Orderinchaos (& Timeshift9) - no good faith, harrassment ("outing"), edit warring, possible puppetry - and he's an *administrator*!, Innappropriate/Harrassing behaviour by an admin called "Orderinch Options Rating

[Dissembly]

I had the following text sitting somewhere among my files for a couple of months; i didn't want to post it back when i first wrote it, because i brought some of the matters up with the Abritration Committee and didn't want to give them an excuse (like posting at The Wikipedia Review) to ignore me. I stumbled across the file again a few minutes ago, and decided that since I had heard nothing from "ArbCom" (having sent the message on the 25th November (2008)), enough time had passed for me to just go ahead and post it. So here 'tis:

------------------------------
After happily editing on Wikipedia since before 2005, i had my first unpleasant encounter with an administrator about a week ago a couple of months back. When it got to the point that i was considering e-mailing the arbitration committee, i figured, "if he treats people like this, then i can't be the first person to have a problem with him". So i did a google search for "Orderinchaos", to reassure myself that i wasn't going crazy, and found these forums via this thread:
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showt...489&#entry93489

There, i found descriptions of Orderinchaos's behaviour (with two other users) that vaguely resembled the kind of rapport he had with Timeshift9, when i ran into him. My problems with him ran a bit deeper, though, as he seems have developed a taste for making personal "bad faith" attacks, going far outside the boundaries of an edit dispute on a Wikipedia page - going as far as researching me "offline" (or so he claims). So, i thought i would put the story on this forum, so if any other users out there who have been treated in a similar way are doing a google search, they'll find this and think, "Oh good, it wasn't just me."

So to go back to the start, I ran into two other editors on Wikipedia, user names "Timeshift9" and "Orderinchaos"; Orderinchaos, as i take it people on this board will already know, is an inactive administrator.

On the discussion page (for an article upon which these users and myself came into a dispute), "Orderinchaos" made allegations that violated good faith and rested upon allusions to my real-world identity:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=253730226

(The "outing" occurs at the very bottom of the page, under the title "Recent edits to this page".)

There seems to be an effort by (institution name ommitted) student activists to slant this page in a particular direction. Offline evidence demonstrates that NebYevnoc and Dissembly, while clearly different people, are closely associated users who have coordinated offline in the past. I am only prepared to share this evidence offline with trusted administrators, as it involves RWI and I am not at all interested in revealing such information. However it is an important disclosure which, regrettably, has been omitted by the editors in question. Orderinchaos 04:52, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

It upset me, because i don't feel that someone's political beliefs are relevant to Wikipedia discussion. Sure, if i was Lindsay Tanner's professional PR person, or his dear old grand-mother, that would be something that ought to be disclosed. But no, i'm just some dude who, like every single other editor on Wikipedia, has their own set of political beliefs.

But here is this guy, claiming to have uncovered some "offline" information about me and another editor (and thats a little disturbing in-and-of-itself), claiming that it invalidates my right to use Wikipedia like anyone else, and openly offering to send this information to his fellow Wikipedia administrators.

What the hell does he mean that he found "offline" information about me? What's his deal with calling me (and Neb Yevnoc) a "student activist", as if that's some sort of a secret conspiratorial cabal that I and another editor have formed (rather than, say, two long-time friends who have both been students and both participated in various RL activities)?

What an ass!

So i took this as an innappropriate personal attack when i eventually saw it - it had nothing whatsoever to do with the legitimate disagreement we were having over the content of an article. Before i found it, though, the other user being "outed" decided to register himself as a non-semi-anonymous editor, and sought to remove this paragraph, and he directed Orderinchaos to the Wikipedia guidelines on "outing":

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=253948607

Removed discussion as it amounted to harassment. Orderinchaos and Timeshift, this edit has been made in good faith. Please check the harassment policy again because you have actually breached it. Bear in mind that if a user has made efforts to resolve a dispute (eg. apology) it is highly unreasonable to attempt to restart the dispute in the manner in which you had, regardless of whether there is a continuing dispute with another user. If you persist in this matter, I will request arbitration. Friojolez8282 (talk) 05:12, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

(The "apology" that he refers to happened during a little tiff between him and OiC + Timeshift on the discussion page.)

