Peter Tatchell: Survivor

Guardian online.

As hilarious a piece of self-serving self-mythologising as Saint Peter's Wikipedia page.

Grant Shapps: A World Turned Upside Down

Mirror montage.

Wikipedia has blocked a user account on suspicions that it is being used by the Conservative party chairman, Grant Shapps, “or someone acting on his behalf” to edit his own page along with the entries of Tory rivals and political opponents.

The online encyclopedia, where pages are edited and created by readers, has tracked the changes made by a user called “Contribsx” who has systematically removed embarrassing references on Shapps’ Wikipedia page about the Tory chairman’s business activities as Michael Green, the self-styled millionaire web marketer.

A Guardian investigation found about a third of the contributions made by this user were to Shapps’ own Wikipedia entry while the rest are made up largely of unflattering changes to the online pages to senior political figures – including prominent figures in the Tory party such as Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, Justine Greening, the international development secretary, and Lynton Crosby, Conservative election campaign strategist.

Wikipedia says that “sock-puppetry” – creating a fake online identity “for an improper purpose, such as to mislead other editors, disrupt discussions, distort consensus or avoid sanctions” – is not permitted.

It added that it had banned Contribsx and said any evidence of future attempts to cover the user’s tracks would be investigated immediately.

The site’s administrators, selected Wikipedia volunteers who patrol the site, told the Guardian that they “believe that the account Contribsx is a sockpuppet of Grant Shapps’ previous accounts on Wikipedia ... and based on the evidence the account is either run by Shapps directly or being run by someone else – an assistant or a PR agency – but under his clear direction.”

When the Guardian first approached Shapps saying that Wikipedia would be closing down this user account because Wikipedia said it was linked to him, a spokesman for the Conservative party said: “This story is completely false and defamatory. It is nonsense from start to finish.”

When Shapps was sent a detailed exposition of the changes made by Contribsx – including posts critical of cabinet colleagues such as George Osborne – the Tory chairman did not respond.

Later, on Tuesday night, he said it was “categorically false and defamatory”.

“It is untrue from start to finish, and was quite likely dreamt up by the Labour press office. Sadly it is typical of the smears coming from those who would rather not debate policy and substance,” Shapps said...

Some of the posts made by Contribsx, which was created in the summer of 2013, illuminate Conservative divisions, focusing notably on one of the biggest rebellions in the last parliament over the issue of gay marriage – a policy that remains controversial, with traditionalists targeting liberal Tories in this election.

The rancour began after May 2013 when 134 Tory MPs voted against the government, arguing the idea would weaken the institution of marriage. Shapps was one of the MPs that had supported the leadership line that the country was ready for the change.

In the months to come, Contribsx highlighted those in the cabinet who had rebelled. In September 2013 Contribsx edited Hammond’s Wikipedia page so that it noted the then defence secretary had “been openly critical of the prime minister’s approach to the (same-sex marriage) bill saying that he was ‘shocked’ at the speed at which it was pushed through and that it ‘damaging’ for the Conservative party”.

Another edit made a few minutes later drew attention to an interview given by the then attorney general, Dominic Grieve, to his local newspaper in his Buckinghamshire constituency noting that he “was one of four members of the cabinet who abstained in the May 2013 same-sex marriage vote. He said that he believed that the bill had been ‘badly conceived’”. ...

The Guardian.

Fagburn believes this is known as 'doing a Johann Hari'. 

But what a sign of the times that a Tory MP thinks he will smear his fellow Conservatives by pointing out that they did not support equal marriage.

Fagburn has a little list of gay journalists and a well-known gay campaigner who have written much of their own Wikipedia entries, which I shall run soon.

Fagburn calls this 'Wikiwanking'. 

Chelsea Manning: A Statement

I happen to agree with [my attorney David E Coombs'] statement that I was “motivated in my actions not only by transparency beliefs, but also by [my] deep concern for the value of human life.”

