Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/QuakeAID

Note: This discussion was moved here from the VfD page proper. Any references to above etc. refer to comments on the VfD page.

Discussion

The fact is that one of the users above specifically stated that they objected to QuakeAID's entry BECAUSE Baou Trust did not have a page itself. So I created one. I did not want to because it is not our focus. Remove Baou Trust if you want. I, but more importantly, our founder Katerina Theohari DOES NOT want a page for Baou Trust. I was asked to add it AFTER I explained the complaint that was being made by one of the above users. It is a nonsense to object to QuakeAID because Baou Trust does not have a page and then complaint that Baou Trust is trying to promote itself.

The fact of the matter is that Ms Theohari did not authorize the page regarding her painting. I published the information there because it explains or suggests how she obtained the considerable funding that is spent on endeavors such as QuakeAID. Remove the page for Kaith, if you want, it matters not to her or to me.

QuakeAID is a legitimate organization whether users of this service like it or not and will continue to provide funding, research and educational information irrespective of your comments or action regarding the page published here. The only negative element of the proposed deletion is that if it is done, users of this service will not find reference to QuakeAID. That may or may not negatively effect QuakeAID, but it will demonstrate that because of a single user RaD Man, your service is subject to and the victim of arbitrary censorship. But of course, you already know that because it has happened before; reference RaD Man's own comments, "If you stalk my habits, then you know I'm not a deletionist by nature." Where I come from one should need to make such a comment, it merely confirms the initial suggestion. Actions speak louder than words. It is perhaps why QuakeAID does not spend alot of time flouting its activities. We're too busy doing. I tried to convince Ms Theohari on the value of the Internet but her instincts, as usual, were correct. Keep QuakeAID --BAOU 06:36, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Please do not double vote. Your edit history is proof positive that you are indeed SPAMMING Wikipedia. There is absolutely no question about that. As I said before, I will be the first to openly apologize if someone (independant) can volunteer information that indicates that QuakeAID is not a fraud. As it stands, you have been (a) carelessly erasing Talk pages from numerous articles, (b) adding completely non-notable artists (who carry less than 9 Google hits) who are directly related to your Bauo corporation, (c) there is no documentation visible that indicates you are a non-profit organization of any sort, and (d) you've been spamming links left and right to QuakeAID, Bauo Trust and your news wire website (all people and organizations you are personally affiliated with and related to and virtually unknown to anyone except your subsidary companies) looks pretty goddamn shady to me. I feel I'm in the right here by bringing this to VfD, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. Believe me. —RaD Man (talk) 07:01, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe you. I see, you control everything here. I also see that you base the information found in this resource on what you find in Google. That makes it no better than Google. Sad really. You deleted all of the comments that were made to refute the inaccurate information published (by you). Nice one. There is no proof of anything except that you have altogether too much authority in the management of this resource. I note that you removed my original vote as well. Nice one. I repeat, unless you provide an answer to my question, my article will go out without your side. Your comments are inaccurate. You are on a personal quest. --BAOU 07:10, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Refer to your own talk page. Please point out which comments I've made that you are finding to be inaccurate. Your vote is above right where you left it. Thank you for the false accusations, I'll be here all night. —RaD Man (talk) 07:38, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Part one

But User:RaD Man does not think OfficialWire is vanity. Inconsistent and evidence of his prejudice.

Delete the following pages:

QuakeAID Kaith OfficialWire George Dracos Baou Trust

Then delete the username Baou Trust. Ms Theohari does not wish to be associated with this resource. All of the materials found on these pages is copyright Baou Trust. They were published with the permission of the copyright owner and that permission has now been withdrawn. --BAOU 07:41, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Interesting. OfficialWire garners 1560 hits on Google. [1] Thank you for bringing it to my attention, I haven't completed wading through your spam history quite yet. —RaD Man (talk) 07:53, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Do you want this article deleted or not? --kooo 10:33, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

Part two

Be sure to check out OfficialSpin. But it's interesting that you need to check Google in order to determine which pages Baou Trust has published to this resource. Be sure to report your results. I have a fair idea that you are on an Alexa IP and so that's what I will say. If this is not true, be sure to disabuse me of that belief.

--BAOU 08:07, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Part three

209.237.238.181 Alexa Internet:

Care to identify which Wikipedia user of this resource accesses the Internet from this IP? Stand up and be counted. --BAOU 07:53, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Part four

I tried to send an email to Jimbo Wales, to get his comments for my article, but his email address as found on his website does not work.

This is the Postfix program at host gunther.bomis.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the message returned below.

The Postfix program

<bomis@gunther.bomis.com>: unknown user: "bomis"

BTW, did you know that wikipedia.org is actually owned by Bomis, Inc., a private company for profit controlled by Mr Wales? I guess that's just in case the project goes bust on day, so Mr Wales can retain control over the domain name. It's a forward thinking thang.

