 July 2013)
 * Joe Coscarelli, New York Magazine: Adam Lanza Frequented Gun Message Boards, Obsessively Edited Wikipedia Posts About Mass Shootings (2 July 2013)
 * Kevin Morris, The Daily Dot: How Wikimedia Commons became a massive amateur porn hub (25 June 2013)
 * Andrew Leonard, Salon: Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia (17 May 2013)
 * Amanda Filipacchi, Atlantic: Sexism on Wikipedia Is Not the Work of 'A Single Misguided Editor' (30 April 2013)
 * Andrew Leonard, Salon: Wikipedia's shame (29 April 2013)
 * Amanda Filipacchi, The New York Times: Wikipedia’s Sexism (27 April 2013)
 * Kevin Morris, The Daily Dot: Wikipedia's odd relationship with the Kazakh dictatorship (25 December 2012)
 * Christopher Williams, The Telegraph: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales restricts discussion of Tony Blair friendship (24 December 2012)

On the internet
By removing the face-to-face aspect of human interaction, the internet dehumanises people, and our imagination often turns them into inflated monsters, more terrifying because they are in the shadows. Meeting them in person rehumanises them again. —Jamie Bartlett, The Dark Net

On Wikipedia in general

 * The apparent accuracy of a Wikipedia article is inversely proportional to the depth of the reader's knowledge of the topic. —Kozierok's First Law
 * Wikipedia is like an old and eccentric uncle. He can be a lot of fun—over the years he's seen a lot, and he can tell a great story. He's also no dummy; he's accumulated a lot of information and has some strong opinions about what he's gathered. You can learn quite a bit from him. But take everything he says with a grain of salt. A lot of the things he thinks he knows for sure aren't quite right, or are taken out of context. And when it comes down to it, sometimes he believes things that are a little bit, well, nuts. If it ever matters to you whether something he said is real or fictional, it's crucial to check it out with a more reliable source. —Charles Seife, Virtual Unreality, Appendix, "The top ten dicta of the internet skeptic", Dictum no. 1.
 * Wikipedia isn't governed by the thoughtful or the informed – it is governed by anyone who turns up. There are a small core of people who like playing wiki as an in-house role-playing game and simply deny real-world consequences that might limit their freedom of action. There are a larger group who are too immature or lazy to think straight. And then there are all those who recognise "something must be done", but perpetually oppose the something that's being proposed in favour of a "better idea". The mechanism is rather like using a chat-show phone-in to manage the intricacies of a federal budget – it does not work for issues that need time, thought, responsibility and attention. I doubt this problem can be fixed – since it needs structural change to decision making – which is impossible for precisely the same reasons. —Scott MacDonald
 * The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: "Experts are scum." For some reason people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about, say, the Peloponnesian War – and indeed, advancing the body of human knowledge – get all pissy when their contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved. And they get downright irate when asked politely to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment. —Lore Sjöberg, from "The Wikipedia FAQK"
 * The present system favors the bold promotionalist, who can exploit it to force an article to his liking. It harms the modest unfortunate, who has to resort to extremely public and unnecessary discussions of whether his private life should be publicized here. It harms the people it should be helping, and helps those who a NPOV reference source has no business in assisting. —DGG, on Wikipedia's handling of biographies of living people
 * Wikipedia is a porch light for the moths of bias, editors battering themselves to death arguing over their objections of true belief. The porch floor is littered with their corpses, each with a "banned" banner stamped in tiny print. Wikipedia has no system for managing systematic bias and harnessing it into anything useful. It is one of Wikipedia's most pernicious aspects. —Greybeard

On the accuracy of press sources

 * Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge. —Erwin Knoll
 * What people outside do not appreciate is that a newspaper is like a soufflé, prepared in a hurry for immediate consumption. This of course is why whenever you read a newspaper account of some event of which you have personal knowledge it is nearly always inadequate or inaccurate. Journalists are as aware as anyone of this defect; it is simply that if the information is to reach as many readers as possible, something less than perfection has often to be accepted. —David E. H. Jones, in New Scientist, Vol. 26
 * Actually, I'd say newspapers are more like commercial fast-food than soufflé. It isn't just that they are prepared in haste, it is that unwholesome additives and artificial sweeteners are added to true content, in order to make the whole thing more tasty. No one really asks whether the result is edifying or healthy, because it is generally consumed with a pinch of (even more superfluous) salt. —Scott MacDonald

The NPOV policy explained

 * Nasrudin was a judge and arbitrator in a dispute. First the advocate of the first side gave an eloquent discourse advancing his claims. Nasrudin, who had been listening intently, agreed and said, "That's right." Next, it was the other advocate's turn, and he was just as erudite. Once more Nasrudin agreed, adding, "That's right." Listening to Nasrudin's pronouncements, his clerk commented, "They can't both be right." To which Nasrudin agreed by saying, "That's right!" —Idries Shah

Verifiability and truth explained

 * One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth – the alternative is death by hanging." "I am going," said Nasrudin, "to be hanged on that gallows." "I don't believe you." "Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!" "Exactly," said Nasrudin. "YOUR truth." —Idries Shah

"Assume good faith" explained

 * Nasrudin dreamt that he had Satan's beard in his hand. Tugging the hair he cried: "The pain you feel is nothing compared to that which you inflict on the mortals you lead astray." And he gave the beard such a tug that he woke up yelling in agony. Only then did he realize that the beard he held in his hand was his own. —Idries Shah

