Hivemind, Alison vs. Daniel Brandt Options

[Jonny Cache]

Fuck you, Brandt

Go to hell, Brandt

Note the timestamps — You see, progress can be made! Perhaps by the next time Alison is on it will be "Darn you to heck, Brandt!"

Are you sure you are ranking the degrees of rancour properly?

The first is more ambivalent in its e-motion, if you ask me.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 21st March 2008, 5:11pm

[Knight]

So:

The redirect from Daniel Brandt is deleted:
log entry

Alison has been taken off Hivemind.
Hivemind

I'm kinda surprised by both...

[One]

The way Brandt is being treated over all this is an absolute disgrace. All Brandt wanted was for the redirect of his name to PIR to be deleted, and that way he could quite happily take Alison's information, which had been freely available on the internet, off hivemind at a politely worded request. So why is he being given the hate mob treatment?

That's fucking bullshit. He didn't even think to ask for demands until after he already put it on his website (see post #7). Read post #2 and it's clear that Alison was posted because he though she was up to something nefarious, having demonstrated an "intent to deceive."

I agree that she was hardly a state secret. Still, there are search costs involved. For what it's worth, I doubt anyone will benefit from the few hours it was up on Hivemind. "Genie. Bottle. Out." was a bit over dramatic.

Still, assholish thing to do. We don't have many people more sympathetic than her, and she keeps getting burned again and again for it.

This post has been edited by One: Fri 21st March 2008, 5:27pm

[Jonny Cache]

So:

The redirect from Daniel Brandt is deleted: log entry

Alison has been taken off Hivemind: Hivemind

I'm kinda surprised by both …

So you were born last, Knight —

What will be surprising is if things remain that way.

Jonny

[Somey]

I'm kinda surprised by both... :wacko:

I dunno... Daniel usually keeps his word when the other side agrees to a compromise, or gives him what he wants (choose your own phrasing, of course).

Maybe the cat is already too far out of the bag, as Alison says, but let's just say regardless that if someone posts that last name here, we're going to redact it ASAP. If necessary we can even add it to our profanity filter, though that might actually act as a confirmation mechanism for "certain people"...

Luckily, it's a common-enough name that the Google hits on it mostly lead to other people. I'd still like to see some effort on Alison's part to reduce her own exposure, but that's up to her of course. Wikipedia sooper-admin powarz should never be considered consequence-free by the people who have them, even if they're really, really nice people. Wikipedia is just too big and controversial for that, I'm afraid.

[dtobias]

I dunno... Daniel usually keeps his word when the other side agrees to a compromise, or gives him what he wants (choose your own phrasing, of course).

"Be reasonable... do it my way!"
(one of the slogans on a set of stickers included as a bonus insert in a Mad Magazine special back in the 1970s)

[wikiwhistle]

. Wikipedia sooper-admin powarz should never be considered consequence-free by the people who have them, even if they're really, really nice people. Wikipedia is just too big and controversial for that, I'm afraid.

If that's the case, it just risks making critics of wikipedia appear like cruel, wierd tossers, having a go at decent people. There are enough examples of abuse on wikipedia for them to be highlighted without going after individual editors who've never done those at WR any harm, particularly.

If we make WP lose editors or their contributions decrease due to intimidation/winding people up, it just plays into Wikipedias hands for them to be able to say their critics are troublemakers and nutters going after people at random, rather than genuine critics.


As to removing info from online about oneself, that's quite difficult to do sometimes.

[Jonny Cache]

OOTMOB —

As to removing info from online about oneself, that's quite difficult to do sometimes.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 21st March 2008, 6:08pm

[jorge]

Why is it okay for Wikipedia to post people's pictures and information but not Brandt?

Exactly. At least Brandt's bios can't have "facts" added to them by anonymous vandals, pranksters, old enemies and acquaintances etc. Maybe wikipedians should start thinking about whether they would really want a "biography" of themselves on wikipedia and if they wouldn't then maybe they should start treating biographies in a little more responsible manner i.e. only being editable by established users, perhaps creating another layer of user, "trusted user" so it wouldn't just be based on edit count and removing biographies of people who are not famous.

[SirFozzie]

Actually, jorge, I'm working on something to fix that issue going forward. Was actually working on it with ColScott when this whole thing blew up. He didn't mind it, actually, and neither have any of the admins who's commented on it yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SirFozzie/BLP-Lock

[Kato]

This is the lesson to be learned from this affair

Exactly. At least Brandt's bios can't have "facts" added to them by anonymous vandals, pranksters, old enemies and acquaintances etc. Maybe wikipedians should start thinking about whether they would really want a "biography" of themselves on wikipedia and if they wouldn't then maybe they should start treating biographies in a little more responsible manner i.e. only being editable by established users, perhaps creating another layer of user, "trusted user" so it wouldn't just be based on edit count and removing biographies of people who are not famous.

[One]

Actually, jorge, I'm working on something to fix that issue going forward. Was actually working on it with ColScott when this whole thing blew up. He didn't mind it, actually, and neither have any of the admins who's commented on it yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SirFozzie/BLP-Lock

Um, admins sympathetic to your cause say it's too complicated. Simplify--for example, why six months? Make it permanent.

[SirFozzie]

Look at version 2.. I say a mininum of six months, but I have no problem with making it permanent.

[One]

Look at version 2.. I say a mininum of six months, but I have no problem with making it permanent.

