Election results, Voting has begun Options

When someone like Ryan Postlethwaite can write a load of bullshit about Cool Hand Luke "outing" someone on WR, to scupper his bid - and onlookers who don't know any better have taken the bait - the process is completely screwed.

It's the anti-intellectualism at work (no references, nothing, from RP -- just the tip of his worthless poison pen). Bad enough bullshit like this is mangling the encyclopedia proper. But one might think the jokers would care a tiny bit more about this problem during their elections...

It's the anti-intellectualism at work (no references, nothing, from RP -- just the tip of his worthless poison pen). Bad enough bullshit like this is mangling the encyclopedia proper. But one might think the jokers would care a tiny bit more about this problem during their elections...

If you want real ACE2008-related anti-intellectualism (in its purest tl;dr sense) check out these rockheaded rationales from Will Connolley and Misza18.

And if you think I'm sore b/c they voted against TFMWNCB, it's simply not so. TFM (so he tells me) appreciates votes from people who actually read his answers to questions.

It's the anti-intellectualism at work (no references, nothing, from RP -- just the tip of his worthless poison pen). Bad enough bullshit like this is mangling the encyclopedia proper. But one might think the jokers would care a tiny bit more about this problem during their elections...

If you want real ACE2008-related anti-intellectualism (in its purest tl;dr sense) check out these rockheaded rationales from Will Connolley and Misza18.

And if you think I'm sore b/c they voted against TFMWNCB, it's simply not so. TFM (so he tells me) appreciates votes from people who actually read his answers to questions.

Obesity, it is the negative stereotyping of large or big-boned people what is teh probelm, now if your chum TFMWNCB were called ''I look and sound like George Clooney, srsly'', an teh voters could have imagined the suave mellifuous tones of the cool ER doc/Ocean dude carressing their questions, you'd have been a shoo-in ~~~~

I enjoyed the signing of your post, Casliber.

ChrisO comment on Jayvdb page is incredibly stupid, making it appear that the opposition against him is due to some conflicts between Azeri and Iranian users. Just because he had some problem with some Iranian users he's making an ignorant and misleading comment. Well ChrisO, if you happen to read here, ask John what was behind his work on legislations regulating copyright in Azerbaijan on Wikisource. Ask him why he killed a formal mediation between a group of users, or his ''innocent'' contributions about Caucasian Albanian matters in support of a documentable lobbying organization established on Wikipedia. Invite him here at WR so that he dare making the claims he makes on his page about AA affairs and see how he's been dishonest.

If you are really fighting to have accurate content on Wikipedia you will put aside your personal vendetta's and search the real rational behind the opposition.

If you check, you will see the oppositions comming from Armenian, Assyrian, Persian, Kurdish and Greek etc. members, because he had acted hand in hand with an ultranationalist Azerbaijani organization who is pushing fringe theories over Wikipedia. You're voting to give such a user access to the arbitration mailing list as well as CU access.

This post has been edited by Xidaf: Wed 3rd December 2008, 7:25pm

ChrisO comment on Jayvdb page is incredibly stupid, making it appear that the opposition against him is due to some conflicts between Azeri and Iranian users. Just because he had some problem with some Iranian users he's making an ignorant and misleading comment. Well ChrisO, if you happen to read here, ask John what was behind his work on legislations regulating copyright in Azerbaijan on Wikisource. Ask him why he killed a formal mediation between a group of users, or his ''innocent'' contributions about Caucasian Albanian matters in support of a documentable lobbying organization established on Wikipedia. Invite him here at WR so that he dare making the claims he makes on his page about AA affairs and see how he's been dishonest.

If you are really fighting to have accurate content on Wikipedia you will put aside your personal vendetta's and search the real rational behind the opposition.

If you check, you will see the oppositions comming from Armenian, Assyrian, Persian, Kurdish and Greek etc. members, because he had acted hand in hand with an ultranationalist Azerbaijani organization who is pushing fringe theories over Wikipedia. You're voting to give such a user access to the arbitration mailing list as well as CU access.

