Abd-William M. Connolley, The Cabal strikes back Options

[Guido den Broeder]

Cla68 , the wikipedia troll, seems to have lost his tongue here. His own namespace contributions on wikiedia are narrow and boring. Yet he feels in a position to criticize others. Might he possibly have a chip on his shoulder? He seems limited and shallow. In Britain he would be called a wally. Just my two centimes worth.

Centime is the correct value here. Very little trolling there from any side, surprisingly, but if I were to name someone guilty of it that would be you, not Cla68.


Not counting Mr. Connolley himself, of course.

[Moulton]

Boredom is the name of an emotion, and thus characterizes the current state of the person expressing some degree of boredom along the continuous axis ranging from ennui to fascination.

If subject X bores observer Y, the obvious question for observer Y is: What fascinates you?

Other than participating in W-R threads, that is.

[Lar]

Cla68 , the wikipedia troll, seems to have lost his tongue here. His own namespace contributions on wikiedia are narrow and boring. Yet he feels in a position to criticize others. Might he possibly have a chip on his shoulder? He seems limited and shallow. In Britain he would be called a wally. Just my two centimes worth.

Not worth even 2 centimes. Trashing Cla68 shows a distinct lack of class, and a very large lack of clue. I'm surprised at you, Mathsci, I'd expected better.

[Cla68]

I'm in full agreement with Carcharoth and Thatcher here. Cla68, if you feel there is a severe issue that needs handling by the Arbitration Committee that is not being addressed here, please wait for this case to close and open a request for a new case then. Coming here at this stage and saying everyone commenting on this case should be topic banned is not at all helpful and needlessly provocative. Please back off and retake your seat in the audience. Hersfold (t/a/c) 04:36, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Not one of Cla68's greatest moments on wikipedia. He was trolling on ArbCom case pages.

Actually, after leaving that comment on the case talk page, I had forgotten to go back and look at the responses to it, so I appreciate Mathsci bringing it up. When I get around to it one of these days I'll start a thread here on what I think is wrong currently with the climate change related articles.

In a nutshell, I don't have any problem with those articles concentrating on the IPCC's stance on the issue, because that does seem to be the prevailing belief by most in the scientific community. The problem is the ruthless suppression of minority, but notable, contrary views on the topic by a small group of editors who currently control those articles in Wikipedia.

If a notable scientist like Freeman Dyson believes that warming is localized, not global, in nature, then it shouldn't be so difficult to make note of it in the related article. The fight to keep Lawrence Solomon from being labled as an environmentalist is another example. I won't say any more until there is a dedicated thread on it.

This post has been edited by Cla68: Sun 30th August 2009, 12:02am

[Herschelkrustofsky]

The fight to keep Lawrence Solomon from being labled as an environmentalist is another example. I won't say any more until there is a dedicated thread on it.

This is part of what appears to be a big, complicated story. First of all, you have this battle on the ANI board about the edit warring at the Solomon BLP. It includes (gasp) allegations that Connolley has a tag team. This discussion is in turn blamed by Connolley himself for an interesting modification of WP:BAN, causing major distress to Will Beback, who was hoping to use the old version as a pretext for banning Leatherstocking. The focus of the debate is on whether it is permissible to restore deleted material that was added by banned users if there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Recently joined WR member GoRight is one of the principals in the discussion, as are our in-house ArbCom twin experts, One and No One.

I think that all of this may have far-reaching implications.

[Jay]

If a notable scientist like Freeman Dyson believes that warming is localized, not global, in nature

Trouble is, it's way outside his field of expertise. To my certain knowledge, Lord Peston strongly believes in global warming but nobody would cite him as an expert in the area.

[Mathsci]

Cla68 , the wikipedia troll, seems to have lost his tongue here. His own namespace contributions on wikiedia are narrow and boring. Yet he feels in a position to criticize others. Might he possibly have a chip on his shoulder? He seems limited and shallow. In Britain he would be called a wally. Just my two centimes worth.

I don't find his contributions boring.

He might have something better to do that search his own username every 12 hours on Wikipedia Review. He probably doesn't look at threads that have been bumped three times consecutively by the same axe-grinder. Good for him.

Ahem, this is the only WR thread on the current ArbCom case, one in which Cla68 just tried to put a cat among the pigeons at the last minute. So its not exactly a needle in a haystack. But yes, the internet is asynchronous. In my case some article space contributions (audio links) take hours of time, sometimes even a week, to produce for youtube and a few seconds to add to wikipedia. The images do or will produce spin-off in other WP articles.

Yes, I agree, "boring" was the wrong word to use for his editing. He writes extremely well in military articles. The same applies to PGH.

However, despite the busy schedule you refer to, Cla68 must presumably have had time (hours, days?) to read all three case pages and their talk pages on wikipedia. He then chose to group together all science articles and a large and disparate set of editors in an ill-judged statement. As of now that's almost the last thing he did on WP. I don't have an axe to grind with him - I'm just a bit surprised. Presumably, if he really thinks he's right, he'll be opening a fresh ArbCom case with detailed diffs to back up his extraordinary claims. A brilliant choice for the advisory committee.

