utorrent on wikipedia

[quaternions]

I just deleted a huge chunk of the utorrent article on wikipedia, it was basically saying because utorrent is closed source its full of malware. To be honest it looks like the makers of bitcomet or azureus wrote the article as a hatchet job. There is a good chance that someone will revert my edit and put that info back of course, whoever wrote those sections went to some effort to make the crap look credible.

[amc1]

Anyone could have written that text - no need to start hinting that developers of other BT clients might have done it...

Also - I read what you removed in a different way. It seemed to be talking about various accusations people have made against µTorrent, but points out that there has been no evidence to support them.

[quaternions]

Well like you said, its accusations and speculation. That isn't encyclopedic.

There's another section in there which essentially implies Lud is working for an anti piracy group, implying he can't be trusted with the privacy of his clients users. I haven't seen an article as biased on wikipedia for a long time, that's why i speculated at ulterior motives.

[Dark Shroud]

There is a lot of bias on Wikipedia.

[quaternions]

There is always going to be some bias because everybody has a different opinion. The best you can do is gather a consensus of opinion which includes many but not all people. I find wikipedia better than most places in this respect because sooner or later obvious bias gets deleted or changed.

[amc1]

Personally, I think there's a difference between making accusations on Wikipedia and discussing accusations - but let's face it - if I really wanted to read up about any software, I wouldn't use Wikipedia as my definitive resource.

It was the "makers of bitcomet or azureus" that I didn't like - that's all...

[quaternions]

You can't discuss accusations or make them on wikipedia really. What if someone accuses Bill Clinton of being gay? Or accuses George Bush of being an Iranian spy? Do we have to have a section about that?!

And i do really believe the makers of bitcomet and azureus had a hand in this! Because forums are exactly the place for accusations that i find interesting or amusing

[amc1]

Fair point I guess - as long as there's something somewhere written to stop FUD being spread.

> And i do really believe the makers of bitcomet and azureus had a hand in this! Because forums are exactly the place for accusations that i find interesting or amusing

Well, I have to say that it wouldn't have been the Azureus lot.... must have been the BitComet lot - definitely.

[quaternions]

Yeah BitComet is a really lousy client! Must have been them! lol

[Ultima]

Right... erm, regardless of who it was, pointing fingers and making random accusations won't make µTorrent look any better...

Edit: FWIW, I didn't see anything really *wrong* with having them there, but I guess I can see your POV too.

[quaternions]

Well it isn't hugely important no. But what is? I'm surprised you knew those comments were there and didn't delete them. Dozens of people read that article every day, those sections were there for a few months minimum, so thousands of people have avoided utorrent accordingly. The section about Lud developing spyware for PeerFactor is still there, i don't know enough about it to have an opinion, but i suspect its speculation/crap like the rest and i should have binned it.

[Ultima]

I don't see how the article could've scared anyone who knew how to read. It contained points, and counterpoints -- nothing conclusive, and again, anyone who knew how to read could easily tell that they were informative speculation. Nowhere in the article did it say "µTorrent is spyware" or "µTorrent helped PeerFactor to poison torrent swarms." All it said was that people were afraid of any of that happening -- it's not a crime to say so.

In any case, even though I knew about it, I don't feel it's my job to clean a Wikipedia article up. You can already tell I didn't feel there was anything *really* wrong with what was posted there (because there wasn't anything wrong with it), so what justification did I have to remove the "offending" section of the article? None.

[quaternions]

I can be anal with regards to wikipedia...i like to deal in facts and when i see "nothing conclusive" i delete or change it.

I shouldn't have implied it's your job to clean up wikipedia because of course it isn't. Me bad!

[Lord Alderaan]

imho its better to have a controversy talked about then ignored. I wouldn't remove the peer factor bit.

Ludde didn't support anti-P2P both intentionally or unintentionally. And although some people have grabbed it as an excuse to treat µtorrent badly there is no basis of truth for it.

