‘Wikipedia killer’ pilfers blogosphere, taunts bloggers

Ulitzer bills itself as a new-age website that will somehow replace the cult of Wikipedia. And judging from the online farce that followed the site’s Friday beta launch, it’s off to a good start. Floated by Sys-Con — a New Jersey-based company that runs several tech publications and conferences, including this week’s Cloud …

[Antti Roppola]

Who's the Fool?

You have got to get worried about the industry when you can't easily tell this year's DotCom antics from this year's April Fools jokes.

[Jon Awbrey]

Dum Da Dum Dum ... Dummm

The names have been changed to protect Wikipedia ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What order?

Do we whore, drink, and shoot the pope? Or should we shoot the pope before drinking, while we're still sober, and then get on with the whoring afterwords?

Maybe the drinking should come first, and then the whoring, though - leaving the pope-shooting as the finale (after the whoring has given us some time to sober up)?

These are tricky questions indeed...

[jake]

Prediction.

"SysCon's Jeremy Geelan responded to our initial requests for comment on the matter, but said he didn't have time to talk on the phone as he's currently serving as conference chair of the company's Cloud Computing Expo."

Tomorrow it'll all be "It was just a joke, ha ha!" ... But it's not.

Geelan's using April Fools day to get free advertising for his next-to useless "cloud computing" expo. Don't give it to him. If I ran ElReg, I'd pull the article (at least as it is currently written). But that's just me.

[Anonymous Coward]

@David Wiernicki

You'll need a steady hand to shoot the pope, then a drink to get the nerve up to go whoring.

[Walking Turtle]

Now where have I seen this before...?

"They [Sys-Con] have questionable unethical practices when it comes to dealing with authors and content," Aral Balkan tells us. "And if anyone calls them out on it, or criticizes what their doing, they attack them with so-called articles on their site."

Actually, this as-reported two-fists-and-a-ballbat approach to Web authoring and site content management sounds just a leetle too similar to that reportedly employed with stunning regularity and effect against all too many US senators and reps by various agents of a certain political lobbying group known here and there as "AIPAC" for one to fail to notice... Looks like mebbe' the Global Unitary Khazaristani Shriekdown Squad might have gained itself a few Turkish understudies...

Just noticin'. Pope-shooting won't do it though, let alone the liquor not the loosie-ladies.

Blocklists? Infrastructure Adjustment? Torches, pitchforks and scimitars...? One way or a decent 'nother, though, I for one'd be surprised if this thang lasts even six months.

Coat. Off to the Villians and Monsters Death Pool site to see who got there to log this'un into the wagering before myself. Yes, the one with the fez and scimitar's it, thanks.

Turkish Delight, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Santa Clara Lawyer?

If the author lives in London, like I read from this article, why ask a US lawyer for a legal opinion? Surely more fun to sue for libel in English courts?

[Colonel Panic]

Homosexual defamatory ?

Prof. Goldman would be right to say that (thankfully) we have moved on and being homosexual is not something that would lower someone in the estimation of right-thinking members of society. However, a statement that someone is of a particular sexual orientation (straight or gay) may be libelous if it implies to those who know the person that the subject of the statement has misrepresented their identity.

It may be potentially libelous for example to say that Graham Norton is in fact straight.

[Loki]

I call first!

I call first! April fools shenanigans!

[Kato]

Sys-Con tame compared to Wikipedia

Cade Metz writes:

"They [Sys-Con] have questionable unethical practices when it comes to dealing with authors and content," Aral Balkan tells us. "And if anyone calls them out on it, or criticizes what their doing, they attack them with so-called articles on their site."

Well that's certainly what Sys-Con has in common with Wikipedia. The difference is that Wikipedia does it at the top of Google. Sys-Con seems quite tame in comparison.

[DR]

default copyright law

I can understand how this protects search engines as they are having to log and index pages. and usually only display a small proportion of the page to show whether the passage they think may be relevant is indeed relevant.

but how does this protect a site republishing in full and making money from doing it?

if I copy and paste all the articles on a newspapers website and make money off that then I could be sued under copy right law? if I scan pages from a book and publish the book online for free I can get sued/prosecuted...

why does the law protect others doing it if they decide to make this their business model?

[Tom Chiverton]

@Loki

No, I'm afraid it's true - con-sys are a bunch of ejits.

[Anthony]

Wiki Waa Waa

Has nobody made these guys a wiki page yet exposing their horrible evil or would that be a step too far for those embedded in their blogs, only surfacing to tweet about the fact that somebody was mean to them on the Internet?

[djs]

About what you'd expect

The same Sys-Con that _still_ employs Maureen O'Gara? Seems to me that generally abusive behaviour fits pretty well with their established track record.

I suppose running a blog aggregation site is all you have left when your real journalists and editors resign in protest. I'm just surprised it's taken them this long to notice that nobody seems to write for them any more.

[Paul]

Sys-Con: "Con" is appropriate

Sadly not an April fools, this was mentioned in a couple of places yesterday.

Sys-Con are a bunch of c*nts. This is about right for their level of ethics.