Anyway, if anyone has his email address, I want to give him the chance to comment as well. --BAOU 08:01, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• How kind of you. Why don't you try his Talk page? —RaD Man (talk) 08:06, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Part five

Because we need an independent record of the message on our system, for legal reasons, which is not under your control and could therefore be deleted and denied. You cannot be trusted.

--BAOU 08:10, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Your personal attack against QuakeAID

I think it is newsworthy that you are attacking QuakeAID, without any knowledge of the organization. Would you like to reveal your reasons? I give you this opportunity in aid of fair reporting. Please reply. --BAOU 07:13, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This is not meant to be an attack on you. There are guidelines on what is acceptable on Wikipedia and you are working outside of those lines. Far outside. If you wish to talk to me on my talk page, click here -> User_talk:Radman1. I have left you a personal note at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Baoutrust&oldid=9069360#Suspicion_of_fraud. —RaD Man (talk) 07:25, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Original Message which was returned:

OfficialWire wrote:
> Dear Mr Wales,
> 
> I am preparing an article on the apparent attack against QuakeAID, a 
> charity organized for the benefit of earthquake victims, by one of your 
> services (Wikipedia) administrators: RaD Man.
> 
> Please note that OfficialWire.com is owned by Baou, Inc., which is owned 
> by Baou Trust (New York), and that QuakeAID received financial 
> assistance from Baou Trust.
> 
> In any event, for some days, this person has launched a personal attack 
> against QuakeAID, criticizing the company's website, its methods of 
> business and claiming that it is involved in fraud.
> 
> He has published numerous slanderous statements about the organization 
> to your company's website.
> 
> Whilst I recognize that your website is an open source resource, the 
> materials found there are unquestionably slanderous and based on nothing 
> except, according to your admin's own statement, the lack of references 
> about QuakeAID in Google.
> 
> I am writing an article about the apparent power this person has within 
> your organization, to edit content, remove comments refuting untrue 
> statements and his obvious attack against a reputable charity that has 
> been in operation since 1998, before your company existed.
> 
> Please reply.
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> 
> Jennifer Monroe
> www.officialwire.com
> 

--BAOU 08:13, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Jennifer, I am not an administrator or sysop of any sort on Wikipedia. While I've made several thousand edits here and try to do my part to contribute and preserve (yes, preserve), I am just a regular Wikipedia user like most everyone else. I do find it laughable that you refer to yourself as a "reputable charity" which has been in existence since 1998 yet in 2005 is still not recognized by the U.S. government as an actual charitable non-profit agency. Your actions are all pretty transparent and at this point fairly predictable. Keep up the good work. —RaD Man (talk) 08:19, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Christian Wirth a/k/a/ RaD Man achieved notarity by making it his personal quest in life to attack the reputation of QuakeAID, based on inaccurate information. He used his position of power, within the Wikipedia organization to attempt to sully the reputation of QuakeAID, but merely suceeded in demonstration what a complete ass he really is. See Christian Wirth --BAOU 08:26, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Is this how everyone at your legitimate non-profit charity organization operates? Very professional. —RaD Man (talk) 08:35, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Part six

Try to harm a person's work and see what they do...?

Christian Wirth a/k/a/ RaD Man achieved notarity by making it his personal quest in life to attack the reputation of QuakeAID, based on inaccurate information.

He used his position of power, within the Wikipedia organization to attempt to sully the reputation of QuakeAID, but merely suceeded in demonstration what a complete ass he really is.

See how easy it is?

--- Of course you could block the IP, but then you lose an entire section of the Internet, plus I have another... and another, and another...

QuakeAID, Kestrel Trading Company, Baou.com - Website History on Wayback Machine

Please read every single record in this history log in order to make sense of what's going on while maintaining neutrality.

• QuakeAID: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.quakeaid.org/
• Kestrel Trading Company: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.kestrel.mu
• Baou.com: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.baou.com

QuakeAID's page of interest: http://web.archive.org/web/20020602150428/http://quakeaid.org/ --Godric 08:48, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

• So it looks like Baou.com is originally "a protectorate of the Church, Baou Island offers a host of services such as corporate registrations, off-shore tax incentives and private banking arrangements" turn sponsor of non-non-profit agency QuakeAID? What is it we're supposed to be seeing here exactly. —RaD Man (talk) 08:55, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Reasons for voting to keep

I agree with the general sentiment that this is a highly dubious "charity": I can't tell at all how many donations they've received in the past and what exactly they did with that money. It's also strange that the only way to donate is through a recurring membership subscription. But that's not primarily what's at issue in this vote.

