Warning. Serious discussion of meta-issues. Please cover your head with a bag so that, if it explodes, the mess is confined. Be considerate of those who would have to clean up. Do not read if vulnerable to
Dog Vomit Slime Mold Syndrome, but ask someone who is immune or resistant to tell you about it.
QUOTE(Mathsci @ Tue 28th July 2009, 9:09am)
These initiation ceremonies are not designed to be easy, that's the whole point. They often require great courage.
Nah, that's my cabal, not Mathsci's. Mathsci's cabal is a
Majority POV-pushing cabal. "Majority" doesn't mean "majority of all editors," it means that the members are pushing a content POV which they view as being that of the "majority of scientists," when it is usually, more accurately, an easy opinion of the most editors who take interest in a topic, but who don't rely on review of the overall body of reliable source; an MPOV-pushing cabal is dangerous because it can easily drag along other editors who don't review the sources in detail. That's why it's not "courageous."
We all have difficulty distinguishing our own biases. That's why we need "fringe editors." Absolutely, they should not be allowed to control articles, but if we ban them for "Fringe POV-pushing," which often happens, we lose the ability to detect NPOV failure that favors a majority POV. For those who read carefully, these issues are coming out in the Workshop discussions, and, together with other evidence, it can be seen that the cabal doesn't trust the editorial community, it is opposed to determining NPOV by consensus. Instead, they believe, it's a job for administrators to enforce it. It's a rejected position, but there are enough editors holding this view, with enough administrators sticking to that position, that the cabal is very dangerous.
There are solutions to the structural problems that allow cabals (fringe or majority or even single editors, sometimes) to control articles, and the cabal vigorously opposes them, because they are able, with the status quo, to effectively control articles of interest to them, like Global warming. I tried editing "Cold reading" to make it NPOV. Immediately, cabal reversion. What I was doing with Cold reading was what had been hammered out as a consensus at "Psychic", a much more heavily watched article. The cabal loses when it's confronted patiently. We win when we take the time, which can only happen sometimes.
(I don't lose, in the end, because I don't pick conflicts that I'll lose on, though there is always a first time. Or, more accurately, I don't lose lately, I did have to test the limits, to see how far I could go with what I understand. And those early "losses," where I believe that the community simply wasn't ready yet, will lead to later work that will be successful. Am I arrogant? No, merely confident and assertive. I'm wrong, sometimes, and I drop those initiatives. Indeed, the fastest way to learn, I figured out long ago, was to be very publicly wrong, stick my foot in my mouth deeply enough that someone will actually drop the politeness and instead be truly helpful by pointing it out.)
QUOTE
I should add that at this present moment in time there are two things that CABAL cannot offer any assistance with:
(a) baldness
Not my problem, not yet, anyway. As normal for may age, the front hairline has receded pretty far, but it's still on my forehead. Perhaps if they do solve that baldness problem, I'll consider asking the cabal for assistance, assuming that hair made that much difference to me. The cabal is likely to solve this problem because they get a lot of practice with bald reverts. In addition, they have Mathsci, who may
be a bald revert.
QUOTE
(b) being or appearing to be a native Californian.
And proud of it. I left California, though, because it had gotten completely insane (before, it was merely crazy), way too expensive to live there, and I moved to Western Massachusetts, which is the California of the East Coast; an open, tolerant, highly educated, beautiful area, with rich cultural resources, world-class, far more affordable. And snow and a five-month winter. I haven't figured out of that's the good news or the bad news, but to this native Californian, it's certainly beautiful.
QUOTE
These have been the subject of long drawn out debates by the governing body of the CABAL, but all have been inconclusive. There is still a faint glimmer of hope that something can be done, but we're talking years, if not decades. (IMG:
smilys0b23ax56/default/idea.gif)
There is no governing body for the cabal, the collective intelligence of the cabal is the equivalent of slime mold. Its' dumber than its members.
