Shoemaker's Holiday flames out Options

[carbuncle]

There seems to have been some kind of feud going on between Shoemaker's Holiday and Durova over image restorations and something called "the WikiCup". If I understand the gist of the discussions on Talk:Featured picture candidates,

• Shoemaker's Holiday felt that Durova was cheating,
• Durova told him to fuck off during a conversation which had been recorded by Shoemaker's Holiday,
• Shoemaker's Holiday uploaded the recording,
• it was oversighted as copyvio,
• Shoemaker's Holiday started throwing around accusations that "Durova has a corrupt oversighter in her pocket",
• Durova referenced SH's Adam Cuerden account on commons which SH took as outing,
• SH's head explodes all over WP:AN

Here's the short-lived AN discussion in full

What the fuck is going on here?

I was outed by Durova on WT:FPC. I've asked for it to be oversighted SIX FUCKING DAYS ago.

WHY hasn't anything been done? Has Wikipedia decided to throw out all its policies?

FURTHER VIOLATIONS OF POLICY IN THE LAST WEEK

* Wikipedia:Deletion_review#List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming is ful of votes that go directly against the Deletion guidelines.

* [5] as oversighted oin defiance of WP:OVBRSIGHT. Thje oversighters say that it is accepted, but couldn't damn well be bothered to change their stated rules, then complained about how horrible I was to ppoint out that it was against the stated rules after waiting three days for an explanation from the oversighter in question.

* As discussed on WT:FPC, Duroa attacked me off-site in an attempt to suppress dissent on her Featured picture nominations. When I brought it up, they said they didn't even want to see the evidence.


WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE? CAN'T WIKIPEDIA FOLLOW IT'S OWN DAMN POLICIES ANYMORE?! Shoemaker's Holiday talk 17:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

* Please calm down, thanks. Majorly talk 17:30, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

* And to answer your question: It never did. And not everyone's interpretation of THE RULES is the same as yours. WP:TRUTH might be useful. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:32, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

STOP FUCKING AROUND AND OVERSIGHT THE FUCKING OUTING Shoemaker's Holiday talk 17:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

[indent]This sounds like something more suited for email to arbcom-l-at-lists.wikimedia.org, arbcom-audit-en-at-lists.wikimedia.org, or cu-ombuds-l-at-lists.wikimedia.org, since discussion at this noticeboard is likely to lead to further details being disclosed in the course of discussion that may prejudice future claims of anonymity. MBisanz talk 17:35, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Jehochman wisely removed the thread soon after. SH hasn't been active since early November.

[gomi]

Shoemaker's Holiday (T-C-L-K-R-D) has been showing a penchant for histrionics ever since "health problems" meant he was "unable to go to university this year," which seems to have resulted in "a complete breakdown" that Durova was "fully aware of." ...

Out of two people, one of whom is Durova, I would never have imagined the other person being labeled the drama-magnet (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

... I would say Durova is more like a large piece of drama-iron who is irresistibly attracted to drama-magnets, ... she ... only deliberately gets involved in them and draws more unnecessary attention to them, often not for the general betterment of all.

I suppose the answer to this is so obvious as to make it a non-question, but why is it that the Wikipedia drama-mongers, drama-whores, etc are all, to some significant degree, bent, damaged, or broken people? I mean, they can't go to college because of some unspecified health problem, or they edit in bizarre 36-hour stretches, they've been disbarred, they're philanderers or they fondle animals, or they're nationalist or religious zealots. It goes on and on.

I'll answer my own question: I suppose the bizarre, broken, damaged people drive the normal ones out, and any normal people who persist can be expected to keep a low profile, out of natural reticence and also self-preservation. But still. It's so much worse than one would expect.

[GlassBeadGame]

Shoemaker's Holiday (T-C-L-K-R-D) has been showing a penchant for histrionics ever since "health problems" meant he was "unable to go to university this year," which seems to have resulted in "a complete breakdown" that Durova was "fully aware of." ...

Out of two people, one of whom is Durova, I would never have imagined the other person being labeled the drama-magnet (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

... I would say Durova is more like a large piece of drama-iron who is irresistibly attracted to drama-magnets, ... she ... only deliberately gets involved in them and draws more unnecessary attention to them, often not for the general betterment of all.