So Orderinchaos returned and restored the allegedly harrassing paragraph, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=253951118

At that point i came across the discussion, and removed the harassing paragraph myself, agreeing that it was a violation of wikipedia policy: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=253951118

And then, both "Orderinchaos" and "Timeshift9" returned:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=253967991

Orderinchaos: " it is in the history, people can read it for themselves"
Timeshift9: "the revelations can always be seen in the non-removeable history up the top of this page." (and he/she provides direct links to the history'd pages containing the offending paragraph.)

What obnoxious comments to make over a case of alleged harrassment!

In the same paragraph, Orderinchaos went on to make a series of anti-good-faith accusations, accusing me of "meatpuppetry and attempting to stack debates, edit war and wikilawyer in transparent and obvious ways". None of which i was doing.

To be honest, i had no idea what "meatpuppetry" and "wikilawyering" were, until Orderinchaos used those words. But after he did, i thought about the way he had been behaving: quoting endless regulations that didn't seem applicable, posting in a synchronised leap-frogging way with Timeshift, and both terms suddenly made complete sense. (If you want to wade through the whole dispute, note the way Timeshift and Orderinchaos both write, and the amazing similarity between their views on Wiki policy - particularly what "consensus" refers to; now i think that "meatpuppetry" is a fairly strange accusation, because, by definition, it's a form of puppetry for which there can be no electronic evidence. But if one was going to accuse anybody of such a thing, it would be these two! At one point, the other user involved became confused over which one of them (Timeshift or OiC) had said what. When you look closely, you can see that he was only confused because they themselves had become confused over which of them had said what... I'm no psychologist, but...!)

This was a bizarre experience, and the first of it's kind that i've had, in more than four years of editing Wikipedia.

Re: the discussion page that led to Orderinchaos and myself crossing paths in the first place; yes, if you take a look, sure, i came into it a little rude and abruptly (quite frankly, i thought 'Timeshift9' was just trying to be a douche, (yes, 'AGF', i know...) i mean - he was quibbling over something as stupid and uncontroversial as the definition of a "right-wing policy" - but hey, thats neither here nor there; at the time, i felt i was assuming good-faith as much as the pettiness of Timeshift and Orderinchaos's comments could have allowed...). I'll wear that. But every edit i made was in good faith - i was modifying edits to take criticism into account, i was beefing up the article in other, non-disputed subject areas - i was basically doing what you do when you edit an article.

But Timeshift9 started to play an edit war (and i separate my actions from his/hers by pointing out that i was modifying wording whereas he/she was wholesale-deleting), and when i quoted the three-revert rule, Orderinchaos jumped in and took the reigns. If you want me to back up my characterisation that this was just edit-warring, and not merely conflicting ideas about the article, i'll point out that Orderichaos's deletions twice involved deleting completely uncontroversial additions - additions that had not been disputed anywhere.

And then, of course, if you read the discussion page, you get a sense that Orderinchaos and Timeshift9 - each of them - have a bizarre idea of what "consensus" means. Rather than treating it as the constant modifying and altering of an article to respond to criticism and to reflect different editors influences, they seemed to think that "consensus" means a flat-out vote. They had two people, i was one person, therefore they won the imaginary vote (my friend's vote didn't count, according to them, because he conceded early on to "the consensus" - he's a new editor, and i think he just took their definition of the word "consensus" for granted). And yet, there was no vote, no POV tag, nothing resembling the process they each pretended was happening.

And just scrolling through the History page from that article, it doesn't look as if the pair of them treated any of my edits with good faith at all.

About a quarter of the way into this whole debacle, i stopped allowing Orderinchaos to comment on my talk page, as he was using it to boast about his status as an administrator, and patronise and insult me. I also stopped responding to his ridiculous claims (which may have been a mistake, because it means his side of the argument is there forever, and mine is not), because i realised this was the kind of troll that has far too much free-time on his hand, and the barrage of accusations and (i suppose the word is...) "wikilawyering" would simply not stop if i responded to them. I've met my share of trolls and web-stalkers. I also decided that i didn't want to end up losing my cool, and validating their accusations by getting angry. (So, i guess, Wikipedia indirectly rewards those with the most time to waste on mudslinging.)

