this time it was the self proclaimed president of the Gay Niggers Association of America. thats right, our old pal timecop himself.

Although the fact that he wrote and intentionally kept a lie about me in a public discussion page indirectly linked to by Digg and refused to take it down even after being warned that what he was doing was committing libel, the Administrators of Wikipedia did not block him indefinitely for that, in fact they never mentioned it in their decision.

instead they popped him for being disruptive, being a troll, being offensive, using racial slurs, ethinic slurs and basically being an asswipe.

here are some of his comments that the Admins linked to as they discussed whether or not they should block him from editing/commenting on Wikipedia:

ethinic slurs:
– Yes go for it. Sorry, i tried to reply but wikipedo jewed up my edits.
– JEWSDIDWTC-1

general asswipery and profanity
– Whoever took the time to look this up has a tiny penis.
– However, you for some reason insist that this is GNAA related (it is not), and are turning this into a name-calling shitfest.
– merge to list of blogshit and delete
– The problem is, you’re getting into something you shouldn’t be part of. If you don’t read blogs, stop caring about what happens to them. I guess you can consider this a warning of some kind.

But probably the most laughable statement that timecop made was when he wrote that two admins were trying to make him lash out and fuck up. Laughable because by slandering me in an illegal, libelous manner, he fucked up plenty and if he wasn’t going to get busted for being an overall prick, he was going to get popped once the Wikipedia’s attorneys got wind that they had a user intentionally breaking the law on their public pages:

[[User:HighInBC]] and [[User:Cyde]] are on a crusade to ‘free wikipedia’ of ‘offensive user boxes’ on my userpage. They’ve taken sudden interest in my page due to my involvement in a non-notable blog nomination [[Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tony_Pierce_%28second_nomination%29|right here]] and now they’re determined to make me break some wikipedia rule in order to find a reason to ban me.

anyways, one of timecop’s pallies complained that the GNAA president had been banned without a consensus from the wikipedia community

so they presented the evidence and stated whether or not he should be blocked or not.

the most interesting comment came from the last Admin to remove the last block on timecop:

At the time, I unblocked mostly as a procedural item; I strongly believe in gaining the support of a group before unilateral action. That said, I support an indefinite ban on User:Timecop. His behavior, while at times seeming to work towards Wikipedia’s goals, is more often than not divisive, uncivil, and designed to get a rise out of people. The “eating dog” comment in the userbox is a slight at the stereotypical “korean’s” love of eating dog, and designed to be offensive. The troll has overstayed his welcome on Wikipedia for long enough. Ban him, and let’s leave it all for the archives. –humblefool®

which was followed by this Admin’s comments:

While in theory I support the “war on blogs”, the way he’s going about it, including even the very name, is entirely disruptive, and has lead to various problems, including bloggers noticing it and recruiting their readers to come and fight on behalf of blog articles in AfD debates. Add to this the userboxes, the admission of being in GNAA, all of the other disruption … and I think it’s time for him to go. –Cyde Weys

dear mr weys, i seriously hope that you are not referring to this blogger. although wordy, i know, i suck, bloggereha, etc, i ask you to look over this post that i wrote where i advised my readers NOT to go to wikipedia to join into your discussion, instead i asked them if they wanted to do anything on my behalf that they should buy their mothers flowers and/or give food to the homeless.

although we have many code phrases here on the busblog “buy your mother flowers” is no longer not code for “OMG EVERYONE GO SAVE MY ENTRY ON WIKIPEDIA!!!1!1”.

i have said repeatedly that i respect the process at wikipedia, and the project, and the people who volunteer their time there.

i believe that my entry deserves a place in wikipedia based on the achievements that i have contributed in blogging in the past and the ones that i am accomplishing currently as a professional blogger who has helped triple the hits of a city-based blog that i Edit.

i have said several times on the pages of wikipedia, in this blog, in emails, and in the comments of this blog that i will respect the decisions of whoever it is that makes the decisions over there regardless of what is decided.