I suppose the answer to this is so obvious as to make it a non-question, but why is it that the Wikipedia drama-mongers, drama-whores, etc are all, to some significant degree, bent, damaged, or broken people? I mean, they can't go to college because of some unspecified health problem, or they edit in bizarre 36-hour stretches, they've been disbarred, they're philanderers or they fondle animals, or they're nationalist or religious zealots. It goes on and on.

I'll answer my own question: I suppose the bizarre, broken, damaged people drive the normal ones out, and any normal people who persist can be expected to keep a low profile, out of natural reticence and also self-preservation. But still. It's so much worse than one would expect.

This why I like the word "monster" to describe Ms. Durova and other like her. The word has two important aspects. First the idea of deformity and distortion. Second, most related to the words origin, the making a show or display. Almost a perfect word to describe them.

[Wiki Witch of the West]

Shoemaker's Holiday (T-C-L-K-R-D) has been showing a penchant for histrionics ever since "health problems" meant he was "unable to go to university this year," which seems to have resulted in "a complete breakdown" that Durova was "fully aware of." ...

Out of two people, one of whom is Durova, I would never have imagined the other person being labeled the drama-magnet (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

... I would say Durova is more like a large piece of drama-iron who is irresistibly attracted to drama-magnets, ... she ... only deliberately gets involved in them and draws more unnecessary attention to them, often not for the general betterment of all.

I suppose the answer to this is so obvious as to make it a non-question, but why is it that the Wikipedia drama-mongers, drama-whores, etc are all, to some significant degree, bent, damaged, or broken people? I mean, they can't go to college because of some unspecified health problem, or they edit in bizarre 36-hour stretches, they've been disbarred, they're philanderers or they fondle animals, or they're nationalist or religious zealots. It goes on and on.

I'll answer my own question: I suppose the bizarre, broken, damaged people drive the normal ones out, and any normal people who persist can be expected to keep a low profile, out of natural reticence and also self-preservation. But still. It's so much worse than one would expect.

This why I like the word "monster" to describe Ms. Durova and other like her. The word has two important aspects. First the idea of deformity and distortion. Second, most related to the words origin, the making a show or display. Almost a perfect word to describe them.

Dehumanizing people isn't a very effective way to develop insight. The reason I stood up for Shoemaker's Holiday, at first, was simple: his arbitration was a nonemergency case that began voting twelve hours after it opened while he was requesting time to study for university exams. Not to get into all the ins and outs of why it was a bad case, it's one of only two in site history that ArbCom has vacated (the other was Orangemarlin).

Before that arbitration case he had never been in formal dispute resolution and had been basically uncontroversial. The only area where he had locked horns with other editors had been homeopathy--and pretty much anybody gets into conflict there (homeopaths and allopaths playing tug o' war with the NPOV rope).

So during arbitration I got to know the fellow, discovered some of our editing interests overlapped, and was truly impressed with his work. He writes featured articles about Gilbert and Sullivan; he restores eighteenth century engravings. What's not to respect about that? The arbitration case had obviously taken a lot out of him. I was angry about how his case had gone and worried about what WMF had nearly lost, especially in terms of audio restoration: due to copyright laws, public domain audio often means restoring wax cylinders. This dude restored Enrico Caruso's singing. There was no other volunteer who who had those skills until Shoemaker trained more people.

I hoped the outbursts would subside, especially after the arbitration got vacated. Didn't happen. Am not sure whether he was always that way but it just hadn't surfaced or whether the arbitration changed him. That prospect might seem silly from a distance, but Wikipedia's arbitration process really is tough on the people who sit in the hot seat. One of the ways arbitration works is by putting people through so much stress that some of them become erratic and demonstrate that sanctions are necessary. That's not an intentional feature of the system, but no Wikipedia arbitrator has ever been on the short end of a case. They haven't walked a mile in the moccasins.

