Printable Version of Topic

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

May we have the envelope, please...


This year's winner is renowned for his keen fashion sense, as well as his incandescent charm and sterling sense of fairness and justice. We proudly present this year's Jimbo® statuette to:

David Gerard!

In a real cliff-hanger of a match, David squeaked ahead of the runner-up in this year's competition, FT2, who put up a spirited fight. We expect great things of FT2 in future competitions.






Deep in the catacombs beneath the Wikipedia Review, there is a vast chamber, from which may be heard the eerie cackling of Somey as he labors over his image editor/avatar generator. It is said to be like a cross between http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Diego_Velasquez,_The_Forge_of_Vulcan.jpg and one of Dr. Seuss's contraptions. It is here, they say, that Somey produced the new, 2009 model Jimbo® statuette:








And now, before proceeding the the winners in the other categories, we'd like to present this...

PoetGuy!

PoetGuy delighted Wikipedia fans, and in particular, those of us at the Review, with his outstanding performance in innumerable sockpuppet roles, literally, a cast of thousands (known to the cognoscenti as "PoetHorde.") As the pert coquette "Poetlister," he became for a time Wikipedia's most celebrated martyr, believed to have been unjustly banned for socking. When the truth of his culpability came out, PoetGuy was disgraced. His old nemesis SlimVirgin wrote a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SlimVirgin/Poetgate in which she made PoetGuy the center of a vast conspiracy against herself, and attempted to make his disgrace into her vindication. However, among members of the Academy, PoetGuy's performances in such a wide array of roles deserve to be recognized as the pinnacle of his craft, right up there with http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051077/

Let's take a minute now to remember PoetGuy's contributions to the Review. (roll clip) As Poetlister, he was named by Lir to be an admin at this site. The Poetlister character enchanted us with her endearing fantasies, including a fake wedding and honeymoon on a romantic isle, embellished with images from http://www.releasing.net/filmmaker/images/burt_lancaster_and_deborah_kerr.jpg Then there was Guy, the stuffy, proper Englishman with a heart of gold and an obsession with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Zionism Guy became a moderator here. He had a faithful, putatively Jewish companion, Yehudi. And finally, there was the flip side of the stuffy, proper Englishman, in the form of the ever-popular Taxwoman, who was raunchy, babelicious, and an expert on the London Fetish Scene.

So, for having generated unforgettable drama at Wikipedia and across the wide, wide interwebs, the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award goes to PoetGuy!

...and now, back to our regular awards presentation: the Straight Shooter award for most ethical admin goes to Thatcher, who made a very strong showing, thanks in part to a ringing endorsement from this year's runner-up, Cool Hand Luke (who is actually now an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee#Current_members.) Cool Hand's nom de Review, of course, is One.

The Cojones de latón, for the non-admin who has distinguished himself in combat with the cabal, goes to Cla68, who was last year's runner-up. This year's runner-up is The Fat Man Who Never Came Back, who was particularly recognized for his lethal use of humor on the battlefield.

In the Miss Incongeniality department, Elonka and JzG wound up in a dead heat, so they will be sharing the honors. This marks the second year in a row where JzG has made it to the top -- his incivility is legend! And Elonka makes her debut sharing the number one spot.

Finally, in the Tag Team Event, the award goes to Odd nature, Salmon of Doubt, KillerChihuahua, Jim62sch, Mu301 and FeloniousMonk, also known as the ID (Intelligent Design) Cabal.

Congratulations all around, and we'll see you next year on the red carpet!

Posted by: Anonymous editor

great job with the awards, Herschel.

I like the trophy.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Yep, good job.

Such fun down here.


You know, if you read Paradise Lost by a certain author, which nobody does anymore, "Heaven" is this boring place where all the angels have to sing along in unity with God-King. A third of them bolt, and I'm amazed it's not more.

Down in Hell, after being thrown out, they can actually sit around and have adult conversations, and entertain different points of view, and so forth. You think I'm making this up, but I'm not.

-- Milton

Posted by: privatemusings

well I'd like to thank my family, my friends, and everyone I've ever..... oh hangon.......

congrat.s dicks and dames, and I'll be back fighting for Cla's balls next year ;-)

Posted by: Alison

How long before that pic ends up on David's talk page?

