Talk:Wiki-Watch

A fact from Wiki-Watch appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 9 May 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that Wiki-Watch is a free software tool to automatically assess the reliability of Wikipedia articles?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2011/May.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia Mid‑importance

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illegal linking

According to Wikipedia:External links#Restrictions on linking it is illegal to link to Material that violates the copyrights of others. The link to a copy of a (depublicated) FAZ-article violates the copyright of the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

@History2007: Do You want Wikipedia to be sued by a leading German Newspaper? --217.227.32.75 (talk) 08:25, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Basic rule: the moment people get legalistic, there is something fishy going on. It is not FAZ that is worried here, it is someone else - no names mentioned. I saw that the link to the duplicate was removed. I will not bother to even discuss it further because 2% of readers will read it anyway. And I know that type of legal threat is as empty as it can get, so just forget it.

Frankly I had no idea who these people were. But with all this legal talk and all, I wonder what is going on. Not because I care about this little PR firm, but I wonder how many firms there are in the US, UK, France etc. who may be Wiki-PR agents.

In any case, I think your friend in Berlin did well to add that info as a start. Regardless of what happens with these 2 people (and I could not care less) the interesting question is: how many PR firms around the world are doing this type of thing and how can one know?

Regardless of all of that, I still like the "idea" of this piece of software and I think MediaWiki should develop something like that itself, so it will be free of any possible accusations. History2007 (talk) 15:59, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"..., but I wonder how many firms there are in the US, UK, France etc. who may be Wiki-PR agents." That's really an interesting question. --MTYM (talk) 02:31, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I thought about that more, and I think we should have, and should expect it. Wikipedia is a "communication medium" and like other media there will be PR firms that try to manipulate it. So regardless of how many firms there are, there will be more in the future, just as there are PR firms that try to do that for print newspapers. History2007 (talk) 05:56, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The special case here seems to be that the manipulators run a organization that pretends to be concerned about the reliability of Wikipedia. Its strongly looks like the fox wants to put himself in charge of the henhouse.--MTYM (talk) 15:53, 9 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

8 minor edits

8 Edits [1] within the article Sanofi-Aventis [2] are used by german Wikipedia "prosecutors" as a sign for "massive manipulation and influencing efforts "[3]. The answer to the question how these edits indicating "massive manipulation and influencing efforts" is not been given neither by journalists nor by wikipedians. The edits are all in all apparently too irrelevant to talk about. A comparison of the 8 Edits with the current version of articles today (07/19/2011) reveals amazing. The incorporated information can still be found! Well Thats Wikipedia;-) So where is the massive manipulation? Within the article or outside the article by using Stocks relation to Sanofi for discrediting the work of Wiki-Watch ? --WowowowonderWhy (talk) 18:39, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Assuming you understand german and really understand the links you present you seem to me to have a rather tactical relationship to truth. Please include all the sock puppets, and also the sock puppets of user Diskriminierung and count again. Look e.g. also at the history of articles related to evangelicalism like the articles about World Vision --MTYM (talk) 22:19, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think you can click the link above yourself and count the edits (8) and accounts there too. --WowowowonderWhy (talk) 09:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And beside: You know that W. Stock, the man the article is talking about, is not user Diskriminierung. You also know, that this article does not have anything to do with user Diskriminierung. In return i would lik to knww what your relationship to truth is, when you are mixing up facts here. Your mission, when seeing your german user site, seems to be obvious just an anti World Vision fight. Enought said about "tactical relationship to truth" ? --WowowowonderWhy (talk) 16:32, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

WoWonderboy, here is a newspaper article linking the Wikipedia Account of Diskriminierung and the official Wikipedia-Account of Wiki-Watch and also Weberling admitting that Diskriminierung supported Wiki-Watch. Thats why the whole affair blew up in the first place. That must be mentioned in the article of Wiki-Watch. --MTYM (talk) 03:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WhoIs Jörg Wittkewitz (the autor of the FAZ article everybody is talking about)

According to Whois.de Jörg Wittkewitz [4] is the domain owner of txt21.de. [5] This domain is the online address of the company txt21 Wittkewitz communications. [6]

The "Wittkewitz Communications" is annotated on the internet with an interesting agenda: "The agency helps companies in the IT, pharmaceutical and chemical industries in their media work." Uuups !

And the txt21 homepage says the same [http://web.archive.org/web/20070629081256/http://www.txt21.de/kunden/ index.html]: By "customer" states:

"txt21 works in the fields of high technology, information technology, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. [...] We are here for you when it comes to creating texts and articles, or it goes to the addressing press is to schools for advice and internal PR and marketing forces or for a total package full unwinding of all tasks in communication management. "

Specific customers of Wittkewitz are for example Verity. For this company was / is "Wittkewitz communications." expressly listed as the contact for the press [7]. This work for Veritas closes a circle on (Insulin) with the Verity customers of Roche and Schering as competitors of Sanofi's. [8]