mostly because i can plainly see that wikipedia is an ongoing, living, well-meaning project where things are added and deleted every minute of every hour of every day.

and because, yes, i am That confident of my achievements in blogging and how it relates to the terms of notability.

for some reason one of the mandates is that a blogger be written about in newspapers, magazines or interviewed on television (despite the fact that bloggers and blogs should be judged within the realm of blogging since its clear that mainstream media still has no farking clue what to do with the blogging phenomenon).

no bother, i have been written about in newspapers around the world,

i have been the subject of tv interviews in the US on G4TV (.avi), and interviewed by the French equivalent of 60 Minutes called Envoyé Spécial in Feb 2005 and it was broadcast in June in France, of course (they came to my home and interviewed me and several days later, as emmanuelle explained, a party was thrown for them).

i was on World of Wonder’s “Ring My Bell” this year for an hour and they graciously chopped that live appearance down to 5 minutes for later viewing, as is their custom.

for some reason Wikipedia also want bloggers to write books to prove that they’re notable. not only have i written a few books, i even helped coin the phrase “Blook” thanks to Jeff Jarvis who invented it. and not only did i write the first two blooks “Blook” (2002) and “How to Blog” (2004) but that word was the runner up for the Oxford Word of the Year this year and Lulu now has an award called the “Blooker Prize” where the winner of the best blook of the year gets ten grand(!).

some say that’s not good enough, that in order for a blogger to be recognized for writing a book he has to be dumb enough to give a publisher and an agent and a book store a cut: aka being a “published” author.

yeah, no thanks. those of you who are familiar with my life know that i have a very good and accomplished Book Agent who ive written about because she flatters me, who represents about a hundred authors who are probably just as famous as Jenna Jameson, but thats the only author of hers that matters to me.

as ive discussed before, although it would make my mother proud to have a son whose book is in the book store, im not a huge fan of deadlines. for example, this blog post could have/should have been posted about 8 hours ago when i got an email from someone from the GNAA telling me of timecop’s demise and that she was sure it would only be temporary so “don’t get ur hopes up”.

i am also not interested in dedicating myself to writing a book for six months only to have it edited and going through the process of rewriting after its been edited and possibly having to go through that a third time. ive said it before i will say it again, im an amazingly lazy writer. if i write something and you want to edit it, go for it, but then put it out.

i also enjoy immediate results and instant feedback. writing a book proposal (or two, as was my case) in January, talking to publishing houses in February, accepting an advance of a few thousand dollars in March, writing the book(s) for six months as the publisher “checked in”, waiting for edits in September, rewriting in October, and waiting until April to see the galleys, and then waiting until May to see it hit the shelves (if then…) is not worth the small amount of parental pride that my mother would get going to her local book store and seeing my book heaped among all the other loser books that nobody cares about.

there have been exactly zero books on blogging that have mattered and i was being asked by an agent and a publisher to write Two. how about this, how about i write something and when im done i upload the PDF my own fucking self, create the cover(s) my own fucking self, and sell it through CafePress my own fucking self. if i get super ambitious (which I wouldnt) i could hustle a few dozen copies around to independent book stores that I BELIEVE IN and then tell my dear mother where those stores are. how about that?

i love my agent but i will not be someones monkey for a year of my life for a small bag of shekels. render unto doubleday what is doubledays. and besides, my mother is plenty proud of her son, the blogger.

heres the deal with real bloggers. we’re not wannabe journalists. journalists cant say this: my fingers still smell of that vollyball chick from vermont and for the second straight day i have avoided washing my hands because i miss her.

bloggers are not wanna be authors of books. real bloggers fucking Love this medium because when you hit a home run it goes around the fucking world. real bloggers are known within the blogging communities in which they participate, which is why if your determination of notability is how important is this person in his field, you cant delete Google hits that end in blogspot.com, dumbass.

