The Whole Earth Cataloge for the digital age….kind of…
About two years ago, someone gave me a heads up that I had an entry in the Wikipedia under my name.
Well that was nice, and a certain sign of recognition in the digital age. The entry had been posted by someone in Europe, which was a kind gesture. Over time, there were a few additions to it, and I had pretty much forgotten it was there.
Then, about three or four months ago, I was doing an interview with an American magazine, and asked if it was true that I called myself ‘the VJ idiot’. I asked where they had gotten that from, and they told me it was in my entry in Wikipedia.
I went to Wikipedia, and I was astonished to read that I was listed at “the Jewish TV producer” and “Obama supporter”, among other things. Well, these are both true, but not particularly germane to what I do. There were other perjoratives as well.
I went in and corrected the entry, and no sooner had I done this than other changes, far worse, were place on the site.
Look, anti Semitic comments and email are nothing new for me. Not since I was listed on jewwatch.com years ago. Here’s an example of what comes in the mail. This from some mental case in Chicago:
Mike Sponza
mike.spon65@yahoo.com | 75.91.74.189Your rabbi? It’s bad enough you’re a jew, now you want to throw your dirty religion down our throats by posting this crap all over your front page?
Shouldn’t you be out somewhere teaching companies how to slash their operating costs by firing the Cameraman, Editors, FP’s and the like? I mean come on, any copywriter can shoot and edit amazing stories with just 4 days of your shitty schooling. What is happening at KRON? What about DC? Hummm, the BBC isn’t too pleased either from what I hear. And now we hear rumors that the GAO is starting another investigation.
When will you stop?
When it comes to my own emails or blog, I could care less, but when it comes to Wikipedia, its vandalism.
And it was becoming a daily event.
That’s where someone named Andy Mabbett comes in.
He is one of a small corps of highly dedicated yet unpaid web professionals who spend their time making sure that places like Wikipedia are kept in shape.
Now I don’t know Andy Mabbett, and I have never spoken to him, but he found the vandalism and cleaned it up, time after time after time.
Other people came in an peeled away paragraph after paragraph as they were vandalized. I am not supposed to deal with my own entry, and things I put in were removed as well.
Today, my entry is reduced to a line or two, but at least it’s accurate, and as I understand, protected from vandalism – at least for a while.
The world is filled with sick f***ers, and there is nothing I can do about that. But at least people like Andy Mabbett are there as well.
Thanks, Andy.
6 Comments
Pauli Ojala December 20, 2008
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Jew-Watch.htm
Who has heard that in the 1930’s Bagdad every 3rd citizen was a native Jew? The Sefardi (Safrati) Jews have a 400 year old history and the Mizrahi Jews over 2,500 year old history in the Middle East – outside the location of the state of Israel (Palestine).
Here’s the statistics regarding not ONLY the expelsion of Jews from various Moslim countries in the last 60 years that Israel has been an independent state, but also numbers expelled from the Europe in a longer time interval. The Jews are no settlers of colonialism:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-Jews-statistics.htm
60 years of survival. This is statistics, not Zionism. When the military means have lacked the power, it is now a time of a media war to spit on the Jews and curse the Jewish Scriptures. Both the Old and New Testament were written by Jews. Although Jasser Arafat in his books claimed that there never was any Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and that Jesus was not a Jew, he could not deceive the honest spectator
As a matter of fact, the population of Arabs (my beloved friends and brothers, just like the Jews, our common fathers) under the Israeli government was increased ten-fold (10X) in only 57 years. The Palestinian life expectancy increased from 48 to 72 years in 1967-1995. The death rate decreased by over 2/3 in 1970-1090 and the Israeli medical campaigns decreased the child deat rate from a level of 60 per 1000 in 1968 to 15 per 1000 in 2000. (An analogous figure was 64 in Iraq, 40 in Egypt, 23 in Jordan, and 22 in Syria in 2000). During 1967-1988 the amount of comprehensive schoold and second level polytechnic institutes for the Arabs was increased by 35%. During 1970-1986 the proportion of Palestinian women at the West Bank and Gaza not having gone to school decreased from 67 % to 32 %. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in West Bank and Gaza increased in 1968-1991 BKT from 165 US dollars to 1715 dollars (compare with 1630$ in Turkey, 1440$ in Tunis, 1050$ in Jordan, 800$ in Syria, 600$ in Egypt. and 400$ in Yemen).
One-fourth of the judgements of the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations strike Israel. Out of the incidences dealt in the Security Counsil one-third is having to do with Israel. I think this resembles the hysteria seen in the Black Plague in Europe, when the European Jews were accused of the pandemia and burned alive. The phobic mob was really scared and saw the peculiar Jews as a threat.
Pauli.Ojala@gmail.com
Finland
PS. Statistics of the beneficial impact of Jewish population to the host country in terms of inventions, science and technology:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Indicator.html
pigsonthewing December 05, 2008
Thanks, Michael.
Paul December 02, 2008
Michael, you seem to inadvertently made a very strong case for tighter web regulation.
The web is plunging into a ‘Lord of the Flies’ scenario.
For ‘democratisation’ read ‘mob’.
Nino December 01, 2008
HOLD IT JUST A DAMN SECOND MICHAEL. Did we go thru this discussion just a few months ago? That was about a ton of lawsuits mostly for slender and court award being handed out against bloggers and other who posted on the web? If I recall you were the one that wrote that these were “isolated†incidents and should not discourage the democratization of the web and the right under the first amendment to write whatever someone feels its right? But now that’s hitting home that not right anymore? I told you that there’s nothing more dangerous that sick idiots armed with keyboards but you tried to ridicule me for saying that, what about this sick idiot that wrote about you, is he guilty in believing and following your preaching? In few words it’s okay to do it to others but not to you?
This is why there will never be credibility on web reporting because there’s no accountability. Can you imagine the consequences if this incident would have happen on broadcast television? There would have been dozen of people getting fired and lawsuits all over the place, but not on the web.
This is your own medicine Michael, tastes bitter when you have to take it.
$ December 01, 2008
Anyone can put whatever e-mail they want here or for a wiki entry.
It doesn’t “prove” who wrote anything.
Those who leap forward and assume, then want to write e-mails condemning people are foolish.
This is a perfect example of why wikipedia has no real credibility as a solid source of information.
I am sorry someone was so ignorant and cruel to write things like that about you and your faith.
But a better lesson learned from all this is bot as much about the author as much as it is about entities on the internet and their less than reliable position as a source of factual information when their entire product is internet based.
The rare “good” examples are far outnumbered by those like wikipedia which, time and again, have been proven wrong with glaring problems beyond repair to ever be trusted.
Cliff Etzel December 01, 2008
Never ceases to amaze me at the level of arrogant GOB’s of TV shooter types with comments like those of Mike Sponza’s – talk about a narrow world view – and it becomes more apparent just how scared they are at the changes they can’t keep from happening.
Total ignorance is all I can say.
Thanks for posting his email – I’m sure there will be plenty of comments directed towards him with regards to his distorted world view.