Unless we really think it's a good idea to encourage contentious requests for unprotection every six months, this shouldn't be an option. There should be only three ways to get off of BLP-LOCK:

1. Death.
2. Bona fide paper encyclopedia notability.
3. The subject's consent.

Moreover, the ORTS formality seems silly. If that's what it takes to get it passed, fine, but I'm sure we'll just write a script to complain about every biography on the project. I think it would be easier just to allow anyone (not just admins) to request BLP-LOCK on an article for any reason, so long as none of the three conditions is true. Biographies that the subject doesn't know about are no less potentially defamatory than ones they've already come to hate. In fact--I suspect that unknown biographies are more likely to be outlandishly libelous.

[Jonathan]

The way Brandt is being treated over all this is an absolute disgrace. All Brandt wanted was for the redirect of his name to PIR to be deleted, and that way he could quite happily take Alison's information, which had been freely available on the internet, off hivemind at a politely worded request. So why is he being given the hate mob treatment?

That's fucking bullshit. He didn't even think to ask for demands until after he already put it on his website (see post #7). Read post #2 and it's clear that Alison was posted because he though she was up to something nefarious, having demonstrated an "intent to deceive."

I agree that she was hardly a state secret. Still, there are search costs involved. For what it's worth, I doubt anyone will benefit from the few hours it was up on Hivemind. "Genie. Bottle. Out." was a bit over dramatic.

Still, assholish thing to do. We don't have many people more sympathetic than her, and she keeps getting burned again and again for it.

I believe his key quotes are:

All this is in stark contrast to her claim that stalking is a problem.

and

I believe we've been hoodwinked through the use of clever over-dramatization, and that the Amorrow issue in particular, and the "stalking" issue in general, is a red herring that's used to slap down Wikipedia's critics whenever the occasion arises.

I believe Brandt's issue was that she made a whole song and dance about "stalking" and yet the fact remained that she still rather voluntarily had personal information about herself on the Web, which, if she was truly trying to prevent any kind of way of people finding out information on her, is quite clearly a Non Sequitar. Thus, by that stream of logic, Brandt felt that what Alison was doing was looking for ways to silence WP Critics by using the "stalking" angle, thereby feeling that that made her suspicious. To me, this is KateFan0 all over again. The lynch mob pile into Brandt, ignoring the more in-depth facts about the WP:User involved. Yes, maybe Alison was a saint and the epitome of that all is great and wonderful, but Brandt had a hunch she was looking to mislead people about WP Critics and since she was tampering with the PIR article and its redirects that made her fair game in my view.

EDIT: Also on the "Alison being banned" thing, aren't there rules preventing personal attacks outside the Tar Pit? Had Alison, as well as SirFozzie and Dan Tobias chosen to make their personal attacks there, I would have had less of an issue, but they knowingly made their insults in the General section.

This post has been edited by Jonathan: Fri 21st March 2008, 10:19pm

[everyking]

Look at version 2.. I say a mininum of six months, but I have no problem with making it permanent.

Unless we really think it's a good idea to encourage contentious requests for unprotection every six months, this shouldn't be an option. There should be only three ways to get off of BLP-LOCK:

1. Death.
2. Bona fide paper encyclopedia notability.
3. The subject's consent.

Moreover, the ORTS formality seems silly. If that's what it takes to get it passed, fine, but I'm sure we'll just write a script to complain about every biography on the project. I think it would be easier just to allow anyone (not just admins) to request BLP-LOCK on an article for any reason, so long as none of the three conditions is true. Biographies that the subject doesn't know about are no less potentially defamatory than ones they've already come to hate. In fact--I suspect that unknown biographies are more likely to be outlandishly libelous.

It would be ludicrous and mean mass destruction for the project if this was implemented without requiring that the subject complain first, and that the subject be of genuinely marginal notability (not just "below paper standard").

[Milton Roe]

EDIT: Also on the "Alison being banned" thing, aren't there rules preventing personal attacks outside the Tar Pit? Had Alison, as well as SirFozzie and Dan Tobias chosen to make their personal attacks there, I would have had less of an issue, but they knowingly made their insults in the General section.

Is that a rule here?? Thank you. I've been here 3 weeks (I know it seems like longer to the rest of you ) and I missed it. Would be nice if this was somewhere in a FAQ for newbies...

So that's why threads observing that some WP personality is a fucktard get moved to a different section!

[Herschelkrustofsky]

...aren't there rules preventing personal attacks outside the Tar Pit? Had Alison, as well as SirFozzie and Dan Tobias chosen to make their personal attacks there, I would have had less of an issue, but they knowingly made their insults in the General section.

We don't have a "no personal attacks" rule the way that Wikipedia does. What we do have is a policy against boring and annoying our readers. But since we also have a policy against censorship, the tar pits serve as a receptacle for posts which, in the judgment of the moderators, would try the patience of our readership.

There has been a certain amount of snarling and shrieking on this thread, but in my opinion, the give-and-take has been generally of interest to the public. Several posters have called attention to the profusion of epithets, and there may be some speculation as to why they are being used so liberally.

So that's why threads observing that some WP personality is a fucktard get moved to a different section!

See above. For further clarification, see our provisional posting rules.

[Alison]

[..] and since she was tampering with the PIR article and its redirects that made her fair game in my view. [..]

O RLY? Please show me where I did that. I'd really like to see it.

[SirFozzie]

It's your evil clone, Alison! (although how female evil clones can be determined is not yet apparent to me.., at least with guys you can look for the "evil clone goatee"....)