nor can you attempt to knock an author whose blook or book isnt in Amazon. im the number one tony pierce in google and the number 3 tony in google. if someone is looking for a book by tony pierce they will find it by typing tony pierce in that fucker. amazon does not deserve a cut so amazon will not get a cut. if amazon wants to sell my books they can pay me up front for the privilege, not the other way around.

blogging is the field that im notable in. it really shouldnt matter if newspapers are hep to me, or if tv shows want to interview me. or if the LA Weekly wants to feature me as one of the 100 interesting people in LA alongside rick rubin, sarah silverman, and yes a waitress and a bartender. there are a few notable waitresses and bartenders in LA and if they dont fit in your encyclopedia thats fine too. none of us asked to be in there in the first place. we’re doing what we are notable in, not what we’re faking at.

LonelyGirl15 was on the cover of Time for being a fake. does she deserve to be in wikipedia? sure (despite an almost unanimous delete discussion followed by an almost unanimous keep discussion a few weeks later), but not because she was on the cover of Time, but because she got millions of hits on YouTube. was she interesting because she was a faker? no she was interesting because people felt smart that they outted a fake. and she was interesting because she was a pretty girl. if it was LonelyBoy114 nobody would have given a crap. nobody.

tony pierce has accomplished the things that hes accomplished inspite of not being a pretty girl, inspite of not being a political or gossip blogger, inspite of pretty much only talking about himself, inspite of not spell checking or grammaring or always being all fucking sweet and omg i love you.

this blogger once ripped the instapundit so well that most of it got in the Washington fucking Post a month before the elections and not only am i still on his permalinks but im on the permalinks of his buddy at LGF and Baldilocks. to be on those far right blogs, and to be on far left blogs, and to be in gossip blogs, gambling blogs, hot chick blogs, and every type of blog inbetween adding up to nearly 2,000 blogs earning me a Technorati ranking in the top 500 of 55 million blogs.

noting that someone is being in the top .001 percent is better than noting that he has 400,000 google hits because it shows that he does have some standing in the blogosphere, his field.

becoming one of the few professional bloggers proves that i have standing, asking for and getting enough money from my readers to buy a car proves i have standing, so does asking for and getting two ipods and a trip to aruba.

as does being asked to be on several blogger panels at the biggest meeting of bloggers, SXSWi, as does winning an award from the best known blog awards,

as does having a post called “How To Blog” linked to from all over the world and translated into different freakin languages.

do non-notable bloggers have their shit translated, toned-down, and/or annotated?

many of the editors who stated Delete in the discussion did so and claimed Vanity despite that objection being against the rules, one tried to compare Google ranking to that of the Daily Kos which is a group blog of dozens of writers, and some voted to delete my entry despite not even pretending to be Neutral in relation to blogging, which is standard that Wikipedia requires their editors to be. every “vote” that claimed that I wrote my own entry and should be Deleted should be Deleted itself based on Wikipedias own rules.

but the most annoying part about all of this is that the editors of wikipedia try to line-item veto each of these accomplishments, which shouldnt be the point. the point should be to look at all of these things as a whole. do all of the above equal someone who is notable enough to be on wikipedia in the world of blogging?

yes there have been lots of people who have been quoted in the NYT, yes there have been a lot of people interviewed on cable tv, yes there have been a lot of people intereviewed on the French 60 minutes, yes there are 500 people in the Technorati Top 500, who have coined the second best word of the year, etc etc, but when you add them all up, I believe you have someone who has done something unique from the other bloggers.

i am a real blogger and this debate is difficult because i dont really fit in easily to the definition of notability on Wikipedia. good. that means im doing the right thing. bloggers shouldnt fit in to old media or in this case new media trying to improve on old media.

blogging isnt a tv show it isnt a newspaper it isnt a radio show it isnt a diary it isnt a love letter it is something very different and when its at its best it defies all of those olde school failures.

which is why if i dont get in it wont kill me. people know where to find me. either from one of the 2000 other links on the blogosphere, from one of the 400,000 google hits, or from putting “tony” into google and avoiding the unbelieveable temptation of clicking the Tony awards or Tony Hawk.

plus the entry they have on me up there is shit. but thats another post for another day.

spill some of your fourty out to timecop, m’ niggas.

which doesn’t mean that my cause has any hope in hell, but at least there will have to be some solid reasons to delete it other than deeming it “blatant self-promotion”.

so since there are so many allegations being thrown at me, lets clear up some things superfast.