Since i met Orderinchaos, i resolved to, from now on, never spend more than one hour per day on Wikipedia, to preserve my sanity. It's now taken me an hour to write this, so, this is a good place to stop. Now the experience is down and recorded for posterity. Very cathartic.

This post has been edited by Dissembly: Tue 13th January 2009, 8:51am

[EricBarbour]

Firstly, welcome to the Review. You will get much more sympathy here,
as most of the top users have been screwed in a similar fashion by
Wiki admins in the past.

To be honest, i had no idea what "meatpuppetry" and "wikilawyering" were, until Orderinchaos used those words. But after he did, i thought about the way he had been behaving - quoting endless regulations that didn't seem applicable, posting in a leap-froggy way with Timeshift (and, if you want to wade through the discussion that led to us butting heads in the first place, note the way Timeshift and Orderinchaos both write, and the amazing similarity in their views on Wiki policy - particularly what "consensus" refers to.), and both terms suddenly made complete sense to me.
About a quarter of the way into this whole debacle, i stopped allowing Orderinchaos to comment on my talk page, as he was using it to boast about his status as an administrator, and patronise and insult me. I also stopped responding to his ridiculous claims (which may have been a mistake, because it means his side of the argument is there forever, and mine is not), because i realised this was the kind of troll that has far too much free-time on his hand, and the barrage of accusations and (i suppose the word is...) "wikilawyering" would simply not stop if i responded to them. I've met my share of trolls and web-stalkers. I also decided that i didn't want to end up losing my cool, and validating their accusations by getting angry. (So, i guess, Wikipedia indirectly rewards those with the most time to waste on mudslinging.)

Sadly, this is not an unusual story. You became the victim of a tag team.
If you'd like to see some more, you can read this.

Some of the regulars on the Review are well-respected Wikipedia admins.
You might ask them for help/opinions here.

(And by the way: did you notice that Orderinchaos now claims he's "not going to be available on Wikipedia between 6 and 25 January"? The timing of his unavailability is interesting. And not surprising---other admins have done this when they were losing a battle. They tend to be cowards and backstabbers, and will not engage in open conflict.)

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Tue 13th January 2009, 8:43am

[Dissembly]

Thank-you, i really do appreciate the sympathy. It's weirdly disturbing how this sort of thing can "get" to you, and it's nice to know you're not the only one.

I don't know if his absence at the moment is to do with me; the incident in question actually occured last November; i only delayed posting this in case it interfered with a Arbitration Committee complaint that i raised about Orderinchaos, but it doesn't look like the complaint was proceeding, so i thought i'd just post it.

Thanks for the link, i'm going through it now. Its pretty hilarious (and strangely true...)

[Orderinchaos]

Some of the regulars on the Review are well-respected Wikipedia admins.
You might ask them for help/opinions here.

(And by the way: did you notice that Orderinchaos now claims he's "not going to be available on Wikipedia between 6 and 25 January"? The timing of his unavailability is interesting. And not surprising---other admins have done this when they were losing a battle. They tend to be cowards and backstabbers, and will not engage in open conflict.)

Firstly, apologies for the length in advance.

Nothing terribly suspicious - I have a course deadline at a TAFE (in US language: community college) on 16th February and I have 1/4 of the work I need to get done for it. It's a job-ready course, so there's a very significant financial incentive for me to get the work done, esp in the current economic climate. I'm not entirely sure (as people at the college are on holiday) whether that means I have to submit by the 16th, or get it back and marked by the 16th (meaning roughly an end of January deadline), so I'm taking the rest of this month to do it and have put all other priorities aside. If I was to remain as active on Wiki as I was over the month of December, I would never get it done. Occasionally I will edit over the period, and have done so, but it means I don't have to deal with loads of requests to do stuff or look into random stuff on my talk page.