These are not mutually exclusive values; rather I see my concern for human life as providing a solid foundation to my dedication to transparency.

I also agree with the [Private Manning Support Network] “that [my] actions in 2010 intersect crucially not only with issues of information transparency but also with a critical discussion about US wars and foreign policy”.

However I would personally extend this further and broaden this intersection of transparency and the value of human life with those of a need for equality and respect for all people regardless of: skin complexion, eye color, or hair color; who your parents are; the geographic location you or your parents were born; what you believe or don’t believe; what gender you were assigned or identify as; who you are physically and emotionally attracted to; what job you have or how much money your family makes; whether you’re incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, or your physical and intellectual ability...

Statement sent via Private Manning Support Network.

Read the letter in full here.

For background to this and the confusions over Chelsea's recent letter to the Guardian regarding the Sean MacBride Peace Prize see WISE Up Action Network.
In this memorandum Manning confirms she is requesting a presidential pardon and commutation of her sentence, treatment for gender dysphoria, and a legal change of name - these last two may have to go to court.

PS Wikipedia's argument over Chelsea/Bradley Manning continues...

• The Pvt Manning Family Fund is raising money to help her relatives in Wales afford to visit her in prison in the US.

Update: The Advocate on how the US media dealt with Chelsea coming out as trans, ie not very well.

Gay Media: Pants

An interesting article in AdAge on the failure of American gay-targeted TV channel, Logo, blog 365gay.com, and the social networking site, Fabulis;
'Is Gay Too Mainstream For Its Own Media?' 
Top fact; "Logo is piped into 48 million homes nationwide through cable, satellite and telco providers, but its network-wide ratings are too low for Nielsen to report."
Oops.
Logo was an epic failure simply because it wasn't very good. 
Same with 365Gay.com.
I should go into management consultancy, really...
Fabulis scraped in just 100,000 users in eight months - they dropped the gay angle a year ago.
Fabulis always sounded a really ill-thought out idea, as one of its founders tells AdAge, what were they offering gay men that they couldn't get from (the far from homophobic) Facebook, for example?
I read that someone has just launched WikiQueer, "the Wikipedia for all things LGBT".
Has anyone ever had problems getting queer stuff on - or off - Wikipedia?
In fact, WikiQueer is currently publishing mirror pages from Wikipedia.
Here's WikiQueer on the Kinsey Scale and here's Wikipedia.
So what is point?

Fagburn: Blackout

Fagburn has shut down for 24 hours.
This is partly in protest against SOPA, but mainly because without Wikipedia I can't cut-and-paste entire paragraphs and pretend I know about things I don't.
I am also upset I can't re-read the glowing Wikipedia article I wrote about myself.
Fight da power!

Polari: Talking Rubbish

There's a fitting irony that polari is often misrepresented as being a language; much writing about gay men in the media still reads like anthropology, describing a strange, lost tribe whose ways are quite alien.
There is a piece in the Telegraph today; 'British languages 'in danger of dying out within a generation''
"Twenty languages spoken in the UK - including Old Kentish Sign Language - have become extinct or are in danger of dying out within a generation according to academics who are attempting to halt their disappearance..."
"Also included is Polari, a language which grew from ingredients of Italian, Romany and Hebrew origin and was used by homosexual men in the mid-19th century as a secret code at a time when it was still illegal to be gay."
Once upon a time journalists would make their own mistakes, in the age of the internet they just repeat other peoples'.
Polari isn't really a language - you couldn't hold a conversation in it - it's just an umbrella term for some slang words used by some British gay men in the twentieth century.
There have been various attempts to compile polari dictionaries, but only a few words ever had anything approaching a common currency.
Saying that polari was "a secret code at a time when it was still illegal to be gay" is mendacious.
According to Wikipedia - the idiot's friend - it was used "to disguise homosexual activity from hostile outsiders and undercover policemen".
It wasn't really - it was just a bunch of words various groups of gay people used, often just small groups of friends; it wasn't subterfuge, it was more likely to be used by gay men when they felt safe, with their own kind, in private conversations, in a bar, over lunch, at parties.
And how can polari be "in danger of dying out" when it's always been in a state of flux?

