QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Mon 29th October 2007, 7:30am)
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There is a
discussion in the so-called "Tar Pit and Feather Barrel" of
The Wikipedia Review that touches — off and on, hot and cold — on the Matter of Evil, a thing or two about which I have a thing or three to say...
For the benefit of non-members who can't read the material being referred to, it's not quite so bad as one's imagination might lead one to believe...
Nobody is saying "Wikipedia is Evil" in any sort of objective sense, for example. Well, maybe one or two people are saying that, but the point is, most people here aren't accusing the WP'ers of acting out of malice or a genuine desire to hurt people, though there are always going to be exceptions. The problem, really, is what are they doing about the exceptions?
The most recent example is
this WikiEN-L post by Josh "User:JoshuaZ" Zelinsky. He claims to be monitoring "reliable sources" on an ongoing basis, waiting for Daniel Brandt (
and should I assume others as well? the mind reels!) to "slip up" and do something "notable" so that they can put the article about him back up on Wikipedia, and go back to
sticking it to him - just like the good ol' days!
So the question becomes, is ol' Josh merely yet another far-gone sociopath, or is he genuinely
evil, in the objective, demonic, anti-conventional-morality sense?
We also have to bear in mind that in the post-9/11 era,
evil is the new bad. The term gets casually tossed around more than iceberg lettuce 'n' croutons.
I've pointed out Josh's similarity to a rogue artificial-intelligence construct many times, and now it looks like they've programmed a whole bunch of new "attack mode" subroutines into him. I imagine the programmer is having a good time, at least. But as I wrote in the other thread, until they fix that, you can't ask me to be impressed with
any of the erstwhile-good things they do individually, because it simply will never be enough to overcome that kind of mentality. User:JoshuaZ may be the worst Wikipedia has to offer, but as long as people like him remain there, they'll continue to be a sick community.
(The maxim is "Hanlon's Razor," by the way, and in this case at least, it doesn't apply - JoshuaZ and his programmers know exactly what they're doing.)