The story with the above guy's pretty simple. Essentially, this editor's dispute with me (back in November 2008) came about because he wanted to put opinions and claims reflecting a far left political position (without refs) into an article about a government minister. In response to Dissembly, I don't care much about users' politics, and indeed over a coffee we may well agree on an awful lot about the state of the world, but the stuff he was trying to add was interpretative essay writing and entirely open to opinion, rather than sticking to facts or sourceable opinion. As often happens, I saw it on my watchlist long before deciding to get involved - Australian politics is an under-watched area though, and I soon had to when he started branding good faith edits not in agreeance with his position "vandalism". When I asked him to cite sources, he refused to do so and when he finally came up with one, it was a 300+ page book that was not about the subject. Attempts to get a page number from him also failed. On that basis, I removed the edits.

Wikipedia policies require things to be sourced and neutral. And yes, I'm aware that it is not well enforced site-wide, and I'm not alone in wanting it to be better enforced site-wide, but there are a few of us trying to handle it on the Australian political scene to keep at least one section from getting ugly. We occasionally do have flaks for politicians trying to butter up their employer's resume or decimate their opponents in virtual form, and there was even an article about it in the Sydney Morning Herald a while ago. We've had, and I've handled, similar problems on articles for both right- and left-wing politicians from all major parties.

Around the same time, it was brought to my attention that the two "independent" editors supporting each others' claims and edit-warring were in fact very closely related offline and were in fact political activists. Following the same instructions I was given led me to confirm this discovery. Nothing more than looking at his early edits and page links on his user page was required, I probably in retrospect should have used a better word than "offline" but I saw no reason to give anyone else free information on the user's identity and activities, especially when it was *so* easily locatable. The old saying is "do not use a hammer to crack a nut", and I personally believe public shaming went out with the end of the Salem witch trials, and rightly so.

When I stated the conflict of interest and the link between the editors on the article talk page (something he should have disclosed himself) - without revealing any personal information or, as he puts it, "harassing" him - he reacted very abruptly, launching a string of reports against me in a variety of fora. When these failed (and in at least one case I was even complimented for "keeping cool in a difficult situation"), he wrote a blog post about me (not by name) then stopped editing on the site - as did his friend.

While I am neither an academic nor a post-graduate (just been around unis and academics for far too long and have a BSc degree), I have a strongly academic mindset as to how things should be done on Wikipedia. My personal belief is that with every significant article there should be at least the intention, if never the will, to get a GA or FA out of it. Anything that gets in the way of that ever achieving such should therefore be opposed outright. One of the key criteria on both is that the article must be sourced and factual. I recognise that many people here would laugh at the notion that Wikipedia could one day be a respectable publication, but in my view there's no harm aiming for it, and indeed, some of my fellow Western Australian editors have produced articles on plants which outdo some of the leading scientific journals.

What I read about this person's background (on their own site) suggested that they had absolutely no excuse to not cite sources, or to refuse to engage intellectually on a matter like this in circumstances where they particularly wanted to edit something in, or to act in a misleading and deceptive fashion both in the way in which they made the edits and tried to get them through, and then in the manner in which they reported me. I was actually quite disappointed, as someone with that level of education can be of considerable value to the site if they behave in line with their training and practice - especially in low-traffic areas where disputes are rare, so editing up quite solid articles is possible (it's one of the main reasons I stick to the topics I do).

A couple of other points:
* He notes (institution removed), but I've read the original post and I did not cite an institution, I cited a city. The two institutions they attended were not the University of Melbourne, although were located in the Melbourne metropolis (there are six or seven in the Melbourne area), so he is once again being dilatory and accusing me of stuff without any evidence whatsoever - which was the main reason his four reports were rejected.
* He makes claims about my views on consensus. My view is that it is exactly that - that it represents a broad good faith agreement between editors with some element of compromise. (It cannot, however, override core policy, unless a very wide consensus is brought in.) By meatpuppeting to game an outcome, and refusing to discuss concerns, and insisting that radical POV was in fact some form of "consensus", he showed no interest in developing one that did not include his disputed paragraphs and allegations about the political figure concerned.
* And anyone who thinks Timeshift9 and I have a mutual agenda should really look at the talk pages we both participate on. There are countless incidences of irretractable differences between us across a range of issues, and I've often supported causes that he's opposed. I think if you look back a month or so there was even a brief edit war. Sometimes he's invited me to comment on a dispute he's involved in and ended up wishing he hadn't as I've ended up concluding his opponents are right.