There appears to be some canvassing going on among a certain group of editors trying to sink John's candidacy. Seven editors showed up today to oppose who didn't meet the eligibility criteria. That's a smoking gun.

My experience with Eastern European nationalists (no matter what the stripe) is that they view promoting the superiority of their own national creed to be of such great importance that it abrogates lesser rules. They will therefore blithely disregard rules that stand in the way of doing so, while at the same time manipulating such rules to the detriment of their identified enemies. Every Eastern European nationalist I've encountered doing this is flatly and utterly convinced that their actions (no matter how outrageous they might seem to one not committed to their cause) are absolutely beyond reproach. Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply a shill for the opposition.

I'm reasonably convinced that's what's going on here. This is one of Wikipedia's unsolvable problems, in that solving it requires banning, quite frankly, most of Eastern Europe (and a good fraction of expats from Eastern Europe), which simply isn't going to happen.

For a good time, try reading one of the Wikipedias in one of the national languages from one of these countries. You'll get a really interesting twist on "neutral point of view", especially on the projects where admins are empowered to decide content disputes and block people who come out on the wrong side thereof.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...om_elections.3F

Someone's having a great vacation.

A chart of the vote, generated by ST47:

My experience with Eastern European nationalists (no matter what the stripe) is that they view promoting the superiority of their own national creed to be of such great importance that it abrogates lesser rules. They will therefore blithely disregard rules that stand in the way of doing so, while at the same time manipulating such rules to the detriment of their identified enemies. Every Eastern European nationalist I've encountered doing this is flatly and utterly convinced that their actions (no matter how outrageous they might seem to one not committed to their cause) are absolutely beyond reproach. Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply a shill for the opposition.

I'm reasonably convinced that's what's going on here. This is one of Wikipedia's unsolvable problems, in that solving it requires banning, quite frankly, most of Eastern Europe (and a good fraction of expats from Eastern Europe), which simply isn't going to happen.

For a good time, try reading one of the Wikipedias in one of the national languages from one of these countries. You'll get a really interesting twist on "neutral point of view", especially on the projects where admins are empowered to decide content disputes and block people who come out on the wrong side thereof.

Kelly, I am preparing an answer to the concerns raised and will be posting it soon. I just assure that after readers see what John has done they will stop claiming this to be an ethnic conflict. Just wait.

This post has been edited by Xidaf: Thu 4th December 2008, 2:47am

PART I

I will be answering this and what has been addressed on WP because this is becoming rather intimidating. The ''Armenian Block'' claim is totally ridiculous, over half of those users already knew even before John was to run that he was going to run and were waiting to oppose. Both Iranian opposes and Armenian opposes have nothing or very little thing to do with each others.
On the CU request, those who are close to the topics know that most users there are legitimate (I cannot say all, because I didn<t know the existance of many of them), rejecting members just because they happen to be Armenian, Iranian, is the very same reason why this has degenerated this far, because the problems concerning those issues have been very badly handled and tagged by the ethnicity of the contributors.

I had decided to not dig John participation because I did not want others to think that that was vendetta but the way things are handled as if this is a baseless concern force me to.

See this edit here. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=156399477

John is requesting to throw the article for deletion or redirecting it(which in this case will be equivalent to delete). Let’s see when he requested it; this was the state of the article when he requested it: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=157370321

The 19 footnotes in question were in reference to his ethnicity. If you check the history of the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=history You will find out the several socks (organized by Adil Baguirov) who fought on this claiming him to be Albanian. As a result 19 sources were provided to stop the edit war. After providing that much references, not only does John request it deletion by also claim to write ‘’Armenian or Albanian’’. The period which he wrote (the author which the article is about) Albanian (Caucasian Albania, nothing to do with current Albanians) was indicative of the region of Albania rather than an ethnicity. John other contributions suggest that he knew that, the article created about Caucasian Albanians shows this. The article was created by Haji, while there were some legitimate concerns about the article itself given the hasty way it was build, the subject was legitimate and Haji was working on it to address those issues. Grandmaster comes and continues the vote, 14 minutes later John vote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...asian_Albanians

A group of users which Grandmaster is part of have done everything to prevent any articles about the term Caucasian Albanians which would require to add about the fact that after the 5th century the term Albanian was rather referred to individuals from the region of Caucasian Albania than an ethnicity. They rather created articles about the Udi, they even forked the article and created nearly two identical articles about the same thing. When one of the two copies was posted for deletion they opposed in mass. An administrator deleted it obviously because it was a copy.

