Talk:Jack Thompson (attorney)/archive7

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Archived talk pages

The talk page was getting long, so I archived it. Jabrwock 16:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Current discusssion

Current discussions were:

  • Article/language cleanup, stop the blanking due to some users
  • Length of article, someone should move some of the activism onto another page.
  • Wikiquote cleanup
  • Submission for peer review
  • Thompson's birthday. He claimed it was wrong, but didn't provide a correct date.

Here is the "editorial" Thompson inserted into the middle of the article. We can use this as a reference list to double check the article, and there are a few items not present that are listed. Verification would be nice. Talk:Jack_Thompson/archive6#Thompson.27s_Edit

  • Elder, Presbyterian Church in America
  • Got the State of Florida to stop funding, with tax dollars, pornographic, adults-only movies at the Miami Film Festival, which funding violated state law
  • Stopped the distribution of Link Line tapes in Florida public schools, because their promotion of sexual promiscuity violated state law


Fairness to Jack thompson in this article

Update: since I wrote this comment, I went through and corrected the first two paragraphs, basically they had to be entirely re-written, I'd appricate you guys looking at this article in actual npov mode and fix some of it's inherent biaseness --- You guys are such hypocrites, this is the most news-speak article I've ever seen. You say you are all about fariness and accuracy, but you don't even allow the man to speak for himself. When he does speak for himself, you make it out to be vandalism and harrasment. You say he thought there was innacurcies "SO HE WAS A BAD BOY AND VANDALIZED" yet you don't go into any details of the quite accurate criticisms he had of the article, the only reason his edit is even mentioned at all is so you can libel and twist his words and actions more. Any attempt to put fairness into this article will just be reverted by the squad of biased Pixelantes. Anything he has done is swung and turned to make him out to be a villain, the good side is always ignored. Something needs to be done to make this article fair and the stop the squads of people that are obviously biased from editing the article (posted by 203.112.2.212)

Please sign your comments.
As for "allowing the man to speak for himself", it is considered bad form to edit one's own wiki entry, and even worse form to just paste an editorial into the middle of an article. This is why it was removed. I have put the entry here in the talk pages so that we may use it as a point of reference, as major revisions to an article should be.
Feel free to correct any "inherent biaseness" you find, and to discuss major changes here. If the article is corrected in a professional manner, it will not be reverted.
As for why an entry was made about his edit, feel free to change the wording to make it sound less biased, but the fact remains that he essentially pasted an editorial into his own entry, and then threatened to sue Wikipedia when they removed the editorial and asked him to discuss major changes on the talk page. Jabrwock 17:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, there were plenty of valid reasons to object to Thompson's edit; it was of a style that belonged in the talk page, not the article page. On the other hand, the anon poster does have a point that there is a general bias to the article; I happen to agree with the anti-Thompson opinions myself, but still think that the gamer community has often acted in a highly immature manner in pursuing its criticism of him. *Dan T.* 17:16, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Oh I agree that this article could use a rewrite. There are sections that sound just like a newspaper article. But calling us all "squads of biased Pixelantes" and that we're "twisting his words" so we can "libel" is hardly constructive. As I said, if the rewrites are done in an NPOV manner, they won't be reverted. Jabrwock 17:25, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree with Jabrwock and Dan T. on several things. I don't agree with Thompson's particular methods, but this article is fairly against him. The writing itself seems fairly neutral. We just don't have much information supporting him, so some of the things Thompson posted could actually work if we verify it (or maybe cite him as a source?). And I know people said we shouldn't take bad things about Thompson out of the article to make it neutral, but this article was 106 kb last time I checked. If we're going to try to even out the article by adding information supporting him, we need to be very selective of what will be in the finished article, including information currently in the article, or split it up into even more subarticles.
But like Jabrwock said, insults don't help. I never cared much about Thompson's goals at first, since I didn't play the games he has the most vocal opposition to. It was when he made generic insults about gamers (some examples: "they're stupid," "they're evil," "they're violent") that made me start to pay attention. Now he insults me as a Wikipedian too. While I can't speak for every person who fits into those two categories, I'm pretty sure most gamers or Wikipedians don't fit into his description.Mred64 17:55, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Problem is that most of these "biased comments" are backed up by links and evidence or common knowledge. These are Jack Thompson's actual words! Should they be removed just because NOW he's embarrased by them?
The goal of NPOV is not to make decisions about character for the reader. Quotes are generally NPOV, but in the wrong context they do little to make an article NPOV. Basically, instead of saying "Jack Thompson went so far as to say...", we need to say "Jack Thompson responded..." The goal is to write the article as if you had no connection to Jack Thompson or his views. --Bakkster Man 17:13, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. I think the man is a reactionary glory-hound, but his own actions and record speaks more against him than any insults. Just post the facts, and let them speak for themselves. And don't let him bully anyone. If he claims something is incorrect, he damn well better provide some sources like the rest of us. SAMAS 15:53 13 March 2006

Bias: Intro

Since we've agreed that this article is in need of a re-write due to an impression of bias, let's compile a list of sections that need re-writes, so they can be handled on a case-by-case basis.

First Paragraph Jack Thompson

Other than his birthdate, which according to Thompson is incorrect, are there any objections to the way the first paragraph is written? Short of mentioning that he has been married for 30 years and has a son, and of course the correct birthdate, I don't see anything that needs to be changed here. Should we take out the b-day until we can confirm the true date?

Taking out his birthdate may not be a bad idea. Otherwise it seems fine. Mred64 18:11, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Done, removed until we can confirm it. Jabrwock 18:26, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

The_attourney over on gamepolitics posted a link to Mr. Thompson's correct birthdate. Or a means of finding it. You can find the reference here, as I am just figuring out Wiki I don't feel comfy editing the article. http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/213047.html?thread=15238711#t15238711

I can confirm that Thompson's birthday is July 25, 1951 and that his wife is July 26, 1951. My workplace has a PublicData.com account. Pretty useful website as you can find anyone's address, driver's license #, license plate, criminal record, etc. And yes, it's perfectly legal as this can all be atainable through public records (hence the name of the website, PublicData.com).KungFu-tse 15:23, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Bias: Political Run

His political run Jack_Thompson#Political_run

I think it needs a re-write, as currently it implies that Thompson won the position, but was voted out. It should read that he won the nomination, but that he lost the election to the incumbent (Reno).

Other than that, I think his stint as "Man in Miami" deserves it's own section, as it doesn't directly relate to his political run, other than he used the position to write articles criticising Reno. Jabrwock 18:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Maybe this could be the rewrite:
In 1988 Thompson ran as the Republican candidate for Office of Dade County State Attorney. In the election voters, elected Future Attorney General of the United States Janet Reno to the position.
By the way, is "Future" supposed to have the f capitalized like that? Mred64 18:15, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I rewrote it to "won the candidate nomination, but lost to the incumbent Janet Reno". I also seperated out "Man in Miami" because other than his accusations against Reno, it doesn't directly relate to his political career. Jabrwock 18:21, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I also put the accusations of Mafia blackmail and closet lesbianism, because those happened during the election, not during his time at NewsMax. Jabrwock 21:45, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Bias: Man in Miami

Jack_Thompson#Man_in_Miami

Can we find any other articles he wrote as "Man in Miami"? Did he only criticise Reno or did he write about other political figures? Did he ever write an article about the closet lesbian accusation, or was that just an incident at a fundraiser? Why doesn't he write for NewsMax anymore? Jabrwock 18:29, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Here is link to his articles: http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/4/7/70516 I think putting following this, when it's 12 years after the election is a tad bit strange, he did a ton of stuff inbetween the two.

Ok, I thought he was hired by NewsMax following his defeat. It seems odd that he'd attack Reno 12 years after being defeated, and after she refused to hire him. What a lengthy grudge! I guess it's a good thing that the NewsMax things is seperated out then. I'll put the date he began writing for them... Jabrwock 21:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Section is worded rather poorly as well. First reference to Janet Reno in the article and she's just called "Reno". Anyone not familiar with the subject likely would have no idea what this refers to.--Isotope23 20:35, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Bias: Paducah lawsuit

Jack_Thompson#Paducah_schoolhouse_shootings_class_action_suit Paducah_schoolhouse_shootings_class_action_suit

I don't think that second paragraph needs to be there. That's more under his "activism" section.

The linked article could probably use a style edit, but I don't think it needs much more than that. Jabrwock 18:33, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Bias: Video Game Cases

The "In spite of his various legal threats against video games (see activism, below), Thompson has only acted in an official role as a lawyer in a small number of video games-related cases. His notable cases are summarized below." is obvious OBVIOUS commentary and needs to be removed, I added essentialy the opposite commentary and put down "Thompson Has been an outspoken advocate of protection of minors from violent media. In Thompson's continuing pursuit of protecting children from violence and harmful influences, he has worked on countless cases including many notable ones below" a compromise between the two needs to be found 203.112.2.212 21:19, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

  • It's hard. How do you acknowledge that he's involved in these cases, yet avoid painting him in a favourable or unfavourable light? I think your above line is close, but it still needs some work. How about this?
Thompson has been an advocate of preventing minors from accessing violent media due to what he calls "harmful influences". In the pursuit of this, he has contributed to several notable lawsuits detailed below:
Jabrwock 21:57, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Also I think a link to the Activism section would be useful.
Thompson has also been involved in video game activism outside the courtroom (see Activism below). Jabrwock 22:03, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Bias: Strickland vs Sony

Jack_Thompson#Strickland_vs._Sony

Any comments? I can see a few bits that need cleaning up, such as his email reference being messed up. And while the vaginal tube thing is funny, I don't think it's relevant to the case. Maybe move it down to "other"? Jabrwock 18:51, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm just deleting that sentence. It only has value as a trivia factoid. Mred64 19:25, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I'd actually move the vaginal tube reference (it has some value) down to the Threats subsection. --Mazinger-Z 20:46, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't know if the link in that sentence is a source for anything else, so here it is: Thompson bails GTA case. Mred64 19:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I think we should find a new source for the initial filing of the lawsuit. The ledger-inquirer link doens't exist anymore. Jabrwock 19:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Apparently this lawsuit was the reason he was interviewed on 60 Minutes. Not as an "expert", but as the plaintiffs' lawyer. [1] Jabrwock 19:56, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Ok, I put in the mention about him being featured on 60 Minutes (it's his favourite thing to remind people of, but whatever, it's in), and I did some copy-editing. Thoughts? Jabrwock 20:21, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

FReeper History

We've got an section related to his GamePolitics/LJ history. It'd be a fairly interesting thing to put in FReeper history (which is prevalent during the Elian saga in Florida).

http://web.archive.org/web/20010416002606/http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39719ca95afa.htm

http://www.joystiq.com/2005/10/14/spankings-for-anti-game-crusader-jack-thompson/#c214092

--Mazinger-Z 20:44, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

  • If you can write it in a way that's non-biased, power to you. I have no idea how to write up a piece where Thompson claims that calling Clinton a "treasonist whore" is ok because it's true, but calling other FReepers names or questioning their sanity is "libel"... Jabrwock 20:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Thompson vs. Howard Stern

I finally found an article that credits Thompson with the complaint that resulted in Stern's parent company (Clear Channel) being fined $495,000. Although Thompson can't claim credit for getting him "kicked off the air" because Howard Stern simply moved off Clear Channel networks and onto Infinity Broadcasting (Viacom) ones. A few months later he was back in the same markets, but broadcasting through Infinity. Infinity dropped him in Nov 2005 because he was advertising on air his move to satellite. That and before the complaint was filed, Stern had already signed his deal with Sirius, so he was moving off Clear Channel anyway. [2]

We could credit him with the fine, since it was his complaint that got the ball rolling. But not with getting him off the terrestrial airwaves, because that was going to happen anyway. Jabrwock 22:49, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Jack vs. Wikipedia

This one is tricky. There is a policy against referring to Wikipedia WP:SELF, but Thompson did vandalise his own page. (Note I'm using wiki's definition of vandalism, namely that it's considered vandalism to edit one's own page, as well as inserting a page worth of unformatted, opinionated content...) Plus he did post on another site that the wiki was full of lies and he "corrected it" (even though he didn't, actually)

Is there any way we can mention that he did this without violating WP:SELF? Jabrwock 22:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think speaking about this in a normal way, as if Wikipedia was a completely different site, would violate SELF at all. Definitely less than Wikipedia does. Atropos 01:13, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I think mentioning his actions regarding the article is within the article fits the context of the article, and speaks quite loudly about his character.--Vercalos 01:57, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Alright, I would re-write it though, so it doesn't say stuff like "edited this article", etc. Write it as if the section were about him editing and insulting a seperate website. Jabrwock 03:18, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
By the way, does anyone have a link to JT's edit? I'm rather curious as to what he posted.--Vercalos 22:38, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Please let me know if you find it. It is needed for citation.Yeago 06:45, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

This has been dealt with and the consensus suggests that it is noteworthy in the article. It avoids WP:SELF criteria because Wikipedia can be the only source of the information in question. The notable event happened to take place on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia logs are objective and verifiable.

See:

To be added when/if this article ever cools down.

