Talk:Kristofer Straub

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Contents

[edit] POV concerns regarding sockpuppetry

Discussion follows examples.

[edit] Wikipedia experiment and controversy (version 1)

On Thursday, February 15, 2007, Straub nominated his own webcomic "Starslip Crisis" for deletion on Wikipedia[1], "using faulty logic to initiate the discussion," according to his website[2]- and created ten fake Wikipedia accounts, all of which voted to delete. While editors of Wikipedia did not discover that all the "delete" votes were coming from a single IP address, they were able to find one "Keep" vote which was, in Wikipedia terminology, a "sock-puppet." In spite of deceptive practices, the discussion resulted in the deletion of the article. Straub reported this on Halfpixel after the Starslip Crisis article had been deleted, sparking furious discussion on Halfpixel[3] and across the internet[4][5][6][7], as well as a review of the deletion[8] by the Wikipedia community, resulting in the restoration of the article, which was then nominated properly, per the author’s request on Halfpixel.

[edit] Wikipedia sockpuppets (version 2)

Sock puppet
Sock puppet

On Thursday, February 15, 2007, Straub embarked on the most notable achievement of his cartooning career. He created a sockpuppet he lovingly named "Salby" on Wikipedia and nominated his own webcomic "Starslip Crisis" for deletion [9], using what Straub lter described as "faulty logic to initiate the discussion," according to his website[10]. This "faulty logic" included "Alexa ranking search for "www.starslip.com" yields no traffic data whatsoever even though the site has been up for two years." This was quickly discounted by non-puppeteering editors pointing out that "Salby has not even searched for the correct url. www.starslipcrisis.com has an Alexa rank of 88,460 if you care about Alexa ranks." Many Wikipedia editors, in general, do not care about Alexa ranks.

Straub also created an additional ten Wikipedia sockpuppet accounts, all of which voted to delete.

  • As his second imaginary friend, "Incredulous," Straub wrote that the comic was "Non-notable, has not been covered in any news media or other non-article sources. I say this with some experience in web comics as a fan of Player Arcade." Non-puppet Wikipedia editors quickly "question[ed] Incredulous' experience in webcomics, as it's Penny Arcade. If you can't even recall the correct name of the most popular webcomic on the Internet ..." Another editor from outside the foot-wear community called "Incedulous"'s comment "hilarious ... the above poster is under the illusion that reading PA, the only webcomic linked to by Slashdot, (indeed, the only webcomic that has its own charity organisation) denotes any degree of webcomic expertise."
  • Much as Neil Young joined Crosby, Stills & Nash in the late sixties, soon the sock puppeteer attempted to create what some termed a folk rock hip hop sock-puppet super group by adding "Hammurabbi" on harmonica, acoustic guitar and beatboxing. As "Hammurabbi," Straub released one single titled "Weak delete, notability is questionable but it's a poor article. Probably could be Merged under Blank Label Comics or Kristofer Straub." Straub, as both "Hammurabbi" and "Banalzebub" released a brief series of one-man freestyle rap battle albums with himself where he agreed with himself that the article nominated by himself about himself ought to be deleted possibly by himself. These albums failed to chart outside of Straub's mind.
  • For his fifth puppet show, Straub wrote as "LKeith30," "Delete ... Straub hasn't even been invited as a guest to conventions." Outside of fantasy land, non-puppeteering editors pointed out that "convention appearances, etc. aren't particularly useful for writing encyclopedia articles." On another trip inside fantasy land or possibly a secret mission to the Forest moon of Endor, Straub, again as "LKeith30," wrote that the article should be deleted because "a webcomic wiki exists for webcomics." Back on Earth Prime, Wikipedia editors who reserve their socks for preventing chafing between the foot and shoes, responded "Riite... so because there also exists many math wiki we must start a campagain to delete all math articles."
  • Straub named his sixth sock puppet "StarHarbor" and wrote "Delete Secondary sources, notability in doubt, article NPOV wrt unnecessary details, high Alexa rank." This Alexa rank thing fooled everybody about as well as it did the first time.
  • As his seventh puppet, "Repromancer," Straub wrote simply "Delete per nom." This was a possible attempt by Straub to avoid being typecast as the sentimental cinderella and try to get another chance to play the strong, silent type who makes easily discounted arguments to avoid in deletion discussions.
  • Soon, Straub created his eighth tribute to Emmy Award winning PBS children's show, Lamb Chop's Play-Along. As "Expewikist," Straub remarked "no secondary sources, no Alexa rank for www.starslip.com ..." This Alexa rank thing fooled everybody about as well as it did the second time.
  • After watching his first nine sock puppets get the brush-off, Straub created his dream date sock-puppet bachelor number ten. As "TerryNova," Straub decided that Wikipedia editors should "Delete [because the] article has too many outstanding npov and nor problems in addition to orig nom. delete." TerryClothSuperNova has a point there.
  • The live action role playing continued, as Straub dressed up as "YothSog" and wrote "Strong delete. ... Google search for "starslip crisis" yields 99,000 hits ... Alexa ranking is far below that of [other webcomics]." That went over about as well as it did the first three times.
  • Do these sockpuppets go up to eleven? Yes, sadly, they do. Finally as "867.5309" "66.27.212.63", Straub wrote, "Delete per nomination." One million Wikipedians snored.