1. Although it was very nice of whoever created the entry on Wikipedia about me, that particular page accounts for less than .01% of the hits that I get on this blog. It also accounts for less than .01% of the hits that I get to LAist (the only hits that I actually care about). Therefore if it is self-promotion its a horrible promotion and if a Marketing freelancer had done it I’d fire them.

2. A few of the Wiki editors have accused me of using this blog to send out a “call to arms” to get votes on the discussion board. This is troublesome because if those editors have a difficult time reading last night’s post (where I basically threw my arms up at the situation and said that the post is scheduled for demolition and is doomed to be removed so take a picture while it lasts) then how accurate of editors are they on far more important things that they should be reading and editing: world events and controversial people on Wikipedia?

Love him or hate him, I have always been an admirer of Howard Stern. One reason is because he never organized a campaign to keep him on radio stations who were planning on removing him, nor did he ever ask his millions of listeners to protest the anti-free speech groups who tried to get his sponsors to pull support of his shows.

So when I saw that the guy spearheading this “war on blogs” has pull at Wikipedia (despite his spotty past and bizarre user page), the last thing I wanted to trouble my readers with was some fucked up web debate/war on my behalf. As I’ve said here before repeatedly, I am one of the luckiest people ever. So save your energies on less fortunate souls, especially now during the holidays, namely the poor. Being on Wikipedia is not a make or break situation for me, and I would be a loser if it was.

However, nobody gets to tell me what I can put on this blog or not put in this blog, and if I told my readers who were editors of Wikipedia to vote on this matter, I don’t see how that should disqualify my post. Since when, in America, have we encouraged people not to vote? It appears that the small group of editors who are anti-blogs wanted this vote to go under the radar and happen quickly so as to avoid a true vote. Me, I think that regardless of who votes, the entry should be voted on based on its merits and whether or not it fits in Wikipedia based on their guidelines. Any mention of the “controversy” on an alleged blog by an alleged non-notable blogger is neither here nor there.

But for the record: In no way am I telling you, busblog reader, to do anything with your time on my behalf. If you want to do something that would make me happy buy your mother flowers, or give a homeless person some food tonight.

3. the best defense that ive seen so far for keeping the entry has been here:

Keep WP:BIO states as a criterion for inclusion: “The person has been the primary subject of multiple non-trivial published works whose source is independent of the person.” It continues, “This criterion includes published works in all forms, such as newspaper articles, magazine articles…” etc. Pierce meets that criterion. A quick search of the Dow Jones/Reuters Factiva service shows Pierce has been the subject of articles from the New York Times (27 May 2004) (followed by an echo to the Times-owned Int’l Herald Tribune on 29 May); Reuters (10 July 2004); Straits Times (Singapore) (5 March 2006); Reforma (Mexico City) (2 April 2006); EL PAIS (Madrid) (20 April 2006); Los Angeles Times (16 October 2003, 27 Feb 2003, 12 July 2004, others); Le Monde (25 June 2005); and others. The search string was (Tony Pierce AND blog), and the variety of citation shows that some regard “just blogging” to be sufficient for notability, if one is widely enough known for it (just as one could become widely known for such synonyms “writing a diary”, “writing a journal”, “writing essays”, etc.). A campaign to edit the phenomenon of blogging out of Wikipedia, when it is clearly observable in everyday life, could be considered a violation of WP:NPOV through overly aggressive editing out of known facts. .–hbobrien

4. Authorship: although i understand why they frown upon having the subjects write or edit their own posts, if the subject is alive an has been known around the web to be an honest person, who better to create an accurate post? and isnt’t that, after all, the ultimate goal of Wikipedia – accurate entries that are the definitive source for reference? therefore many of the things that I noted in the post before could/should be edited into the wikipedia entry, as well as the information that hbobrien provided, and many other bits of facts that the rest of you could/should add.