Yeago 05:01, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


'Jack Thompson and Wikipedia'

On February 18, 2006, someone claiming to be Jack Thompson formed an account for Wikipedia and added information as well as editorial comment about Wikipedia posters to his own page in an attempt to counter what he saw as bias in the article, and inaccuracies such as his birthdate. [3] He was reminded that it is bad form to edit one's own wiki entry, and told to post corrections to the talk page. After his edit was removed as unencyclopedic, he insulted Wikipedia, atheists, and threatened to sue Wikipedia if it continued to display the "lies" on his page. He also claimed in the gamepolitics.com forum, as well as on his apparent Wikipedia account, that Wikipedia is his favourite fiction website. The comments on GamePolitics.com were confirmed by the site owner to have come from an IP Thompson regularly posts and emails from. [4]Yeago 22:16, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions-

The Jack Thompson page is really messy and unorganized. I have a few suggestions-

-Try to make some of it more neutral.

-Make a seperate page for Flowers For Jack.

-Move anything possible from the Gamepolitics page to the JT page and vice versa.

-Move all of the sections about specific games together, and get rid of any unnecessary links.

I can do some of this stuff on my own, these are just a few suggestions.

  • neutrality - slowly working on that
  • seperate page for FFJ - agreed, they should have their own wikipedia entry anyway
  • GP content - not sure. granted a lot of stuff in here right now is from his postings on GP, maybe change all links regarding actual letters and press releases to their copies on wikiquote?
  • group specific game info together - definitely. except when it crosses between lawsuits and activism. that should be the divider. hence a section for GTA in both lawsuits, and activism.

Jabrwock 03:22, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

For the GP part, I was suggesting to get rid of the long Thompson rant on it, and maybe move some Thompson stuff that would be appropriate for the GP page.
Ace ofspade 03:36, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I would also like to suggest moving most of the long quotes and correspondences to Wikiquote. This should help cut down a bit of the articles, while avoiding the need to delete them completely. ╫ ２５ ◀RingADing▶ 04:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC) ╫

I copied the Jack Thompson and Gamepolitics section onto the gamepolitics article a few days ago, but didn't think to take it off here, I had just did it as I didn't have all the information on his bans. Pixelanteninja 21:14, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Another way to shorten the article

This article is far too long, especially if we are going to add more information. Here is how I propose we split the article:

  • Article: Jack Thompson - A biography of Jack Thompson (Political Run, Man in Miami, Non-video game cases), which will also contain sections too small to create entirely new articles for, and brief summaries for each of the longer sections that will link to the sub-article.
  • Article: Jack Thompson and Video Games – contains current Video Game Cases, Activism, and Flowers for Jack sections
    • Split this sub-article into more sub-articles as needed, such as creating another article for certain video game cases or A Modest Proposal.

Mred64 03:29, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

How about this:
  • Main article - Biography and other short sections that are not generally connected to his anti-video game stance (such as the IM emoticon escape).
    • Article on video game cases and activism by Jack Thompson - including "Modest Proposal" (I agree that this needs to be split up further, as the article would still be too long. I'm not sure how that can be achieved though.)
    • Article on responses to Jack Thompson's activities (Support, criticism, threats, what not)

╫ ２５ ◀RingADing▶ 04:52, 21 February 2006 (UTC) ╫

Sub-articles

I moved Strickland vs. Sony and "A Modest Proposal" to their own sub-articles. Eventually we'll probably need a TOC in each sub-article, so you can jump from sub-article to sub-article directly rather than having to go back up. Jabrwock 15:42, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

  • We'll also need some wiki cleanup on the sub-articles. Some have reference links that don't exist anymore. Jabrwock 15:46, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Moved all specific video game activism to it's own sub-article. Jabrwock 21:55, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Could the video game lobbying go in the Video Game Activism sub-article? Mred64 02:04, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
The subarticles are now in conflict with WP:NAME though ("Do not use an article name that suggests a hierarchy of articles") - the slash convention is used in talk/user/project, but not in main article space. Someone ought to figure out better names for these, and not everything needs to be even hierarchic anyway (For example, just "A Modest Video Game Proposal" instead of "Jack Thompson/A Modest Video Game Proposal".) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 23:08, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I just moved all the articles like that to pages with new names and updated the links in the article to reflect that. Since there really is no such thing as a hierarchy of articles, maybe we should just say "See main article X" instead of "See sub-article X"? Mred64 23:28, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Thompson aka BioTerror expert?

In 2002 [5]

"Norwalk-like flu virus" besieging primarily the Disney Cruise Line may be the work of al-Qaeda affiliated bioterrorists. The prophet Muhammad was a pirate.

Jabrwock 17:28, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

The article should be linked as it does show some relavance to Mr. Thompson's ability to take make assumptions with vaguely related facts. Actually even though they would make this article weighty links to his written articles give a better feel for Thompson than any write up people can give. -Toll

Mrs. Thompson

Flowers for Jack found info on his wife, a fellow Miami lawyer. According to Thompson, they've been married 30 ish years. She specilizes in commercial law. Interestingly, she's on the Florida Bar Grievance Committee "IIB"...

FindLaw Lawyer Directory

Carlton Fields

Threats

In the threats section it says that gamepolitics changed it's posting policy due to that law and his comments on the suicide of the gamer, it was found early on that it only really applied to e-mails, and Thompson was the only one who seemed to take it seriously. I think we should take this out as it seemed that the suicide comments were what really drove Dennis to change the policy but don't want to start an edit war. Thoughts, anyone? Pixelanteninja 21:23, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I believe it a combination of things, but the suicide gamer comments Thompson posted were the last straw for Dennis. He wanted to be able to ban Thompson from posting, but he didn't realise that Thompson could just sign up for a new LJ account, which he did repeatedly. So now as long as he doesn't get out of hand, Dennis lets him post. But when he goes overboard with his insults, that account gets banned and he has to sign up for a new one. Jabrwock 22:02, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Which, I might add, is "ban evasion", and is against the LJ TOS, puishable by permanent IP banning from LG. l0gue and others have started their petition to urge LJ to take such action against Thompson. --216.161.72.96 01:15, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

  • He's at it again, his last one must have been banned as well... jackjackjackjacJabrwock 17:04, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Dennis knew that he could sign up for an account as he said that he could just ban him if he did. Pixelanteninja 21:11, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately banning him doesn't remove all his spam, which Dennis has to clean up message by message... Jabrwock 21:22, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Thompson and Gamers

What about Jack Thompson and Video Gamers or Response to Jack Thompson for another sub-article? I'm thinking it should include the Livejournal/GamePolitics, Correspondence, Response, Threats, and Metalgearsolid.org sections. It would really help to shorten this article. Mred64 02:18, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, but watch out for User:Monicasdude, he'll probably label that sub-article for deletion due to it being "fancruft". I just cleaned up the deletion request from all the sub-articles. Jabrwock 06:29, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
It's up, and the main article links to it under a new sub-section in the Activism section called "Communications with GAmers." Mred64 22:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that was a dumb move, now we have how many other articles relating to Jack Thompson, just leave the letter there,it shows a lot about Jack's character.Father Time89

Letter to the "secret service"

He just posted a letter to the "secret service" on gamepolitics.com [[6]] in response to some flash game mocking the cheney hunting incident because you shoot at the image of George W. Bush (attached to a sheeps head, with laser eyes!) among others. Not sure if it's worthy stuff, or just his usual antics.SanderJK 02:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Maybe a sentence or two. Right now I wouldn't do anything with it, since we don't know if he actually did reach the Secret Service and we're reworking the article. Mred64 03:03, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Just add it to his wikiquotes for now. Jabrwock 06:19, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Already did that. Been busy today, sadly IanC 18:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Letter to Alabama Bar

ohn B. Thompson, Attorney at Law 1172 South Dixie Hwy., Suite 111 Coral Gables, Florida 33146 305-666-4366

February 22, 2006

Robert D. Segall President, Alabama State Bar Copeland, Franco, Screws & Gill, PA Montgomery, Alabama 36101 Via Fax to 334-834-3172

Re: Jack Thompson v. Alabama State Bar

Dear Mr. Segall:

I wrote you sixteen days ago and asked you to call me back regarding the mishandling of a State Bar complaint against me which in fact was not even filed and yet with your Bar is “investigating” it in violation of its own Bar Rules.

Because you did not extend to me the courtesy of any kind of response, I have had to sue the Alabama State Bar today. I have also moved the court for mediation of the matter, in a spirit of professional cooperation which has been utterly lacking on the part of the State Bar.

It appears that the Alabama State Bar has an attitude that it need not descend from Olympus to talk with a lawyer from a border state. That’s fine. I like the people of the Alabama, and I look forward to spending more time there. I shall be addressing the Eagle Forum in Birmingham on March 31, and I’ll explain, from my perspective how the Alabama State Bar misunderstands its statutory function.

Your own Bar ballyhoos at its Internet site the benefits of conflict resolution short of litigation. I happen to agree with that approach. It’s unfortunate that you and the rest of the Bar machinery have made this litigation necessary by your refusal to communicate to try to resolve this matter amicably.

Sincerely, Jack Thompson

Copy: Judge James W. Moore, Fayette County Judicial Inquiry Commission Media http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/213925.html?thread=15262117#t15262117

He sued them because they didn't respond to his letter?--Vercalos 21:28, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
His original letter said that he would sue if they didn't drop the "investigation" he claims they're running. But under their rules, they can't tell anyone if they are investigating... The only reason we think he's under investigation is because he lost his Pro Hac Vice status, and was referred to the bar by a judge... I'm not sure if that results in an automatic investigation or not... Jabrwock 22:11, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I emailed the Alabama Bar about whether "referring" the matter to the Bar constitutes filing a complaint, or just notifying the Bar that they should look into it and decide if they want to open an investigation... And are judges excempt because everything they do in court is public record anyway... Jabrwock 22:30, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Can anyone confirm that he has filed a lawsuit? It would have been filed with the United States District Court Southern District of Florida I think. They charge for document copies, but they should be able to confirm or deny whether the suit has been filed or not. Their main # is (305) 523-5100 Jabrwock 22:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
How would the Southern District of Florida have any jurisdiction over the Alabama bar, anyway? *Dan T.* 13:19, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Good question. Maybe he has to file there first before they move it up to a court that has jurisdiction? Or maybe he's just an idiot... Jabrwock 15:36, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Speaking of the Eagle Forum, Jack's going to be on live radio this March [7]. And they'll also be answering emails on the air too [8].Might be a good place to ask about, oh gee, I don't know, all the sh*t that's happened this past year. I'm sure Phyllis Schlafly would love to hear about Walsh, the Florida Bar, the Alabama Bar, Judge Moore, the complaints, the letters, the lies, and everything else that's been posted here. ;) KungFu-tse 22:07, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Latest changes by admin

I just reverted the latest changes made by an admin (forgot who he was) who said that he was putting the "sensible version". An encyclopedia is not about sensibility, it's about the facts. This is who the man is and as such it should stand! 66.231.253.100

I feel that this is borderline editorial abuse. While the user who committed this blanking is an admin, they have no place in unilaterally removing very large portions of an article without any sort of consensus, ESPECIALLY for a controversial topic. I feel the article in its pre-vandalized state ought to stand. Nortelrye 14:33, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
The administrator who did the blanking goes by the username Brookie. I've left a note on their user page asking them to leave off with the massive article changes without any sort of consensus. Nortelrye 14:46, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, I *tried* to ask nicely, at least. This user does not appear to be interested in addressing this issue on their talk page, however; as they appear to have nuked [9] my polite request [10]. Nortelrye 16:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
This deleting of comments from his talk page -- the "La La La I Can't Hear You!" approach that is a favorite of some of the more annoying users on Wikipedia -- is a disturbing thing to see an admin doing. *Dan T.* 16:48, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
As you well know anyone is free to edit as they feel fit - which I will continue to do. By the way, I do not see any edits as claimed by Nortelrye on the history of the page - what can this mean? Do we have sockpuppets peddling a view here? Brookie :) - a will o' the wisp ! (Whisper?) 15:11, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Nice try playing the sockpuppet card, but no, I'm not one. Unless you'd care to prove it, let it go. I'm a GP user who wanted to speak out about what appears to be somebody abusing their position as a wikipedia administrator. You're not "pruning" the article, you're vandalizing it, and I too will be reporting it as such.Nortelrye 15:44, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Thing is Bookie - We cant see what your trying to do. Everything on here is accurate to my knowledge, yet you continue to blank it out. Why? IanC 15:29, 23 February 2006 (UTC) (yes the one who accused you of vandalism)
Brookie refers to "adverts" and "self promotion" and "vanity photos". Maybe he believes Jack himself put up all this stuff... I can't think of any other reason for deleting nearly the whole page. --Fedùle 15:54, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I would definitely like to hear Brookie's explanation for "pruning" the article, especially since removing 332 of the 341 lines from the pre-vandalized article (determined by copying and pasting the two versions into a text editor and looking at the line count) can hardly be considered "pruning", or even responsible editing for that matter. A wikipedia admin ought to know better than to unilaterally delete 97% of a controversial article. Nortelrye 16:38, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts on Informal Mediation?