Posted by: Moulton

In conjunction with these announcements, the Psychopathy Department of the Woolworths Foundation School of Political Dramaturgy will be introducing the latest revision to DSM IV.

Watch for our newest diagnostic category, Scherzophrenia, coming soon to a Freudian Casting Couch near you.

Posted by: The Adversary

Very nice job, Hersch and Somey, and a warm congratulation to Gerard and other dicks; very worthy winners.

However, there is one thing about this years election campaign which slightly irritated me: all those WP glitterati (=arbs and adms) who descended on WR to electioneer for people only in the Straight Shooter and the Cojones de latón cat. You know who I mean! To all of you I would like to say this: Chicken!

Now, could we make it an informal rule/guide for the future that anyone who endorse candidates in the above categories, should also endorse candidates on main WP:DICK and Miss Incongeniality categories? Thank you.

Finally, also a warm congrats to The Fat Man Who Never Came Back, the runner up in Cojones de latón category (though not a bad word about Cla68). My favorite, in fact I suspect he rounded up the female vote

Posted by: Bottled_Spider

I'm pleasantly surprised by JzG's performance. I honestly thought the best he'd do this year would be second place, if he was lucky. After his very recent disgrace in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SmashTheState fiasco, though, he's going to have to work really hard to even get a mention next year I'll bet. Chin up, Guy!

Sorry to see Peter Damian wasn't appreciated the way he should have been. But that's his way ..... very subtle; quite invisible to most drama fans. Giana's fall was both spectacular and predictable. I'm looking forward to a mirthsome 2009 on Wikipedia with him. Would an eventual, permanent ban, complete with mucho hissiness, drama and mass revenge-retirements from his supporters be too much to expect? I hope not! You go, girls! Heh!

Posted by: cyofee

Could you please release that image under a free licence so we can upload it to Commons?

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

Derivative work - are the source images free?

Posted by: dtobias

Interestingly, Guy and Damian are actually quite similar in their agendas, and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:SmashTheState&diff=prev&oldid=269147314 on-wiki has Damian saying "Guy is not so bad."

Posted by: Peter Damian

He's not. Just a bit erratic and mad and impulsive. Human qualities, no? And he collects lawnmower engines.

Posted by: wikiwhistle

I agree, I mean he might not be nice to other users sometimes, but at least he makes sure the articles on flakey theories are ok and that they don't rave about them when there's no peer-reviewed scientific evidence.

I have a similar agenda (i.e. we are supposed to have WP:NPOV not a misleading POV) where these articles are concerned, but hope I'm a bit friendlier most of the time than JzG, that's just my personal style though. I have zero tolerance for those pushing a misleading POV that there's any valid evidence for most/any of these things having any efficacy beyond the placebo effect, though.

Acupuncture is the one they usually cite as the one with most evidence, however yet another meta study, as with most ones, has recently said there's none. Having said that, I still practice some alt therapies, most people needs something to give them some fake sense of control over their life.

Posted by: LaraLove

Great read, Hersh... and the award is awesome Somey.

Posted by: Peter Damian

I thought the big-boobs thing was actually quite funny as well.

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

I'll say this about Guy: whatever his merits as a Wikipedia administrator, I get the impression that I'd like him in real life (cranky, contemptuous of unsubstantiated scientific viewpoints, mildly obsessive about things that wouldn't matter to normal people...these are a few of my favourite traits).That's not true of most admins who I perceive as abusive (a category into which this post shouldn't be taken to lump Guy).

Posted by: Anonymous editor

I'd rather it be the trophy peeking in the way Krimpet did it on your talk page. Or something.

Posted by: Somey

No, but there are enough changes to the original that it could be treated as "fair use" for parody purposes, at least under US law. Still, unless I'm mistaken, the Wikimedia Commons admins wouldn't allow you to upload it on that basis alone, though Uncyclopedia (now a Wikia site) probably would. Also, since the source image presumably isn't free, I can't claim any sort of license on it, nor would I want to. So feel free to do whatever you want with it - just don't expect me or The Wikipedia Review to take responsibility for it "in the wild," OK?

In other words, if Sally Field decides she doesn't like the idea of Dave's head being grafted on her body, she can ask us to take it down here on WR, and we'll almost certainly do just that. (Same goes for the photographer, whoever that was.) But as far as other websites are concerned, she'll have to ask whoever copied it from WR, and if the site in question is Commons, they'll probably defer to their usual "not our problem, call OTRS" routine.