The request for deletion which John engaged in, and his comment there shows a particular understanding from his part of the position of the lobbying group run by Adil Baguirov and another member (name to be disclosed privately) of Wikipedia, Atabek. See more here his reply. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=165621208

Those who don’t know the subject will find nothing here, but this is on the surface. What is behind that reveals more. The same lobbyist group advance the theory that all Albanian books (to explain why those books were written in Armenian during that period) were destroyed and burned after being translated in Armenian. Probably the last volume was written by another person indeed. But the fact is his knowledge of this particular information which is used by the lobbying group to question the original language and the person why wrote it. First part, written mostly by an ethnic Albanian, then an Armenian taking the first part translating it, destroying the original and finishing it. That basically sums the claim.

There are many things which links John with this group (which presence like I repeat is documentable). For now I don’t have time to type the rest, I will be doing it bit by bit, including why Iranian members oppose John (concerns which are legitimate too)

I advice those who throw stones and make baseless charges to wait... before throwing stones.

I will also ask to ChrisO to step down at commenting about something which he totally ignore about and not make this as vendetta because he had conflict with Iranian users. The reason those users oppose to John, has nothing to do directly with articles or actions by John directly relating to their contribution.

This post has been edited by Xidaf: Thu 4th December 2008, 4:48am

If any candidate I have already supported (or indicated I would support but haven't yet done so) asks me to change my support of them to an oppose of them in order to counteract this sort of skewing that they consider unfair to other candidates, and to keep the relative standings properly balanced, I will do so (marking my oppose as an offsetting one done at request of the candidate I'm opposing). And... respect them a great deal to boot. It would send a strong message to those block voting that elections should be carried on the strength of the candidates, not on ethnic rivalries or BADSITES dramas. Anyone else willing to do so, or is this a crazy idea? ++Lar: t/c 03:23, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

After reading this stupid answer comming from Lar, an alleged respected member of the community I rest my case. I won't continue posting anything else about the subject.

Just for your information, I have emailed two members who had something against him to oppose. That's all the canvassing I did, a huge sin, since I have no right to vote.

Abusive Sockpuppeteer and known canvasser JoshuaZ proposes that email checks be made on the accused.

This may be a bad idea but I thought it should be at least put up for consideration: As I understand it, it is now possible to verify which Wikipedia email user functions were recently used with whom. Could the people with that capability (checkuser or maybe just developers?) look at that and see if there is any evidence of using it directly to canvass to these users? JoshuaZ (talk) 04:52, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. That is a bad idea.

Why can't they just accept that a bunch of people didn't like a decision this guy made, for whatever reason, and voted oppose. As is apparently their right? Jayjg has been orchestrating these kinds of things all over the site for years, with impunity and under everyone's nose. That is the system you operate in - like it or leave it.

I mean, it isn't anywhere near as bad as those Cool Hand Luke opposes, which came from people being duped by a malicious smear attempt by Ryan Postlethwaite.

They can use any tools they want on my account and check if I ever sent anything to anyone beside two emails which I don't remember if they were sent through Wikipedia.

Besides, Cool Hand Luke opposes were vendetta's, while John is opposed because he is not trusted to access CU and arbitrators mailing list. Lar is actually proposing to undo users vote by supporting someone that they don<t want to support, while opposers really wanted to oppose him.

Abusive Sockpuppeteer and known canvasser JoshuaZ proposes that email checks be made on the accused.

This may be a bad idea but I thought it should be at least put up for consideration: As I understand it, it is now possible to verify which Wikipedia email user functions were recently used with whom. Could the people with that capability (checkuser or maybe just developers?) look at that and see if there is any evidence of using it directly to canvass to these users? JoshuaZ (talk) 04:52, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah. That is a bad idea.