5. i was accused of writing on the debate page under a fake name. although the accuser pointed to the wikipedia page “Sock Puppet” when they should have linked to this page. notable bloggers do not need fake names to defend themselves in the discussion areas of web sites. i stated my case under my name and initials. if i wanted to say anything more on that site i would have done so. but the way i saw it i said my peace and moved on. not everyone works that way, but i do. anyone on the blogosphere knows that IP addresses are easily checked and others have been caught using fake names to support themselves. i have better things to do during working hours, namely blogging. for money. something some notable bloggers are fortunate enough to do.

6. my favorite exchange so far has been this one:

# Keep – He taught thousands how to blog.PermanentE 09:02, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

* Comment – it that a good thing? – Femmina 15:24, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

o Yes. –Oakshade 17:20, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

7. some are voting but their votes are being discounted because its the first time that they’ve posted something. although i can understand that attack, the truth is everyone has a first post or edit. if this debate creates more to volunteer and edit more things in Wikipedia then Wikipedia benefits. same goes for those who sign up to vote my entry out. all i want is for people to vote for the entry based on the guidelines of Wikipedia or vote against them based on the guidelines. therefore the amount of edits that the voters have made on the page, to me, are immaterial.

8. i forgot what eight was.

9. the five main reasons i think im a notable blogger under their guidelines are:

a) ive had articles written about me in major publications, interviews conducted with me in major places, and tv appearances due to the fact that im a notable blogger.

b) my post “how to blog” has been linked to throughout the blogosphere and reproduced in several languages, and the fact that a word that i helped coin, “blook”, was runner-up in the Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year contest this year shows that im more than just some cute cam girl.

c) with a rank of #428 out of 54 million blogs means that the busblog is in the Technorati Top 500. ten percent of 54 million is 5 million. one percent of 54 million is 500,000. .1% of 54 million is 50,000, and .01% of 54 million is 5,000. so to be in the top 500 of blogs means that your blog is more popular than 99.999% of all other blogs. a feat i have achieved over the last three years. certainly no flash in the pan. in the war on blogs, may i suggest that if you have sustained a ranking in the Technorati Top 500 for several years, despite the ever-changing world of the blogosphere, you’re doing something unique, and thus have a pretty good arguement for being in Wikipedia

d) i wrote the first blook, and the second (which was much better).

e) there are less than 100 bloggers who have been able to turn pro. and even few who did it without being journalists, writing primarily about politics, or writing primarily about sex. when i became editor of LAist i got to join that very small club. and once i got that job i helped triple the amount of traffic on that blog in less than six months, without a lot of sex talk or political coverage.

of the 50 million bloggers very very few have accomplished any of those feats, let alone all of those. which is why i believe im notable.

10. As one of my defenders noted, this all out “war on blogs” goes against one of Wikipedia’s “fundamental principles” that of a “Neutral Point of View“. The same reason they ask the subject of the entry not to write about themselves because it goes against this priciple, one who clearly hates blogs should not be allowed to delete or judge entries about bloggers since they obviously have an agenda against those who have their work viewed on computer screens.

/self serving defense

Update: As Bloopy reports in the comments, this matter has made it to the front page of Digg. Holy crap!

Update #2: Even though they swear that the discussion page is not a place to vote, but to debate, the page was closed once the debate became interesting (and once the original nominator got banned indefinitely). Thus a second nomination was introduced and that page can be viewed here where currently the vote discussion is pretty even.

from their hallowed pages.

i wrote a rebuttal (below)in the discussion page but it doesn’t seem to make any difference, so if you wanna see it take a picture because it’s due for demolition.