This post has been edited by Wiki Witch of the West:

[Somey]

So during arbitration I got to know the fellow, discovered some of our editing interests overlapped, and was truly impressed with his work. He writes featured articles about Gilbert and Sullivan; he restores eighteenth century engravings. What's not to respect about that? The arbitration case had obviously taken a lot out of him. I was angry about how his case had gone and worried about what WMF had nearly lost, especially in terms of audio restoration: due to copyright laws, public domain audio often means restoring wax cylinders. This dude restored Enrico Caruso's singing. There was no other volunteer who who had those skills until Shoemaker trained more people.

I realize this is a tangent, and maybe deserves its own thread or even a blog posting, but the whole issue of restored audio content on Wikipedia is a fairly interesting one from an outside perspective. It does take considerable skill to do it properly, but the software is getting easier and easier to use, and IMO more people have these skills (and these programs) than some might think.

These days it's very common for people to have programs with "scratch removal" filters to clean up vinyl conversions, though it's far less common for people to actually use them or even know how, of course. More serious home audio restorers can buy something like Diamond Cut Millenium, which is only about $60. Diamond Cut also sells CD's of restored public-domain Edison wax cylinder recordings, which were mostly done in 2005, just around the time when WP began embedding audio files. (You could always up/download them, IIRC, just not embed them.)

But audio restoration doesn't attract the sort of person Wikipedia would normally be expected to attract. Audio doesn't take up a lot of space on a page, and at the moment I don't see Featured Audio on the Main Page (though that might be an aberration - I don't look at the Main Page very often). It can be very time-consuming if you do it right, and it's not a good way to increase your edit-count (given that you're not going to upload 80 versions of the same file, each with one less pop or click in it). And whereas clicking on an image takes you to a page on which credit for the image is spelled out in excruciating detail, clicking on an audio link simply plays the audio; you have to click "About this file" to see any credits. Moreover, when you hear an old recording that's been restored, you don't think "hey, what an awesome restoration job," because you probably haven't heard the unrestored version. In fact, the cleaner it is, the less you think about how much effort it took to restore it.

So it's something of a thankless job, isn't it? I can easily see why people don't want to do it, and why they'd feel underappreciated after a while - possibly even to the point of developing a complex about it.

If WP had the manpower, I'd suggest that they try to avoid situations where people who do audio restoration work are made responsible for things like "WikiVoices." But of course, they don't have the manpower, because nobody wants to do thankless tasks for free. It may be that Shoemaker's Holiday (T-C-L-K-R-D) is the sort of person who likes to take on thankless tasks for the purpose of complaining about how little thanks he's getting, and if so, that might explain a few things. But I'd be completely irresponsible to draw that kind of conclusion in any sort of formal way, obviously... (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hmmm.gif)

As to whether or not someone like Durova should be involved in it, that's another issue - she might well be too ego-driven to work effectively with people who do thankless tasks. That is to say, she'll probably thank them (which is good), and maybe even be the only one thanking them (which is bad). At the same time she might be unable to avoid the appearance of taking credit in some cases, even if she isn't actually doing so, simply because of the way she interacts with people in general (i.e., she tends to "take over"). The worst thing you can do with (or to) someone like Shoemaker's Holiday, I suspect, is be perceived as taking credit for whatever specialized work he does, particularly if it's voluntary.

Ultimately I don't want to appear (myself) to be too critical of Wikipedia's efforts to provide audio content, or the people who provide it - there's a lot of material there, they're reasonably good about copyrights, and some of the restoration work is quite well-done. (Also, dissemination is a major aid to preservation, as they say.) But if they're going to really make a go of it, they should come up with a way to make it less thankless - assuming there even is a way.

[MBisanz]

So during arbitration I got to know the fellow, discovered some of our editing interests overlapped, and was truly impressed with his work. He writes featured articles about Gilbert and Sullivan; he restores eighteenth century engravings. What's not to respect about that? The arbitration case had obviously taken a lot out of him. I was angry about how his case had gone and worried about what WMF had nearly lost, especially in terms of audio restoration: due to copyright laws, public domain audio often means restoring wax cylinders. This dude restored Enrico Caruso's singing. There was no other volunteer who who had those skills until Shoemaker trained more people.

