Talk:Justin Berry/Archive 1

Total rewrite?

I'd like to see this article totally rewritten by uninvolved wikipedians. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimbo Wales (talk • contribs) 04:09, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry...is this part of some project? JHMM13 (T | C) 04:12, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Even if the article needs a total rewrite, all the prior versions should still be preserved in the history. My understanding of the Wikipedia biography policy is that people should not be influencing their own bios. This probably goes double for reformed camwhores doing the talk show circuit flogging the right wing child sex and porn agenda. Hermitian 22:21, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Redirect instead?

I think that this article should possibly be a redirect to Kurt Eichenwald. Academic Challenger 04:15, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

The subject of the article called Jimbo personally and was very upset about something in the article. So we're going to go through and rewrite being very careful about sourcing. JesseW, the juggling janitor 04:17, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Possible references

• "Through His Webcam, A Boy Joins A Sordid Online World" - The New York Times (December 19, 2005)
• "NY Times Internet Documentary" - The New York Times (December 19, 2005)
• "The New York Times Legal Aid Society" - Slate Magazine
• "KurtEichenwald.com: The Back Story" - Slate Magazine
• "A Heartbreaker From Eichenwald And The Times" - CBS News
• Justin's Amazon.com Wishlist.

These are the sources used in the old version of the article; they are a good place to start, I suppose. JesseW, the juggling janitor 04:17, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I added them in as external links (except the last one, that's rather creepy) and rewrote this to have some semblance of relevance. It's bare bones, and I doubt (hope!) that those changes won't be disputed.--Sean Black ^(talk) 04:27, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

The amazon wishlist is a big part of the story. You should read the times article. I also don't see why the previous article was completely trashed. From what I recall it was fairly well done. -JJay 09:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Just standard operating procedure in a case like this.--Jimbo Wales 14:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Jimbo, why don't you write the new article, since you are apparently the only person who knows what was wrong with the prior one, and you don't seem to be forthcoming with any details. Hermitian 22:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean because I'm not really privy to the details. I will say that I had previously read the article and didn't see anything outlandish. I'm also somewhat surprised that Mr. Berry would complain. Given how he achieved his fame (webcam, Times expose with which he fully cooperated, Oprah, etc), I wouldn't have thought he was opposed to exposure. -- JJay 18:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Photo

Is there any reason why we can't have the photo Image:JustinAt15.jpg in the article? Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 18:28, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Hypocrisy?!

I'm dissapointed that the majority of this page was deleted, most likely because one of the editors is a self-admitted pedophile. Is it fair to declare that a pedophile can't be neutral on a page that involves pedophilia?. I guarantee that wikipedia wouldn't ban a Jew from editing a page on the holocaust, or ban a black person from editing a page on affirmative action. A pedophile is just as capable of editing with a neutral POV on a subject matter dealing with pedophilia, as a Jew or a black would be on an issue that involves Jews or blacks. Wikipedia claims to be a online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. If that doesn't include pedophiles, than how is that fair?. If we allow certain sexual minorities to be silenced, what's next?, allowing certain racial minorities to be silenced as well. As a frequent reader and occasional editor of wikipedia, I only want to read factual, neutral POV articles, and I don't care about the race, nationality, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation of the editor. Even if most people have moral objections to pedophilia, surely we can agree that we all have a right to post on wikipedia as long as we abide by the rules.

Bone to Pick...

Alright, now that I have my VOICE back, having been blocked... let me start out by asking a few simple questions. I will try the best I can to stay to the point and stay rational.

• Why was I blocked? I did nothing to deserve a blocking. I broke no rules. I made an article; a controversial one, yes, but as far as I know, that does NOT constitute blocking someone from responding to an issue, and you did just that, Jimbo.
• Why was my article removed? I posted NOTHING infamatory, NOTHING that was "personal research", and I stayed as best I could to the facts presented by credible sources including but not limited to:
  • The New York Times article
  • Archive.org's unrefutable content
  • Oprah.com
  • Justin Berry's own words
  • Google Groups
  • Slate.com articles
• Why were all previous histories of the page completely wiped from the database? What is this, the third reich??
• Did Justin Berry complain about my article, and if so, what was his grounds for the article's complete removal? As I said before, I made SURE that all facts had supporting sources. Did you check my sources before removing it? I've said nothing that he either did not present himself or that other noted sources did not present.
• If there were any disputes about this article, why did the usual due-process of disputation not take place rather than this full-on, blatent cover-up of the entire article?
• Jim, with all due respect, who placed you as the almighty voice of the truth? I thought this was a democracy. I might have a controversial POV, but I am definately capable of restraining myself, and in my opinion, I had done so in the writing of this article.

