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Please, show some respect. I heard he's being considered as Wikimedia Foundation's next Chief Operating Officer.
Somey: Of course it's the same guy. The video names Josh Zelinsky at the end, the pic is from Facebook (the full results merely add "Yale alum" after you log in), he talks about his fraternal-twin brother (who is also at Yale) on the video — I think even Durova could get this one right!
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I wonder what his point was in posting that to YouTube? He never does seem to get to any kind of point in his supposed "rant", other than sounding like a nerd. So, was his whole point to show the world what a nerd he is? That's not what gets respect from other nerds; you have to actually accomplish something, like creating a really neat computer program or Web site, to do that.
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QUOTE(Somey @ Mon 17th December 2007, 1:06am)
This is him, isn't it? This guy (on the left) looks enough like the photo on Hivemind...
To be fair, I feel it was wrong of Yale to permit an assignment that required students to video interview the most nerdiest student they could find. After all Josh has things to do with his time.
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It was posted by someone else, who has over 40 videos on YouTube. The mention of Hopkins in the context of Joshua's brother is a reference to Hopkins School, a local private school where Aaron graduated in 2002. Aaron graduated from Yale in '06, and Joshua graduated in '07. Aaron is now at Yale Law, class of 2010. Joshua has always been one year behind his fraternal-twin brother.
Aaron is apparently a popular student — the video mentions him as student body president of Hopkins. He was also a debater at Yale. It's possible that Joshua followed his brother into Yale Law, which would mean he started there just a few months ago, but I cannot find anything on this.
The fact that this post has more to say about Aaron than Joshua is no doubt something that has happened again and again to Joshua. Their family lives in New Haven, where Hopkins and Yale are located. I believe the parents are Edward A. and Doris Zelinsky, both of whom are notable. Maybe they'd like biographies in Wikipedia!
When Aaron gets his law degree, maybe he'll be a law-firm partner within a few years, and can hire Joshua to kick butt on vicious legal briefs. I don't think Joshua will be arguing much in front of juries.
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Y'know, I never thought I'd end up making a statement like this, but this is just such an obvious case, and somebody has to say it.
A long time ago, before I was a member here, there was a big brouhaha because two or three people - I think Lir was one of them, in fact - suggested that physically unattractive people can sometimes become unusually abusive online, more so than might otherwise be considered typical, as a form of subconscious retaliation for their feeling unwanted or unpopular. Needless to say, a lot of people felt this was insensitive and unfair, and indeed it was. But how can you look past something like this? It is, quite simply, a perfectly legitmate and logical explanation for his apparent near-hatred of well-known, successful people.
JoshuaZ has, on multiple occasions, stated that those whom "Wikipedia" considers "notable" not only deserve to be profiled in WP, they actually forfeit their rights to privacy if they became notable because of their own activities. Putting aside the obvious question of whether this means that the Wikipedians themselves therefore forfeit these same rights, one has to consider the chilling effect this might have on individuals who have socially beneficial ideas, but who might from now on keep those ideas to themselves - because they value their privacy too much to let it fall into the hands of a website full of anonymous goons with "Edit" buttons.
This statement, posted during the Angela Beesley DRV, showed up only a week ago (boldface mine):
I'd rather not have this DRV now but if we're going to have it now overturn. I continue to maintain my position that courtesy deletion for people who are ''willing public figures'' is uncalled for and almost ridiculous. I understand cases like Brian Peppers where the person in question has become notable in a completely unwilling fashion, but people who are notable precisely because they have injected themselves into public sphere simply do not have the same rights. Furthermore, in such cases we as a whole owe our readers to have articles about them. I find this particular disturbing in a case where the subject of the article has a website devoted to promoting herself.
Note the term "injected themselves into," which he added later when correcting a typo. It originally said "taken actions in." (They also would have added the word "the," of course.) Most people would use a term like "promoted themselves in," or simply "entered," but Josh here apparently sees the attainment of personal success and notoriety to be almost a form of parasitism.
(Even so, Angela Beesley hasn't "injected herself into the public sphere" in a personal sense. She was involved in the founding of a major website, sure, but that was hardly self-promotion. She also has a site of her own, but in a culture that values "transparency" as highly as Wikimedia does, she'd probably be considered suspect if she didn't maintain such a site.)
