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Felonious Drunk

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[edit] It Wasn't Always This Easy

When Wikitruth started out in April of 2006, we were one of a few points of light in the darkness. Wikipedia could do no wrong, you see, and what wrong it did was the normal side-effects of growing pains. Such growth, therefore, was inevitably going to lead to the occasional mis-step. Give us time, they of the Wikipedia Way said. Oh, and by the way, "Wikitruth is a complete hoax" and should be ignored.

A toast to great success!!

We kept at it, of course, and over the months we found quite a bit wasn't working under the hood at Wikipedia. Not just stuff you could pawn off on "growing pains" and "we're a loving, trusting organization" but true and actual fucked-ness inherent in the organization and foundations. And we weren't the only voice, of course; a smattering of blogs were dedicated to criticizing Wikipedia, and sites such as Wikipedia Review and Wikipedia Hivemind were kicking up all sorts of dust about the place. Together, we were painted, we of the organized criticism sort, as burnt-out editors, Wikipedia Headcases if you will, as much a part of the Wikipedia as anything else. That is, we were all painted as mere insider posturing.

All contributors to Wikitruth have, at some point, edited or been an admin on Wikipedia. Or are editing and are admins on Wikipedia. To that extent, yes, we have always been within the "family", assuming you count the milkman and the guy you shot in the front lawn as being in the "family". For nearly two years, we have done our best, out here, to herald the troops, provide a safe haven. We have not been alone, but we have often, regardless, felt alone.

What is critically different, as we head into 2008, is how Wikitruth's clever little music box of commentary is quickly being drowned out by the foghorns, whistles and shouts of many more sites. Sites that don't have the words "Wiki" in them. Sites that couldn't possibly be considered "ex-wikipedian echo chambers". Sites that... well, you know, sites that report news. ^[1] Sites that, in fact, far outstrip our ability to dig that deep for that long in that many directions.

This new orchestra of criticism has tuned its instruments and honed its notes and is now focusing on a situation that is Wikipedia-changing, even if Wikipedia and Wikimedia decline or defer from admitting so.

That situation is Carolyn Doran.

[edit] Bottoms Up

Ah, Carolyn. If you'd locked Willy on Wheels and 2007-era Kelly Martin and Andrew Orlowski in a room for a week and fed them nothing but Red Bull and Cayenne Pepper, they still wouldn't have dreamed up a situation this utterly and completely nutbag. They'd have crafted pieces of it, to be sure, but when you really lay it out, it stands on its own. And let's do that.

Carolyn Doran became Wikimedia Foundation's Chief Operating Officer quietly in the beginning of 2007. ^[2] She had been hired as a temp worker to work in accounting and was spontaneously promoted to one of the highest positions in the foundation. This put her in charge of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and left her in a position of power over what is currently a top-ten website. In other words, she was catapulted beyond reasonable measure into the stratosphere of power and control... with, it turns out, no background check done on her. At some point during the year, she... well, she stopped being the Chief Operating Officer. Her information page was quietly shunted away, her name quietly removed.

Eventually, people started asking questions. People who were basically stonewalled. People who, it turned out, had facilities at hand to then start finding the answers.

Whoops, too many toasts.

And that's when it turned out that Carolyn Doran was in jail. ^[3] Jail jail, not fake home arrest jail and not held-for-a-few-hours-and-released-to-boyfriend jail, but jail jail. She was in jail for Driving Under the Influence, and for Hit and Run. This means she was drunk, she was driving, she hit something, and then went away, and was arrested. This is pretty bad, as far as things go.

Additionally, people found out, this wasn't her only crime in life. It turned out she'd passed bad checks, gotten a handful of previous DUI convictions, and oh yeah, she had shot her boyfriend in the chest. Awesome!!!