Well, judging by the remarks left at Brookie's talk page ("I'm bored of this. A tedious article - good bye!")[11], it seems clear that this administrator is not interested in discussing or developing a consensus regarding their actions. I cannot judge whether this is an act of bad faith or not, or whether or not they're violating the "try to preserve information" portion of WP:Editing Policy (I don't believe that an article being "tedious" is a valid criteria for deleting verifiable information), but at the very least they're guilty of poor etiquette and are definitely committing a faux pas by ignoring and deleting concerns posted on their talk page.

As attempts at discussion have failed due to this user refusing to respond to or acknowledge our concerns, and at times outright hiding them from public view [12]; I believe the best solution (at least as a first step) is to seek informal mediation under WP:Resolving Disputes. I would not propose this if a regular Wikipedian had blanked the article, but I am concerned about future vandalism of this article by this user, as well as the potential for abuse of administrative power - it's hard to assume good faith when the admin in question pretends your concerns don't exist. What do other people here think about this course of action? Is this going too far? All I'd really like to gain from this is an assurance that this admin will not in the future decide to "prune" 90+ percent of this article and then pretend that it's not a problem. Everybody's thoughts would be appreciated. Nortelrye 21:43, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

WP:Resolving Disputes seems fair and appropriate to me. Also, I thought it was against the rules to remove discussions from talk pages. --Maxamegalon2000 22:03, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Is it? I may be in trouble then. :P I thought it only applied to things like warnings, and ban notices. Jabrwock 22:05, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, almost. "Actively erasing personal messages without replying (if a reply would be appropriate or polite) will probably be interpreted as hostile. In the past, this kind of behavior has been viewed as uncivil, and this can become an issue in arbitration or other formal proceedings. ... If someone removes your comments without answering consider moving on or dispute resolution. This is especially true for vandalism warnings." --Maxamegalon2000 22:08, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Just to be very clear, I am referring to Brookie's removal of concerns posted to THEIR OWN user:talk page. It does not seem to be a violation of WP policy (however, doing so on an article's talk page may very well be), but it is considered bad etiquette to do such a thing. Nortelrye 22:24, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree. Anyone can edit, which is Wiki policy, but when an admin repeatedly blanks a page, that is an abuse of position, because who do you get to temp ban the admin for vandalism? It should definitely be reported. Jabrwock 22:03, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
Well... At least he'll leave it alone now, right? It did seem a bit immature to me. IanC 22:30, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't want them to leave the article alone - I'd love if Brookie would make positive contributions to it. The problem is dealing with an admin engaging in what would most likely be considered an act of vandalism if it were performed by any other wikipedian - and it may still be dealt with as an act of vandalism, that remains to be seen. The point is that their administrative status makes it difficult to deal with, especially because administrators ought to know better than to do such things. Brookie is only compounding this problem be refusing to address it. If they'd like to make positive contributions, that's fine. But if they don't intend to do so, I would definitely like some kind of assurance that they'll simply leave the article alone and not use their administrative status as a means of circumventing wikipedia policy. Nortelrye 22:39, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

The response among recent contributors appears to be fairly good at this point, and so I intend to go forward with the remedies available under WP:Resolving Disputes. In the interest of maintaining civility and good faith, I will wait at least 48 hours after the time of my initial posting before commencing the dispute resolution process, in order to give Brookie more than ample time to respond. Perhaps they can overcome their being "bored of this" and do us the courtesy of addressing our various concerns. Nortelrye 01:26, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the New picture

After i cleaned up the new picture of JT of jpeg artifacts i got asked where the original image came from, i didnt know before but i now tracked it to this source:

http://www.gamepro.com/lofi/article.cfm?article_id=49525 Jernejl 15:56, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

24.70.24.114 04:56, 7 March 2006 (UTC)isn't it better to use a more up to date picture?

It doesn't really matter, but we should probably include the age of the photo....--Vercalos 07:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The picture doesn't need to be up to date (is George Washington's picture up to date?), but we should include when it was taken, if we know. Also, has anyone checked on the copyright of this picture? Wouldn't want to do anything to make Jack angry, now would we? --Bakkster Man 17:49, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm just saying that it makes more sense to use a current picture of him, since he is still alive, and he does have a current colour image available. Nobody is going to go changing George Bush's image to one of him 20 years ago. Once George is dead, the picture that represents him as once being president will be used, because it will be the most well known. Jack Thompson today is recognized by the grey-white hair, and newsroom, not by some 40 year old black and white photo of his younger days before his crusades. Bo916 22:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Removing content when there is no longer a source to cite?

I recently edited the 'Miscellaneous cases' [13] portion of the article, in part to remove what appeared to be POV conjecture, and afterwards cleaned up the wording a bit. I noticed that the news story that was cited as a source [14] no longer appears on the website ("The requested article was not found."). I could not find another source to substitute. Should this section and the reference to the supporting news article be removed entirely? What does everybody else think? Nortelrye 17:08, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Found a new source. Apparently he managed to convince the mother that games were to blame, but she later decided that they weren't, so she turned him down. Jabrwock 17:56, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Jack vs. Dennis McCauley

This is cute. First Jack posts Dennis' unlisted, private phone number, claiming it's an office # so all's fair. Then he bitches at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and claims that Dennis' is misrepresenting himself as their employee. Apparently he did this once before, and the PP didn't do anything. Here's Dennis' explanation: [15] Then Thompson claims someone from the Pioneer Press called him to "thank" him for "exposing" Dennis. Jabrwock 20:43, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I've been ROTFLMAO all day on this one. Seriously this article and the wikiquotes section are studies in a man sinking into depravity. Anyways encyclopedic question: Anyone think the phrase "verbal diarreha of the keyboard" is too POV? Considering the sheer amount of "press releases", emails, spam, etc, etc. That Jack is capable of? No need to mention his poor editing, grammar, spelling, coherent sentences, they speak for themselves.--69.132.103.165 23:59, 23 February 2006 (UTC)Tollwutig... maybe one day I'll get a wiki account

I agree, "verbal diarreha of the keyboard" is not only non-sensical, it's blatantly POV and does not belong on wikipedia. Nortelrye 00:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
The guy went on a crazy posting spree in the Game Politics comments section like mad. Clearly he is in some sort of stage of insanity, even moreso than usual. MarphyBlack 00:03, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I was actually asking if it was in this case. Can anyone think of a better way to describe the sheer volume Mr. Thompson puts out. Not only in quantity of letters, emails, etc, but in thier length. None of it really holding together. Just sheer volume. Considering this is a major trait, not only on gamepolitics, but looking through the wikiquotes everything he does, from articles, his websites, lawsuits, etc. A major trait should be described.. ok so maybe not verbal diarreha but something about his prolific writings should be mentioned. --Toll

I checked Thesaurus.com and I got the following synonyms for verbal diarrhea(which I was surprised to even find on Thesaurus.com to tell the truth): blarney, cacoethes loquendi, diarrhea of the mouth, flowing tongue, furor loquendi, gift of the gab, logomania, logorrhea, volubility, and gift of gab.--Vercalos 01:17, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps something like: "is a prolific writer of letters, e-mails, and press-releases in support of his cause"? Nortelrye 01:20, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
or "expresses great volubility when discussing his political stance."--Vercalos 01:23, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I think I like yours better. Nortelrye 03:59, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

"expresses great volubility when discussing his political stance." I like this one too. Toll


For reference, this is the first thread which indicates his Permanent ban. [16] There's a bit of searching, but it was performed after there were abuse reports sent to LiveJournal. --Sigma 7 17:27, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for deletion, again?

Looks like User:Monicasdude is on a quest to remove all "non-notable" articles, so he spams {Prod} tags all over the place. Every sub-article has been tagged. I commented on the articles for deletion page. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Log/2006_February_24#Strickland_vs._Sony Jabrwock 19:15, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh for goodness sake - Its better like this. Before the article was way too long, now its nice and clear, and you have further articles to go to for more indepth info IanC 20:32, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Put that as a comment on the deletion page. I've been told that we should "summarize" his actions, and limit them to "notable" cases and actions, but we need somewhere to gather all the data together, almost like a sub-page for "research material & references". Otherwise we're left trying to summarize cases from 170+ links. Jabrwock 20:36, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Commented. Hope i did it right. IanC 20:40, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, seems all the pages that where "proposed for deletion" have survived IanC 19:18, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Research Page

Sometime soon I'm going to make a "Talk" subpage called "Research". Basically it will be a whiteboard so we can gather all the material into one long page, and organize it. This way we can keep track of various stories, and then we can pick out the important bits to summarize on the main wiki entry. This will allow us to condense the article, while still retaining the in-depth info for reference, instead of having to scour the web for the various links. This should deal with the "delete this fancruft" crowd, as it will make the article short & sweet, and we get to keep our indepth material intact so we have background info to work with. Jabrwock 23:52, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Here we go. Talk:Jack Thompson/Research. It's basically all the info from the main page and sub-pages. Essentially so we can gather together all the data into one place, so it's easier to trim down. The research page will be the "Lengthy" version, so we have a "whiteboard" for all the info, makes it easier to sort things before they go on the main page. Should make it easier to trim the main page, and merge in any other stuff if we need to as well. Jabrwock 15:45, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Vanity

Seems like a vanity article to me. Isn't this article a bit long for a not particularly notable lawyer?

To many people, Jack Thompson is complete unknown, but to the video gaming community, he's a demonic figure loathed by all. This information is quite relevant, interesting and useful to a suprisingly large number of people. Markusdragon 13:55, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
This is not a vanity article, it's a collection of data gathered by many users. Actually, Jack Thompson tried to edit his article, citing "lies about him" and he was barred from doing so. This is who the man is and is backed up by fact. As such it should stand. Besides, if you actually read the article you'll find it less than flattering.

As an activist lawyer, he's definitely notable. --Bakkster Man 16:23, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

It could probably use a little trimming down, though not the sledgehammer approach somebody tried a little while back. *Dan T.* 17:13, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

You have to be kidding me in if cloud strife and evil clown can have an article longer then this then the length is fine. 203.112.2.212 19:30, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, both those articles are shorter then Jack Thompson's article, particularly when you consider the sub-articles.--Vercalos 21:52, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


Thompson's right but it's not the game content

Sudden violence arising from video game playing is being caused by a problem with human physiology related to the vision startle reflex.

In the 1960's designers, engineers, and psychologists accidentally found a 'conflict of physiology' when knowledge workers began to have mental breaks. This came to their attention because the victims were using the first prototypes of movable close-spaced workstations.

The problem was solved and the cubicle became the industry standard to stop the mental events.

The Redlake school shooter left a journal entry describing what he did to create exposure to Subliminal Distraction. Other shooters in prison have psychiatric symptoms, hearing voices, to indicate they had a mental event to precipitate the shooting.

The same phenomenon produced the Everquest Addiction episode of 2001/02 http://visionandpsychosis.net/Everquest_connection.htm

The same mental breaks happen on scientific expeditions and Russian space missions. One Russian killed another with a hatchet in an argument over a chess game. There have been fist fights over chess games on Russian space stations.

http://visionandpsychosis.net/Astronauts_Insanity.htm

This phenomenon can be experienced with a simple psychology experiment. http://visionandpsychosis.net/a_demonstration_you_can_do.htm

L K Tucker 68.223.107.250 18:25, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! That certainly was an interesting read. One thing I've noticed, however, is that you don't really cite.....well, anything besides your own website in support of the claims you make. Please don't take this as an attack, its just that your claims are difficult for a wikipedian like myself to swallow without any third-party citations or peer-reviewed studies in order to verify facts and support your claims. The 'links page' [17] contains only general links to various sites, none of which offer support of your claims. You have without a doubt a very interesting theory (I did the experiment), but unfortunately, I don't think this is usable in the article because it constitutes original research; and there's a policy here forbidding that sort of thing. As intriguing a theory as it is, it's not possible to simply take your word for it. Nortelrye 20:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the links, they were good reads. However this has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Wether he's right or wrong, Wikipedia is a compilation of facts. As such it should be treated.
Maybe put some of this research in an article about peripheral vision, or better, make a new article and cite some other sources. --Bakkster Man 19:16, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Jack's Son

First time past the article in a few days, is the comment in the introduction about his son playing games rated E really necessary/POV? I couldn't imagine an encyclopedia saying that...Melander 07:31, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Thompson did say that he only lets his son play E-rated games in an interview (was it EGM?). Anyways, I see your point. It seems like the kind of trivia info that you would put on Thompson's personal bio rather than an encyclopedia.KungFu-tse 15:32, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Jack's letter to Bono

From http://www.starttruth.com/articles/thompson/bono.php (removed - it can be read on the above provided link, no need for copying it down here)

I wonder who he'll write next? Bush?? Maluka 14:26, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Heh. I rather wonder why he's still blaming the Robida murders on video games, despite evidence to the contrary, and the fact that the police did not find any video games.--Vercalos 00:55, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I can see why he'd write this. Take Two should be the last company you'd ever want to purchase. I always find JT's writing style unique. Always starts so eloquent, until he starts bragging ("I was on 60 minutes, TWICE!!!") and insulting ("They're lying liars that got caught lying"). On the other hand, I agree with his logic, and if I had the balls I'd tell Bono we was making a mistake. Still dowsn't belong in the article, though. --Bakkster Man 06:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

"Sony and Take-Two designed the GTA: Vice City game to utilize the PS2's Dual Shock controller, which sends a visceral jolt back into the hands of the player each time he kills. Thus, the entire system is a biofeedback, operant conditioning system which desensitizes the user to the act of killing."