I realize this is a tangent, and maybe deserves its own thread or even a blog posting, but the whole issue of restored audio content on Wikipedia is a fairly interesting one from an outside perspective. It does take considerable skill to do it properly, but the software is getting easier and easier to use, and IMO more people have these skills (and these programs) than some might think.

These days it's very common for people to have programs with "scratch removal" filters to clean up vinyl conversions, though it's far less common for people to actually use them or even know how, of course. More serious home audio restorers can buy something like Diamond Cut Millenium, which is only about $60. Diamond Cut also sells CD's of restored public-domain Edison wax cylinder recordings, which were mostly done in 2005, just around the time when WP began embedding audio files. (You could always up/download them, IIRC, just not embed them.)

But audio restoration doesn't attract the sort of person Wikipedia would normally be expected to attract. Audio doesn't take up a lot of space on a page, and at the moment I don't see Featured Audio on the Main Page (though that might be an aberration - I don't look at the Main Page very often). It can be very time-consuming if you do it right, and it's not a good way to increase your edit-count (given that you're not going to upload 80 versions of the same file, each with one less pop or click in it). And whereas clicking on an image takes you to a page on which credit for the image is spelled out in excruciating detail, clicking on an audio link simply plays the audio; you have to click "About this file" to see any credits. Moreover, when you hear an old recording that's been restored, you don't think "hey, what an awesome restoration job," because you probably haven't heard the unrestored version. In fact, the cleaner it is, the less you think about how much effort it took to restore it.

So it's something of a thankless job, isn't it? I can easily see why people don't want to do it, and why they'd feel underappreciated after a while - possibly even to the point of developing a complex about it.

If WP had the manpower, I'd suggest that they try to avoid situations where people who do audio restoration work are made responsible for things like "WikiVoices." But of course, they don't have the manpower, because nobody wants to do thankless tasks for free. It may be that Shoemaker's Holiday (T-C-L-K-R-D) is the sort of person who likes to take on thankless tasks for the purpose of complaining about how little thanks he's getting, and if so, that might explain a few things. But I'd be completely irresponsible to draw that kind of conclusion in any sort of formal way, obviously... (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hmmm.gif)

As to whether or not someone like Durova should be involved in it, that's another issue - she might well be too ego-driven to work effectively with people who do thankless tasks. That is to say, she'll probably thank them (which is good), and maybe even be the only one thanking them (which is bad). At the same time she might be unable to avoid the appearance of taking credit in some cases, even if she isn't actually doing so, simply because of the way she interacts with people in general (i.e., she tends to "take over"). The worst thing you can do with (or to) someone like Shoemaker's Holiday, I suspect, is be perceived as taking credit for whatever specialized work he does, particularly if it's voluntary.

Ultimately I don't want to appear (myself) to be too critical of Wikipedia's efforts to provide audio content, or the people who provide it - there's a lot of material there, they're reasonably good about copyrights, and some of the restoration work is quite well-done. (Also, dissemination is a major aid to preservation, as they say.) But if they're going to really make a go of it, they should come up with a way to make it less thankless - assuming there even is a way.

Actually, Durova has made they exact same arguments about the place images are given in WP (low edit count, time to restore, etc) dozens of times before. Frankly I'd encourage most audio or image buffs to head over to commons, where at least the primary focus is on low-edit count media work.

[Wiki Witch of the West]

So during arbitration I got to know the fellow, discovered some of our editing interests overlapped, and was truly impressed with his work. He writes featured articles about Gilbert and Sullivan; he restores eighteenth century engravings. What's not to respect about that? The arbitration case had obviously taken a lot out of him. I was angry about how his case had gone and worried about what WMF had nearly lost, especially in terms of audio restoration: due to copyright laws, public domain audio often means restoring wax cylinders. This dude restored Enrico Caruso's singing. There was no other volunteer who who had those skills until Shoemaker trained more people.

I realize this is a tangent, and maybe deserves its own thread or even a blog posting, but the whole issue of restored audio content on Wikipedia is a fairly interesting one from an outside perspective. It does take considerable skill to do it properly, but the software is getting easier and easier to use, and IMO more people have these skills (and these programs) than some might think.