I'm not saying by any means I'm perfect, that I never do anything wrong or that I act 100% of the time in the way I should. But rewarding friends or alliances with guaranteed and consistent support (as I've been accused of on this occasion) would be a quick ticket for said people to believe they can act with impunity on my watch. If there is a genuine conflict of interest (i.e. one of my friends is acting up), I've never hesitated to handball the problem to someone with none. Likewise, I expect my friends and those I edit with to be constructively critical of me, and I'm fortunate in the Australian project that many feel able to be so openly without fear of my reaction. I believe I am fair and will concede any decent point if it's demonstrated my argument falls on the facts, and have on quite a number of occasions - there's no shame in being wrong if I can learn from it. However, in this case, Timeshift was entirely right to revert the edits.

One final point - if I'm the rogue admin that is being alleged here, why didn't I block him or protect at my favoured version or something? He was never blocked, the page was never protected, I didn't even lodge an AN/I on the matter. I dealt with him exclusively as an editor.

This post has been edited by Orderinchaos: Tue 13th January 2009, 1:34pm

[Dissembly]

If anyone wants my response to any particular claims OiC has made in the above post, i will happily respond if you wanted to put it to me independantly of OiC's comment.

However, as i said earlier,

About a quarter of the way into this whole debacle, i stopped allowing Orderinchaos to comment on my talk page, as he was using it to boast about his status as an administrator, and patronise and insult me. I also stopped responding to his ridiculous claims (which may have been a mistake, because it means his side of the argument is there forever, and mine is not), because i realised this was the kind of troll that has far too much free-time on his hand, and the barrage of accusations and (i suppose the word is...) "wikilawyering" would simply not stop if i responded to them. I've met my share of trolls and web-stalkers. I also decided that i didn't want to end up losing my cool, and validating their accusations by getting angry. (So, i guess, Wikipedia indirectly rewards those with the most time to waste on mudslinging.)

...i've long since realised this gentleman really needs to be treated the same way as a troll (or, at the least, a timesuck).

I will make one small comment; i noticed the line "Essentially, this editor's dispute with me (back in November 2008) came about because he wanted to put opinions and claims reflecting a far left political position (without refs)" before averting my eyes; and it's just... the irony is amazing. "Far left" and "without refs" are just factually incorrect, but what i found funny was comparing this with my own earlier comment, "...just scrolling through the History page from that article, it doesn't look as if the pair of them treated any of my edits with good faith at all." At least you're staying true-to-form, OiC.

That's enough of that. Ive said what i had to say. I have not, and will not, be reading (or replying any further) to OiC's post (above), for reasons given above.

If anyone's really burning with curiosity about something OiC has said about me (above), like i said, feel free to address me on your own terms.

We've all encountered people like this before, so i'm sure you'll understand.

This post has been edited by Dissembly: Wed 14th January 2009, 3:28am

[Orderinchaos]

Incidentally, "far left" is merely a positioning, not a good/bad faith issue. It reflects, say, the Socialist Alliance or Socialist Equality Party in Australia, the Respect! party in the UK, etc. Many people in those movements would indeed see "far left" as a compliment or even a statement of ideological purity as against "the left" who they feel have betrayed them (c.f. the attempted additions to Lindsay Tanner, who is or was (not sure?) a member of the Socialist Left faction of the ALP). "Without refs" is merely a factual statement that no refs were provided - people can see that for themselves in the links below and in particular my painstaking (failed) efforts to get them out of him.