My god! I must have been secretly trained for years by the Nintendo 64 with its evil Rumble Paks to become a mass murderer! I felt the thrill of the kill from blasting the leader in Diddy Kong Racing, and I felt the visceral jolt of joy of collecting honey combs in Banjo-Kazooie! Curse you rumbling controllers! Curse you Nintendo and everything you stand for! - MarphyBlack 13:44, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't get it

This article, without even counting the sub-pages, is significantly longer than Wikipedia's biographies of George Washington and Napoleon I of France, and practically the same length as those of Joseph Stalin and George W. Bush, just to pick some reasonably notable people more-or-less at random. Jack Thompson, by contrast, even if he is widely quoted, seems to be a relatively peripheral cultural figure. Why is this guy so important that we need a book-length narrative about him? --Russ Blau (talk) 22:06, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the articles you listed ought to be longer. Also, George W. Bush does contain 18 "see also"s. I don't know; people contribute about what they know, and sometimes it's hard to determine with people who are currently in the news just which items will end up as the more important ones in history. Also, I'm not sure that importance and article length necessarily ought to be correlated. --Maxamegalon2000 22:13, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
The main reason is that there is a lot out there on Jack Thompson.Reub2000 22:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree. While there is a lot of information about JT, it's not all relevent, and not all of it needs to be in the encyclopedia. I suggest we try to decide what people will really want/need to know about Jack in 5/10/15 years. Obviously his political history, but not every single thing he's said publicly (he's said a LOT publicly). I know the page is being reduced and rewritten, hopefully the less notable information will be left out. --Bakkster Man 22:56, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Maybe so, but even if we want only what people will want to know in 5/10/15 years, we still have to cater for the things that people want to know NOW. Thompson is still attempting to influence people, and as long as he continues to spew fiction, it is essential that the facts remain accessible and readily available, especially when Thompson relies on them not being known in order to push his agenda. --Fedùle 00:45, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, we still have to remember that this is an encyclopedia article. We can't make decisions for people, and that includes what we add. We should not add a section because Jack pissed us off by saying something, we should add sections because what he said was notable in some way. Of course we should still mention Jack's attacks on games, but maybe we don't need to describe every press release he's ever made. i.e. broad descriptions of his views and actions, less descriptions of individual events. --Bakkster Man 04:16, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Bush and his contemporaries are fairly restrained - they rarely make candid statements to the press. JT here just goes after anybody and even without concrete evidence - such is the case with The Sims 2, how he used a questionable source ot make the outragous claim that Sims 2 was a game for pedophiles. Also, the sheer number of people he has attacked - Amazon.com, GTA:SA< GTA:VC, The SIms 2, and so forth - have touched many gaming communities that are offended by his actions. - Hbdragon88 07:01, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, but as an encyclopedia article an outside look needs to be taken. As much as I feel should be said about JT, Wikipedia is NOT the place to go on and on about him. Right now, I'd call most of the article Fancruft. Mostly, I feel that 22 seperate events is too much to talk about. Picking out the most notable and briefly mentioning the rest would be a big help to this article, and external linking would allow information seekers to find out more if they so choose. --Bakkster Man 15:04, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

What you're missing here is that Jack has one article on Wikipedia. GWB has many, many more. For example:

So, Jack T. clearly doesn't out-weigh GWB on Wikipedia -- Jack T. just has almost all of his information on one page. As such -- I don't think this article needs to be trimmed down. If anything, just move lager sections to their own article. -Quasipalm 20:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Panda magazine

I have removed the panda magazine section, as all it amounts to is basically someone talking shit about someone else. Nothing notable. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 03:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Penny Arcade?

Was there not an incedent related to his proposal that someone made a video game that kills video game developers? If i remember correctly, penny arcade donated 10,000 dollars in his name to a charity after Jack Thompson refused to pay? Im still looking for more information, but i remember hearing about this on Gamespot presents the hotspot. Can someone please help find anything about this incident and maybe propose it should be included into the article. Tommygun141 04:45, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

You are referring to A Modest Video Game Proposal, which both has its own article and is mentioned in this one as well. --Maxamegalon2000 04:58, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Article blanking?

What happened? Is this the result of legal action by JT, or possibly just administrative action on the page's length? Maybe the actions of a lone contributor? Anyone know? --Bakkster Man 20:05, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

It is administrative actions and I don't think it is appropriate to discuss at this time. --Cyde Weys 20:16, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
WP:OFFICE block is in effect. If you have questions, address them on #wikipedia-en-admins or to User:Danny through the normal channels. Just don't revert anything.--BradPatrick 20:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Hmm I don't think there is much of a fair use case for that image in the shorter article.Geni 21:14, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I dont like what that message says.... IanC 21:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Please read WP:OFFICE if you have questions. What happened is there was an issue that the m:Wikimedia Foundation needs to handle, and the page will be unprotected when they're done. The details on what happened will probably not be released publically, but it certainly wasn't an article-length issue. In the meantime, the article's locked down. If this makes you sad, you'll be interested that this is the only article on all of Wikipedia currently protected under WP:OFFICE, and it will almost certainly be unprotected soon. -- SCZenz 01:51, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
If this is because of Jack-O's legal threats, isn't it several months late?--Vercalos 02:37, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Has Jack previously made legal threats against Wikipedia? I'm not aware of anything like that. --Cyde Weys 02:39, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Whatever issue this is because of was probably communicated to the foundation office, not on Wikipedia. That's what WP:OFFICE means. -- SCZenz 02:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
So, can anybody get an article blanked just by complaining to the right people about it? Granted, this article was in severe need of being trimmed down; not every last detail of every one of the guy's clashes with the computer gaming community was sufficiently notable to deserve to be recounted here. But cutting the whole thing down to a sub-stub wasn't too cool, either. *Dan T.* 02:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
This is only temporary. The article will be back at some point. This is just an office action. I cannot comment on the nature of it as I don't know all of the details and IANAL. We must trust that the people at the WikiMedia Foundation know what they're doing. And while theoretically this could happen to any page on Wikipedia, in practice, it's so rare that there's less than one office action ongoing at any given time. --Cyde Weys 02:49, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

So in other words we don't get to know what this whole thing is about? --Shaoken 02:50, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I hope Wikipedia realizes that if they don't say why they locked the article then a large flame war will start, remember when the mod deleted every single video-game related thing from the article.--Father Time89

I would have to agree that it was a bit much to remove every reference to video games, since Thompson centers his career around them.--Vercalos 05:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

When was this? But removing all video game references from Jack Thompon's article is like removing all religous references from the Pope --Shaoken 07:03, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

There are still many subpages on Jack Thompson still on wikipedia. Reub2000 10:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's Why It Was Blanked

Jack Thompson ordered Wikipedia to remove this article. It had numerous statements that were not true and defamed Mr. Thompson. He sent a copy of the letter to the press:

Dear Board Members of Wikipedia Foundation:

I contacted the Foundation at [removed], asking for your fax number, and the person who answered the phone refused to give it to me because I indicated this pertained to a legal matter. This arrogance helps explain some of your problems.

You have at your www.wikipedia.org a number of false, defamatory, and actionable statements about me. As an aside, you all don't even have my date and year of birth correct, and it goes downhill from there.

I am hereby demanding that you give me the real names, addresses, and phone numbers, and any other verifying information, regarding anyone who has posted anything about me at Wikipedia, as they will be defendants. You have thirty days to comply with this demand. The Seigenthaler experience shows that you must provide me this information.

Jack Thompson also mentioned that he tried to correct the false statements and foolish Wikipedians then removed the fixes and called it vandalism. Thompson has threatened legal action if Wikipedia does not comply, and says he suffered harm due to the fake information.

This situation is only going to get Wikipedia more criticism now. But at least the article was removed as Jack Thompson asked for

xSTRIKEx6864 08:08, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Jack.
Sorry, but the article did not contain any false information. Note that he himself can only cite his birthdate as an error. He has not cited any further errors. He just vaguely says there are errors.
And his addition was a vandalism and inappropriate for Wikipedia, not fixing anything.


What Jack "added" was vandalism, if you look through the history you will see that. He can have my real name and contact informtaion, i dont care, hes only doing this because he doesnt like how truth the information was.
Also, this statment by him just show ou waht sort of person he is: "This arrogance helps explain some of your problems." IanC 15:53, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


Greetings all.

As a new member here, who has been a long time member of GP, I'm sure I"m gonna probably get alot of heat for what I'm about to say.

If wikipedia is actually submitting to Jack Thompson, then you should just dismantle the site entirely and call it quits. Jack Thompson has no case, no claim, and no real arguement. His actions are his own, regardless of if they are flattering or not, they have been documented, evidance of them was given, and it is his own words that damned him on this site. If he cannot accept that, he should not have acted as he did.

Wikipedia, as it's name implies, is supposed to be a an encyclopedia of information. Yet when I, at the time a non member, added some small updates to a few items, even including links to proof of my statments, they were deleted. Why? Cause they proved JT was lieing? So when hard fact does not agree with a person you remove it.

Jack Thompson's Article should be restored to it's former self asap. It doesn't matter if he likes what it says or not, it's his own words, actions, and deeds. They have been documented and validated. If Wikipedia is not going to do what it's meant to do, be a repository for truthful, informative data, then why does it even exsist. I'm sure theres plenty of others who might not like what is listed on there Wikipedia page, but if what is there is true, as it was with Thompson, then there is no reason for it to be changed.

If you was not willing to stand by wikipedia, and those who did all the work needed to form the article in question, what purpose does this site serve?

Sorry for the rant, but it sickens me that Wikipedia would actually listen to a man whose been shown to be a racist, a liar, a bigot, and more, let alone bow down to his pointless and empty threats.

Yukimura.

I agree, if you're going to give in to any demands from this lunatic you may as well just consider Wikipedia dead here and now. All that money you collect and all these intelligent people posting on this site yet you don't waste five seconds seeking legal advice before you rip the article off. Any research into his background or legal history (which was conveniently posted RIGHT HERE) would have quickly shown that he is clearly a nutcase with an axe to grind with anyone who might POSSIBLY disagree with him and the judges he's gone to have stated as much. It's likely the only court case he could win at this point would be a traffic ticket and even THAT is iffy. Shame on you. -Moocats 22:01, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
In the quest to get things absolutely right, we do have a responsibility to be cautious. As such, we need to take the last version of the page and make sure that every sentence and statement of fact is correctly referenced right there in the article. Preferably with multiple references. Then we have something that fits the WP:LIVING guideline perfectly: neutral in tone, with all facts put in because they are relevant, and all facts unimpeachably referenced. We don't need it done in the next hour. Mr Thompson may or may not be correct in his assertions about the article, but we don't lose anything by taking our time to Get It Right. Which is what we really want to do - David Gerard 12:26, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for that david. I understand what your saying. I was just upset at the thought that wikipedia was actually going to allow itself to be bullied by someone like Thompson. For verification of specific game related data, might I suggest contacting dennis Mccauley of GP, who has a long backlog of JT information you could use to verify anything that needs verification.
So long as wikipedia puts the article back up, with more or less the facts intact, then I'm fine with some changes made. But make no mistake. What was in there before was ll of jacks own words and actions. If he wants it removed just cause it makes him upset to have the truth readily avalible on the net, then thats all the more reason for us to keep the truth there for the people to see it. If he was such an upstanding christan as he claims, would he be wanting to hide it?
But again, thanks david, and keep us informed.
Btw, can anyone link me to JT's edit? I want to see just what kind of knight in shining armor he painted himself as.--Vercalos 16:40, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Here you go. --Maxamegalon2000 16:58, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Being cautious is definitely the best response. Looking through the old page, almost none of the individual incidents were properly referenced. Most common was "critics responded..." with no citation that anyone other than the writer actually critiqued his views. The article was poorly written and barely cited, and now we got bit. If the article had been properly cited, I guarentee the Foundation would have checked the article, seen that everything was up to snuff, and just dismissed the attack. I expect the article will be back shortly, and this time we can back up our facts so that it's irrefutable. --Bakkster Man 17:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Just wanted to mention Seigenthaler. [18]. Get this, "Major communications Internet companies are bound by federal privacy laws that protect the identity of their customers, even those who defame online. Only if a lawsuit resulted in a court subpoena would BellSouth give up the name." Interesting read.KungFu-tse 01:05, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

This article should now be deleted, I suppose.

The article now fails even the most basic requirements we have on Wikipedia.

John Bruce "Jack" Thompson is an American attorney at law who is often cited in the media for his views on the effects of obscenity and violence in popular media.