Posted by: One

I'm impressed with the improved trophy. What's that black object rising from the globes? Is that a waste can?

Thank you so much for the PoetGuy award; I'm moved that you listened.

Posted by: gomi

I believe that you will find on close examination that the black object is the .... ahem .... "dick" in question, rendered in black latex or something. Of course, Somey may have some other explanation .....

Posted by: Obesity

Get your mind back in the gutter, CHL. It's obviously an overwhelmingly phallic affair, situated near Jimbo's crotch, with the two Wikipedia logos an enormous pair of gonads.

Speaking of which, I would like to see Cla68's trophy. Does he get a pair of those brass balls that Alec Baldwin wields in Glengarry Glen Ross?

Posted by: One

Sorry, religious upbringing. I miss these things.

Still, I think it might be some innocent object standing in (up?) for a phallus.

Posted by: Obesity

I didn't want to go there, but the thought occurred to me, Elder One.

Posted by: One

Nah. Never made it that far. Was supposed to have my wisdom teeth removed first, but then the orthodontist retired. Never did reschedule (indeed, I still have wisdom teeth). Papers never went in. I stayed in Salt Lake City, and then I graduated.

Nice folks though.

Posted by: Bottled_Spider

I knew about the "Guy is not so bad" comment, but I have to disagree on the similar agenda bit. No way would Peter ever have anything to do with "turd burglars" or "huge knockers", or the like, and JzG wouldn't know shit about writing encyclopaedia articles, etc. Otherwise, you could be right. Who knows?

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

How about a new award for next year: The Guy Chapman Non-Humanitarian Award for Lifetime Achievement? Sort of borrowing from the Oscars' Jean Hersholt Award -- a great way to honor lifetime achievement for non-honorable admins?

Posted by: Obesity

Mr. Gerard has http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:David_Gerard&diff=269384859&oldid=269384774.

Posted by: EricBarbour

zzzzzzzzzz........


Thanks to all for putting up a good award "show".
Nothing like cynical sarcasm to raise the
spirits on a gloomy winter day.

Posted by: Cla68

That was one of the fastest reverts I've ever seen. Thank you everyone, by the way, for the support.

Posted by: gomi

If we're suggesting new awards, may I suggest the SlimVirgin-FT2 Animal Husbandry award, given for outstanding contribution to drama on an animal-related WP page?

Posted by: dtobias

"Animal husbandry" is a weird word... does it mean to have an animal as your husband, or that husbands act like animals to their wives?

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

Tom Lehrer made the same point in a much funnier way, when he said, during his act, "I majored in Animal Husbandry... until they caught me at it."

Posted by: Milton Roe

The whole idea behind NPOV was that it was supposed to mirror the various POVs in print, more or less. But has fallen victim to scientism more than once on Wikipedia, and often when it has, JzG has been in there pushing and saying nasty things.

A lovely irony of all this is that Guy Chapman's chosen moniker on WP is from the book and 2005 movie The Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy: Gag Halfrunt: Zaphod's just zis guy, ya know. And Guy chose JzG for "Just zis Guy." Heh. But the irony is that a Kool Aider like Guy would pick a film (and book) in which occur many motifs which satirize Wikipedia very well. The destruction of things for meaningless reasons and in the course of meaningless rules (ArbCom was made for Vogons). The politician Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Galaxy, who, as a not-terribly-bright playboy, reminds one of a certain Wikipedian more than a little. There's the Hitchhiker's Guide itself, which has outpaced the Encyclopedia Galactica as the #1 resource book in print in the galaxy, mainly due to being a little cheaper . And also because the cover says Don't Panic in large letters, which people find soothing (I think it should be a pillar of WP).

And then there's a device which we should use for the trophy for the tag-team or Miss Incogeniality. A "weapon" from the film called the Point of View Gun. If you shoot somebody with the fearsome POV-gun, they immediately see your point of view. Something nobody has obviously ever used on Guy. I think he's wanted one of his own, and has been using the block button as a poor substitute.


Trillian using the dreaded POV Gun on a hapless man

Posted by: dtobias

Maybe Wikipedia needs a NPOV-gun that forces all its editors to have a neutral point of view?