Wikipedia Vs Research: Received Wisdom

"Yesterday's articles about the life of Norman Wisdom included many credits, but overstepped in attributing to him the lyrics to the song There'll Be Blue Birds Over the White Cliffs of Dover (Chaplin's only rival: Norman Wisdom, last of the music hall greats, dies at 95, 5 October, page 3) and saying he was nominated for an Oscar for The Night They Raided Minsky's (The lost art of slapstick, page 3; Sir Norman Wisdom obituary, guardian.co.uk)."
Corrections and Clarifications, The Guardian.

Yesterday was a great day for media mischief makers.
Several newspapers printed as fact nonsense like the above nicked from Norman Wisdom's "vandalised" Wikipedia entry.
As they haven't corrected it or included it in the above mea culpa, Fagburn presumes The Guardian is still sticking to the wonderful "fact" they printed on page 3 yesterday:
"In the early 1970s, [Norman Wisdom] was personally invited by Mao on a month-long tour of China."
The Guardian is almost certainly the best paper at admitting their mistakes, and their daily Corrections and Clarifications column is a hoot, and knowingly so.
They also fessed up to publishing the White Cliffs of Dover fiction on Media Guardian yesterday - and pointed out it had also turned up in tributes in the Daily Mirror and The Independent.
No journalist - certainly not an unprofessional fuckwit like Fagburn - can gloat over this story.
It happens to the very best of us.
The acclaimed biographer - and a journalist Fagburn loves - Roger Lewis, included the nonsense about Wisdom's Oscar nomination in his tribute to Norman in today's Daily Telegraph (Still present and incorrect online at the time of typing).
The problem is not mirthful moments like this, but journalists with specialist knowledge being replaced with idiots who know nothing and can only cut-and-paste from Wikipedia and/or a press release.
Little parlour game: Pick a magazine article at random, say a profile of some gayer of note in a gay mag, and see how much of the info in it is also in the relevant Wikipedia entry, and how much has come from elsewhere.
If a journalist has got nothing else to add, then why not just print the URL?
Here's a classic example - a Pink Paper story about Ben Summerskill getting his OBE in November 2009.
Here is Ben Summerskill's Wikipedia entry.
There is a four paragraph potted bio of Summerskill at the end of the Pink Paper story.
It is missing one crucial part of his CV - presumably as it is not mentioned in his Wikipedia entry.
But you might have thought a journalist writing for The Pink Paper would have known that Ben Summerskill used to be the editor of The Pink Paper.
Let's just hope this whole sorry episode has been a learning experience for all of us.
Don't trust anything you read on Wikipedia.
Don't trust anything you read by a journalist.
And most of all don't believe anything you read by a hypotwit like me.
Okay - now go and tell some inventive lies on Wikipedia.

Покушајте са другим кључним речима

Fagburn very much likes this website, GayEcho Belgrade, from Serbia, although he doesn't really have any idea what they're writing about, and it could just possibly be nonsense on a stick.
Fagburn has a bit of a thing about the former Yugoslavia.
You know, Tito, the noble partisans, the non-aligned movement, workers' control, us bombing the fuck off out of them just cause they didn't bow down and worship the free market and that.
So just the idea of people being gay and Serbs thrills me.
Croats I'm less keen on.
Bosnians? Meh!
No wonder they had a civil war.
But I also like the way Serbo-Croat looks; "Boj Džordž večeras u Novom Sadu."
That's "Boy George comes to Novi Sad", I think.
It's somewhere in the north, and he's a much under-rated singer.
GayEcho appear to be having some trouble with Wikipedia, and their page keeps being taken down, the ever useful UK Gay News report, though I'm not quite sure when this was as there doesn't seem to be any mention of it on their own site.
Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me - Wikipedia is an idiots' paradise.