I do see some evidence for notability, plus the article clearly has the potential to become an NPOV source of information eventually (it's already much better than the first revision). It is also pretty clear that the article was created by someone directly involved with this charity, possibly with the goal of self-promotion. But we're past that now. Like I said above, the current revision contains valuable information from background research done by WP editors. Information that does not seem to be present anywhere else on the web, like the list of missing reviews from BBB and similar organizations, or the fact that this charity is not a tax-exempt not-for-profit corporation under US law.

IMHO it is better to take the NPOV inclusionist road with self-promoters and spammers that are marginally notable. Someone thinks they can get free advertising, but on WP there is no such thing as a free launch. What they will get instead is an NPOV article that mentions the bad and the ugly as well. That is a valuable contribution: especially now that people may be looking for information on QuakeAid, a reader is in a much better position to judge what's going on based on this article, compared with most (all?) other secondary sources of information on the web. --MarkSweep 14:52, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Mark. I understand your point on notability. I myself spent my time researched about their website's Wayback Machine log, I too want to keep those valuable info intact for others to see. But the fact is that, the original QuakeAID info, by user BAOU, is non-notable; because as I said, it is highly dubious in factual accuracy. Let me try to put it this way, we are torn between user BAOU's dubious contribution and the factual research info that is done in response to refute the original dubious info, and the dilemma is that they are technically on the same page (but noted that they are not logically on the same page though; because the true knowledge copying is done in our minds, not in the communication medium, whether it's in Wikipedia's database or on paper).

Therefore, after giving some thoughts on this dilemma, I've decided to vote for deletion; because it's very obvious that the original info by user BAOU is highly dubious, and not to mention its social impact during such a vulnerable time of unprecendented global disaster for Humanity now. I don't recommend that we give in to those dubious info with negative social impact, solely because we want to keep our own stuff (research info, rebuttals). In fact, we can always move the factual research info into other pages, and then reference QuakeAID as a case study of such incident/dispute.

My secondary alternative besides deletion is to lock the QuakeAID page indefinitely (effectively making it a static case study page), until the dubious matters it involves is resolved, at least to some acceptable degree of clarity (e.g. Law Enforcement investigating QuakeAID).

Then you could ask me: what is the difference between a "locked case study page" and an "openly editable live page" of QuakeAID? The answer is revert wars. In this special case dealing with user BAOU, s/he was quite persistently "defending" herself and her "charitable organization" with constant personal attacks and evasive maneuvers (see this main page and talk page). It seems to me that she will be unlikely to avoid an epic revert war, solely for continuing her "personal defence". The sole notable casualty of this possible war will be our readers, whom will be exposed to constant revision after revision, revert after revert, on merely insisting, without factual support, that QuakeAID, the dubious organization in question, is indeed factual as claimed, by user BAOU, who practices limitless personal attacks and evasive maneuvers; but obviously we all know, with factual research, that it's dubious at its best.

And this is why I voted for Deletion. --Godric 19:24, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

I understand and share your concerns. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if QuakeAID was operating on the fringe of legality, though they appear to be very clever in not making any specific promises. I also agree that the kind of article that BAOU (or should we say "Kathy") has been pushing for is unacceptable. However, I still think that a reasonable NPOV article could be maintained and that it would be a useful thing to have. Like you said, people will now be searching the web for charitable organizations that promise to help quake victims. Where can they find objective, independent information about QuakeAID? I'd say Wikipedia is perhaps the only prominent place. For me the only question is whether QuakeAID is inherently notable. It's perhaps a borderline case, but I'd say it passes the notability test for me (it's a registered corporation, they have an online presence, so what if that's only due to self-promotion). When I first saw the Sollog article, I nominated it for deletion. It was a similar situation, perhaps worse because the guy behind Sollog suffers from some form of personality disorder and is generally incapable of rational exchanges, plus he's quite the sockpuppeteer. However while I was arguing for deletion or protection, several editors convinced me to at least try the open approach that's normal on Wikipedia. Sure, Sollog keeps pushing his POV, but these futile attempts get reverted within minutes. We've seen revert wars, page blanking, vandalism, profanity, sockpuppetry, posting from open proxies, phone calls to Jimmy Wales, homophobia, legal and other threats, prophecies of eternal doom, fake court orders, verbal attacks against Jimmy Wales's wife and daughter, the creation of wikipedia hate sites, among many other strategies from presumably a single person. This even escalated to include Slashdot at some point. While some of these attacks are painful and reprehensible, they have had no effect on the Sollog article itself, thanks to extremely vigilant editors. I don't think it can get much worse here, but I could be wrong. --MarkSweep 22:55, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Another thing. There are some striking parallels to the Sollog case: the first revision was an act of vanity/self-promotion, the creators run their own news outlet and domain registration service, which are based in classic off-shore tax shelters, their notability is mainly due to shameless self-promotion, both are concerned with earthquakes, both also promote their own fine art, etc. However, Sollog appears to involve less than a handful of people, possibly only one main actor. Yet the result of the VfD on Sollog was to keep the article (trying to make/keep it NPOV is another story). I agree with all your objections against the organization QuakeAid, but they are not necessarily objections against the article about this organization. I agree in particular that calling it a "charity" is POV, but that means the wording should be changed to something more like "claims to be a charity but is not recognized by the IRS as a charitable organization for tax purposes, unlike [list of a few real chairities]". --MarkSweep 18:53, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sorry that I'll investigate Sollog in depth later, I just skimmed through it a bit. However, I have a technical & legal question about Deletion in mind now, and I'd like to know whether or not you guys know something about it already.