The idea that people like Joshua Zelinsky can make value judgements about a person's motivations in doing things that make him or her a public figure, deliberately or not, represents an extremely dangerous proposition. And even if we give JoshuaZ the benefit of the doubt on any given case, which I don't, the question of "willing notoriety" is beside the point. The point is that special considerations have to be made for a website that anyone can anonymously edit, which is run by people who are often prone to personal vendettas and revenge fantasies, and which has a near-ubiquitous presence on most major search engines.
But it seems as though he totally refuses to accept that one simple principle, no matter how often it's repeated - and not just by us, but by well-meaning, decent people on Wikipedia as well.
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I think he has a point, actually, in that when somebody intentionally involves themself in the public sphere, they inherently become, to some extent, fair game for commentary and criticism. I believe this in an evenhanded manner, meaning that it applies to Wikipedia bigshots and their critics alike.
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Uncharismatic people who are otherwise talented are likely to direct their talents toward endeavors which do not include meeting the public. The advent of text-based social networking cultures on the Internet may attract uncharismatic participants in the same way that careers in radio or print journalism attract participants who are not photogenic enough to be competitive on TV.
Joshua is no doubt quite familiar with the advice of Hillel, who said, "That which is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow man. That is the whole of the (Jewish) Law. All the rest is mere commentary."
Inversely, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
So, we've all taken a gander at Josh, and some would like to cook his goose in the spaghetti sauce du jour.
If there is an epiphany in this story for Josh, I imagine it might be the application of an instance of Hillel's Law, which suggests that totemic dominance hierarchies aren't quite so linear as one might initially imagine.
I dunno if Josh is an Aspie or not, but if he is, he might have a stronger abhorrence of being coerced than your average NeuroTypical. If so, it would behoove him to be mindful of Hillel's insight, and eschew the practice of coercing others who are lower down on the community totem pole.
Could you run through Verifiability not Truth once more?
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QUOTE(dtobias @ Mon 17th December 2007, 5:17pm)
I think he has a point, actually, in that when somebody intentionally involves themself in the public sphere, they inherently become, to some extent, fair game for commentary and criticism. I believe this in an evenhanded manner, meaning that it applies to Wikipedia bigshots and their critics alike.
Isn't that one of the Wikipedia problems though, they enjoy confusing commentary and criticism with privacy. As a simple example, challenging Slim on her editing on Wikipedia becomes stalking; challenge her ownership of Wikipedia, that is a personal attack. By confusing these issues, there is little ability for reasoned debate.
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Is it possible that this video is meant as a joke? No offense to Josh if this is what he's really like, but it seems like a very over the top nerd portrayal.
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QUOTE(Moulton @ Mon 17th December 2007, 12:59pm)
The references to obscure mathematics like the cardinality of infinity seem to be coming from direct personal familiarity, not a memorized script.
I agree. He mumbles the arcane stuff rather than calls deliberate attention to it. Plus that generalized motor agitation looks real to me, but maybe he just had to pee.
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QUOTE(dtobias @ Mon 17th December 2007, 11:17am)
I think he has a point, actually, in that when somebody intentionally involves themself in the public sphere, they inherently become, to some extent, fair game for commentary and criticism.
Commentary and criticism are one thing - a biography, written without the person's knowledge or consent, and claiming to be "neutral" but nevertheless subject to administrative caprice and anonymous public editing in general... is quite another. Not to mention the Google rankings!
QUOTE
I believe this in an evenhanded manner, meaning that it applies to Wikipedia bigshots and their critics alike.
Okay, but this second sentence doesn't seem to follow from the first...? Are you saying the WP big shots and critics themselves are fair game? If so, then that may be well be the case - but someone has to actually write the article first, and then convince them not to delete it.
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QUOTE(dtobias @ Mon 17th December 2007, 5:17pm)
I think he has a point, actually, in that when somebody intentionally involves themself in the public sphere, they inherently become, to some extent, fair game for commentary and criticism. I believe this in an evenhanded manner, meaning that it applies to Wikipedia bigshots and their critics alike.
He does have a point, but with a critical flaw: the trouble here is that WF is playing a legal game to avoid responsibility for what it publishes, and correspondingly hasn't developed any reliable mechanism for the quality control which would accompany this responsibility.
You may recall that the American tabloids got themselves in a heap of trouble (countable in dollars) for libelous coverage of entertainment figures. But even at their worst, the best-known tabloids are far more reliable than Wikipedia (a few are even downright trustworthy, even if their subject matter seems lowbrow.)
It's not that public figures have a generic right not to be written about - they don't. It's that Wikipedia's approach is uniquely heinous in its contempt for established principles of journalistic responsibility.