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

Since I suspect this doesn't warrant a new thread, I'll note in this one that Straight shooter winner Thatcher http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&user=Deskana&page=User%3AThatcher.

Posted by: The Adversary

Which reminds me; WP:DICK is a very Anglo-Saxian award name: insults refer to a sexual image. If the majority of board-members had been of Lutheran back-ground, the award would have had a religious image; say, WP:DEVIL?

And if most of WR-people had a Jewish/Islamic background, if would refer to something about purity, cleanness, say, WP:PIG?

Of course, if most of us had been Iraqis, Gerard would now have been the proud winner of the WP:SHOE award for 2009

Posted by: Milton Roe

That would be just the standard gun, since as Jon points out, the only folks who truly have NPOV, are dead people.

As I keep pointing out till green-in-the-face the NPOV requirement does NOT help the problem unless you know which level to stop at, and then it must be applied partially and ungracefully, inviting wholely correct comments that the thing is merely an inevitable invitation to eventual arbitrariness and personal editorial judgement, see Original Research. Sure, you can represent the various POVs according to their referenceable notability, but how do you judge that you've gotten THAT right? You either just assert it, via OR and your personal understanding of the subject (or the uneasy concensus views of the few people working on the article, if you're lucky enough to have that situation), or else you find some authority to tell you which POVs have majority and minority status, and after you've found this guy, all you have is his expert POV, and if you get an argument about "who's this guy?" you have to collect a number of such people in theory to see if his view represents the majority POV about POVs, and then you have to find a reference for the minority POV about POVs, and then finally you need somebody to reference to see if you have THAT right, and on down the rabbit hole. It never ends, and there's a potential WP:RS fight at every level of it, if somebody wants to be snarky. Which they always do, if their particular ox is being gored or their dog is being screwed, or whatever (we've mentioned the animal and Israel-related articles).

The "real world" of academia has this problem too, of course, but they solve these in the familiar way of invited contributions of people with CVs, peer review, and a final editorial say from which there is no appeal. WP has dispensed with this, basically because it can't afford it in a volunteer project. So it is more like the legal system, where there's even less input from Subject Matter Experts. and so questions which are really proxy fights about facts in the real world, like did the X in my water supply cause my kid to get cancer, end up being "decided" by panels of laypeople or appeals judges who can't remember their last science class. CHL/One has pointed this out on WR, recently, and it's a long-standing problem in democracy.

Except Wikipedia is worse: a legal system run by amateurs. The formal sytem (what there is of it) is far worse on Wikpedia, where ArbCom ends up being the WP Supreme Court which has a huge backlog of fights which are really POV fights about real-world facts, being fought on a proxy level, as procedural issues argued by Wikilawyers, instead of factual issues argued by academics. Exactly like appeals in our present legal system, but worse on every level for reasons that I hope I don't have to point out (if you like our present level system, you'll just love WP, which is has the same faults, but even-more-so, plus many others).

In all systems for which we desire evolutionary improvement, we come back to the problem of closure of the quality-control loop, which is the feedback in cybernetics. No system improves unless it has some way of objectively guaging performance by some agreed-metric, and using the results to make it better on the next round. That's the command-control cycle. Biological evolution needs both death and reproduction, for example, or it creates nothing. For many goings-on in the world, the agreed metric is what happens in reality. Does the businesss make sustainable profits or not? Does the Space Shuttle blow up, or not? When it does, somebody like Feynman reminds us that Nature can't be fooled by stupid management puffery (the same happens for business and banking, but we don't have a Feynman for that-- see our present economic problems). Feynman's comment is a version of the joke that lawyers make poor private plane pilots because they forget they're arguing with God. The same goes for politicians and management in general.

Max Planck argued acidly that science progresses funeral by funeral, but it's not quite that bad. The social fad and fancy part of science does this, but the rest of science lurches forward, making slow generational progress in the same way as FAA regulations and Building and Fire Codes: disaster by disaster, bad prediction by bad prediction. Individual scientists get screwed in this process because the cycle time is longer than cycle time for individual academic progress. But things get done despite the unfairness.

