That second article is fishy. Anonymous tips and our popular Hatedom providing telling evidence of the site's secret, protected, pedophile users? Riiiiiiiggghhhtttt.

Well, yeah, if they're arguing the point on the page itself then they both get banned for arguing on the page. You get arrested if you're caught spray painting a wall, doesn't matter if you're tagging an important philosophical debate.

Tomorrow: the shocking expose as the TV Tropes' secret dirty laundry is revealed: the Fetish Fuel site.

How about summarizing ccoa's post as a comment?

After some introductory blah, "We did look into the case of the user who claims they were banned for 'being rude to pedophiles'. This is not, in fact, true: The ban was given for completely different reasons, namely ...". Maybe provide a link to this thread?

The problem is that we set ourselves up for dealing with even worse issues if the anonymous tipper isn't, in fact, the one identified here. "Oh, that wasn't our anonymous tipper... just how often do you deal with this issue?"

The only thing we can do is wait for actual evidence and address the issue as it comes up. Otherwise, we're just dealing with the Many Questions Fallacy. We're dealing with the Internet version of the "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" question. No matter which way we answer, they take it badly.

Yes, we banned someone for questioning US Bias. If by questioning US Bias you mean inserting rants about the glory of North Korea into articles at seemingly random places. There was no real research done into this second article. I can pull apart every single one of those criticisms, but I'm not going to.

The sad truth is, journalists care not so much for the validity of their statements, but more for the number of views they get.

@55 Some journalists do. I'm a lapsed journalist myself, and some of us care for the truth instead of numbers.

What I don't understand with the second article is that it shifted topics. It first continued to talk of cleanup efforts and stressed the need for certain tropes to be there for the sake of information. But then it began to talk about some kind of deal to let banned users back, and about harboring pedophiles...? The tone/direction of the two halves of the article don't add up.

That's good to hear. You don't see it very often.

Oh look, alarmist journalism with obviously biased sources. Hmmm...what's the proper response to stuff like that?

Oh, right.◊

Actually, no, that just makes things worse...

What I mean is there's nothing we can really do to counteract it; whoever wrote that article is either horribly biased or suffers from a terrible case of Did Not Do the Research (unlikely given that we pointed them in the right direction in the first article). Since it seems that they don't really have an interest in listening to what we have to say, there's isn't much to do other than not get riled up about it. Getting all angry just gives the haters more reason to pull crap like this. At best, we can just explain the situation, and hope that the readers aren't going to take the article at face value.

Raging about how bad the article is will cause way more problems for the wiki's PR than going "Um, no, that's inaccurate." and moving on. If we ignore it, the haters will have to perpetuate the reaction themselves rather than allowing it to bounce back and forth between us and them.

edited 27th Jun '12 11:30:36 AM by JapaneseTeeth

Yes, this sounds like trolling on-a-long-range to me.

I do agree that the article is flawed and jumped to conclusions. That's why I wish there was a way to directly discuss the matter with the author; article sites like these sometimes bug me when the authors just write and leave but don't respond to any of the comments. Then we don't have a two-way communication going on.

Someone tell me why we care what these clowns think of us again.

edited 27th Jun '12 11:46:37 AM by Fighteer

The thing is, the fact that the second article continues to bitch about us implies to me that they're intentionally trying to make us look bad. With just the one article, I could buy that they just misunderstood what was going on. After the second one, it's evident that the author is, at best, willfully ignorant. One, I can understand. It's entirely possible to jump the gun and not get all the facts straight. But then doing it again after people have tried to point you in the right direction? Not so much.

Eh, I'd say the sheer timing of the articles makes the motive obvious. Posting a disparaging article with questionable sources right after the issues on the first article were solved? Something stinks.

I'm not familiar with the site, but the article itself reads like something out of a tabloid rather than a true article. It's more "look how much dirt we can dig up, shocking, ain't it?" and "who cares if it's true, it sells papers!" sensationalism than anything else.

edited 27th Jun '12 12:02:28 PM by ccoa

Hmm...what about the other articles?

The first article seemed reasonably written, but the second one seems very much written by someone with an agenda to push.

Like I said, it's not really consistent, nor does it try to explain why the first half is relevant to the second IMO. It seems to try to take both sides - preserving the need of free information and keeping the site safe - but without a proper transition.

Eh, it doesn't take a genius to figure out how the second article got written.

All of the things cited in the second article are from links that were included in comments either to the first article or on the Geek Feminism post linked to in the first place. If the TV Tropes piece got the readership, a lazy writer unconcerned with checking for evidence could just rehash those comments without actually investigating whether or not they were true, putting in enough so-called Weasel Words to cover themselves in the event that someone rattled the cage about libel.

It shows a lack of investigative talent and really looks like support for the "no" camp in the long-running "are bloggers actually journalists?" argument. But there's not much that really can be done other than ask that the claims be presented with evidence (I mean, if all this happened here on the forums, there should be links to the forum posts in question in the article). I personally don't make a habit of trying to refute baseless claims.

The person who got banned for allegedly questioning US Bias was Gilgameshkun, right? He had a history of unruly behaviour. Although the US Bias argument was the last straw, that thread wasn't the sole reason he got banned.

US Bias? Can someone explain this? This is the first I've ever heard of it.

If I remember right, some guy kept spouting about how awesome North Korea was and how Americans were slandering it with lies and propaganda or something. Or that might be another incident.

edited 27th Jun '12 12:37:32 PM by JapaneseTeeth

The incident I'm talking about is this one. Nothing about North Korea in the OP's post but it's a notable incident where a troper questioned the US Bias.