Upsi Dupsi, our world is quite small ;-) --WowowowonderWhy (talk) 18:57, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Nice try, but you only forgot to mention, that Wittkewitz Communications was dissolved about half a decade ago. Since then Wittkewitz makes his living mainly by blogging and writing articles as a Jounalist for newspapers[9]. That's why you need the Wayback-Machine and can find only rather irrelevant links from 2003. --MTYM (talk) 21:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So does he? You know him personally, drinking low tea with him ? You know everybody is joking about Stocks sentence about his mother (?) having diabetis *g* "And Wittkewitz makes his living mainly by blogging and writing articles as a Jounalist for newspapers" *g* Just make your own google search for "txt21 wittkewitz communications" and read the obvious yourself. His work is still actually tagged as "Public relations agencies advertising marketing companies". --WowowowonderWhy (talk) 19:33, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Look also at Scheringwatch. Wittkewitz still holds to be a PR-agent. And if he had stopped this work, why should he still maintain this websites? --Scheringwatch (talk) 18:16, 21 October 2011 (UTC) So, not finding any really credible source you make now up your own sources and link them here? --MTYM (talk) 03:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Appropriate use of the software

Now, instead of Upsi dupsi, how about doing something useful, now that you know the topic. That software has no future at that university, so why not talk to the university to "donate the source" to Wikipedia and wash their hands from it. Then MediaWiki can use it after inspection and it will be useful, and the fox will no longer be guarding the hen house, as someone said. There is no point in throwing it away, it can get donated to the Wikimedia Foundation and the university will look good doing it. And Wikipedia can use it in a clean form. History2007 (talk) 19:00, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh is that the goal of the anti-wiki-watch campaign? Getting the softwhere from wiki-watch ? i've heard all bricks are available on the toolserver for building wikipedias own watch-tower. So i dont believe it. From my point of view the anti-wiki-watch campaign is just a part of the typical wikipedian political mud-wrestlings. --84.137.43.155 (talk) 19:51, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I am pretty pro-WikiWatch. I started this page because I thought it was a good idea - I still do. And I could not care less who owned it before, who threw mud at whom etc. What I would like to see is something like this in use within Wikipedia. And if it can get donated then so much the better. The fact is that reliability can not be asserted in the presence of accusations - be they true or false. This software as is has become controversial - right or wrong is another story. It is controversial now and I could not tell people to use it in the presence of these mud fights. If MediaWiki has something like this, it will be a different story. But it has no future at that university, given the controversies, regardless of the merits of teh accusations, or lack thereof. History2007 (talk) 20:21, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If You are sincere in this, You should contact Wiki-Watch directly. --Wicki und Halva (talk) 19:20, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to the german wikipedia newsgroup it has been planed to exlude evanglicans like Wsto (Wolfgang Stock) from the Wikipedia since more than two years

Within the Mailinglist of the german wikipedia you can find a statement of a prominent user (who knows what he is writing), saying that it has been planed to exclude Wikiwatch, Wolfgang Stock (Wsto) from Wiki-Watch and conservative christians (evangelicans, opus dei) since more than 2 years. From this point of view the whole agitation thing about some minor edits 2009 (!!) by W. Stock is nothing more than a cheap campain.

A detail from the german Text

... Dein Optimismus in allen Ehren, aber es dauerte mehr als zwei Jahre, bis endlich - auch mit Wsto und Wikiwatch - aufgeräumt wurde. Bis es dazu kam, bedurfte es hunderter Diskussionsseiten, die diese Gruppe ehemals unterstützenden Admins und Oversighter haben sich danach nicht zu Wort gemeldet. Ich sage nicht, dass "unsere" Leute dieser Gruppierung nahestünden, aber es sind einfach Traumtänzer! Ich kann Dir aber versichern, dass nur ein kleiner Teil dieser Gruppen erfasst und vorerst stillgelegt wurde. Ich plädiere nicht für ein rigoroses Aussperren ohne Gründe, aber die Schläfer sind noch immer vorhanden. Der Opus Dei (um nur eine Gruppe zu nennen) kann jederzeit an die zwanzig Leute innerhalb von wenigen Stunden mobilisieren und sie machen es sehr geschickt, kennen die Regeln perfekt. ...

Here the Google translation. Its is especially interesting and courious that the text (from the left side of the world) sounds a little bit like a right wing text against an islamistic group ("sleepers"). But the mechanismis are the same: evangelicans and conservative christians are the bad boys: "We" - the wikipedian starship troopers must do everything against this other "Axis of evil".

--WowowowonderWhy (talk) 16:47, 22 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

better Infobox?

As Wiki-Watch is not only the wiki-watch.org software but an University project to monitor Wikipedia, the infobox software is not the right one. Is there an infobox for university projcts? --Wicki und Halva (talk) 19:13, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

mmh, maybe using the infobox website... mabdul 20:35, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

co-founder

It is no NPOV to write

Der Spiegel added a disclaimer to the formal reply stating that according to press law
it has to print this reply without regard to factual truth"

These disclaimers are usually beneath every formal reply. The disclaimer does not challenge the formal reply because it gives no facts and thus no reason to doubt it. In some cases German newspapers comment formal replies with additional facts, but this didn't happen. So this sentence is redundant. It only shall arouse doubt. This is MTYMs POV, not NPOV. --Wicki und Halva (talk) 06:18, 17 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

hmmm.. I would say it is POV to write here "unchallenged" with or without disclaimer, but even more so if the disclaimer is present. Also, a newspaper has the possibility to admit an error and apologize if it finds the formal reply valid. Obviously, that didn't happen here. It is a reason to doubt it if a formal reply has to be printed without regard to factual truth. BTW, it is interesting to see the accounts blocked in the german Wikipedia in the course of the discovery of the army of sock puppets still active and producing spin in the english Wikipedia. --MTYM (talk) 03:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]