You could reduce the "long-drawn out debates" by adopting some of the principles I've been proposing, you know, the ones you knee-jerk reject because you have two knees and are a jerk, like not debating proposals that haven't been seconded. That's for when you are trying to make a decision, not for mere open discussion. Or delegating discussion to a committee, which, on Wikipedia, simply would mean that an unpopular proposal doesn't get attention until, at least, two editors support it, and this really works if one of those editors is a supporter of the status quo. That way there isn't extensive debate over maintaining the status quo when there is only one challenger: the challenger is asked to find one editor who was part of the original consensus (or even one who wasn't a part of it) before it starts to get serious attention.
(And these are proposed in the RfAr as advice, not as regulation of behavior, which is what the cabal is trying to make out of it so that it will be rejected as obviously "not the way we do things." Damn straight it's not the way we do things, and we will never solve the existing problems if we are limited to "the way we do things." The cabal position is pretty much that the solution to existing problems is to ban those who cause them, not realizing that they are the cause of much, not all, of the existing problems. If we banned everyone whose behavior was a problem, we'd simply be left with a smaller set, among which some would then be the problem. It would be a collapsing fractal.)
Because there is no way to channel debate like this, and when there is a status quo to be maintained, irritation at long posts is understandable. In fact, with good process, there would be no problem. A long wild-hair post will get moved to a subpage for discussion, quickly, and only those willing to discuss it will join that page; when there are at least two editors in agreement on something new, they might bring it back to the main article talk page and explain what they agreed upon, briefly, with reference to the full discussion. So time isn't wasted reviewing stuff that isn't ready, doesn't have adequate source, etc.
This is, by the way, informal delegable proxy, the formal proposal, made in WP:PRX, which was just about a mechanism, not about how it would be used, simply sets up default, documented communications structures that allow natural caucuses to form rapidly in a more reliable way. (A natural caucus is like a cabal, but without the negative connotation; if a natural caucus functions to repress others, it's a true cabal.)
The cabal editors want to make it appear that the charges are ridiculous and, as well, uncivil, when "cabal," by itself is little more than an assertion that there is a faction that, acting collectively -- and simply following their natural opinions and friendships -- is violating policy an damaging the project. The individuals may not appear to be violating policy, considered individually. For example, cabals can easily tag-team revert, and that's how I first identified the cabal. (The cabal needs a specific name, so I'll name it after the original involved article, in the discovery, it's the Global warming cabal, and I think there might even be reliable source on this, WMC and Global warming have been discussed in the media. But it could also be named after ScienceApologist, consistently supported by the cabal, but I'd prefer to allow him to develop in peace, and naming it after an editor could allow us to imagine that if we simply control that editor, no more problem, which is how the cabal thinks, not me. Or the anti-Fringe cabal, but it's also anti-pseudoscience. Or the Holy Inquisition Cabal, because SA said that, if he were alive then, he'd be on their side, supporting majority point of view against heretics. That's telling, I think! (Is that still on his User page?)
The Holy Inquisition wasn't supporting NPOV, it was supporting Official Point of View against that of a tiny fringe, heretics. HIC. Maybe. But I'm sure some cabal members would be horrified. They do support Global warming (i.e., believe it's real -- as do I), but would certainly not support SA's view, explicitly stated. Another reason why I like SA. You know, I think some here, when I say I like WMC or, now, SA, think I'm being sarcastic. I'm not.
There is also the Keystone Cops Cabal, to reflect the fact that this cabal is not organized, which is obvious. They can act collectively, but only in a primitive and uncoordinated and unreliable way. Poor Woonpton cited the control of minor pseudoscience articles by fringe POV pushers as proof that there was no cabal. Nope. Not proof. Subtlety of thought is not a cabal trait, in general.
