What is Cirt's Deal?, Did a Google Search for Cirt and Wikipedia and was shocked Options

[rockyBarton]

I have had a few encounters with an admin named Cirt who struck me as really territorial about certain articles. Curious, I did a Google search "Cirt wikipedia" and came up with several threads on this board. After having read them and I am shocked at the history of this editor and left wondering how someone like this can be an adminstrator.

Cirt edits more than 18 hours a day and 7 days a week to boot. How can anyone do that?

Given the number of hours Cirt edits and their anti-cult agenda, has anyone ever been suspicious that they are paid, or that the account is used by more than one person?

Doesn't Wikipedia have rules against this kind of thing?

This post has been edited by rockyBarton:

[Orderinchaos]

I think anyone who knows me would accept that I do nobody's bidding but my own. I accept that some will not agree with what I do (or even anything I do) on Wikipedia, but they will at least accept that I don't take the place seriously enough to fight others' battles. It's a waste of time and energy, and I've got plenty of offline stuff to spend that on these days.

What happened is very simple. I am an Australian politics editor and admin. A person (Pieter) started acting from a very strong POV or agenda within that space, just days after I'd managed to clear out a political party sockfarm in the beginning stages of an election year in Australia. I decided I was going to take a hard line against agendas, but to do so, needed to research to figure out where this was coming from. In doing so, I found a bunch of activity on two projects (including two debates) and substantial block logs there and elsewhere which showed form.

I was initially unwilling to intervene beyond simple debate participation because I had had a runin with Cirt in November last year. Oddly, we'd had our runin over exactly the same part of Australian politics, I felt a reliable if controversial Australian editor had been blocked unfairly, and I unblocked him. Cirt objected to this action on my part and ended up filing a conduct RfC against me demanding I be desysopped. It was later withdrawn.

Pieter's persistence was the main reason for my intervention. Rather than compromise or negotiate, he escalated, and set off every warning flag indicating workplace bullying from my time as an advocate in that area in an offline workplace. He appeared to be in the space for the sole reason of advancing the cause of Scientology, and this was in direct violation of the ArbCom case as well as various WP policies on neutrality. When he was prevented from advancing the cause, he set out on an all-out kamikaze mission to destroy his opponent in both projects. Hence, the AEs and my support of those, and the related Commons case involving his behaviour there.

Once the AE was concluded, I considered that matter settled - I have nothing against Pieter personally, and he has stopped bothering the Australian project, so I'm happy. I actually ended up coming down on Pieter's side in a dispute he was having with Physchim62 on a science-related dispute either one or two days after the AE had passed, primarily because on that occasion he was entirely right.

You will find that those (Nov 09 and the en/commons debacle) are the only two occasions prior to April 2010 in which Cirt and I had been in the same place at the same time. The DYK was a coincidence where I'd been told about the debate involving Mohammed by another admin, skim read it, offered an opinion, and only later realised that Cirt was involved.

I broadly agree with Kwork and several others above on the general situation.

This post has been edited by Orderinchaos:

[pietkuip]

Pieter's persistence was the main reason for my intervention. Rather than compromise or negotiate, he escalated, and set off every warning flag indicating workplace bullying from my time as an advocate in that area in an offline workplace. He appeared to be in the space for the sole reason of advancing the cause of Scientology.

Ludicrous. It was Cirt who was threatening and bullying. But yes, I was persistent, and I did not budge.

[Milton Roe]

Pieter's persistence was the main reason for my intervention. Rather than compromise or negotiate, he escalated, and set off every warning flag indicating workplace bullying from my time as an advocate in that area in an offline workplace. He appeared to be in the space for the sole reason of advancing the cause of Scientology.

Ludicrous. It was Cirt who was threatening and bullying. But yes, I was persistent, and I did not budge.

If you're "persistant and didn't budge," in defense of Scientology, you're not going to get much sympathy on WR. There aren't too many systems of believe nuttier than the one that runs WP, but Scientology qualifies.

Your phrase "threatening and bullying" seems to mean that Cirt got in your way. Così è la vita.

It was Cirt who wanted me out of the way. See for example his initial warnings here. This was followed by him reporting me on various administrator boards. Clearly someone who does not really believe in freedom of speech for opponents. But yes, such is life.

Such is life for anything controlled by Scientologists. Do you think THEY believe in "freedom of speech"? They do not-- they believe in barratry to destroy critics. I've seen them do it to a friend of mine, and that policy is real, not some idea I got out of rumor or the newspapers.

So if you have anything to do with defending Scientology, Pieter, I have only one message for you: Fuck You.

[Somey]

So if you have anything to do with defending Scientology, Pieter, I have only one message for you...

Well, he did say he isn't a Scientology person earlier in the thread, FWIW.

I believe there are a few WR members who are at least somewhat sympathetic towards Scientology as a quasi-religion, in a "live and let live" sort of way - Mr. HRIP7 probably being the clearest example IMO (he too says he's not a Scientologist; I think he states on his WP user page that he was a member of some sort of Indian spiritual organization at one point, though AFAIK Cirt and others consider him to be an active cult member.)

I personally don't like the Scientologists one little tiny bit, but y'know, if you're going to claim to be a "neutral encyclopedia," then sometimes you have to take the bad with the good - if only to avoid the appearance of egregious bias or even outright persecution (though strictly of the online variety in this case, of course). I actually felt that WP was doing a reasonable job of toeing that line during most of the 2007-2008 period, but that may have been more due to the pressure of an all-out CoS wiki-propaganda campaign than anything the WP Faithful were doing... Anyway, Mr. Cirt seems to be trying to change that, and has been for some time.

[HRIP7]

Jimbo seems to have woken up to the fact that Cirt is a POV pusher:

Talk page discussion at Everybody Draw Muhammad Day, one of Cirt's pet projects these last few weeks.

Related Commons discussion.