As for the rest, people are quite capable, I think, of reading the pages concerned and coming to their own conclusions.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...s/Friojolez8282 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Dissembly (comparing these two in November is pretty interesting)
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lindsay_Tanner

This post has been edited by Orderinchaos: Wed 14th January 2009, 3:47am

[Somey]

I can't say I know much of anything about Lindsay Tanner (T-H-L-K-D), but are ancillary references that include the words...

Despite being known as a prominent member of Labor's "Socialist Left" faction, in this ministerial capacity Tanner has publicly promoted right-leaning economic policies, such as international free trade and deregulation.

...really all that controversial, or left-biased for that matter? If Tanner were successfully made out to be less liberal than he (presumably) wants to appear, or actually is, what's the effect on his political career, and/or the Australian political scene in general? (Assuming there's any whatsoever?)

In other words, if this really is part of a concerted ideological campaign against Tanner by just one or two "Melbourne student activists," with the goal of undermining him politically in some way, then sure, Mr. Dissembly's activities could probably be considered highly suspect. But it doesn't seem all that slanted an assertion. So I'm asking, because there may be more here than meets the eye - either way, if there's a substantial number of people in Australia who hold that opinion of him, there should be some way to reach a compromise on what's essentially just a content dispute with political overtones.

(Edit: I wrote this before I saw the post immediately above this one - thanks to Mr. Chaos for clarifying the whole "far-left" thing.)

[Orderinchaos]

I can't say I know much of anything about Lindsay Tanner (T-H-L-K-D), but are ancillary references that include the words...

Despite being known as a prominent member of Labor's "Socialist Left" faction, in this ministerial capacity Tanner has publicly promoted right-leaning economic policies, such as international free trade and deregulation.

...really all that controversial, or left-biased for that matter? If Tanner were successfully made out to be less liberal than he (presumably) wants to appear, or actually is, what's the effect on his political career, and/or the Australian political scene in general? (Assuming there's any whatsoever?)

In other words, if this really is part of a concerted ideological campaign against Tanner by just one or two "Melbourne student activists," with the goal of undermining him politically in some way, then sure, Mr. Dissembly's activities could probably be considered highly suspect. But it doesn't seem all that slanted an assertion. So I'm asking, because there may be more here than meets the eye - either way, if there's a substantial number of people in Australia who hold that opinion of him, there should be some way to reach a compromise on what's essentially just a content dispute with political overtones.

All very fair questions.

Re Tanner's political career - he's simply the finance minister in the current government. As a minister he's bound both by the decisions of the 17-member cabinet and as a Labor Party MP by the Labor caucus, who, once they have voted on an issue, require that all members support it. (While the Liberals do not officially caucus, so-called "floor crossing" is extremely rare within the party, so in a de facto sense, they work a similar way) There's been no evidence presented that whatever views he has on his own portfolio have impacted, favourably or adversely, on his career. Factional memberships are actually quite hard to ascertain and are certainly not known to the majority of the Australian public - he'd simply be seen as Labor. I wanted to do an article on the factional allegiances of Labor MPs and could not find a definitive source which told me the orientations of their 110 or so federal MPs.

As for the stuff being added - problem 1 is there is no clear evidence that deregulation or international free trade are "right wing" - and indeed, in that context, "right wing" is an imprecise and meaningless term. Many policies cannot be categorised easily as left or right - for example, international free trade is strongly favoured by left-leaning Governments and opinion leaders in many developing countries as an effective redistribution of wealth from rich countries to poor ones, and protectionism (the opposite of free trade) has likewise been supported by governments that would generally be held to be "right wing" (such as the Menzies Liberal government of 1949-1966, as well as many nationalist parties).

Problem 2 - Tanner is a minister in a government and is bound by Caucus decisions within his role, so it is almost impossible to separate a minister from the government they are a member of. So in stating the policy of the Government, there is no way to tell if the minister is or is not stating a personal opinion or is indeed "publicly promoting" anything beyond the agreed policy of the government. If they don't, they get fired. We had the exact same problem on Liberal Party articles where some ministers' articles (look at Philip Ruddock in particular) were starting to look like a laundry list of activist complaints, in some cases practically accusing them of war crimes. Ministers don't "do" very much, their staff or departments do - cf. "Yes, Minister" - and their statements are often written for them by staffers or advisers. It's very, very difficult to write about ministers for that reason, and the way the Australian project had settled on doing it was writing an article about the Government as a whole (eg Howard Government or Rudd Government) which would cover the policies and actions of the Government.