These days it's very common for people to have programs with "scratch removal" filters to clean up vinyl conversions, though it's far less common for people to actually use them or even know how, of course. More serious home audio restorers can buy something like Diamond Cut Millenium, which is only about $60. Diamond Cut also sells CD's of restored public-domain Edison wax cylinder recordings, which were mostly done in 2005, just around the time when WP began embedding audio files. (You could always up/download them, IIRC, just not embed them.)

But audio restoration doesn't attract the sort of person Wikipedia would normally be expected to attract. Audio doesn't take up a lot of space on a page, and at the moment I don't see Featured Audio on the Main Page (though that might be an aberration - I don't look at the Main Page very often). It can be very time-consuming if you do it right, and it's not a good way to increase your edit-count (given that you're not going to upload 80 versions of the same file, each with one less pop or click in it). And whereas clicking on an image takes you to a page on which credit for the image is spelled out in excruciating detail, clicking on an audio link simply plays the audio; you have to click "About this file" to see any credits. Moreover, when you hear an old recording that's been restored, you don't think "hey, what an awesome restoration job," because you probably haven't heard the unrestored version. In fact, the cleaner it is, the less you think about how much effort it took to restore it.

So it's something of a thankless job, isn't it? I can easily see why people don't want to do it, and why they'd feel underappreciated after a while - possibly even to the point of developing a complex about it.

If WP had the manpower, I'd suggest that they try to avoid situations where people who do audio restoration work are made responsible for things like "WikiVoices." But of course, they don't have the manpower, because nobody wants to do thankless tasks for free. It may be that Shoemaker's Holiday (T-C-L-K-R-D) is the sort of person who likes to take on thankless tasks for the purpose of complaining about how little thanks he's getting, and if so, that might explain a few things. But I'd be completely irresponsible to draw that kind of conclusion in any sort of formal way, obviously... (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hmmm.gif)

As to whether or not someone like Durova should be involved in it, that's another issue - she might well be too ego-driven to work effectively with people who do thankless tasks. That is to say, she'll probably thank them (which is good), and maybe even be the only one thanking them (which is bad). At the same time she might be unable to avoid the appearance of taking credit in some cases, even if she isn't actually doing so, simply because of the way she interacts with people in general (i.e., she tends to "take over"). The worst thing you can do with (or to) someone like Shoemaker's Holiday, I suspect, is be perceived as taking credit for whatever specialized work he does, particularly if it's voluntary.

Ultimately I don't want to appear (myself) to be too critical of Wikipedia's efforts to provide audio content, or the people who provide it - there's a lot of material there, they're reasonably good about copyrights, and some of the restoration work is quite well-done. (Also, dissemination is a major aid to preservation, as they say.) But if they're going to really make a go of it, they should come up with a way to make it less thankless - assuming there even is a way.

Actually, Durova has made they exact same arguments about the place images are given in WP (low edit count, time to restore, etc) dozens of times before. Frankly I'd encourage most audio or image buffs to head over to commons, where at least the primary focus is on low-edit count media work.

Some good points, Somey. Bear in mind that although it's easier to restore audio these days, no one was doing it at WMF until Shoemaker. The featured sound program was lifeless; he revived it. And he really drummed up interest and trained other people to make the FS program sustainable.

And Matt except for rare situations in copyright law, Commons is exactly where this material does go. Shoemaker had been attempting to get Commons to feature sounds. The Commons featured picture program there had been mostly about digital photography until he and I and a few others brought in historic restorations.

This post has been edited by Wiki Witch of the West:

[dogbiscuit]

Here's some advice how to become a better Machavellian: accept the offer first, get the dude unblocked, wait an interval, and then lay into me.

You haven't got it yet, have you?

Essentially this is about process and how Wikipedians use and abuse processes rather than an individual. I hadn't really conceived that people here are at all interested in achieving an unblock of an individual to work on a website held in considerable disdain by a sizeable proportion of those who post here.

The principle is: understand the flaws in the process, understand why people abuse the processes then you can understand whether the processes are wrong or simply the operators of the process.