By GFDL, every text content submitted into Wikipedia is also GFDL-ed. This means that all the content that user BAOU submitted about her "charitable organization(s)" is now accessible to all GFDL compatible usage, and this is probably why user BAOU feared about this, thus saying this in desperation.

I guess I can relate this (GFDL-Deletion issue) to your concern Mark. If we deleted all of these dubious, but nonetheless GFDL-ed contents; would this act of permanent deletion effectively revoked, though not legally, but technically, the permission already granted by user BOAU to any other GFDL-usage (e.g. Wikipedia)?

And my last question is that, is Wikipedia's deletion permenant? Thus technically (based on MediaWiki's coding) acts like vanishing into thin air; therefore the GFDL-ed material, though dubious, will cease to exist upon deletion, thus effectively revoked the GFDL upon the completion of deletion?

I'll look into the matter of MediaWiki's internal mechanism myself a while later. Here I just want to raise the concern between GFDL-revoke and MediaWiki's deletion mechanism. --Godric 19:58, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what the issue is. I'd say (IANAL) that BAOU published her contributions under a GFDL license, which makes it possible for Wikipedia to create and publish derived works under the same (or compatible) license. There is no obligation to publish anything here, either the original version or any derived versions. --MarkSweep 22:55, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I noticed that Baou_Trust is deleted now. Is the content of it permanently unretrievable after this deletion, at least from an editor point of view?

My point was, if I don't have a copy of Boau_Trust at hand, and it's now deleted in Wikipedia; to me, it's content is forever lost. If everyone also doesn't have a copy of it after deletion in wikipedia, then it's forgotten. Therefore, we can never retrieve its GFDL-ed content anymore, thus effectively "revoked" Baou_Trust's GFDL-usage upon deletion. --Godric 17:38, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Only if - My sole pivot - Deletion, GFDL & Eternal Copyleft

I'll vote to keep, even while contradicting my conscience in a short-run, only if MediaWiki's deletion will effectively (not legally, but technically) revoke the GFDL-ed content that our dear user BAOU has granted us for eternity under GFDL (copyleft) --Godric 20:13, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)

MPC Trust (now Baou Trust) vs. Spank-the-Monkey

Spank-the-Monkey site owners letter archive

Pages of interest: July 2003 - October 2003, November 2003 - February 2004

User BAOU (Jennifer Monroe, then Associate Director, MPC Trust; probably got promoted by now) was mentioned there. (note: attention to her tactics decribed by the site owner)

Also note that, most of the MPC/Baou site-operations listed here and here (e.g. You've Got Post, etc...) has been shut down probably due to some reasons (message dated 30/11/2003, mentioning AOL UK's injunction on trademark).

And since around May 2003 (according to Wayback Machine's log: Wayback on Boau.com, Wayback on MPCTrust.org, Wayback on kestrel.mu (probably the ultimate or original parent company)), all of MPC/Baou subsidaries' websites were redirected to OfficialWire (formerly OfficialSpin), the newly created umbrella site. Despite this umbrella redirection, QuakeAID remains standalone until today, with relatively innocent appearance (unlike a few other commercial-looking subsidaries survived being nested under OfficialWire, see sidebar).

And thanks to user:ZenWarrior for reminding us in here, we also know that [www.cafepress.com/baou/460390 QuakeAID shop] also sells thongs for charitable purpose.

So much for them to operate an adult service before, along side with the innocent "charitable" QuakeAID offering.

Also note that QuakeAID is/was a subsidary directly under Kestrel Trading Corporation in here (see copyright line), as a member among the "Group of Companies" managed by Kestrel. But all the names and relationships are somewhat reorganized nowadays, probably due to some crucial reasons.

I guess it's starting to get worthwhile encyclopedian-wise (unprofessionally, of course). --Godric 19:58, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)