Often cited? We never use those words without a citation, since they are useless otherwise, as useless as the supposedly libelous material that was here before. So that line should be removed, which gives us:

John Bruce "Jack" Thompson is an American attorney at law.

Which is an obvious speedy candidate as it fails to establish notability.

By the way, I find it deplorable (if the press release a few pages up is true) that the Office is seriously responding to a request that includes a demand for names, phone numbers, and other identifying information, so that they may be prosecuted. I would say this outlandish demand negates the veracity of the blanking request. Requests should only be considered when they make sense. But I suppose the legal threats ban doesn't apply when they're sent specifically to Danny. --Golbez 17:28, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Now let's all hold our horses. In a few days I think there will be some administrative action taken in some form, and we can start deciding what to do then. It's still early in the process; give Danny and friends some time. --Maxamegalon2000 17:33, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
The no legal threats policy is necessary for Wikipedia to function, but the foundation can and should respond to legal threats in a rational and cooperative manner. In the real world, sometimes you have to sit down with people who are threatening to sue you and listen to them. There's no indication that the foundation is complying with Thompson's request for personal information. It would violate the privacy policy to release this information without a subpoena. By listening to Thompson and preventing possible legal action, it could be argued that the foundation is actually preventing the release of this personal information. Rhobite 18:37, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Not that there's any way for the foundation to release information that it doesn't have, anyway... I don't think the user signup form even asks for the user's address and phone number. *Dan T.* 18:42, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Seeing how I am a potential defendant in any case brought against Wikipedia (According to Thompson's vexatious litigation), I'd like a little more transparency in this process. There IS no personal information to be had, that's a major point. The foundation knows nothing more about me than my email address and IP address (which, folks should remember, has been sufficient for the RIAA/MPAA to bring John Doe suits against people, so don't think you're immune from litigation here). So why they even responded seriously confuses me.
I agree that there's no way the foundation is responding to the request for information, even if it was possible to fulfill. What I'm annoyed with is they're responding to the requests attached to that. I would consider anything else in that document fruit of the poisoned tree and ignore it. That they are complying with one demand of that supposed document gives credence to the others.
And no one's yet explained why the resultant stub should not be deleted. --Golbez 18:58, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Because there hasn't been a result yet; regardless of the outcome of the office action, there will certainly be an article on Thompson, and it will not be a stub. The list of accomplishments that Jack himself submitted is extensive enought to be the basis of an article. In short, this article's current stub-like existance will be short-lived. --Maxamegalon2000 19:41, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

An article about Jack Thompson will be created. It will, I hope, be a very thorough article. It will also be properly and fully cited. This is a temporary measure. Danny 21:34, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I understand that, and I thank you for commenting here. But the WP:OFFICE process is new, and is still as yet unrefined. In the future, can you post something to the talk page explaining who complained and what about? This is your first comment to this talk page, so far as I can tell. We deserve a notice other than a template. I understand if you might be confined by legal maneuvers in what you can say, but still, a talk page notice would be extremely nice.
I know talking with Thompson must be a draining and intellectually numbing experience, so I don't blame you if you're annoyed. :) --Golbez 21:51, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
As long as you dont pander to his whim, and distort the truth then that will be fine by me IanC 21:54, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
wikipedia reaches a new moral low for spinelessness. yep, cave at the first blush of a threat of a warning of a hint at legal action. organizations with spine don't run away from a bully just because he says he's going to take action. organizations with spine wait for the action, and deal with it accordingly. jimbo has the financial resources to defend his creation; he merely lacks the integrity to do so. Anastrophe 22:00, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree completely with Golbez on this point. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, encyclopedias are factual, and from what I've seen of this article, it's all factual. If Wikipedia listens to the demands of a man like this, then there's no point any more. -- RattleMan 22:09, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Hey now, wait a minute. I'm not saying actions like this kill the encyclopedia. I'm responding to the fact that they're giving any part of such an outlandish document (the one posted above, if true) credence. I'm thinking OFFICE is probably a necessary element, but requests should make sense and not involve John Doe legal threats against thousands of people. They should have refused to consider the request until a reasonable, legally actionable one was presented. That's all. And, of course, I dunno, maybe they should have just blanked the article like they did with Brian Peppers (but on a less permanent basis of course). --Golbez 22:28, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I'm also inclined to agree with the sentiments here. Whilst I will admit that certain work needed to be done as far as an accusatory tone is concerned, the site has been blanked for the wrong reason. The post describing why this page was blanked already assumes that the facts are wrong, whereas, in truth, there was very little, if anything, that was not based solely on fact and on the actual postings of Mr Thompson, at least as far as his Video game stance is concerned. This capitulation has a negative effect on the impartiality of the Wiki. Also, I would recommend you do not allow yourself to be terrorised by him. Though I will add that I do understand the need to review the page from a legal standpoint, I should inform you that Legal Threats are far from rare in the case of Mr Thompson, as items in the Wikipedia itself show. Flipside72 22:21, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

A lot of gonad swinging around here. How many of you run your own websites? I'd rather have Wiki minus one article on some psycho pundit than no Wiki at all. This isn't a game of who blinks first contrary to what the Internet would make you believe. Danny Lilithborne 22:58, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the Foundation has to pick its fights carefully - imagine the opportunity cost that would be incurred from spending cash to fight this guy in court.--inksT 23:09, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
There is also the question of precedent. As the Wikipedians themselves have stated, they have run up against this problem before. It's not just a question of 'Who cares if the Wiki is minus an article'. It's more a question of not setting a precedent that anyone who wants to hide facts about themselves only has to send a threatening letter. I fully understand the need to review the article considering the complaint made, but I think people want assurance that the article will be reviewed for the articles sake and not simply give the impression that they have allowed themselves to be intimidated. Flipside72 23:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I am seeing some awful incidences of "biting the hand that feeds" here. As said before, there is precedent, so you can't just pooh pooh this, or feign ignorance and hope that the other side will be too irritated to follow through like a certain website. This is a serious matter and demands a serious response. Danny Lilithborne 23:37, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

As an Impartial viewer of this site, I have to say to remove this article or modify it in any way is no more different than changing history- say removing any reference to the World Trade Tower because it offends someone. History is not supposed to be biased on account of if someone agrees with it or not, Wikipedia has always stood for neutrality. If you remove this article, you act as the individual or events never existed; to me if you choose to bastardize information on that scale, you may as well remove references to the holocost because people debate the truth of that as well. 165.166.180.188 03:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the above. Encyclopedias are about facts, and most, if not all that is mentioned about this man is factual and can be backed up. Should it be deleted just because now, when he looks at them put together, he finds them embarrasing and inconvenient? NO! As for the threats agains the Wikipedia contributors, if Mr. Thompson hadn't been absent the day they taught law at law school, he would know that for a site/corporation or entity to release private information of it's users/contributors, etc... He needs a subpeona. Anyone remember the RIAA and their subpoenas to people using file sharing services? Same applies. I'm certain Wikipedia knows about this and would not do this, so the locking of this article must be just a precautionary meassure.
If this article is updated, it should be submitted to Thompson first so he can confirm that the information is correct. That way no wrong information will go up about him.
Pardon my intrusion, but if that were to occur, would it not fall under a form of "self Promotion"? He could then claim everything negative to be a lie, even though they are the truth. Which is most likely what has occured here in this situation as well. Andrew Rhodes 16:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that would be very against NPOV, too. --Viridis 02:06, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

So what exactly did Wikipedia Violate? If he's whiny about his bio and how its written, he should go ahead and make his own auto-biography if he wants. I dont think you guys violated any guidelines as far as I'm concerned, and as long as this is based on an American Attorney, the same freedoms that are placed in the constitution should be exercised here. Thats pretty much my 2 cents. User:mothman47 00:38, 13 March 2006

Some responses

There are two things I find kind of disturbing here. One is the building of accusations upon assumptions. Some people seem to assume that the Foundation received this letter and immediately protected the article. That is false. There were several steps in between these two processes, as the comment by BradPatrick above would indicate. The second is that the Foundation, which would be the defendant if Mr Thompson chose to sue us (and he has not), would then be obliged to post all of its legal strategies on this page for discussion and debate by various Wikipedians. The Foundation does not know all of the people who commented here. Do you really think it is wise to discuss all the details of what is happening in such an open forum? That is the second thing I find disturbing. Assume some good faith, particularly in the people such as Jimbo who make this website possible.

Having said all that, I would invite Wikipedians to begin to reconstruct the article by offering suggestions as to how a more fuller survey of Jack Thompson's life and career can be covered in a neutral and fully sourced way. Thompson contended that even his date of birth was wrong. Then let's rebuild the article so that every single fact is correct and sourced. As David Gerard said above, there is no reason why this should not be a candidate for featured article. Danny 23:23, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Are we allowed to begin reconstructing it on a temp page? Also, I don't think anyone here suggested you post legal strategies here, but a notice other than the OFFICE template would have been nice. That's been the bulk of my complaint. --Golbez 00:24, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I find that a perfectly fair statement. I think the post of xSTRIKEx6864 was what started, in part, the assumptions in this page, since the post implied automatic failure on the part of those who edited and maintained the page. As I said earlier, there was a high degree of 'accusatory' type wording in the original article, along the lines of 'He said, but we say'. Whilst I don't think it is wrong to add points of importance to various comments/posts made by Mr Thomspon, I do understand the need for it not to simply be a 'Jack Thompson is wrong' article. I apologise if I came across as accusatory, I have great respect for the Wiki and what it's trying to achieve, hopefully, with some work, we can provide a more thorough, definitive, and possibly shorter article about this man. Flipside72 23:48, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
I would second Danny's sentiments above. The Foundation already have to deal with enough difficulty in managing the project's executive level aspects and dealing with matters such as legal issues without the added onerous task of having to elaborate their internal affairs to those who don't necessarily either have a role to play in the dispute nor have any constructive input on how to resolve the scenario. It is one thing to complain about the state of affairs, but it is quite another to do something about it and actually rebuild the article - as Danny suggests - as opposed to simply arguing politics. It is this latter which we should be doing, as opposed to the former; we should leave the Foundation to get on with their job, without unfair judgement or onus, and we the editing community should likewise get on with our job and write a properly encyclopaedic article that nobody, not even Thompson, could find sufficient fault with. I propose that we perhaps start afresh at Jack Thompson/Rewrite. --NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 23:51, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, this is a bit of a rant, but I want to add this here. We have really got to cope with this sort of thing better as a community - for the good of the project as a whole. We get a complaint, it goes through various stages (I'm one of them as someone who answers our email, when it gets beyond me I pass it to people like Danny and BradP). At one or another of those stages the article might get temporarily blanked, or protected, or deleted... and then the row starts.

But I think it's important to say that none of these interventions are done lightly. Don't you think that everyone involved has the same ideals of free and open knowledge? Why else would they be here? We are all Wikipedians. But there are also the practicalities. It's better to have one article temporarily in a stubby state, or even permanently so, than the project as a whole to be in trouble. And frequently the community as a whole can't be told all the details. Because to make them public would inflame and escalate the situation that they are trying to fix in the first place.

I get to hear quite a few bits of what's going on, because of the work I do. But there is a whole lot I don't hear, and that's as it has to be. If Danny or Brad told me to take action on an article, but said that they couldn't tell me why, then I would likely do it. Not through some sort of blind obedience, but because I trust them, and trust that they have the good of Wikipedia firmly in their sights. If that isn't the way the community as a whole reacts to this sort of problem, then we are going to end up in real trouble some day. -- sannse (talk) 23:53, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to add my own semi-rant to sannse's; I'm in the same boat she is as someone who wades through the mail desk. If anything Jimbo and Danny have more stake in the project than any one of the rest of us. It is neither to their interest nor anyone else's to damage an article or to abandon the openness of Wikipedia. And I can speak with absolute confidence that for every WP:OFFICE protection, there are loads upon loads of "sorry you're unhappy with this article, can you tell us what's incorrect to help us fix it?" mails that no one gets much bothered about and most of the community never hears about. Sometimes they are very angry, sometimes they are from wealthy and powerful people, and we don't get too fussed about them until there is a serious concern that we may be doing wrong, and something needs to change, and that something hasn't happened via the usual community processes. That's what office actions are for.

Do you have any idea how big Wikipedia is and how much attention it gets? This isn't Joe Schmoe's website that no one will ever see; publishing here is like publishing in the 'New York Times. Except that we're on the web and searchable without registration. There is actually serious damage to be done by having falsehood and rumors up on articles, and if our community processes have failed to get that right then it's clear some intervention is needed. It's done to save the project, not to destroy it, and I imagine that Danny would rather chew his own toenails off than face this sort of shitstorm without good cause.

Now, everyone who does have good, verifiable, neutral, cited information to add, go work on writing temp versions so we can replace this accursed thing. Complaining on the talk page doesn't help do that, but researching does. Without whitewashing, without censoring, with the whole neutral and verifiable truth, and only that, and if it meets those standards it'll be back up no matter what Thompson thinks of it. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 00:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

As someone who also sometimes fields the emails that Mediawiki gets, I add my sentiments to those of Sannse and Mindspillage. We are volunteers. Let anybody who is concerned that there may be some kind of weird cabal at work, consider in his own mind whether he's prepared to take on some voluntary work on OTRS, out ticketing system. Any good faith applications to join will I'm sure be happily dealt with by Danny or Kat (Mindspillage). On conditions of confidentiality, you will then get to deal with everyday complaints from readers and editors, and this may give you a clear picture of the kind of day-to-day complaint that Wikipedia deals with.