I want a full copy of the previous, unmolested article for my own records. (Pun intended.) I would like it sent to my email address listed under my personal preferences, and I would like a sincere apology from the Wikimedia Foundation for this blatent act of discrimination and prejudice. I can understand knee-jerk reactions, but nothing excuses what happened today.

As stated by Jimbo himself on his User page: "Freedom of speech is critical for all cultures." All except the childlove community, apparently.

"Be bold", my ass.

--Rookiee Revolyob 05:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm willing to answer you here. So here goes.

You were blocked because jimbo decided to block you while he sorted out the complaint made about the article. It's only a short block, I realise you feel hard done by but Jimbo has to look at the whole picture.

The histories were wiped from the database because there was a complaint made about the article. Jimbo has stated that he wants the article written by neutral editors.

Yes he did complain. The grounds for removal was because that's what Jimbo thought was the best course of action.

You thought wrong when you thought this was a democracy. It is not. Jimbo can do whatever he thinks is best.

Your pun was not in the least bit funny.

In short we dont want self identified paedophilles editing articles about people who claim to have been molested and abused as children. We will write the article ourselves thank you. Personally i don't object to paedophilles editing pages about peadophillia but writing articles about abuse victims is simply not on.Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 16:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the key words here are "claim to have been molested." Justin was an Internet sex entrepreneur and a high paid male prostitute, who had numerous opportunities to get out of the business had he wanted to do so. It is only society's blind and blanket characterization of everyone under the age of 18 as having been "molested" when they engage in problematical sexual activity, which permits Justin to make a quick transition from selling his body to selling his victimhood. Rookiee's article was fact-based and properly sourced. That Justin didn't like it when the facts weren't spun from a victimologist perspective is immaterial.

Wikipedia pretends that it's run by consensus as long as volunteers are happily creating multiple millions of dollars in free intellectual property for Jimbo. Once that task is largely complete, the truth is revealed, which is that this is basically Jimbo's private BBS where he can do anything he feels like, and the contributions he paid nothing for are his to exploit any way he wishes.

Good luck with your Oprah-esque fluff piece on the attention-seeking camwhore. Hermitian 17:43, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

No they aren't his to do whatever he wants with. He is bound by the terms of the GFDL. But he is certainly free to delete contributions if he sees fit. Of course everyone has the right to fork - that's what's so good about the GFDL. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 20:38, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

NPOV is a good measurement for the quality of an article. The sexual orientation of one or some of the editors is not. You can check each of my contributions to this wiki, and you will find that every single one is constructive, neutral, ice-coldly fact-based. From what you are saying, it seems Jimbo has decided that for this article, you are not allowed to edit it if you are of pedophile or ephebophile orientation, regardless of your attitudes or moral values. So, a class of Wikipedians are prohibited from contributing, under the threat of blocking. I believe that Rookiee's original article was pretty badly POV, but I wish we could have fixed that by applying NPOV and fact-checking, instead of defining a lower class designated for "the back of the bus". But these are just the times we live in, I suppose. Clayboy 19:20, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

As I see it this "high paid male prostitute" was in fact a child. Anyone paying for sexual services from these prostitutes is abusing a child. Anyone writing about this child (even though he is an adult now) who self identifies as a paedeophille is perpetuating the abuse. Pedeophiles should not write about child protestutes. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 19:46, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

What a complete crock. By calling everyone under the age of 18 a "child", which the dictionary correctly defines as a human between the ages of infancy and puberty, you can make everything even remotely sexual sound salacious and evil. Teenagers are insulted to be called "children," and if you start using terms like "teenage sex" and "teenage sex with adults" to describe problematical behavior by kids old enough to know better, the "poor little abused children" angle is more difficult to sell. Maybe we should just go to the ultimate extreme, and legally define everyone under 18 as a "baby." Then all sex with minors could be "poor little babies being abused and raped," which would no doubt please the Judith Reisman's, John Ashcroft's, and David Finkelhor's of the world. When such semantic games have to be employed to sell an agenda, with disqualification of everyone holding a different perspective as "perpetuating the abuse", what you have is pseudo-science and flim-flam, and not unbiased reporting.Hermitian 20:10, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

What do you want me to say? First you put words into my mouth and then go off on a rant. I'm English BTW. Our age of consent is lower than yours, I know who Operah is but I never watch her show, I have no idea who Judith Reisman, John Ashcroft or David Finkelhor are I'm afraid.