The denials, combined with the fact that PeerFactor SARL was once run by some of the same people who participated in anti-P2P activities, and the fact that Strigeus apparently intends to keep µTorrent closed-source, have led to suspicion among some P2P users that neither Strigeus nor PeerFactor SARL can be trusted, and that µTorrent may not protect the privacy of its users.

Although the way it is worded could be explain as both negative (add: So you shouldn't trust µtorrent in your head) and positive (add: But these people are obviously acting childish/spreading fud in your head) in the end it merely reports a fact without adding any explicit judgment.

Actually now that I have read what you removed (had to struggle with the history there for a second) I think it shouldn't have been removed. Maybe edited but it stated a few important facts that did really happen.

The closed source and its consequences is a valid point that is worth mentioning in the wikipedia page. µtorrent IS closed source and this means it IS harder for the average user to detect spyware. No need to lie about it. But with a user base of millions (I think) it IS true that any spyware activity wouldn't even take days to detect but would be more a question of hours. I believe there are enough paranoid (not necessarily a bad thing!) technical savvy people out there who still like µtorrent enough to try its new builds and keep an eye on it.

[lexein]

I've reverted the unwarranted mass deletion, and copyedited it. It needs more, and better citations. News of controversy about a subject is warranted. I would like more informed, research oriented forum members to contribute to the Wikipedia article. The hardest part seems to be finding non-blog non-forum citable sources.

[quaternions]

You will never get non forum, non blog citations, because its BS! Those sections need deleting until there is citable evidence! I've given the article {{NPOV}} and you can read the relevant sentence here :

All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly and without bias all significant views (that have been published by reliable sources).

[Lord Alderaan]

Hmmz

Critics point out that since µTorrent is closed source, there is no way of independently verifying whether the program contains spying code. The creator denies that there is any, and to date, no one has published evidence of μTorrent attempting to spy on a user's activities, which should be possible to detect—although impractical for most users—since an application's activity can be monitored for evidence of suspicious behavior without having the source, as shown by anti-virus companies who observe and analyze the behavior of trojans, rootkits and worms.

Is now worded as

Critics point out that since µTorrent is closed source, there is no way of independently verifying whether the program contains spying code.[citation needed] The creator denies that there is any, and to date, no one has published any evidence of such.

I agree the previous wasn't a good flowing sentence and contained unnecessary information. But although obvious to some I think it should be noted that while there is no way to independently verify the existence of spying code its still posible to detect spying activities through monitoring of a programs activities. Especially dialing home activity is easy to detect and is required for spyware to work at all. Even if µtorrent employs an extreme long dial home interval and stores gathered information before exchange it would be detectable through proper monitoring.

People not familiar with programming and/or networking will probably interpret the current wording of the Closed Source section as a warning for a strong likelihood of spyware being present in µtorrent.

[quaternions]

People not familiar with programming and/or networking will probably interpret the current wording of the Closed Source section as a warning for a strong likelihood of spyware being present in µtorrent.

Quite. And without evidence the whole lot needs junking until there is.

[Lord Alderaan]

I'd suggest adding the following to the section:

"It is posible to detect spying code activity through monitoring.{{fact}} Considering µTorrents many users and the technical knowledge and paranoia of some of its users it is unlikely the presence of spying code would go unnoticed for long."

But I'm unaware if the second sentence is against the wiki rules.

I'll just edit it and throw in a reply in the talk page.

[quaternions]

I can see what you are getting at, people always like to hear all sides...But there have been thousands of edits now, and citable evidence would have turned up by now if there was any.

Earlier in the thread i joked that Azureus and Bitcomet must have wrote the article cos it's so biased. But having read the Peerfactor section and seen the 15 page, 300 post battle between utorrent and slyck. I'm now inclined to think someone with a grudge from Slyck wrote everything biased in the article. Just my pet theory of course!

[Lord Alderaan]

I'll just edit it and add a bit to the talks page.

[quaternions]

I added a bit to the talk page.