I wish everybody here who, in good faith, believes that the Foundation is being dictatorial or underhand, or is doing things in a hidden way, would join OTRS and contribute to the work Wikipedia has to do, day in, day out, to keep itself in touch with its customers--and I make no apology for using that word, the public are our customers and the public's money and the public's choice have made this the number one reference site in the world. Let us keep in touch with our customers and our best editors. The editors can accomplish this at any time by doing their duty as OTRS volunteers. --Tony Sidaway 01:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Reconstruction

Here's my proposition for rebuilding the article (in a way to prevent problems from happening in the future). First of all, if you feel strongly about Jack's views, please refrain from editing the article directly. Feel free to participate in the talk page discussion and research, but if you feel you might make a POV statement, let someone else do it.

Secondly, everyone should read the WP:LIVING guidelines on editing biographies of living people. I have a feeling that if we had followed them more closely, this never would have happened.

Third, we use whiteboard page here to organize our research and fully cite our sources. Even as few as two days ago I was still trying to find sources to add to uncited sections.

Thoughts/ideas/additions? Hopefully using a thorough process we can rebuild the page better than it was before. --Bakkster Man 23:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

For someone who is new to using/posting on Wiki, would actually using direct quotes of the man in question be considered POV, even if they can be backed up with actual evidence? Mr.Pat 00:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism is always going to be a problem as long as Thompson continues to advance his views on video games. I have a neutral position to the whole affair, but there are some people who take video games waaay too seriously, and the majority of them spend a lot of time on the Internet. If we're going to try to create an article that won't ultimately cross the legal boundaries of libel (again), this problem has to be addressed. Danny Lilithborne 00:02, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Aside from the date of birth though, how was the page exactly libel? I researched the situation and every single one of his quotes are exact, as were his various letters. Mr.Pat 00:05, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

This isn't a comment on the legalities, but as a matter of neutrality: it's very possible to slant an article while having every single item perfectly true. Emphasis, slanting, the language chosen, weight and space given to different aspects... all this can make a factually correct article a travesty of bias (that's not a direct comment on this article, but a general point). It's not always about what you say, but also about how you say it -- sannse (talk) 00:10, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
An example from the last version of the page:
In the Washington Sniper case, Thompson was the first to suggest that video games may have been the source of the sniper's skills, although police never made any link between the two. Dateline NBC reported that Malvo "trained" extensively on the Xbox game Halo. He also stated that there was an option within the game entitled "God mode" or "Sniper mode" (although there is a sniper rifle available, Halo does not have a "God mode" like most other first person shooters). From that report, Thompson argued that "the games both broke down his inhibition to kill and gave him incredible shooting skills" and he believes that "Microsoft should be sued and held liable for money damages by the victims of the Beltway Snipers."[19] Thompson's critics point out that John Allen Muhammad was a former soldier with significant rifle training, as predicted by the police, and that Lee Boyd Malvo's shooting skills could have easily been the result of instruction by Muhammad.(citation needed)
Only one citation (that I recently added after the article had been accessible for a long time), no citation to the "critics" point of view, and an obviously slanted writing style. Not that the whole article is absolutely horrid, but it would definitely benefit from some cleanup and TLC. --Bakkster Man 00:21, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
One question regarding this. A lot of the more inflammatory posts made by Thompson on GamePolitics were made under an Anonymous screen-name, though the IP address was confirmed by the site's owner to be that of Mr Thompson, this was confirmed when Mr Thompson finally got a screen-name on GamePolitics. How does the Wiki stand on citing sources that are, on the face of things, Anonymous, but confirmed in such a manner? Flipside72 02:06, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether or not it was libel according to the current laws; Wikipedia is a virtual gold mine for ambitious civil attorneys to try and make new law. The dictionary definition of libel would give one plenty of cause to, at the very least, waste a lot of the website administrators' time and money, and that alone is enough reason to give pause. Danny Lilithborne 00:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Under that interpretation of the law, we might as well go ahead and shut down Wikipedia right now. Silensor 00:39, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Don't get me wrong. I'm on Wikipedia's side. I just want people to be aware that we survived a close call with Seigenthaler, who thankfully is more gracious than he could ever have been expected to be. You think Jack Thompson will be that gracious? It's true that the most he will probably do is make a lot of noise, but I think we should cover all bases and angles here. Danny Lilithborne 00:43, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

The point is that Thompson claimed that the article was libelous and actionable --- of course, the truth is, it wasn't. I'm so beyond frustrated by now. The man, even more so than Michael Moore or even Ann Coulter, is duplicitous and pathological. Other blowhards from every inch of the spectrum at least sincerely believe what they're saying or, when they screw up, at least shut up and stop propagating it. Some people, though, like Jack, don't. And what's scary is that we're now giving in to his pathological, demented need for attention. Wikipedia is dead to me. If only I had the resources, I would threaten to sue Wikimedia every day, make thousands of vexatious law suits, just to punish them for giving in to this one. Hopefully the server farm will burn to the ground and purge this stupidity once and for all.

Wow, a complaint from some anonymous badass. Let me give this the weight it so obviously deserves. Oh yeah, that's right, none. Maybe it's a fallacy to say that if you aren't part of the solution, you're part of the problem, but opening your mouth and spewing out random bytes of hatred really don't help your cause. Danny Lilithborne 00:55, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Let this "anonymous badass" take credit for his work then; it was I. Now do I get credence? My bad, I mean, I thought I had set Wikipedia to remember me, but apparently not. Your scathing wit, like the grammar-school retort of "oh yeah, that's right, none," so favoured since the dawn of time as the pseudo-epiphany of the flavourless insulter burns me to my bones. My comments stand. This is trash of the highest order -- Jack Thompson most definitely is pathological. I'm sorry that there's naughty people in the world with mental pathologies that do bad things for attention, but that's just the way it is, Danny Boy. Professor Ninja 11:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
It's comments such as the anonymous one above that lend credence to Mr Thompsons' claims. What is being stated here is not a removal of facts, it's a removal of opinion from the article. Supply people with the facts and they will form their own opinion. That is the purpose of the Wikipedia. To be honest, I think the facts will speak for themselves, but it is not up to the Wiki to influence people, only to inform them. Certainly, insulting the Wikipedia for wanting to make sure that the article contains only fact is a pointless task, particuarly in this case and considering the facts involved, you may find that a full review and non-objective viewpoint will actually reveal more, because it will not be blurred by sub-commentary. Flipside72 01:24, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
How, exactly, does it give credence to Thompson's claims? How does "I hope an integrityless house of spinlessness burns to the ground" give Thompson reason to say that non-existent functions of video games train pedophiles to become snipers and that anything to the contrary is actionable libel? Empiricism, please. When objectivity gets kicked square in the nuts, I tend to become subjective, because that's all that's left. Professor Ninja 11:47, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Did you read the article before? There were no "opinions" that needed to be removed. The article was just fine before. This is purely a matter of a man of dubious sanity hating that the truth was being revealed about him, so he uses litigation as a way to silence legitimate critics.
Yes, I read the article quite thoroughly, and have been watching the progress of the talk pages as well, but starting to make comments like 'I'll sue wikipedia every day' and 'Hopefully all the server farms will burn down' is not particularly constructive. I've already stated my opinion on the matter, but the Wikipedia has a responsibility to itself as well as the people who edit it. I'll agree that the chances are high that the threat was an empty one, but when you are an organisation, such as the wikipedia, that's not a risk you take lightly. As was stated elsewhere in here, the article can be 100% factual and still be biased, it's human nature. I'm not stating that the article is wrong, merely than when faced with threats such as this, the Wikipedians have little choice but to investigate. Flipside72 05:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Not everyone is making those comments, but their anger is understandable. There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong with the article. Someone like Jack simply doesn't want truths about himself to get out. If Wikipedia makes one single change, it's a further betrayal of their integrity than they already have done.

Censorship by way of litigation threats

This incident, and the reaction by the WP:OFFICE staff really made me pause and give newfound credence to the Five Wikipedia Predictions by Jason Scott (see prediction #4). The board really needs to come up with some proactive solutions to these problems now before they wind up alienating the entire editing community. Silensor 00:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

The proactive solutions we as an entire community have been coming up with involve tightening up on verification and care to articles on living people (see Wikipedia:Verifiability and WP:LIVING, and also Category:Living people, all toward that end). It just happens that some things slip through the cracks. We have 1 million articles. It's *hard* to check all of them. And all of these measures are designed to help keep these articles open so that they spend as little time actually protected as possible. If you think there is not currently a push to solve these kinds of problems before they are problems, you are mistaken. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 01:00, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
You might have missed what I was driving at. Yes, we now have over one million articles, but this one was hardly low profile. It has thousands of edits and was on a number of administrator's watchlists, are you implying that this is one that slipped through the cracks? Silensor 02:57, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of if this article was slanted or not, Libel only applies if you have verifiable proof that a statement was wrong and or defamatory. In the case of Mr. Thompsons article, this was not only not the case, but it was also probably the most cited article that wikipedia had seen. At it's highest point, the article had over 100 cited sources, though admittedly, many of them were from Jack Thompsons postings on Game Politics, it was confirmed by that sites owner, that it was indeed Jack Thompson making those statements.

Now, due to recent changes to the Live Journal system, most notably Thompsons permant banning from Game Politics, some of this citations are no longer valid. It would however be important to not that many of them are still housed by Wikiquote, and thus are still verified and located on in an easily linkable area. My concern is not that the article will altered, but that those statements made by JT, which were verified, be left intact. Jack is doing this not cause of libel, but cause he does not want the truth about his actions to be seen by the public. If wikipedia allows him to bully them into silence, there allowing him to hide the truth from the public, a far worse crime then Libel, in my opinion. (YukimuraSanada 01:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC))

That statement is completely wrong about how the burden of proof works in a libel case. --Michael Snow 01:44, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


How so mike? IANAL, but I have family that is involved in the court system, and I asked around. Libel normally requires three things.

1. Falsified statments. not the case here, since these were his own statments in most cases. 2. Monitary Harm::jack hasn't won a case in years, no harm there. 3. Damage to reputation.: Need to have one to damage to begin with.

However, as I said, IANAL, so if you have some details and clarification ,I'm happy to hear it. Unlike Jack ,I"m man enough to admit when I might be wrong. (YukimuraSanada 02:02, 12 March 2006 (UTC))

You're correct that in the U.S. the burden of proof is on the plaintiff to prove that the statements were not true. However, your analysis of the "case" is limited, and the question of whether he could win at trial is not the only issue. Please remember that this is temporary, and trust that the foundation office is acting in the best interests of the encyclopedia. Rhobite 02:14, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
No, that's what you both have wrong. Arguing that the statement is true is a defense against a claim of libel, and the burden of proving such a defense is, not surprisingly, on the defendant. --Michael Snow 06:28, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
You may be thinking of the UK, whose libel laws are notoriously plaintiff-friendly. I am positive that in the U.S. the burden of proof is on the plaintiff to prove that the statements were false. If this is wrong you should update Slander and libel quickly. Truth is an affirmative defense, of course, so many defendants will argue it, but that doesn't mean the burden of proof is on the defendant. If the plaintiff doesn't prove falsehood (and the other elements of libel), then in theory the defendant doesn't need to present any defense. Rhobite 16:03, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, hasty and imprecise responses on my part. Libel isn't really even the term in use for much of modern U.S. law, defamation would be more apropos. Whatever its name, if the tort involves as an element of the claim that a statement be both defamatory and false, then yes, the burden of proving those elements is on the plaintiff. It would depend on what elements the particular jurisdiction requires in order to make a prima facie case. --Michael Snow 02:09, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I am trying to keep faith in the office, but having seen jacks actions in the past, I'm not so much upset about his threats as I am about wikipedia actually buying into them. He's made threats against multiple groups and people no less then a dozen times as seen on your own acticle, and never followed threw. The fact that you actually listened to him will just fuel his insanity and make him even more determined to attack you.

If you'd ignored him, he's have gone away.


Oh, why, wikipedia, why? Cowardice. User:Mightfox

I second that. User:mothman47

I'm more upset that wiki office pulled the article then Jack Thompson threatening to sue. He does the latter all the time, while the former is a form of censorship and thus always scary. Wiki shows the Danish cartoons, but not the well researched (How many offsite links, 150?) actions of a very controversial lawyer, based on a single email? SanderJK 13:24, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Date of birth?