Wikitruth didn't break this story. Wikitruth had nothing to do with breaking the story or even guiding anyone in the right direction to break the story. No, this sort of credit can go to Cade Metz at The Register and whoever tipped him off. ^[4] ^[5]

Additional digging found all sorts of crazy crap, ^[6] admittedly unlikely to prevent employment but still goddamned weird: she was the daughter of a CIA agent, had a husband who drowned on their honeymoon in 1999, and was a snitch who secretly recorded conversations with an ex-roommate accused in a poisoning case.

This ain't your typical story.

[edit] Oh David, You Always Know Just What to Say

Naturally, as Summer turns to Fall and as Carolyn apparently turns to Jack Daniels, Wikipedia Apologists have risen from the wings to downplay all of this, this obviously completely fucked up situation. We've gone through the piles of discussion over whether there should be a Carolyn Doran entry in Wikipedia (and naturally it is being surpressed like an eating disorder), and whether any of this is relevant at all. We think the whole thing can be summed up by this little interchange:

...The person we are discussing here has a fascinating, notable personal history. Her father was an officer at the CIA. She shot her boyfriend / father of her child in the chest, but was not prosecuted. She wore a recording wire in an effort to incriminate a roommate in a plot to lethally poison someone, all while she was accused of financial fraud. Then, there was the time where she was DUI and someone was killed in an accident and she left the scene. Then her husband -- also a CIA agent of some importance -- drowned while on their Caribbean honeymoon, and the coroner never determined the specific cause of death in the drowning. Then she very quickly worked her way up from a temp assignment to a Chief Operating Officer position at the planet Earth's eighth-most popular website. Then she had another DUI come up and she was arrested in violation of her probation by leaving the country on Foundation business. Any attempt to "hide" the need to have an article about this person is CLEARLY not paying attention to WP:BLP1E which, at worst, indicates that "a separate biography may be unwarranted". Given the above fascinating history, it is most certainly warranted here...

Lord on Canary (talk) 15:00, 22 December 2007 (UTC)^[7]

Single-purpose account, posting only on this issue in an apparent attempt to fake consensus

David Gerard (talk) 16:20, 22 December 2007 (UTC)^[8]

The first quote is a tsunami of sentences, and they're true. This is what researching journalists are finding out: she was a snitch, she did shoot her boyfriend in the chest, she did have her husband drown in an inconclusive honeymoon mishap. This shit did happen, ladies and gentlemen.

And what can David Gerard, Queen of the Wikipedian Apologists manage? Oh, it was a single-use account that posted this. Nothing relevant. Go home.

That someone wouldn't want to burn through their user account on Wikipedia discussing something un-toward about Wikipedia isn't being slippery or deceitful; it's somebody who's making sense. That Wikipedia targets and shuts down critics on a personal and on-site basis is not just a suspicion, it's a bare-assed fact that's borne out over the years. Rock the little Wikiboat and you're sucking in ocean, Popeye. This is how it's done at Wikipedia and if you want to get an opinion on Wikipedia or discuss subjects Wikipedia's not comfortable with, you better step carefully.

But here's the best part of this whole exchange: nobody gives a whirly fuck what Wikipedia thinks about this issue! Nobody could dredge a single cup of Care out of Giveashit Bay whether Carolyn Doran is "Notable" or "Non-Notable" or a "BLP Violation" or "Failed To Reach Consensus". All that incredibly stupid Wikipedian masturbatory nutjobbery hasn't got a miniscule amount of exchange rate with reality! Reality, in the form of people researching Carolyn and how Wikimedia works and what the hell Jimbo Wales is up to or any other little skeleton dancing in the closet cares what they say about it! Oh, sure, they'll print the little apologists and the statements of "it's no big deal", but they sure as hell aren't dropping the pen and walking away after that.

This is the future of Wikipedia. A future where that light is going to be very hot, very bright, and very revealing. We'll keep our flashlights on at the Wikitruth, but we would never pretend we're ever going to be brighter than that spotlight.

It's the kind of situation that would drive you to drink, isn't it?