At WR there is a fairly strong consensus ( (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/sick.gif) sorry!) that BOTH the processes and the operators are wrong. However, Wikipedians are blind to all this, they see a perfect process gifted from Jimbo and refined down the ages, and presume that Wikipedians themselves are able to perfectly apply such processes - any mistakes are a temporary aberration. So the question is: are you capable of seeing the flaws in Wikipedian processes and then work to resolve this, or do you simply take the typical route of throwing your hands in the air and cry out "What do you expect? It's only a game you know, it's not real life."

You are not so well skilled in deflection as SlimVirgin, but the irritation in hearing you spout runs about at the same level.

[Wiki Witch of the West]

Here's some advice how to become a better Machavellian: accept the offer first, get the dude unblocked, wait an interval, and then lay into me.

You haven't got it yet, have you?

*snip*

At WR there is a fairly strong consensus ( (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/sick.gif) sorry!) that BOTH the processes and the operators are wrong. However, Wikipedians are blind to all this, they see a perfect process gifted from Jimbo and refined down the ages, and presume that Wikipedians themselves are able to perfectly apply such processes - any mistakes are a temporary aberration. So the question is: are you capable of seeing the flaws in Wikipedian processes and then work to resolve this, or do you simply take the typical route of throwing your hands in the air and cry out "What do you expect? It's only a game you know, it's not real life."

Yeah, but the weakness of WR criticism has always been quality control. Notice how the spurious claim that I was doing original research went completely unchallenged here, even though the correction was actually done by Roger Davies and the Signpost had run a report on the Library of Congress's confirmation.

This post has been edited by Wiki Witch of the West:

[GlassBeadGame]

Here's some advice how to become a better Machavellian: accept the offer first, get the dude unblocked, wait an interval, and then lay into me.

You haven't got it yet, have you?

*snip*

At WR there is a fairly strong consensus ( (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/sick.gif) sorry!) that BOTH the processes and the operators are wrong. However, Wikipedians are blind to all this, they see a perfect process gifted from Jimbo and refined down the ages, and presume that Wikipedians themselves are able to perfectly apply such processes - any mistakes are a temporary aberration. So the question is: are you capable of seeing the flaws in Wikipedian processes and then work to resolve this, or do you simply take the typical route of throwing your hands in the air and cry out "What do you expect? It's only a game you know, it's not real life."

Yeah, but the weakness of WR criticism has always been quality control. Notice how the spurious claim that I was doing original research went completely unchallenged here, even though the correction was actually done by Roger Davies and the Signpost had run a report on the Library of Congress's confirmation.

This post indicates just how clueless you are about what constitutes a significant critique. The result is that you have found yet another venue to embarrass yourself

[Wiki Witch of the West]

This post indicates just how clueless you are about what constitutes a significant critique. The result is that you have found yet another venue to embarrass yourself

Actually it's more of a segue into my opinion that part of the social glue which holds WR together has to do with the anthropological concept of the social construction of the Other.

You've spent quite a few posts calling me monstrous, either directly or indirectly. Why not just put me on ignore?

In order to play Saint George it's necessary to cast someone as The Dragon. You pop up to provide reminders of The Dragon role whenever I start to seem less worthy of skewering.

So sometimes I play along with the role in jest, and you accuse me of trolling.

[GlassBeadGame]

You've spent quite a few posts calling me monstrous, either directly or indirectly. Why not just put me on ignore?

Because examining you through the lens of your monster-ness is productive to understanding Wikipedians. Monster = Distortion + Display. Defines you, and many Wikipedian's, nicely. Certainly makes you like Shankbone, Gerard, JzG, Wales.

But it does not make you like SlimVirgin, who has a element of concealment in her character, which you lack. She is much more complex than you.

[Wiki Witch of the West]

You've spent quite a few posts calling me monstrous, either directly or indirectly. Why not just put me on ignore?

Because examining you through the lens of your monster-ness is productive to understanding Wikipedians. Monster = Distortion + Display. Defines you, and many Wikipedian's, nicely. Certainly makes you like Shankbone, Gerard, JzG, Wales.