Would anyone object to adding his birthdate or would that be too controversial an addition? I mean we're here to provide information, not protect ourselves from lawsuits. Luigi30 (Ταλκ) 01:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you have an authoritative source for that information? He claims the date that was formerly up there is incorrect. *Dan T.* 01:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Heh, you're right. Google turns up no hits for his birthdate other than Wikipedia... Luigi30 (Ταλκ) 01:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Read my comment on Bias: Intro. The original date was incorrect, removed after Thompson complained about it, and then I added the correct one.KungFu-tse 02:06, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Can you then include the date with a reference? Since the page is frozen, it can be done in a rewrite page as suggested above. Danny 02:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, that's kind of tricky. A lot of the public record services that you find on the net (like PublicData.com) are subscriber services. Also, PublicData limits the number of searches you do per month. So a direct link to the record is not possible. The only other way to verify it is to ask Mr. Thompson himself, which he declined to fix himself.KungFu-tse 02:43, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
If he will not tell us the correct birthdate then we have no proof it is false. Slap up Jan 1 1877 for all I care. He can only prove it's wrong if he, well, proves it's wrong. --Golbez 03:15, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I believe someone watching this page had a website he was able to cite. Maybe he can put that date back up. --Bakkster Man 00:25, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Setting a bad precedent

The problem with blanking pages when people threaten to sue Wikipedia over its content is:

  1. More people unhappy with Wikipedia information will threaten to sue Wikipedia.
  2. You create a precedent of showing that Wikipedia does have full control over the information written by its users, and as such you take liability for it.

This is an awful idea. The article should be restored immediately. -Quasipalm 03:59, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed! Restore the article! Shane 04:07, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Ditto, restore the article. People need to stand up to Jack Thompson. Scott Ramsoomair, Tycho and Gabe have all stood up to him and he crawled away, nothing says the Wikipedia can't do the same either. SavannahLion 05:43, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Please read the above discussion to see why this is not feasible. If you would like to see the article restored, please help write the new version. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 05:46, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I have. Unless I missed something, what I see is Wikipedia backing down to threats from Jack. The issues of bias are extremely difficult to assess and control seeing as how Jack Thompson himself openly attacks a very large group of people. In order to vie for accuracy, all that dirt has to be laid out. Now if someone wants to actually write something not so dirty while remaining true, then so be it. Don't ask me to write something unbiased. Everything I know about that man goes against every grain of my being. Which is why I intentionally kept my hands off of this page (until now). I

have nothing good to say about this man and I have never seen this man say anything good about the gaming industry. SavannahLion 06:04, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

If you want Wikimedia to challenge JT, do you have the funds to pay for their legal costs? - Hbdragon88 07:46, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
People will donate for such cause. SYSS Mouse 19:03, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

For crying out loud, RESTORE the page. Has he threatened to sue? Is the letter going to be on GamePolitics?? This looks so bad for Wikipedia. Maluka 07:25, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

  • It looks bad to Internet kids who don't have a clue about real life, but it looks perfectly reasonable to me. Danny Lilithborne 08:01, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
    • Internet kids??? I'm probably old enough to be your mother. From your own page "Vital Statistics

Biological Age: 15". That makes you an expert on real life?? I'm chewing my cheeks. This is real bad and checking around the net, I've found more things critical of Wikipedia than Jack. I can't believe Wikipedia bent over and took it like they did. Cowards! Maluka 08:13, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

      • Danny Lilithborne is a character. If you want to take my age from that page, fine. There are plenty of bozos on the Internet complaining about Wikipedia being communist or whatever the dumb trend is now, but few of them have knowledge in law and even fewer have the impetus to do something about it. Thompson has both of those. So take this seriously. Danny Lilithborne 08:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Wait so your alter ego is a 15 year old boy? Jack Thompson threatens people with lawsuits almost every week, and he never follows through with these threats.Sonic Hog
    • Yeah, I'd rather not get into the details of that right now. I know it's most likely that he's full of hot air, but as said before, I'd rather not take the chance. Wikipedia, and its mission, is very important to me. Danny Lilithborne 09:07, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
I just wanted to add that I'm inclined to agree with the guy who pretends to be a 15-year-old boy on the Internet. - 211.28.80.58 12:08, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Let it be folks. Danny is right. No matter how unstable or insane he may be, there is no denying that jack is still a lawyer, and that means he must have some understanding of law, though admittedly, it's been shown in the past that it is sketcy and sometimes completely incorrect.

I say, let danny and the office look into this. The best thing we can do is offer support and catalog as much verifiable info about Thompson as we can for them. Then when he have enough of it, and if he ever does get the balls to take wiki to court, we will have him dead to rights and wiki can counter sue and put him away for good.

I"m not happy about this, but I'm gonna support wiki on this, they were a gold mine to me during school, and I'll stick by them. That being said, I'm upset that they even listened to the man, but there right, he's still a lawyer, and so we should at least take him a little serious. (YukimuraSanada 11:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC))

The original article isn't even gone, anyway. I wonder if Jack knows this. Crystallina 16:24, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Pardon my second intrusion, but it sould be noted that John Bruce Thompson has already gone to GP and posted under a new identity (and apparently a new IP address). Why is this significant? Because in one of his latest rantings, he, in a way, is bragging about a victory over Wikipedia's blanking of his article. At least that is the tone I am getting from his posts. But then, that's the usual tone from his posts, even when there is no clear victory. I'm new to adding my comments here, so I won't post the direct link. But he is using ID murdersims under the 10Mar2006 article Justice Files. In one of the articles, he lists what GP supposedly did not cover. Wikipedia is number 5 in the list. I don't know how Office feels regarding such acts, but thought they, and the rest, should know. I kept a copy of the post in case GP decides to delete it. Thank you for your attention. Andrew Rhodes 16:32, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

It's good to know that all it'll take is the threat of legal action to shut Wikipedia pages down. You may as well take the rest of the site down, as this will simply snowball on other controversial issues.

Even if it does snowball and we have to remove all controversial materials, we can still have things solidly based on facts, such as the origins of a Yorkshire Terrier or the history of George Washington. So closing down Wikipedia because the controversial articles have been removed is a dramatic overkill, considering many articles simply lack controversy.--Vercalos 22:34, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Not really true. As shown here, facts are debatable. This section is being shut down because very little positive information is available about a person (or is contested). There is no NPOH (Neutral Point of History), and to deny that things have happened is both an injustice to people affected by those events and the downfall of any encyclopedic work that has no dissenting account of history. To take down something so minor as this is merely the first step to dismantling the entire record; there are much much more devastatingly biased pieced and there simply is no better way to present them.

The reason very little posisitive is avalible about Jack is cause he's done nearly nothing posistive in years. He's a censor, a man who wants to take away rights from others. I hardly think thats a posistive stance to take in a country that prides itself on the ideals of freedom. Jack May not like what his article said, but only because it showed him to be the hatemongering, communist style lunatic he was. If he wasn't acting that way, then why were there over 140 cited sources showing those exact actions, showing rampant hypocracy, showing lies and deciet and a near endless cavalcade of Bullshit. Sorry, but the fact is, jack didn't like the article cause it showed him to be what he really is, a facist style self serving parastie. If he didn't behave like one, we wouldn't have all the evidance we do on him. (YukimuraSanada 00:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC))

Many things are controversial for many issues. Among the things you wouldn't expect, there is a constant debate on the Einstein page wether he invented relativity or not. By the very nature of wikipedia a lot of it's content will always be disputed. Are we removing all entries with a talk page that has a serious discussion on it? And a censored enclopedia is no encyclopedia at all. SanderJK 13:28, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

You know....

I was going to come and ask the current article maintainers what JT was up to since his banning at GamePolitics (which kind of killed the party over there), but it looks like you guys have got that covered - and then some. Jack Thompson x Wikidrama = comedy gold/worrying reminder that the internet is serious business.

PS for Maluka: A/S/L? 24.20.237.11 09:05, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


Hes back on GP, as "murdersims"

Anyone who thinks this article was biased against him go and look at what he posted here as murdersims IanC 17:39, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

That's ridiculous, he is a parody of himself. The article should be restored immediatelySonic Hog

Jack never mentions exactly what is unture about the article other then his birthday (which isn't that big of a deal unless the year is off by a lot) even though it was deleted. Jack Thompson doesn't want people to know about his actions. Well too bad for him, Jack dug his own grave and he still continues to dig it although not as much as before, it reminds me of a joke I heard, why are lawyers alway buried 6 feet deep? Because deep down lawyers are OK. Anyway sorry Jack but you got yourself into this, you shouldn't have made fun of the suicide of the metal gear gamer, you shouldn't have called the flowers harrasment, and you shouldn't have compared gamers to hitler's youth. I also hope you realise that this article blanking is by no means permanent. Father Time89


I need to add my 2 cents here. I am sick how this is turning out. If Jack Thompson can shut down a wiki article about him, what is next? We already know he gave a cryptic threat to GamePolitics saying he is next. Whats next? Bringing down a site because they have a forum? This guy thinks he can shut down sites which allow users unrestricted free speech. Now Wikipedia has a very big problem. It is like terrorism, if you give in once, they will know they can continue to get their way. Jack Thompson is proving himself to be a Litigation Terrorist: Threaten lawsuits to anyone he disagrees with, and hope he can scare them. It has been said before, and I'm sure it will be said again, but now, whenever someone wants to change their listing, all they have to do is threaten litigation, and they know Wikipedia will cave. I am willing to bet it is just a matter of time before you get your next letter. Add to that the loss of respect from the Internet community you have taken. One thing we hate: censorship.

I don't get it

Why does the article need to be blanked and protected because of a legal threat? Why not just identify what in the article is problematic and then we can concentrate our efforts on that? There may be a good reason for doing it this way, I just don't know what it is. Everyking 12:17, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Apparently its standard practice and has happened many times but I haven't tracked another instance. Yeago 15:29, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
A wide variety of cases where somebody has objected in some manner to content about them on Wikipedia can be found here. *Dan T.* 20:25, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
What a fucking disgrace. Coffee 19:48, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Jack Thompson (lawyer)

That's now a redirect to this article. Creating new articles with minor variants on the title of old ones just to get around protection, edit-warring, or other problems is not a move that gets much sympathy on Wikipedia, even from people who may agree with you on the undesirability of the situation in the main article. *Dan T.* 20:21, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

This Is Seriously Not As Bad As People Think It Is

Geez, I come back here after finally replacing a fried motherboard, and this is what I see... After taking a look at all the comments, I've concluded that this situation really isn't as bad as some people posting here seem to think it is. Wikipedia has not nuked the article, they've not banned anybody contributing to it, they're not horribly censoring *anything*. Regardless of the individual making the threats (and his obvious lack of sanity), legal threats were still made, and they have to be dealt with as such. Wikipedia, in what clearly appears to be a gesture of good faith, has removed the disputed content until they figure out how they wish to proceed in this matter. The data isn't gone forever (yet), and as far as I know, no names or IP addresses have been given up to JT. Wikipedia is simply exercising caution in dealing with a potential lawsuit, and I would be disappointed in them if they didn't do such things. I've not seen them capitulate in the face of legal threats [20] from other net-kooks, and I don't expect that they will do so in this situation. If JT actually does sue them in this case, I will definitely be chipping into a legal fund, and I hope to see the same from other GP readers.

However, I believe that like all of Thompson's other legal threats, this one will go nowhere, and I look forward to seeing the content restored; because while it may be in dire need of POV and bias adjustments, it's still the truth about his actions. In the meantime, hurling insults at Wikipedia and personal attacks at some of its members (no matter how creepy some might find their profiles) and trying to sneak around the lock on this page is NOT GOING TO HELP. If you really care about Wikipedia and its mission, you'll let them handle it according to their policies. But please, please stop trying to undermine what they're doing by creating pages like 'Jack Thompson (lawyer)' to get around the lock. Nortelrye 23:26, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


  • Amen, and thank you for that little bit of sensibility, Nortelrye. It's nice to see some pragmatic responses, and not just "LAWL JT ADN WIKIPEDIA SUX".

Wikipedia does not require users to input real names, phone numbers, addresses etc., and I doubt would give out such information without dire need to do so, which this case clearly lacks. Another short comment - most people with such radical ideas will be ignored by the majority of society, and in general needn't be defamed; they shall bring it upon themselves. brabblebrex 03:18, 14 March 2006 (UTC)


If they do get sued, I to will contribuate to the legal fund to help, and I'm sure I could get a number of GP readers to join in, but to be honest, last night an Idea came to me. Perhaps what the foundation needds isn't to fight this battle alone. IT needs to contact one of JT's biggest enemies, The Law firm blank rome. They are currently collecting as much evidance one JT as possible. Giving them this info would be alot of help in getting his ass disbarred. Just a thought. (YukimuraSanada 23:03, 12 March 2006 (UTC))

What Jack Thompson is saying about this

Apparantly Jack has returned to posting on Game Politics and this is what he has to say on what happened to his Wikipedia article: http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/227903.html?thread=16493631#t16493631

Specifically, this quote:

"Wikipedia's pulling of the entries pertaining to Jack Thompson by gamers, pending review of their falsity."

What? Is this for real? Jack Thompson is acting like this is a legal victory for him, and quite honestly, it's looking like it may truly be one for him unless the article is reinstated. What "falsity" was there ever? The only real disputed fact that ever occured was his birth date; something Jack himself wouldn't reveal or correct. By removing the article, Wikipedia is basically supporting Jack's claim that the article was pulled because it was false since it was Jack that made the original legal complaint over it.

