What the hell? How can an employee of Wikianswers do that. I think you should contact the dispute resolution division of Wikianswers regarding the behaviour of Crystal.
Osama Saleem Asadullah
Wikianswers supervisor.
An Explanation About The Problems At WikiAnswers (wiki.answers.com)
| Written by Sarah Cain |
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I am posting this e-mail here, so that other WikiAnswers Supervisors and contributors can see why the alternative medicine section is now unsupervised.
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To: Crystal Williams Dear Crystal, I recently read the message that you sent to Thomas (Corriher) regarding his removal as a supervisor. I find it astounding that on your first or perhaps second day with your old position, instead of writing to people to let them know that you have returned... you threaten them mainly in regard to incidents that were over long ago. Then you complain about his interference with a contributor who "contributes" by removing peoples answers entirely, or writing "This is not scientific" underneath all of them. You did this even AFTER you noticed that the contributor in question had already been warned by TWO other supervisors. It is disturbing that you have created a vendetta against Corriher (and me in the past), because we had hoped to keep the alternative medicine section about alternative medicine. Despite the 28 modern-medicine categories under health, plus sub-categories, there will always be some doctor, pharmacist, or pharmaceutical investor who will disrupt the alternative area because it is a threat to their business. As long as that is allowed to go on, you should just go ahead and remove all alternative medicine categories, and all supervisors for that area (which I see you have already started doing). No questions in that area can be honestly answered if we have to consult you for permission before we can warn any user who is threatened by the spread of free information. As such, you should go ahead and remove me as a supervisor as well. While I did enjoy helping people to cure their 'incurable' ailments whilst on WikiAnswers, I now know that allowing people to maliciously remove previous answers and replace them with gibberish is far more important. -- |
Below is an an actual message from Crystal, wherein she flippantly noted that she (as a supposedly impartial administrator) reworded other people's questions to censor the reporting of effective alternatives. It was only alternative medicine that needed such careful management from her, by the way; and she even went so far as to insultingly compare alternative therapies with "spirituality" -- with the implication of alternative practitioners being witch doctors whose decisions were always made based on faith, instead of empirical evidence of effectiveness.
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To: Sarah Cain Hi there! Thanks for sending those over, Sarah. I have taken some time to go through everything, and do believe that these issues can be resolved. Obviously, these are questions that have opposing viewpoints. And on WikiAnswers we invite everyone to share their views on questions that ask for opinions or on those that can, in fact, have more than one answer. While we strive for one great answer for each question, this is not always possible. You will find this quite often in Religion and Spirituality and also Health - particularly Alternative Medicine. Questions should be as neutral as possible. So, I have changed "How effective is wu-yi tea for losing weight?" to "What are opinions on how effective wu-yi tea is for losing weight?" and "What is the name of a plant from Madagascar that cures diabetes?" to "What is the name of the plant from Madagascar that has reportedly cured some cases of diabetes?" The other is fine as is. And questions on medications would be phrased in the same manner (i.e. What are opinions on how effective Prozac is for treating anxiety?) I do ask that you keep opposing viewpoints within the answers, only removing those elements that are not directly addressing the question. Snide remarks, insults and so on should be removed. Educate and enlighten people... and allow them to form their own view. They are entitled to hear all perspectives. When in doubt, please feel free to contact me. Crystal |
The part about us rephrasing Prozac questions was merely meant to give us an illusion of fairness; because in actually, it was never our job to alter any orthodox medical questions. In fact, we got into trouble when we tried to do so, which we once did to test our suspicions about the agenda.
To really put things into perspective, Crystal Williams thought that promoting alternative medicine was inappropriate in the alternative medicine section. Promoting virtually anything else on the site, including failed orthodox medicine therapies, like chemotherapy, was okay. Alternative medicine was a special topic for Crystal, and we were supposed to help her friends to discredit it. Crystal simultaneously defended the free speech rights of a 60-year-old man who was trying to connect with teenage girls, and who posted topics such as, "Tips for breaking a virgin". WikiAnswers has to ethically defend free speech, after all; so long as it doesn't threaten the medical establishment. Every other area of the site was policed by moderators ("supervisors"), but we were specifically ordered to allow alternative medicine to be overrun by the opponents of alternative medicine. This was an order that we naturally refused to obey. It was perfectly okay for WikiAnswers to promote chemotherapy in alternative medicine and to be a medium for sexual predators who snare näive teenagers. After all, they have "ethical standards" to uphold. Check out these screen shots to see for yourself what is officially approved by WikiAnswers.
Officially Acceptable Content at WikiAnswers
| Screen Shot 1 | Screen Shot 2 | Screen Shot 3 | Screen Shot 4 |
| Screen Shot 5 | Screen Shot 6 | Screen Shot 7 |
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Comments (6)
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Date: 09/15/2010 Time: 10:43:30 |IP:202.69.15.xxx| Osama @ wiki - Its Pathetic
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Date: 08/04/2011 Time: 13:13:19 | Thomas Corriher (Managing Editor)
These are "unofficial" policies. Asking them to investigate is like asking George Bush for an impartial investigation of 9/11. You cannot ask a criminal to investigate himself and expect any productive results.