If the cabal were organized, there would have been no confrontation at ArbComm. It would be too smart to allow that, and if it saw an initiative coming that would have brought it before ArbComm, it would have headed it off. Risking exposure just to get rid of Abd, not worth it. "Let him edit Cold fusion, the cabal doesn't care enough about it, and where it matters, all it needs is for Enric Naval to let us know he needs help, and one or two editors will show up. In fact, Enric will contact those editors or put up someting on a noticeboard, no need to use the SuperSekriCabal communications channels, and we don't trust Enric to give him that information anyway. He's been known to cooperate with Abd." Instead, because of how the cabal exists and functions, they are diving in and expressing undisciplined opinions that reveal exactly what the problem is.
What's really amazing, because he's avoided it before, is how self-exposed Raul654 is. Does he really believe that ArbComm won't see what he's doing? He doesn't appear to be paying attention, he's provided evidence that is *blatantly* false, he's missed that there is already an unrecused arbitrator complaining about the Scibaby range blocks, so what does he do? Make a big fuss about a *single revert* of mine, restoring an edit, and legitimately, of an alleged Scibaby sock. And then he makes a big noise about it before ArbComm. It's like he's waving a big red flag, defying ArbComm to do something about it. I wasn't kidding about what happened at WikiConference New York. Raul654 is visible, but, when an editor is as deeply involved as Raul654 is, the project moves very, very slowly, and, in the meantime, the admin is burning out, becoming more and more likely to just do what he thinks with no consideration of consensus or policy, pure IAR. And highly biased IAR, which is the kind that if you are an ordinary editor, you are history almost immediately. I have no idea if ArbComm will take this on with anyone but WMC, but they might. If I have time, I'll be trying to make some simple proposals. It's not an easy problem, to be sure.
I'm actually
quite conservative about the wiki. What I'm supporting is pretty much the original vision, very much as expressed early on by Jimbo. It's reflected in the policies, where they represent the best thinking of a consensus, not necessarily where they merely reflect actual practice, which not uncommonly sucks where procedure sucks. This conflict between intent of the policies and actual practice is also an issue in this RfAr. There are a lot of issues there, for people who look. And, yes, it's getting very complex. That's what happens when a cabal is exercised to comment; the few editors involved on the other side are surrounded by comments from one source ("they are wrong"), developed by many writers, and this tends to trigger complex defensive responses. However, I have some tricks in mind. I get to redact everything I 've put up there,
even if there has been response to it. I just hide it in collapse or even delete it, leaving a reference to history. No concealment, but, ... a change in appearance.
They will complain, they already are complaining. They do
not want me to be "concise and clear." They just want me to be sanctioned for not being concise and clear. Heh! Raul is concise and totally stupid. Is stupidity sanctionable? No. Loss of an admin bit is not a sanction, it does not punish an editor (if that's all it is, it shouldn't happen); however, a stupid admin is dangerous to the project, therefore should not ba allowed to continue. On the other hand, ArbComm could set up procedures, easily, which would allow WMC and Raul, for example, to keep their admin bits, and this would be a generic solution to a difficult problem: admin burnout and retirement.
I am
not about punishing WMC or Raul or anyone for what came before. I'm very exactly and precisely about protecting the project so that it can make decisions in a non-disruptive and neutral way, by consensus. Maximized consensus. Quite a trick, if we can pull it off. If we do, we will be the largest active consensus organization on the planet that makes organization-wide decisions directly, and that could, indeed, have some real-world implications. (Alcoholics Anonymous is huge, millions of active members, but .. it makes very few organization-wide decisions, and it does so very slowly, through a super-majority elected Conference, which works just fine for them. Working decisions at the local level are made in face-to-face meetings by members deciding what
they will do, not anyone else, each meeting is a bit like a Wikipedia article, when WP process is working.)
Along the way, I might be able to undo some of the damage WMC and other cabal admins have done. Maybe. Not easy. However, if others join in this, it could all be done. I can do very little alone.
This post has been edited by Abd: 
Abd-William M. Connolley, The Cabal strikes back
Grep Abd-William M. Connolley 