But it does not make you like SlimVirgin, who has a element of concealment in her character, which you lack. She is much more complex than you.

David Shankbone: I don't agree with everything he does, but I do happen to believe he became the target of an honest-to-goodness stalker. That trumps everything else in my book. Expressing this with due respect especially toward Firey Angel, with whom I sympathize and wish there were a good solution for. Really wishing I knew a solution for the latter dilemma.

David Gerard: someone who's usually impressed me as better in the concrete than in the abstract. David and I have polite differences of opinion about the long term effectiveness of "liberating" media content from museums. It surprised me that he still came quite close to defending Mantanmoreland very late in the game after the abusive socking was obvious to nearly everyone. Nonetheless, the guy's heart seems to be in the right place. He was the only one on the arbitration list who took my evidence about Jossi seriously (or even appeared to read it) before--in the third relevant arbitration case--I finally walked the tightrope of publishing a major part of the evidence onsite. Major security concerns there regarding the editor(s) Jossi had been targeting. If the current and active arbs had paid attention to David the Jossi issue might have resolved months sooner.

Jimbo? A much nicer person than I am. I mean that sincerely and take it any way you like.

Taken last year on my fortieth birthday. Shrug, runs in the family. Most of us get carded well into our thirties.

Carded for what, delusional behavior? That doesn't look 28 to me.. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif)

This is Horsey's idea of 28! Grrrrrrrrrrr! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/evilgrin.gif)

Sweet, dude. And you pretended to be a pastor?

This post has been edited by Wiki Witch of the West:

[Somey]

David Gerard: someone who's usually impressed me as better in the concrete than in the abstract... (snip) He was the only one on the arbitration list who took my evidence about Jossi seriously (or even appeared to read it) before--in the third relevant arbitration case--I finally walked the tightrope of publishing a major part of the evidence onsite. Major security concerns there regarding the editor(s) Jossi had been targeting. If the current and active arbs had paid attention to David the Jossi issue might have resolved months sooner.

That's not inconsistent with Dave's original purpose in becoming a WP high mucky-muck, though, which was to "keep the Scientologists from taking over." As such he could be expected to oppose most forms of abusive religious-cult activity on WP - something I also respect him for, up to a point. That point being the one at which he begins to accuse innocents of being involved so that he can railroad them into bans and other kinds of nastiness...

The reason he supported Mantanmoreland/Weiss, in case you hadn't yet made the connection, is because Gary Weiss was opposing Patrick Byrne and Judd Bagley, who are both Mormons. The LDS church has grown to the point where it can hardly be called a "cult" anymore, but there are still many cult-like aspects to its belief system, and they do have quite an active presence on WP, which I suspect Dave finds rather objectionable. However, he probably feels compelled to hold his tongue because of Michael Snow and other prominent Mormons in the WP hierarchy.

[Wiki Witch of the West]

David Gerard: someone who's usually impressed me as better in the concrete than in the abstract... (snip) He was the only one on the arbitration list who took my evidence about Jossi seriously (or even appeared to read it) before--in the third relevant arbitration case--I finally walked the tightrope of publishing a major part of the evidence onsite. Major security concerns there regarding the editor(s) Jossi had been targeting. If the current and active arbs had paid attention to David the Jossi issue might have resolved months sooner.

That's not inconsistent with Dave's original purpose in becoming a WP high mucky-muck, though, which was to "keep the Scientologists from taking over." As such he could be expected to oppose most forms of abusive religious-cult activity on WP - something I also respect him for, up to a point. That point being the one at which he begins to accuse innocents of being involved so that he can railroad them into bans and other kinds of nastiness...

The reason he supported Mantanmoreland/Weiss, in case you hadn't yet made the connection, is because Gary Weiss was opposing Patrick Byrne and Judd Bagley, who are both Mormons. The LDS church has grown to the point where it can hardly be called a "cult" anymore, but there are still many cult-like aspects to its belief system, and they do have quite an active presence on WP, which I suspect Dave finds rather objectionable. However, he probably feels compelled to hold his tongue because of Michael Snow and other prominent Mormons in the WP hierarchy.