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Date: 01/03/2013 Time: 19:46:24 |IP:71.127.254.xxx| Leon Theado - WikiAnswers Won't Help You
This is somewhat off topic, but don't bother putting any faith in the Dispute Resolution practice at WikiAnswers. First, Crystal Williams is part of the 3 person panel called the Community Advisor Team that deals with matters brought to Dispute Resolution, so you won't get any action reigning her in.
Second, I was blocked by a bully of a Supervisor named RHYFOR for filing 5 complaints against him for his treatment of me. The Community Advisor Team never answered one of my complaints then blocked me from the site without saying why or what I had done wrong. Apparently, filing complaints against bullying Supervisors like RHYFOR is considered cyberbullying by them. WikiAnswers will never take adverse action against a person like Crystal or RHYFOR as long as that person serves some purpose for the benefit of WikiAnswers.
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Date: 01/05/2013 Time: 06:31:11 | Thomas Corriher (Managing Editor)
Of course Crystal Williams is one of the top 3 now. She's eliminated everyone who got in her way. If I were one of the other two people (out of those top three at WikiAnswers), then I would be very concerned about Crystal's ambitions. How long will it be before they become "a problem" too? If they are smart enough to learn something from history, then they must be worried. I'm not legally allowed to make a diagnosis, but as a general rule, it is (in my opinion) the sociopaths who best rise to the top.
One thing that gives us satisfaction is knowing that justice has been served upon Wiki.Answers.com. Did you notice that they are essentially dead? They rarely even appear in search results anymore. What is beautiful about the situation is that it is entirely because of the organization's policies of standing behind Crystal Williams' decisions; regardless of their irrationality or immorality.
Way to go Wiki Answers! The chickens are finally coming home to roost, aren't they? We warned you people about your lack of ethics, and we we were not kidding. In fact, Wiki Answers is now somehow considered even less credible than Wikipedia, and that is quite a feat to have achieved. Do you people believe us now?
They actually fired Crystal long ago for obvious reasons, but her politicking with her old good-ole-boy network got her rehired within months. (Things at wiki.answers.com were so smooth during those couple of months, by the way.)
When Crystal returned to wiki.answers.com, it was with a raging vengeance against anyone who she felt might compromise her position or her power -- anyone who might be brave enough to question her. I was personally on her hit list, so she had obviously been seething during her entire time of termination.
A quick Google search of her name will reveal just how serious she is about her own self promotion and about how incredibly egotistical she is. Go ahead and look! We dare you to! If any of you have doubts about just how classy Crystal Williams is, then check out her writing. One of my personal favorites is, "Men, are you ejaculating too fast?". We should feature that journalistic masterpiece at HealthWyze.org, shouldn't we? You see -- after banning our alternative medicine research (which she didn't actually understand) -- she's now suddenly a health expert (among other things). One of the great things about wiki.answers.com, in fact, is that it allows people who know nothing to pretend to be the top experts on a topic. So it's no wonder why she's been so successful there amongst the other fakers. It is worth mentioning that Crystal Williams also calls herself "The Babe of Business" -- you know, because she's just so humble and beautiful, after all. Control yourselves fellas!
Crystal Williams seemed like a witch, and I mean this quite literally. In fact, we have historically found that our Christian philosophy has actually hurt us more than our controversial health information, and it has gotten us chased out of lots of places, including WikiAnswers.com.
Sarah is nicer and more soft-spoken. I tend to 'call it like it is'. I truly believe that Crystal Williams is an evil woman, and that WikiAnswers is getting what it deserves for condoning and tolerating her behavior. Had our alternative section not been censored by Crystal Williams, we could have saved thousands of people from countless medical system horrors.
At least people are getting information from other sites now, such as ours. The people who actually remain over there are part of a community that we know as the ass-kissing convention.
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Date: 01/10/2013 Time: 17:22:01 |IP:67.17.255.xxx| Leon Theado
While I haven't looked at an statistics, it wouldn't surprise me at all if WikiAnswers, a/k/a Answers.com, is becoming less and less relevant. The quality of the answers is getting dragged down to the lowest common denominator of I.Q. of the population. I had to correct many answers in the legal categories when I was first online there as a Supervisor myself and then later, after being blocked, as a regular contributor. All I could say was God help whoever was going to rely upon WikiAnswers's advice on legal questions. Some of the information was just plain wrong and they have no clue how bad it still is.
One ironic thing is that I was first blocked in 2009 because I had words with Crystal when several Supervisors were blocked just after July 4, 2009. She said I was disruptive and caused trouble. Fair enough. That was mostly because I never hesitated to criticize WikiAnswers when I felt it deserved criticism and they do not take kindly to criticism over there.
WikiAnswers has yet to reply to my emails complaining about the bully RHYFOR and the failure of the Community Advisor Team and the Dispute Resolution system. I doubt that they ever will. It just isn't their style to reply to criticism.
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