13 year old's membership to Wikiproject Pornography prompts discussion
Last week an editor with just shy of one thousand edits and already five temporary blocks to his name, whose userboxes identified them as a thirteen year old administrator hopeful was brought to the incidents noticeboard for having made many poor speedy deletion tags and warnings while not responding to criticism. "I don't think the user is acting in bad faith, but could an admin take a look at the contrib history and determine if any action or a warning is needed", wrote the user who opened the thread. A standard ANI thread was just set to ensue, except that it was quickly noted that in addition to being a member of WikiProject Professional Wrestling the user also has a userbox identifiying themselves as a "hard-core member of WikiProject Pornography".
It starts: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive721#User_talk:ChristianandJericho.E2.80.8E
To Jimbo's talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Jimbo_Wales&oldid=452257215#Self_identified_13_year_old_joins_WP:WikiProject_Pornography
To the village pump: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)&oldid=452254141#Wikiproject_Pornography_and_Minors:_Proposals_and_Discussion
On the mailing list: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2011-September/068934.html
Larry Sanger: http://twitter.com/#!/lsanger/status/117299089439334400
On Gender Gap: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/gendergap/2011-September/001600.html
The story was picked up Larry Sanger who claims the title of co-founder of Wikipedia (Jimbo Wales disputes this), but left in disillusionment to start Citizendium and now is a vocal critic of Wikipedia. He tweeted:
| “ | Dear Press: a self-described 13 YO joined Wikiproject Pornography. Wikipedians support him. webcitation.org/61v0ykxJe webcitation.org/61v0ykxJe | ” |
Consensus on the Foundation-l mailing list was that the result would be at most another sensationalist Fox News headline.[1]
The issue as to if the account was being puppeted to orchestrate controversy was also raised, it was joked that perhaps the best question to determine the nature of the thing was to ask the user "Who founded Wikipedia?"[2] All things considered though, the account is probably just what it claims to be.
Discuss this story
Wikipedia talk:Jorgenev/Minors and Wikiproject pornography