This is the first I'd ever heard about Bagley's or Weiss's religion. Although in retrospect being from Utah is something of a pointer. Really could hardly care less. What I've stated from the moment the MM socking became obvious is that if WR had only imposed better quality control (work from the public edit history, and why on earth didn't you publicize Fred Bauder's checkuser result?) then the whole matter could've been cleared up much sooner. Word is MM's socking again, although I haven't pursued it.

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Heavens this thread has heated up. Y'all so interested in lil' ol' me? Will take maybe two more hours to follow up, then heading off to other stuff. Just so it's said in advance.

This post has been edited by Wiki Witch of the West:

[Milton Roe]

This is the first I'd ever heard about Bagley's or Weiss's religion. Although in retrospect being from Utah is something of a pointer. Really could hardly care less. What I've stated from the moment the MM socking became obvious is that if WR had only imposed better quality control (work from the public edit history, and why on earth didn't you publicize Fred Bauder's checkuser result?) then the whole matter could've been cleared up much sooner.

But the point wasn't MM's socking. The point was Weiss's COI in editing both his own BLP AND (as MM) editing topics near and dear to the real life Weiss' heart, with substantial POV problems.

Bagley as user:Wordbomb showed up as a newbie on WP to complain about the above, which is an item that should (then) have been taken straight to ArbCom, or at least RfC, to straighten out (as it eventually was-- becoming a huge ArbCom case, only PART of which was MM socking, and the REST being Weiss COI editing).

And meantime how WP works should have been explained to Bagley. Since Bagley was a newbie, somebody should have taken him under their wing to inform him that is was a very tricky situation, as two basic WP policies were being put into head on-collision with this case.

On one hand: a RL person using a username to edit his own RL BLP, AND also to push a known RL POV which had a major impact on another real company and another real person (since all this spilled over into a RL political and business conflict). The other hand was that how do you stop this without violating WP's prohibition on WP from outing RL identities of nameusers. "But what about if the nameuser is using his anon position to pump up his own RL credentials, bio, and cause?" That's a question that ArbCom had to ask in public, eventually revealing Weiss, in order to do it.

However, meanwhile, SlimVirgin had acted precipitously to protect Weiss, indef-blocking Bagley less than 24 hours after his first edit (long before any sock), and just as he was promising to wait to see what ArbCom and the wonks would do. So not only did she BITE a newbie, but failed to appreciate the larger aspects of his accusations, and the case. Nor did she attempt to put the case before ArbCom itself, after stifling Bagley (which included blocking his TALK page, also).

This gagging of Bagley without any attempt at due process about his beef, had the effect of making Bagley go crazy with the injustice of it. Not only did he THEN sock on WP many times in an attempt to get his case heard (this was ultimately successful, but it also got Bagley community banned), but he also blogged about it on his website and started the investigation which ultimately outed SlimVirgin's RL name and history. All that was entirely avoidable, and it all results from SlimVirgin banhammering a newbie rather reflexively, to protect another user she'd edited other articles with previously. She didn't even bother to find out if Wordbomb had a legitimate beef.

All this got sorted out finally, but not before Gerard, with the blessing of Jimbo, rangeblocked a suburb in Salt Lake City which turned out to be the entire IP range of Broadweave, a small Utah ISP. Ridiculous. Here is Gerard and Jimbo both acting pretty much like SlimVirgin: hammer the problem without looking into it.

ArbCom finally had to clean up. They set the filters which finally caught MM socking and booted him off. They should have desysopped both SlimVirgin and Gerard for being too quick on the block button, also. But rampant authoritarianism in defense of the status quo is pretty common in societies, and it certainly was on WP. Bagley's attempts to get the word out about Weiss reminded me a more than one point of an innocent man's attempt to escape from prison. That's illegal, you know. Even if they shoot you while doing it, and it's later found out you were innocent, nobody has to apologize, because you have no right to escape even unjust imprisonment.

But make a long story short, this whole mess is almost entirely SlimVirgin's fault, and she ended up being the one who paid most dearly for it. So it worked out. But it sure wasted the time of a lot good people who had better things to do than get all involved in Wikipedia's own version of the Dreyfus case. J'accuse (letter)