Obviously I’m biased in this discussion since I am Tony Pierce, and maybe nowadays running a blog is no big deal, but in August 2001 when I started the busblog there weren’t 54 million blogs going. Anyways, I was on G4TV not for my blog, but for the “blook” that I wrote called “How To Blog” which won an award at SXSW. I’ve also been interviewed in the New York Times for being addicted to the web, written about in the Washington Post, and named in the LA Times as the most entertaining blog in LA.

True my personal blog, the busblog, lately isn’t what it used to be, but that’s because I now blog for a living as Editor of LAist, but everyone has made a career and a living out of blogging these days, right? In 2002 I coined the word blook (invented by Jeff Jarvis), which is turning parts of your blog into a book, a word that is dorky, true, but was up for Word of the Year this year by the Oxford Dictionary. Again, achievements I’m sure you’ve all reached. I’d have cleaned up this wikipedia entry on myself but as you can see from this note I’m not so skilled with your interface. I guess that’s why I still use Blogger.com, speaking of which I was sitting next to Ev the night he announced that Google had just bought Blogger just like Amanduhh’s mom? She looked alot like Xeni Jardin. And I was one of just 20 bloggers given free trips to Amsterdam by the Dutch government this year and put up in 5 star hotels to blog about the city, and and and… but blogging is irrelevant to you guys so whatevs. And yeah I realize I don’t get the amount of hits of some of the bloggers in the Technorati Top 100 but personal sites that state right up front that “nothing in here is true” dont really stand a chance of popularity unless youre a whorish hot chick or a political partisan and yet still somehow I am in the Technorati Top 500 (currently #428) (http://www.technorati.com/search/www.tonypierce.com). I agree lots of bloggers can claim that they “belong” here, but how many have achieved these things while being more popular than 99.999% of the rest? Maybe the kids just liked my photo essays?

Anyway there’s no doubt that I was one of the early leaders of blogging, definitely one of the more influential ones, and now a professional one. Therefore I believe that my entry should stay. But if it goes, that’s ok. I did well without Wikipedia, I will live without it. Plus people know where to find me since Google has me listed right below the Tony Awards and Tony Hawk when you simply type “tony” into Google. Thankfully they’re not blog-haters 🙂 Now that I read some of your snarks, it seems like the problem here is in the entry not being very good, not the subject. However, if I had written this entry then you would have tried to bust me for self-promotion. So there’s the rub.

As soon as I posted that I got two more no votes, so clearly if I want to be in Wikipedia I’ve got to sell arms for hostages or become a librarian (jk).

I even posted a discussion on Metafilter about the question of deleting actual information based on yesterdays washington post article (which is what prompted me to check out my entry), but that post was deleted. not my day.

Fortunately the Bears defense and special teams made today worth it. And being in Orlando doesn’t suck. Although the woman who called at 11am to find out if I wanted to buy a time share at while my family was at Disney World was interesting. I had fallen asleep at 5am and wasnt happy to be woken up by these people and told them I was napping to leave me alone.

At noon she called and asked “how was your nap Mr. Pierce?” I said, come over here and ask me that and slammed the phone down.

update #1: blogging.la has written a post about it (using the worse picture of me ever, but maybe i am that fugly, in which case, how do i ever get laid ever?) either way, thanks david

update #2: upon Basart’s invitation to look at the page of the dude at wikipedia who is behind this “war on blogs” i notice that he’s part of the Gay Nigger Association of America. and here i always thought i did well with gay niggers in america. obviously i was confusing them with the gay niggers of canada.

update #3: on the top of the list of the self-proclaimed gay nigger’s Queue for deletion from wikipedia after they delete my entry? technorati top 100 blog, Gothamist. you know, the people who sign my paycheck. weirdly, having a top 100 blog that posts 20-30 times a day poised for deletion makes me feel a little better about my doomed fate. it means that no blogs are safe.