Why can't they just accept that a bunch of people didn't like a decision this guy made, for whatever reason, and voted oppose. As is apparently their right? Jayjg has been orchestrating these kinds of things all over the site for years. That is the system you operate in - like it or leave it.

I mean, it isn't anywhere near as bad as those Cool Hand Luke's opposes, which came from people being duped by a malicious smear attempt by Ryan Poslethwaite.

This post has been edited by Xidaf: Thu 4th December 2008, 5:34am

Besides, Cool Hand Luke opposes were vendetta's, while John is opposed because he is not trusted to access CU and arbitrators mailing list.

I expect some people will say exactly the opposite... that the CHL opposes are good faith concerns and the Jayvdb opposes are vendettas.

I expect the truth is that there is some of each motive present for opposes of both candidates.

As for my suggestion, I don't think you've quite gotten the point of it yet.

Besides, Cool Hand Luke opposes were vendetta's, while John is opposed because he is not trusted to access CU and arbitrators mailing list.

I expect some people will say exactly the opposite... that the CHL opposes are good faith concerns and the Jayvdb opposes are vendettas.

I expect the truth is that there is some of each motive present for opposes of both candidates.

As for my suggestion, I don't think you've quite gotten the point of it yet.

Well I did, I just believe the analogy is not quite there. Several of the users there knew before the presentation of the candidates that John will present himself. After fixing the Azerbaijan's copyright issue he came here to ''fix'' policy. His platform include many issues which will make it hard to address real things. An example being that before accepting a case the scope should be made clear This way of reducing the scope was what was the main problem with AAI, AAII and Ehid_Lesar. I provided those things and several others to the two members I ''canvassed''. Those who opposed know why they opposed. They do not trust him access to CU and arbitrators mailing list, if he can become an arbitrator without such access, I can tell you that some members I know could change their votes. But brushing away votes this way just does not do it.

This post has been edited by Xidaf: Thu 4th December 2008, 6:19am

Besides, Cool Hand Luke opposes were vendetta's, while John is opposed because he is not trusted to access CU and arbitrators mailing list.

I expect some people will say exactly the opposite... that the CHL opposes are good faith concerns and the Jayvdb opposes are vendettas.

I expect the truth is that there is some of each motive present for opposes of both candidates.

As for my suggestion, I don't think you've quite gotten the point of it yet.

I wonder what Jayvdb's motives were for opposing his closest rival's bids and then voting for Jehochman? The first seems like poor sportsmanship, the second like poor judgment. It has also been suggested that it was the opposition of potential rivals that spurred his downward spiral, not these phantom Eastern European canvassers.

And the guy didn't even bother answering your questions Lar - so there is no clue as to what he thinks about the crucial issues of Wikipedia. Rather than moaning about some phantom opposers on admin pages, why isn't he spending time answering them?

The guys crucial issues have nothing to do with Wikipedia.

Besides, Cool Hand Luke opposes were vendetta's, while John is opposed because he is not trusted to access CU and arbitrators mailing list.

I expect some people will say exactly the opposite... that the CHL opposes are good faith concerns and the Jayvdb opposes are vendettas.

I expect the truth is that there is some of each motive present for opposes of both candidates.

As for my suggestion, I don't think you've quite gotten the point of it yet.

I wonder what Jayvdb's motives were for opposing his closest rival's bids and then voting for Jehochman? The first seems like poor sportsmanship, the second like poor judgment.

And the guy didn't even bother answering your questions Lar - so there is no clue as to what he thinks about the crucial issues of Wikipedia.

It looks like at least some of this election is going to descend into outright farce. I think one way to fix this, as Gomi suggested in another thread, is to use secret balloting. Although it won't prevent canvassing, it would make it harder to game the system by tactical opposes/supports and it would help prevent pile-on voting like what happened with Ryan's comments on CHL's and Neil's pages. The final vote tallies would just need to be announced before Jimbo made his appointment announcement.