How would I be "perpetuating the abuse" by participating in the writing about the subject in an encyclopedic, neutral, cited, verifiable style? Some obscure form of voodoo? If I really would have abused him by writing things that someone else would have written anyway, just because my sexual orientation is called something particular, if that really, really is true, I will certainly abstain from writing, because I would sooner die than abuse a child. But so far I think you are pretty far fetched. The five pillars by which we judge the quality of an article remains; the sexual orientations of the writers is not amongst them. Clayboy 20:18, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

It's true that someone else will write them anyway. It's much better all round if the person who writes them is not someone who self identifies as a Pedeophile. Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 20:45, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Should we make the same argument for those who self-identify as Jews writing Holocaust articles? The only possible rationale I could see for prohibiting self-identified pedophiles from writing articles on people claiming child abuse is that it provides right wing cranks with an opportunity to publicly attack Wikipedia. Given the collaborative process, it certainly isn't going to make any difference in the quality of the resulting article, and most minor attracted adults editing Wikipedia aren't going to publicly announce their orientation anyway.Hermitian 21:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

And why would we want to give anyone (right or left, crank or sane) ammunition to publically attack us? Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 21:21, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

You People are A Joke

Wikipedia has come a long way baby! Wasn't the idea to promote informative articles? Isn't Justin Berry a public personality, and isn't his story worth telling? No sex please, we're Wikipedia! Nothing controversial please, we're Wikipedia! When the NEUTRAL POINT OF VIEW (God bless the view from nowhere) gives Wiki-pedestrians the license to delete entire articles, full of facts, then Wikipedia has lost it's reason for being. But I figured that out 4 years ago! Pity on fools who continue to believe in the Wiki-fantasy. Anon-o-Christ 01:34, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Eichenwald

One thing that caught my attention when I read the NYT article was the claim that Justin gave his "customer records" to the Times, and they checked the 1500 "pedophiles" and found they were from all walks of life. Now, at the time Justin shut down his porn operation, he was a legal adult, and was running a web site indistinguishable from any other pay adult site, replete with the required notice that "All Models are over 18 years of age, records on file." Does that mean that anyone who paid for access to that Web site with a credit card got lumped in with the people who paid Justin for webcam performances when he was 14? This is the kind of shoddy agenda-laden reporting typical in these cases. Does anyone remember when the US government busted an age verification service because two web sites that used their codes, located in foreign countries, had underage material on them? They then characterized everyone who'd bought an age verification code as "people who had paid for access to child porn," and shopped the customer list around to a bunch of other countries for sting operations.

Any reporting on alleged child porn in the US suffers from a number of problems, most notable of which is the fact that even journalists are legally prohibited from looking at the material in question to report to readers whether its content is being lied about. It's basically a situation in which you can write anything, no matter how outrageous, about "international pedophile rings" and "luring" and "poor little abused children" and it will get published with no fact-checking, and in an environment in which no one can be publicly suspicious about its claims, for fear of attracting negative attention to themselves.

I haven't seen a single article in the mainstream press in the last ten years on the subject of child porn that wasn't deliberately inflammatory, dripping with value-laden terminology, and full of deliberate lying by omission, juxtiposition, and innuendo. Mr. Eichenwald's relationship with Justin Berry clearly violated almost every rule of objective journalism. Given that the NY Times article is a single source for the entire Justin Berry story, basing an encyclopedia article solely on that article, and on derivative journalism generated by it, is an example of "truthiness," not "factiness."Hermitian 20:38, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Are you arguing for deletion of this article as inherently unverifyable? Theresa Knott | Taste the Korn 20:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Well some facts about it can be verified. Justin is an Internet celebrity. Justin performed sex acts on his webcam for attention, money, and gifts. Justin later became a successful adult webmaster. Justin had a drug problem. But the NY Times treatment of all this, with its "sky is falling" approach to predators and underage sexual performances on the Internet, and calls for parents to seize and destroy all their childrens' webcams, is definitely the Kurt Eichenwald story, and not the Justin Berry story. I suspect we can keep the Justin Berry story short, and to the point, and put the soap opera version in the Kurt Eichenwald article where it belongs.Hermitian 20:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)