Wise Wins Wiki War: Virtual banker stays in Wikipedia, joins elite group of SL listings (SL Reports) | Human Interest

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Wise Wins Wiki War: Virtual banker stays in Wikipedia, joins elite group of SL listings (SL Reports)

Written by Xavier Mohr

Wednesday, 22 August 2007

By Xavier Mohr, Publisher
SLReports.net

SECOND LIFE, SL REPORTS, 22 AUGUST 2007 - Arbitrage Wise has declared victory with the help of progressive Wikipedia editors, having won his battle against deletion from the online encyclopedia.

Wise was added and subsequently approved for inclusion in Wikipedia before a proposal for deletion was submitted by an editor.

In a heated debate on the "Articles for Deletion" pages , emotions and beliefs ran high.

Said one editor, "The one thing we have to keep in mind is that virtual worlds is probably the future, and as virtual world grows, so will characters such as Arbitrage Wise. Notability should not only be reserved for tangible figures... and Arbitrage Wise will have a deep impact on Second Life, and possibly the overall economics of virtual world as a whole."

Yet another editor queried, "Who said virtual network people can be on a encyclopedia?"

Opinions varied, but Wikipedia administrators finally decided in favor of keeping the encyclopedia entry.

"The notability standard doesn't address virtual worlds like Second Life," conceded a Wikipedia admin who closed the debate. "Also, we could gain a lot of editors by attracting Second Life participants, so let's see where this goes."

Arbitrage Wise is one of only two Second Life residents listed by their virtual avatar names, the other being Anshe Chung. He joins a very elite handful of entries mentioning specific Second Life avatars period, some of which include the biographies of Lawrence Lessig, Phillip Rosedale, and Howard Rheingold.

Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. The name Wikipedia is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference Web sites.

It should be noted that while any user may submit an entry to Wikipedia, most are quickly deleted due to lack of notability. This fact makes the positive outcome of the "Arbitrage Wise" Wikipedia debate a truly groundbreaking, progressive, and flattering achievement for the CEO of SL Capital Exchange, JT Financials, and a number of other Second Life businesses.

To view the Wikipedia Listing for Arbitrage Wise, please visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage_Wise

Comments

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Xavier Mohr

|2007-08-25 14:33:44

PS: In reference to the BusinessWeek article you mentioned... I would like to
point out my disapproval of the selection of the SL avatars in that slideshow.
Except obviously Anshe Chung. And except possibly the CEO of the Electric Sheep
Company and **maybe, maybe** Shaun Altman, I feel like perhaps the rest of those
SL residents were chosen at random without regard to their true status in the SL
community. I consider myself very well-connected here and to be honest I had
never heard of five of them.

To be more specific... FlipperPA Peregrine of
SLBoutique. Why did they not choose SL Exchange? SLB for a very long time was
widely considered the joke of web-based SL shopping and has always been the
underdog. SLX is by far the king of web-based SL shopping.

Kermitt Quirk,
Craig Altman, Fizik Baskerville, Sibley Hathor..... I have never heard of these
people. I just asked three random friends and got the same response.

One
person there is cited as earning $90,000 USD a year through SL. It is
impressive, but I can name at least two or three people I know directly that
earn over $100k USD a year. I can name probably 12 to 15 more that I know
earning in excess of $50k USD.

(Stepping aside... I wish I could make any of
those amounts here! LOL!)

I think a lot of people confuse money for
celebrity. Celebrity is gained through a *combination* of press coverage,
strategic business moves, influence over a large number of people, and then...
yes... money.

If you are a scripter earning $100k USD (yep, they exist!) a
year through SL, but your work only affects the clients you do the work for and
you really aren't noticed by anyone else... you obviously don't deserve a
celebrity status.

Just my two cents. I would guess from looking at the
avatars mentioned in that slideshow that the person compiling that article
didn't do alot of research aside from maybe *asking* one or two existing
contacts who the notables in SL were. I also think that random selection was
somewhat intended in that piece period... and that they weren't really going for
who was most notable. =) Just my opinion - the way I am seeing it.

Xavier Mohr

|2007-08-25 13:59:56

I agree with you that there are other avatars worthy of mention in Wikipedia. I
could think of many right off the bat: jasper Tizzy, LukeConnell Vandeverre,
Investor Allen, Nicholas Portocarrero, and even perhaps Sal
Ackland.

However, in reviewing all of these people in my mind, I am not sure
any of them are more or less notable than the others. Some like Luke or Nicholas
have perhaps done as much or more business than Arbitrage, but they have not
garnered the continued publicity he has. One thing Arbitrage has going for him
is a very positive view from the media.

In rereading the article I wrote,
however, I am not sure I would call it tabloid-like. Definitely biased, perhaps,
as I was one of the core fighters in the Wikipedia debate. Although I do feel
you are being a tad dramatic in that statement period.

However even at that,
I see this as something that is wayyy beyond Arbitrage at the core.

The
inclusion represents that real-life authorities are taking note of Virtual
Worlds. I see this as a step in gaining attention from a larger audience. The
things going on in Second Life are truly extraordinary, and it is about time
that the "History Books" take note of that.

Xavier

Ceeq Laborde

|2007-08-24 07:01:21

You probably don't want to make comments like 'wins' as the result of the
'Article for Delection' was 'no consensus'. My position on that was Keep, simply
because of that BW mention, but it's very tight, it's on the edge of being
notable. You say how amazing it is that Wise is the second avatar in Wikipedia,
this is silly as any of these avatars shown here: http://images.busine
ssweek.com/ss/06/04/ avatar/source/1.htm have a much stronger case of entry than
Wise, yet no one has created them yet. This is just an example..

Please do
not introduce tabloid-like work in your normally very respectable articles.

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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 22 August 2007 )

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