The cabal of Wikipedia editors seemed to assume good faith toward the possible clueless new users and did not mark Straub's edits as coming from sock puppets They did, however, conspire among themselves to mark one "Keep" voter who was found puppeteering during teh discussion which is not a vote. The discussion ultimately resulted in the deletion of the article based on Wikipedia content policies rather than Straub's clumsy puppet show. As one editor later put it, "I think the idea was that the puppeteer was going to nominate the article based on a bad Alexa search and back it up with things like 'hasn't even been invited as a guest to conventions."' Then when it would get deleted for those reasons, the puppeteer would say it was all a joke and that the Alexa search was bad and he really was a convention guest and we would all be really embarrassed and keep his article. Instead, we ruined the joke and said 'Alexa rankings, convention appearances, etc. aren't particularly useful for writing encyclopedia articles,' and deleted it based on our actual policies rather than somebody goofing around with puppets."[11]

Straub reported this on his Halfpixel blog after the Starslip Crisis article had been deleted, resulting in over 100 blog comments on [12], several of which may not have involved Straub goofing around on the internet talking to themself. This gigantic controversy raged across the entire internets as represented by about half a dozen blogs[13][14][15][16]. There was also a review of the deletion[17] by Wikipedia editors. Some editors believed the deletion should be "Overturn[ed] and relist[ed], due to abuse of process" and that the "sockpuppets [were] the worst abuse of a Wikipedia process that I have ever seen." Others endorsed the deletion, writing that "AfD is not a vote, and there is no sign that the closing admin was sock-puppet vote-counting rather than closing based on valid discussion of policy.There is also no sign that the sock puppets unduly influenced the discission, since the silliest of the sock ideas (such as 'Delete ... Straub hasn't even been invited as a guest to conventions') were rejected" and "Definitely an attempt at disruption to try to prove some kind of point, but not done very well. No point in rerunning the process for the same result." The article was ultimately restored and relisted for deletion.

Straub's career high-point served to prove that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia where any minor cartoonist can help out by nominating articles on their comics for deletion.