In other fields, it's bad. Where are our solid quality metrics for aesthetics and religion and ethics? Even problems of economics, where the metric is much clearer ("Is average prosperity rising?") wind up with legislators trying to legislate supply and demand, which reminds one of King Canute's humorous demo to his fawning courtiers that kings cannot order the tides. In the end, governments can only (sometimes) keep people from drowning if they've done something stupid in the tidal zone, but the macroscopic goings on of the economic ocean still continue unchanged.

Wikipedia's feedback loop is mostly busted. In religion and the arts and the law, such feedback as there is, is from audience applause, and consists of finally producing something people like and can live with, even if it's not demonstrably better in any other way. But that's fine, because nobody really wants anything better from these fields: they really do exist merely to please, and exist mostly in a vacuum as regards input from what we know of natural law. Wikipedia is much the same as ethics or the arts or religion in that sense, but shouldn't be. Wikipedia is supposed to be a mirror of thinking in academia about nature and history and real-world events, but the mechanism to ensure that it actually mirrors academia is sadly busted, because it mostly lacks academia's quality control mechanisms for making the connection. As has been noted, ad nauseum So, here we are.

If science doesn't exactly progress funeral by funeral, WP does. Here the "funerals" are burned-out bad administrators, and nutcase editors who are finally restrained. But the main progress on Wikipedia gets made by people who completely ignore its rules and write good articles according to their tastes regarding a subject they love, in the process mostly ignorning the POV warnings. And hoping like mad they won't get into a fight and become a casualty of the Wikiwars, since if they do, they're fodder for a system where there are no decent rules or evidence or procedural process in place, and which has a completely clogged resolution system run by teenagers, volunteers, and hobbysts. And no expert testimony at all.

Milton


Okay, tl;dr. So skip it.

Posted by: Anonymous editor

Excellent post. I remember that weapon and this would be a pretty good use of it.

Posted by: Viridae

You havent seen my talk page recently then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Viridae

Also put it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Orangemarlin_and_other_matters&diff=222202548&oldid=222201919

in the FT2 blocked Oangemarlin OMG HYSTERIA thread. It lasted less than a minute.

Posted by: Bottled_Spider

Posted, and deleted, in the same minute! Impressive, actually. That's dedication. Either that or he's been sitting glued to his chair for almost 40 straight (meh!) hours waiting for some evil WR troll to post the news to his talkpage. I should imagine that now one has (or, rather, some Wiki guy called "Fatty Man", or something, did) he can now think of relaxing. And maybe, at long last visiting the shitter for what I imagine will be a danger to shipping once it hits the sea. Poor Dave. Hope he is well.

Posted by: tarantino

Guy was http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/U54363[1], long before Wikipedia was a twinkle in Larry Sanger's eye.

[1] 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' Earth version, was founded by Adams and is currently run by the BBC.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Undoubtedly why I missed it, then. Good one on your TALK page.


There's also a great movie throw-away line, where Trillian uses the POV-gun on Zaphod a few times, and then somebody threatens to use it on HER. She says: "It won't have any effect; I'm a woman already."

Posted by: dogbiscuit

Of course the HHGTG thing breaks down at the point where you remember that the Total Perspective Vortex showed Zaphod he was indeed the most important being in the Universe.

I suppose in the Wikiverse there is a truth in that - but it didn't mean that Zaphod was a Good Thing.

Posted by: EricBarbour

Sorry, it's much more fun to talk about Gerard, sitting in front of his PC day and night,
desperately watching his user talk page to catch "vandalism".

Even Douglas Adams, at his most cynical, would never have dreamed
of a human being doing something so pointless and paranoid.

Now Monty Python....they'd get a whole movie out of it.....

Posted by: Milton Roe

In a way, he's being punished in a way comparable to all those people stuck with unwillingly watching their own BLPs. Justice. I like it. Jimbo has lackeys to watch his talk page, but Gerard does not. Or JzG/Guy either. I figure they're both due to die in time of sleep deprivation. Probably this part of is what makes Guy so irritable and profane. No REM sleep for months...

Posted by: Giggy

Only because the universe he was in was created specifically for him, and was not the real universe. A universe created specifically for JzG would contain a lot more "crazy" people trying to push crazy POVs edit articles about global warming than even JzG could block for spurious reasons. I imagine he would love it.

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

It might have gone better if you had observed proper protocol, which would be to open the conversation by saying, "Who will you be wearing on the red carpet?"