Talk:BonziBUDDY

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You have new messages (last change).

I have radically stubbed the article, and cleared out the old discussion. The article was, quite frankly, an embarassment to us. Extremely bold negative claims, backed up with no sources. Quite frankly, several of the people who contributed to the article should be banned from coming near a keyboard until they have learned to engage in proper encyclopedia writing. Well. Enough of my ranting. The deal is: this article needs to be rewritten, with very careful line-by-line sourcing to legitimate mainstream publications for every claim. The claims should not be made BY wikipedia, but should instead be ATTRIBUTED to the sources.--Jimbo Wales 11:30, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, even though it was not sourced, from an empirical view some of it was "correct." I'll do the attribution as you wish, but it is going to look kind of nasty :).

(I'd like to find some "positive" sources as well, but nearly all are info on how bad it is, how to remove it... HEH!)

Usual source list

RN 04:49, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I made some changes.The application is spyware,that's without doubt.But you can change or revert it if there are mistakes in new article.--Bugtrio | Talk 13:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
    • It is not that there were mistakes, it is that it was mostly unreferenced, and a couple of the referenced claims were not backed up by the sources ("well-known" spyware, but the source didn't say that plus without attribution it means wikipedia makes the claim). RN 22:58, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
      • Spyware guide proves the claim about how it changes the browser, and also where is eTrust entry? I think it's better than Spyware Guide's report on this program.In the registry section the code that program places changes the homepage,I mean you can replace it with SG's link.

But it's not a problem, I will try to find some other references about it and place them into the article with suitable sentences.--Bugtrio | Talk 23:18, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

This is looking pretty good so far! We want the article to be neutral, and I am afraid that the neutral facts will be pretty negative no matter what we do. That's perfectly fine. The most important thing is that, as we have done so far in the rebuild, we cite sources in a serious manner, we don't go beyond what the sources say, we make no difficult claims ourselves. So far, so good, this is looking like a model rewrite as far as I can see. Thank you! --Jimbo Wales 21:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2003 case and other links

Ug, these have been a pain to drag down, as internetnews.com has the links down now.

  1. http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/2212851
    1. Jun 06, 2003 archive of the case summary (http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/2212851)
  2. http://web.archive.org/web/20030618110224/http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/1551941
    1. Jun 18, 2003 archive of original filing with Dec 4 date (http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/1551941)

Also, there is 40 articles on internetnews.com about it [1] - so that is a varitable gold mine; they are all down basically but archive.org is working.

RN 21:37, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I made several changes, some quite minor, some a little more major. One of the key changes was to the paragraph about these court cases. If you read the article very carefully, it seems that the "deceptive advertising" settlement article on Internetnews.com did not say "tricking the user onto the company's website where the user can install BonziBUDDY." The word "tricking" here seems to me unnecessarily pejorative; the description of the ads seems clear enough and is uncontroversially factual.

I am in contact with one of the principals of the company, and he seems happy to work with me and through me to reach an NPOV version of the article. While my edits should NOT be considered as decrees as to the details of the content, please understand a couple of things... (1) there is no need for hysteria about caving to legal demands, there are no legal demands, just someone who feels that the article was unfair to the company, and who is working with kindness with me to try to resolve the issue in a mutually satisfactory way and (2) we have a moral obligation to be precise and neutral in all. In a case like this, the unpopularity of BonziBUDDY will shine through without our article introducing any moral condemnation at all.

I have not made all of the changes requested of me, because I am waiting on further verification. So more may be coming. --Jimbo Wales 19:29, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Future

  1. Reviews - I'd like to change "Reports of spyware" to "reception" and go on a bit about the social papar above and some reviews (hopefully with some balance)
  2. A tiny bit about adware
  3. A few tweaks to intro to make slightly longer
  4. Tweaks to Overview for a bit more description and maybe paraphrase the quote and talk more about what the bonzi site says about it
  5. Source the stuff in the infobox just for paranoia :)

RN 23:03, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] People

We need to name the prominent people behind the scenes. Who though of Bonzi buddy? Who created it? Who were the 'execs' at the time? No doubt these people will show up on the asshole radar in the future and it's nice to know their history, stringing together the pieces of unethical activities.

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