[edit] Discussion

There is an apparent conflict over whether goofing around on the internet with sock puppets is a notable achievement that belongs in an encyclopedia and whether we have enough verifiable, third-party published sources on all sides of this topic to cover it from a NPOV. Above I have posted two possible alternatives for covering this. Neither seem to meet our content policies, but let's discuss so we can try to reach some consensus on whether this belongs in the article, and if so, how. -- Dragonfiend 19:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I contend that the incident is notable in relation to the subject, as it has a measurable web impact, and the subject is primarily notable for his achievements and activity on the internet. It also resulted in more comments than any other entry on Halfpixel, as far as I can discern, and over a quarter as many already on the follow-up entry. Obviously, as the person who fixed up version one from its original state, I have a bias. But I feel that what I wrote improves on the original version( which I have included here, but commented out) by removing POV and nonsense statements, and by supplying links to the various occurrences mentioned.( Yeah, I guess I should convert the links into proper citations. Maybe later... unless someone else wants to?) Perhaps it could use a little further clean up, but I think it is fairly solid as a report. The second version, on the other hand... well, first of all, where the heck does it come from? It was certainly never used in this article. It contains blatant POV in words, phrasing, and overall tone, and seems to be mainly an attempt at sattire( not a bad attempt, but such things do not belong on the Wikipedia). Examples include Straub “lovingly” nicknaming his sockpuppet and the concluding assertion that “Straub's career high-point served to prove that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia where any minor cartoonist can help out by nominating articles on their comics for deletion.”. The level of detail is nice, but generally unnecessary, merely repeating what can be observed by following the links. --WikidSmaht (talk) 20:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, version 2 is all over the place. Is it supposed to be pro- or anti-Straub? Most of it sounds pro, but not all -- for instance, only a diehard Wikipedian could call this Straub's "career high point." ~ CZeke 23:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The proper way to do this

I don't think it should be noted in the article at all - but if we want to say something about it, how about this?

An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
Salby (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
Incredulous (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
Banalzebub (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
Hammerabbi (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
LKeith30 (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
Repromancer (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
Expiwikist (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
Floxman (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
YothSog (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
66.27.212.63 (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
TerryNova (talk • contribs).
An individual covered in this article, Kristofer Straub, has edited Wikipedia as
StarHarbor (talk • contribs).

(maybe we need a version of the template that says "has vandalized wikipedia" and has links to block log etc.) --Random832(tc) 21:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Vandalized? This is criticism writ nearly as large as Stephen Colbert's Wikiality. There are serious and emerging problems with the methodology used on this site, and, as such, it severely limits the effectiveness and relevance of Wikipedia itself. Shall we begin deleting former British MP's based on their 'relevance?' to British economic and political life? Since when is the popularity of, well, anything, tied to it's relevance and notability? Perhaps we should begin a great purge of other subject matter on this basis. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.149.171.39 (talk)

I barely care about this, but since I'm here for other reasons... I suggest that the most relevant guidance is Wikipedia:Avoid self-references#Articles are about their subjects and Wikipedia:Avoid self-references#Writing about Wikipedia itself. If this incident is a major portion of Straub's importance, then it would merit a major part of the article. On the other hand, if he was really important enough to merit an article before this incident, this incident is probably not all that significant overall, so only should get a few lines of article text. Possibly even none if this was just a tempest in a teacup when looked back on from a few months perspective. GRBerry 21:07, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. Wikipedia articles about the subject's interaction with Wikipedia should be avoided. If something were to be included, however, that second entry is an abyssmal violation of NPOV. Neil Hunt 20:39, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I was the administrator who declared the first AFD completely void and reinstated Starslip Crisis after Straub revealed what he had done on his blog. Obviously, I was unimpressed by his tactics and the WP:POINT violation involved ... but I do have concerns about how our notability criteria are being applied to webcomics, which is an area in which Wikipedia could provide coverage not available in other encyclopedias or resources. The entire topic may need to be revisited, but the webcomics community needs to work with us by suggesting mechanisms for evaluating notability of, and the reliability of information concerning, these works: obviously a line as to what to include must be drawn somewhere, though I happen to agree that in many cases it's been drawn too high, and I would have kept Starslip Crisis. As for discussion of Straub's AfD behavior, I agree that self-reference should be kept to a minimum in the actual encyclopedia articles. If he remains concerned that we are excluding coverage of important strips or other matters, then he is welcome to contribute, without further masquerade, to our notability discussions or to anything else. Newyorkbrad 21:19, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleaning up after the storm of an AfD...

Given that this page still exists, and is much closer to Starslip Crisis than Blank Label Comics is, I've chosen to boldly merge the content of that article here and change the redirect. Keep in mind that the history of the article still exists, and the redirect is unprotected, so it's effectively the same effect as if a saner editor had said, "y'know what, there aren't enough sources to make a proper full article, so let's put a summary of it elsewhere and redirect."

And lo, here we are. Or maybe there. Nifboy 20:48, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

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