On God and the world

 * Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains ... an un-unprooted small corner of evil. —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Solzhenitsyn on Wikiquote)
 * When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book? —Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (Lichtenberg on Wikiquote)
 * The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. —H. L. Mencken (Mencken on Wikiquote)
 * No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. —Frederick Douglass (Douglass on Wikiquote)
 * Questioners sooner or later end up in a library ... And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder. —Osho (Osho on Wikiquote)
 * In the coming world they will not ask me—Why were you not Moses? They will ask me—Why were you not Zusha? —Zusha of Hanipol (Zusha of Hanipol on Wikiquote)
 * Poems are made by fools like me / But only God can make a tree / And only God who makes the tree / Also makes the fools like me / But only fools like me, you see / Can make a God who makes a tree. —Yip Harburg (Harburg on Wikiquote)
 * Now every moment of consciousness, every moment of insight, through self-observation in the light of the Work, every sudden moment of seeing what a fool one is in different ways, not only alters the future but alters the past. It begins to re-arrange the memory of the past in a different way—that is, in a way that corresponds to the internal memory where things are rightly arranged in value, in scale, in importance.—Maurice Nicoll
 * Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw, / And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw: / Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide / Return, and back into your Sun subside. —Fariduddin Attar, transl. Edward FitzGerald (Attar on Wikiquote, FitzGerald on Wikiquote)


 * EN stats
 * DE stats
 * FR stats
 * ES stats


 * 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack
 * Cologne War
 * Hermann Detzner
 * Inner German border
 * Makinti Napanangka
 * Nothing to My Name
 * Siege of Godesberg
 * Symbol question.svg The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman
 * Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident
 * Unification of Germany
 * Werner Mölders
 * Akmal Shaikh
 * Idries Shah
 * Scientology in Germany
 * Symbol question.svg Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death
 * Symbol question.svg Andreas Grünschloß
 * Symbol question.svg Anna Murray-Douglass
 * Symbol question.svg Bolton Brown
 * Symbol question.svg Bo Ningen
 * Symbol question.svg Bruce High Quality Foundation
 * Symbol question.svg Dick Anthony
 * Symbol question.svg Frank Crichlow
 * Symbol question.svg Frightful Cave
 * Symbol question.svg Hilya
 * Symbol question.svg Īhām
 * Symbol question.svg INFORM (Information Network Focus on Religious Movements)
 * Symbol question.svg Ivy Alvarez
 * Symbol question.svg John A. Saliba
 * Symbol question.svg Journal of Contemporary Religion
 * Symbol question.svg James A. Beckford
 * Symbol question.svg Lorne L. Dawson
 * Symbol question.svg Magnus Manske
 * Symbol question.svg Mangrove Restaurant
 * Symbol question.svg Marimba Ani
 * Symbol question.svg Maureen Corrigan
 * Symbol question.svg Peter B. Clarke
 * Symbol question.svg Race Today
 * Symbol question.svg Red Barked Tree
 * Symbol question.svg Remi Kanazi
 * Symbol question.svg Rosie Vanier
 * Symbol question.svg swim ~
 * Symbol question.svg The Lazarus Effect (film)
 * Symbol question.svg The Stool Pigeon (newspaper)
 * 2009 French Caribbean general strikes
 * Arthur J. Deikman
 * Association for the Sociology of Religion
 * Black Twitter
 * Control limits
 * Creampie (sexual act)
 * Cult Awareness Network
 * David Miscavige
 * Dick Anthony
 * Dom Sylvester Houédard
 * Edward Campbell
 * Elin Klinga
 * Elvira Bach
 * Gerhard Besier
 * Godesburg
 * Greenhouse (automotive term)
 * Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy
 * Henry Sweet
 * Ikbal Ali Shah
 * International Society for the Sociology of Religion
 * James R. Lewis (scholar)
 * Jamie Doran
 * Jason Scott case
 * Jonas Malmsjö
 * Lionel Morrison
 * np-chart
 * Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
 * Omar Ali-Shah
 * Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
 * Paco Yunque
 * Pauline Bebe
 * Prem Rawat
 * Pym (novel)
 * Race Today
 * Rebecca Sjöwall
 * Rory Peck Award
 * Rosie and the Goldbug
 * Rosie and the Goldbug (album)
 * Rupert Sheldrake
 * Saul B. Newton
 * Scientology
 * Scientology (James R. Lewis book)
 * Scientology as a state-recognized religion
 * Shivapuri Baba
 * Six Sigma
 * Speckled bush-cricket
 * Tahir Shah
 * The Lazarus Effect (film)
 * Thomas Robbins (sociologist)
 * Wilhelm Hofmeister (automobile designer)
 * X-bar chart

Note: FA and GA which I wrote or co-wrote are displayed in the header at the top of this user page. Contributions to other FA and GA consisted in proofreading, copy-editing, reference organisation, minor content contributions, ALT texts and sorting out issues at FAC.


 * Adi Da 2009-12-11
 * Siege of Godesberg (1583) 2009-12-17
 * Radar (song) 2010-04-07

I have written or significantly contributed to the following Wikipedia guidelines and essays:


 * Guidelines:
 * WP:Plagiarism
 * Manuals of Style:
 * WikiProject Religion/New religious movements work group/Manual of Style
 * Essays:
 * WP:ADAM
 * WP:Ad nauseam
 * WP:Hazing
 * WP:Notable person survival kit
 * WP:Wikibombing (SEO)

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