I understand the moderators of Wikipedia are acting in good faith in light of Jack Thompson's request, but what I don't think they realize is that it is unlikely he will ever be satisfied with an article about him. As pointed out before, almost everything in the article was based entirely on fact. These were his actions and his words. The most anybody could really complain about was some (I stress some) lack of citation and a few somewhat POV-ish statements here and there. However, it's ridiculously absurd to think that the article was entirely false or libelous in any way that would constitute an entire removal.

I agree that this situation is somewhat overblown, but now we have Jack Thompson absolutely gloating his supposed victory over gamers and Wikipedia. This is not the kind of person whose wishes should be respected since he clearly only wanted the article removed with the intent of being able to mock his detractors over it. He doesn't care one bit about validity or a neutral point of view or necessary citations. He's just a guy acting with malicious intent. - MarphyBlack 01:39, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree. I understand why Wiki did what they did... they don't want to get sued. It makes sense. But I don't see the point of even restoring the article. Wiki backed down when Jack threatened a lawsuit (sorry, I can't find a better way to say that right now. I don't blame wiki for their actions, though). When the article is back up, even if every other word is cited (and I'm sure it could be, he's everywhere now), he's going to complain. Why? He can't edit his own article, that's not encyclopedic. The stuff that goes on the wiki is the stuff that he does... which shows him negatively. If we put what he does on his wiki, it's going to reflect negatively on him. He'll try to edit it, get stopped again, and threaten to sue all over again, because it worked this time. IANAL (nor would I profess to know more than .5% of anything legal), but I wouldn't waste the time putting up the wiki again unless you get it in writing that he's not going to threaten to sue every 30 days. It could be my pessimism talking, but why even bother? 24.176.26.37 02:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)psyco_chick32

I don't understand exactly why Wiki would pull it. On the bottom of every page there is link disclaimers and when you click it, in bold and large font, is WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY. If Mr. Thompson found so many glaring errors in his article, he could've discussed each one, or fixed it himself. Instead he chose to ignore all of them except his birthdate (and what libel that is!), and add a media blurp about how great he is, citing only his victories and non of his losses, several religious references etcet. He violated several rules by doing so and it got removed. Now i understand that noone likes to get sued, but if you pull articles based on threats alone, you are boldening censors and weakening yourself. I'm sad that the article got pulled, and Jack Thompson is going around the web screaming this as a victory, and that alone makes it clear to me that this was not the smart move. SanderJK 12:52, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget about his edit to the Jack_Thompson article. The only way he would accept it is to allow him to edit it and have WikiAdmins perma-lock it. --Xabora 21:12, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Wiki won't be bullyied by everyone who files suit

Can someone clarify me on this, from my understanding if Wiki got an e-mail from some guy saying he's going to sue if they don't take down the article on evolution would they do it. I highly doubt it because said guy would have no legal backing whatsoever Jack Thompson MIGHT have some kind of legal backing and until the might becomes a definite "doesn't" the article will remain locked, however the good news is that Jack put on a 30 day timer so if Jack doesn't try to cooperate with wiki within 30 days they can probably return the article in it's glouroius original form (and of course add another new section on this fiasco). So be patient I am confident wiki knows what it's doing.Father Time89

Wikipedia:Assume good faith. Remember, unless you can prove the Wikimedia Foundation is attempting to harm the stability of Wikiedia, please assume they are working in what they believe to be its best interest. Even though we have witnessed empty threats from JT in the past, we can't assume they all are (he has to follow through sometime). We can also assume that the Foundation saw enough reasonable evidence that JT could have pursued legal action (and with recent events, that's the last thing the Foundation needs). Give them some time, please. --Bakkster Man 16:17, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
This man is a piece of shit. If Wikipedia bows down to his stupidity we all lose. Klosterdev 07:29, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Category

Would anyone object to Category:Lawyers? Luigi30 (Ταλκ) 14:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Don't see why not. He *is* a licensed lawyer in Florida. Jabrwock 16:51, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
For now. There have been an almost unheard of number of complaints about him to the Florida Bar Association. KiTA 17:20, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Most of them from angry gamers, not legal professionals. Rhobite 17:40, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
And a rather important Judge, who also revoked his status to be try law in another state, Please don't try revoke people smartly Rhobite unless you have done super investigate work first. 203.112.2.212 18:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, indeed. However, they are just as valid as any other complaint. As a lawyer practicing in Florida State, Jack is held to a standard of professionalism, and if he is failing to reach that, and the FBA is informed of such, it is up to them to decide what to do with him. The persons bringing the complaint forward are ultimately illrelivant -- it's his actions, not the accusors identities, that are important here. KiTA 17:57, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I think it's a good category, and certainly relevent. Once User:Danny or another WP Office member gives the O.K. we should add it. --Bakkster Man 19:47, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Prior to the lockdown he was listed in Category:American lawyers, Category:Living people and Category:People from Ohio all being verified true. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 04:05, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Propose: External linking

I propose we add a see also: to the temporary page. Since the other articles related to Jack's actions are not under scrutiny, they can most likely be linked to. James v. Meow Media, Strickland v. Sony, Jack Thompson and video game players, A Modest Video Game Proposal, Jack Thompson and the Jacob Robida murders, Flowers for Jack. I wouldn't reccomend adding the JT and gamers until this blows over, but what does everyone think? Danny, can we get authorization for this? --Bakkster Man 16:04, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

    • Just where is this temporary page? I can't find it anywhere. While I'm at it, why are some people deleting comments on this page? Maluka 16:56, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I mean the current version of the page, since it's just a temporary version until the WP:Office is removed. --Bakkster Man 19:48, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

New article from MiamiHerald

Jacky is quoted in it.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14084718.htm

Calm, please... and Sources

Ladies and Gents, please, be calm. Mr. Thompson's standard Modus Operandi is to use his standing as a lawyer to threaten legal action against, well, everyone. While most people who have followed Mr. Thompson's career are well aware that these are the threats of a paper tiger, Wikipedia has to take every such legal threat seriously.

What is going to happen right now is that the fact checkers at Wikipedia are going to go through the Jack Thompson article, verify some of the more outrageous claims (which, dispite Jack's desperate lies to the contrary, are easily verifyable), and restore the article after fixing some of the wording to make it more NPOV. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the article came back bigger and more detailed than before.

If you wish to help, please bring forth any verifyable sources about some of the more "interesting" anticdotes that follow Jack Thompson's interesting history. For example: Citing his much publisized episode with the VGCats.com artist (wherein he sent a random email to Scott, then, when Scott replied, Jack called him repeated names, slandered him, and then threatened to sue him for harrassment when he replied) [21], or citing a verifyable reference for his infamous "Janet Reno Lesbian Note" debacle during the legendary debate. [22]

Dispite what people like Mr. Thompson would like you to believe, he is a public figure, and subject to public scrutiny. And, in addition, he can claim that Wikipedia contains falsehoods, but if they come from verifyable sources, and indeed, given his extensive history of online communications, I do believe most of the outlandish claims are actually true and verifyable, I fear Mr. Thompson will be woefully dissapointed when the new, NPOV Jack Thompson article is unveiled.

Sources Cited:

  1. Jacko
  2. BEHIND THE 2 LIVE CREW BUST: WHAT JERKS JACK OFF?

KiTA 17:17, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I support your side, certainly, but are there more reliable and unbiased sources that could be cited other than gamers' sites (which seem to make up most of the references)? *Dan T.* 18:03, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
True enough. Although is it somewhat difficult to find external sources, as most of Jack's antics take place over private email or semi-annonymous web forums (see his antics on the Gamepolitics news blog for a good example of this. Jack is on his 10th banned account for his harrassment). The mainstream media has seemed quite content to ignore his personality quirks for the time being -- although they have taken to clipping him down to 1 or 2 sentences in print, and 30 seconds or less in television in order in order to keep his "enthusiasm" in check. KiTA 19:49, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I would also point out that he tends to treat video game websites (and "gamers") differently than other people -- for example, he commonly calls Gamers who converse with him insulting names (calling them pedophiles, drug addicts, satan worshippers, mass murderers, idiots, etc), then threatens legal harrassment if they reply (an abuse of the Florida Cyberstalker law), complete with his other random threats of lawsuits. Outside of some recent events (he threatened several newspapers for not calling the attack at a gay bar by a neo-nazi [23] a game related crime since a few interviews revealed the individual who made the attacks played video games with the people being interviewed), he has shown quite a bit more restraint when dealing with "non-gamer" sources. One important exception of this is his ranting, nearly incoherent TheFlaBar.org website, wherein he threatens the Florida Bar Association with legal action if they do not stop investigating his using legal action as a threat and gross unprofessionallism. KiTA 19:49, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Heads up, watch out for vandals...Although you all cannot get to http://luelinks.net/linkme.php?l=96454 [24], I can guarantee you that it is a link from LUELinks, a high-traffic site. Most of them are gamers and hostile to Jack Thompson, and a good number of them would not be above attempting to libel the new version of this article. - CorbinSimpson 07:02, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
What you just said could be considered libel against the whole site. I know some of them might not be the brightest stars and they don't think things through, but a most them aren't going to do anything that stupid. Besides, I'm willing to bet a few them actually contribute to Wikipedia and have probably helped supply the site with sources for JT's shenanigans.
They can be as hostile as they want -- As long as they remain neutral in their postings and cite verifyable sources. Watchdogs do not have to be unbiased in that reguard. Why bother making stuff up about Mr. Thompson when the simple truth -- that is, uncovering and recording his "creative" accusations and "spirited" debate style for others to objectively view -- works just as well? Soon enough the Wikipedia Foundation will finish their review of this article, and I have no doubt at all they will politely tell Mr. Thompson what he can do with his lawsuit. KiTA 11:45, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Mr. Thompson's antics with Ms. Reno are recorded, and verifyable. His repeated, baseless legal threats are also part of the public record. And his "creative" views on Atheists, Muslims, Homosexuals, Teenagers and Video Game Entusiasts are also of public record. And his almost incoherent, Ad hominem attacks against anyone who foolishly attempts to engage him in discussion are also well recorded from a variety of sources. I almost welcome his latest attempt at a SLAPP Suit -- the sheer outpouring of support for Wikipedia would drown any attempt at a lawsuit Mr. Thompson might attempt, and by the very nature it will bring his barely hidden nature as a profiteering fearmonger to light. KiTA 11:45, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

What is being done?

What is actually being done here? What is the next stage in the process of getting this back to normal, or an editable state? Is there a next stage? If so, is anyone working on it? Everyking 08:30, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

From what I've seen before, the usual thing that happens is that the WP:OFFICE state simply goes away quietly, with as much explanation as when it was applied. If I understood WP:OFFICE and the IRC discussions correctly, it's just a way of avoiding friction with the Subject while the matter (whatever it is) is discussed with said Subject, and thus not entirely unlike the temporary protections we often use when dealing with some kinds of vandalism. --cesarb 11:54, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
As far as we know, the Wikipedia Foundation's fact checkers are looking through the Jack Thompson article's claims, and verifying the sources as best as they can. If I can snark a bit, it may be a few days before they stop laughing in order to finish restoring the article.  ;) I believe we can help out the process by going to the article's last unlocked page, here [25], and helping bring forth any citations that you can find. Any verifyable evidence of Mr. Thompson's antics would help -- including his previous uses of threats of lawsuits (akin to a SLAPP Suit), his obvious falsehoods and use of ad hominem attacks (including claiming the Sims 2 is a pedophile game with realistic naked children models, claiming that studies show that Gamers are violent by nature, calling gamers names when they converse with him over email, etc), and other such information. I would also point out that the only falsehood Mr. Thompson could actually claim is that his date of birth was incorrect, and then a vauge "and it gets worse from there," which is typical of Mr. Thompson's discourse. He has not actually refuted any of the claims of the article on him. If Mr. Thompson has issues with a fact brought up in that article, he's more than welcome to discuss it in this talk page -- He has a Wikipedia account now, after all -- and we will show him the verifyable sources that we are using. I welcome the chance to hear his side of the story. KiTA 11:59, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

My friends, you worry too much

I believe this article will be back up soon, and it was just brought down temporarily while Wikipedia consults the legal matters of this issue and possibly do a verification/clean up of this article. Remember that encyclopedias are about facts, and most if not all that is mentioned here about this man is fact and is backed-up by proof. Should it be deleted just because now, when he looks at them put together, he finds them embarrasing and inconvenient? I don't think so, and I'm betting The Wikipedia Foundation feels the same. As for the threats agains the Wikipedia contributors, if Mr. Thompson hadn't been absent the day they taught law at law school, he would know that for a site/corporation or entity to release private information of it's users/contributors, etc... He needs a subpeona. Anyone remember the RIAA and their subpoenas to people using file sharing services? Same applies. I'm certain Wikipedia knows about this and would not let itself be bullied by a lawyer making an empty threat with blanket accusations and no proof or following due process, so the locking of this article must be just a precautionary meassure.

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