For example, if someone decides to create a giant billboard above the Hollywood freeway, upon which any random person may write in appropriately large letters anything they wish about Barbra Streisand, and the billboard owner denies responsibility for anything which appears there, however libelous, while dutifully maintaining the billboard itself, the law may well decide that it ought to be taken down. That's not equivalent to saying that one don't have the right to publish things about Barbra Streisand.
I'd rather not have this DRV now but if we're going to have it now overturn. I continue to maintain my position that courtesy deletion for people who are ''willing public figures'' is uncalled for and almost ridiculous. I understand cases like Brian Peppers where the person in question has become notable in a completely unwilling fashion,
Yeah, cause someone forced Brian Peppers to commit attempted gross sexual imposition on a minor. Please.
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QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Mon 17th December 2007, 5:46pm)
For example, if someone decides to create a giant billboard above the Hollywood freeway, upon which any random person may write in appropriately large letters anything they wish about Barbra Streisand, and the billboard owner denies responsibility for anything which appears there, however libelous, while dutifully maintaining the billboard itself, the law may well decide that it ought to be taken down. That's not equivalent to saying that one don't have the right to publish things about Barbra Streisand.
Sounds sensible. There is "contributory infringement" of copyright (federal case law). How about "contributory defamation" or "contributory invasion of privacy" under state laws? That will take some time, but Wikipedia will bring this to pass eventually, at the rate it's going. In the meantime, that billboard is an "attractive nuisance." For example, if you don't have a fence around your swimming pool, and some neighborhood kid wanders into it and drowns, that might be an "attractive nuisance" because it was attractive to children and a nuisance in an otherwise safe neighborhood. If your horse and buggy is parked and no one is watching it, and some two-year-old runs up and says, "Horsey!" and gets kicked in the head by the horse, that was an "attractive nuisance."
In the same way, Wikipedia is attractive to children of all ages, including Joshua, who want to edit biographies. These biographies get widely dispersed and are labeled "encyclopedic" by Wikimedia Foundation, and the servers are owned and maintained by the Foundation.
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QUOTE(Proabivouac @ Mon 17th December 2007, 6:46pm)
WF is playing a legal game to avoid responsibility for what it publishes, and correspondingly hasn't developed any reliable mechanism for the quality control which would accompany this responsibility.
Wikipedia's approach is uniquely heinous in its contempt for established principles of journalistic responsibility.
I tried, with notable lack of success, to inject into the Wikipedia culture a semblance of attention to normative standards for accuracy, excellence, and ethics in online media, especially with respect to biographies of living people.
Wikipedia rejected that as anathema to their community values.
QUOTE(everyking @ Mon 17th December 2007, 11:53am)
Is it possible that this video is meant as a joke? No offense to Josh if this is what he's really like, but it seems like a very over the top nerd portrayal.
No, to me it looks as if someone picked him for a reason. Didn't you know weird people in school that you would have picked for something like this?
Apparently this was Joshua.
Poor guy got held back a year in school for a reason. But unfortunately, he's taking out all his weird twisted aggression on people at Wikipedia. With a special focus on Daniel Brandt.
It gets worse. His fraternal brother is not only taller, smarter and clearly has social skills and popularity, but he's a handsome devil
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QUOTE(guy @ Sat 22nd December 2007, 4:22pm)
QUOTE(Moulton @ Sat 22nd December 2007, 2:40pm)
I'd be willing to be a character reference for him.
I can vouch for his character as a dedicated policeman on Wikipedia.
You can say that about a lot of people. Are they fair and competent?
That's a separable issue. It is customary to separate the police function from the judicial function.
More to the point, the police function is separable from the academic function of crafting encyclopedic articles that rise to a respectable level of accuracy, excellence, and ethics in online media.
QUOTE(everyking @ Mon 17th December 2007, 11:53am)
Is it possible that this video is meant as a joke? No offense to Josh if this is what he's really like, but it seems like a very over the top nerd portrayal.
Um. I think it was a joke. But of the unintentional kind, per Josh's point of view, and of the intentional kind by the video-maker's point of view. Didn't you see the guy cover his face up with Josh started lecturing him on animism vs. other forms of religion? This must be a daily life occurance for Joshua, that they've memorialized on cam.
Josh's brave attempt to claim he's making fun of them by being ironic does NOT wash.
Wikipedia must be the one place in the world he can take revenge on it (the world).
Apologies to Daniel, but you are the unfortunate target of this weird scenario.
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Joshua Zelinsky: The Video, How the heck did we miss this?
