Applying Wikipedia's rules to Yahoo! Answers

One of the great unwritten rules of Wikipedia is that you don't criticize Wikipedia on Wikipedia. Sure, there is an article called "criticism of Wikipedia," but outside of that article, you're not allowed to criticize Wikipedia in any way. Doing so on your user page is one of the surest ways to get your user page deleted.

Recently, Eddie on Yahoo! Answers asked "Why do some Wikipedia admins insist that the rules of Wikipedia be applied all throughout the Internet?" GrimJack, a notorious Wikipedia apologist on Answers, answered the question with another question: "Do you have any specific examples of this?"

Well, I have a specific example for you: Nihiltres and Coffee seem to think that since Gregory Kohs was banned from Wikipedia, that means he also needs to be banned from Yahoo! Answers. The bastards have gotten him kicked off as both "MyWikiBiz" and "Try MyWikiBiz," the latter within days of the account being signed up. Supposedly Gregory Kohs uses multiple accounts on Answers, but no doubt the hypocritical Nihiltres and Coffee do so too, and on Wikipedia as well (in fact, they might be the same person).

Much more importantly, Gregory Kohs violated the unwritten rule of Wikipedia: You shouldn't criticize Wikipedia, which Nihiltres and Coffee and their various apologist sockpuppets on Answers wish to have extended to Yahoo! Answers. The reason this is important is that so many people turn to Answers to ask whether Wikipedia is reliable or not. There needs to be someone there to tell them that no, Wikipedia is not one bit reliable, and point them to the websites that tell the truth about Wikipedia, like Wikitruth (obviously), Wikipedia Review, Wikipedia Watch, MyWikiBiz, this blog, and even respectable newspapers of record like the New York Times and USA Today.

Kind of wrong about Nihiltres

So I made a mistake in my last post of 2009. When Nihiltres said that MyWikiBiz had privately admitted to him to having sockpuppets on Yahoo! Answers, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that Nihiltres had invented the confession. "Privately admitted?" How convenient, I thought.

Now it seems that MyWikiBiz did "privately admit" to having multiple accounts on Yahoo! Answers to Nihiltres, and followed that with a public admission at http://akahele.org/2009/04/searching-for-answers/. So, unlike Wikipedia's powers that be, I must admit to my mistake.

But does my mistake really change anything? The fact remains that despite an increasingly larger chorus of condemnation for Wikipedia, way too many people still have way too many misconceptions about Wikipedia (that it's a charity, that it's accurate, for starters).

Dastardly vicious attack by Nihiltres (aka "Alex") on Yahoo! Answers

Almost as often as people ask in the Men's Health category of Yahoo! Answers whether their member is big enough, in the Wikipedia category people keep asking if Wikipedia is reliable or accurate. Each time that question comes up, Nihiltres is ready with his multiple Yahoo! accounts to respond that yes, Wikipedia is 99% reliable. Several different people have been trying to educate those who read Yahoo! Answers that in fact Wikipedia is 0% reliable. What's the reaction of Nihiltres?

Waaah! Waaah! Not fair! How dare they! Waaaaaah! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Here's me playing the world's smallest violin.

So, as "Alex," he posted the question "Why is the wikipedia section on Yahoo answers only answered by people who hate wikipedia?" yesterday. Then, today, as Nihiltres (we're getting to the dastardly part now), posted an answer saying that there are three reasons people contribute to Yahoo! Answers; the first is altruistic, the second is balancing, and the third is to push a point of view. And that the third reason is the reason why the "Wikipedia haters" keep answering questions in the Wikipedia category, according to Nihiltres. (It couldn't possibly be altruistic to want to keep other people from feeding themselves false information from Wikipedia.)

Here's the dastardly part: Nihiltres says that "Gregory Kohs earlier admitted privately to me that he had used multiple accounts to cheat on Yahoo! Answers, and there's nothing stopping this from happening again, assuming it isn't already." Oooh, what a bastard!

The feint is hardly original. Robert, an answerer who spoke up two hours after the dastardly attack, pointed it out: "Of course Gregory Kohs admitted that to you privately, and not publicly, where others can scrutinize for themselves the exact wording of the admission. That's a play straight out of the Wikipedia secret manual. I bet you also have server logs to prove Greg's misdeeds, but out of privacy concerns, you can't show them to us."

Meanwhile, Nihiltres logged out his main account, got back in his car, drove to another WiFi hotspot, and logged in Alex, who then promptly chose the answer from Nihiltres as Best Answer. Supposedly because "it was ballenced [sic] and well reasoned." Please! Even Gregory's answer was more balanced, and Greg is the guy who still can't let it go that Wikipedia rejected his article about Arch Coal.

In the big picture of things, it doesn't really matter if I'm wrong about Alex being a sockpuppet of Nihiltres on Yahoo! Answers. The fact remains that thousands of people are still blissfully ignorant of Wikipedia's awfulness, and all the efforts of college professors, late-night comedians and "haters" on the blogosphere are still failing to wake the ignorant up to the truth: Wikipedia sucks; it's not worthy of use for any purpose whatsoever.

Dastardly as the actions of Nihiltres were today, since they took place outside of Wikipedia, they don't qualify him as a brutal Wikipedia warrior of the week.