There's an entire argument to be had about the notion of "ministerial responsibility" in Westminster systems and how some perceive it has broken down or even become entirely absent, but anyway, I'm totally digressing.

This post has been edited by Orderinchaos: Wed 14th January 2009, 4:34am

[Viridae]

tl:dr

[EricBarbour]

There's an entire argument to be had about the notion of "ministerial responsibility" in Westminster systems and how some perceive it has broken down or even become entirely absent, but anyway, I'm totally digressing.

No kidding. Admittedly I'm not an expert in the machinations of the Australian government, though I do have a friend in Adelaide who has been quite paranoid about them for a long time.

I don't hear from him very often, but when I do, I get extended rants. About John Howard until he left, and now about Rudd and the vile moneygrubbing Laborites, Conroy and this stupid idea to censor the entire internet, Richard Alston, etc. etc. blah blah.

Now he's gotten so paranoid, he won't even email me back unless we use double encryption.....he is quite convinced that the entire establishment in Canberra is utterly corrupt and spying on him.

It might help if the two of you (OiC and Dissembly) tried to write a CONCISE, SHORT precis on what this dispute is all about. In fact, you should find a neutral third party to write it up!

And realize, neither of you are going to get anything if you stay on the present course. You'll both have to compromise and make some kind of agreement. WR people can help out but it's still your responsibility. (And don't take it to AN/I or Arbcom. They will probably make a decision that neither of you like.)

[Orderinchaos]

That's quite worrying regarding your friend... Mind you, I think the internet censorship proposal's just dumb enough to actually fall over before anyone can implement it, that happened in New South Wales in 1996 with a similar rabid proposal (search for EFA and Jeff Shaw if you're curious).

If I understood better why Dissembly was so keen to add this content that he and his colleague would resort to such unusual measures on-Wiki at the time to attempt to force it in, and still be protesting about the situation more than seven weeks after its conclusion (as far as I was concerned, anyway), and if he was willing to accept that content added to Wiki must come from reliable sources, then it would likely be easier for us to reach some kind of compromise - possibly on the desperately-in-need-of-expansion Rudd Government article. Obviously, it matters to him *a lot*.

The weird part is I don't even normally edit federal politicians' articles, the few times I have have mostly been to fix irredeemably bad articles (either effusive praise or abject condemnation). Most of my work's on obscure historical politics that I and a few political science professor types are probably the only people who care about.

(And AN/I makes decisions? If present practice was ever intention I thought it'd been set up as a Wikipedia version of Gladiators (television franchise) (T-H-L-K-D), but with new rules every week and too many judges, and an audience armed with cream pies.)

This post has been edited by Orderinchaos: Thu 15th January 2009, 4:59am

[Dissembly]

It might help if the two of you (OiC and Dissembly) tried to write a CONCISE, SHORT precis on what this dispute is all about. In fact, you should find a neutral third party to write it up!

And realize, neither of you are going to get anything if you stay on the present course. You'll both have to compromise and make some kind of agreement.

Agreement about what?

My complaint was about Orderinchaos's behaviour, not the content of the Lindsay Tanner article.

(The article content itself was a minor thing. At the time, i got annoyed at the pettiness and paranoid conspiracy-mongering of OiC and Timeshift9's edits. I went on to try and expand the article into something bigger (something that was worth getting protective of...), and discovered that i couldn't make any changes at all to the article without them objecting. So I haven't looked at that article for the last two months. (Actually, i haven't edited Wikipedia at all for a while.))

I might dispute it's current content, i might not. All i know is, it's watched by a hostile administrator who doesn't condone edits. So there doesn't seem to be a point in going back to the article.

This post has been edited by Dissembly: Tue 20th January 2009, 12:27am