[Moulton]

For reasons that I am at a loss to understand or explain, disagreements over ideas seem to morph into antagonisms between personalities. One of the remarkable characteristics about the late Senator Kennedy is that he had genuine (and reciprocated) love for those with whom he vigorously disagreed on ideological grounds.

Benjamin Franklin put it this way: "Gentlemen, we can disagree without being disagreeable."

This post has been edited by Moulton: Sun 30th August 2009, 11:44am

[Mathsci]

Cla68 , the wikipedia troll, seems to have lost his tongue here. His own namespace contributions on wikiedia are narrow and boring. Yet he feels in a position to criticize others. Might he possibly have a chip on his shoulder? He seems limited and shallow. In Britain he would be called a wally. Just my two centimes worth.

Not worth even 2 centimes. Trashing Cla68 shows a distinct lack of class, and a very large lack of clue. I'm surprised at you, Mathsci, I'd expected better.

I already replied to CHL and must agree with you here. Cla68's namespace editing record speaks for itself. However, to clarify what I wrote in the heat of the moment, the possibly isolated incident of edits to the talk pages of the PD was completely out of line there. If Cla68 suggests that a whole group of disparate editors should be banned from all science articles without a shred of evidence, that is effectively a trashing on wikipedia which is quite ill-judged. Hence my reaction here. As you say totally OTT - but isn't that what WR is all about?

Cla68 is probably correct that some thinking has to go into what's going on with GW or AGW articles, but that is tangential to this ArbCom case. It's a completely separate problem on WP and quite outside my wiki-universe.

Anyway it's more fun writing wikipedia articles. From day one this ArbCom case has been very odd. The number of bizarre interventions by sockpuppets has been one symptom of that.

This post has been edited by Mathsci: Sun 30th August 2009, 11:41am

[Cla68]

The fight to keep Lawrence Solomon from being labled as an environmentalist is another example. I won't say any more until there is a dedicated thread on it.

This is part of what appears to be a big, complicated story. First of all, you have this battle on the ANI board about the edit warring at the Solomon BLP. It includes (gasp) allegations that Connolley has a tag team. This discussion is in turn blamed by Connolley himself for an interesting modification of WP:BAN, causing major distress to Will Beback, who was hoping to use the old version as a pretext for banning Leatherstocking. The focus of the debate is on whether it is permissible to restore deleted material that was added by banned users if there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Recently joined WR member GoRight is one of the principals in the discussion, as are our in-house ArbCom twin experts, One and No One.

I think that all of this may have far-reaching implications.

The IPCCab editors are making the same mistake the IDCab editors made, which is making it way too obvious to everyone that they're editing with a coordinated POV agenda.

[Moulton]

The IPCCab editors are making the same mistake the IDCab editors made, which is making it way too obvious to everyone that they're editing with a coordinated POV agenda.

FT2 take note. While Cla68 doesn't invoke Girard's Model by name, he observes the phenomenon of mimesis, whereby unsustainable and unwise practices are blithely adopted and reprised without consideration of their long-term consequences. In terms of the modern academic models of a learning organization, the largely unstructured and uncoordinated community of Wikipedians fail to learn from their mistakes, repeating them anew from one bailiwick to the next.

[Cla68]

The IPCCab editors are making the same mistake the IDCab editors made, which is making it way too obvious to everyone that they're editing with a coordinated POV agenda.

FT2 take note. While Cla68 doesn't invoke Girard's Model by name, he observes the phenomenon of mimesis, whereby unsustainable and unwise practices are blithely adopted and reprised without consideration of their long-term consequences. In terms of the modern academic models of a learning organization, the largely unstructured and uncoordinated community of Wikipedians fail to learn from their mistakes, repeating them anew from one bailiwick to the next.

Ironically, the Wikipedia article on learning organization is actually a fairly well-written, referenced article.

[Moulton]

Wikipedia exemplifies the kind of roller-coaster learning curve, full of dramaturgical sturm und drang arising from ill-advised practices grounded in tragic misconceptions and woefully incomplete mastery of appropriate managerial ethics and organizational principles.

[Abd]

Wikipedia exemplifies the kind of roller-coaster learning curve, full of dramaturgical sturm und drang arising from ill-advised practices grounded in tragic misconceptions and woefully incomplete mastery of appropriate managerial ethics and organizational principles.

It is not a roller coaster, it's a tilt-a-whirl.

I just finished writing a response to Carcharoth's question about what I'd do differently. Setting aside the obvious answer of not editing Wikipedia, which would certainly save a lot of trouble, I looked at the decision, commented once again on it, then buried that under specific responses of change. In the process, I looked at the references that had been cited in the finding of fact that I had edited cold fusion tendentiously. They were all pointers to evidence by Enric Naval, who had started with a laundry list of everything and the kitchen sink, including lots of stuff like "proxies for banned users" which has finally been thoroughly rejected. I'd thought it obvious! Anyway, I'd responded to Enric's original evidence, but then he had changed it all, and the new evidence is what ArbComm cited. It was all quite bad, but one pointer was totally outrageous. Remember, this is evidence presented to show that I was editing tendentiously:

The finding.

The Evidence (point 4), which, under the header of "We can't take every peer-reviewed source seriously," points to:

The Evidence Enric presented in RfAr/Fringe science.

Did the arbitrators actually read this? This was evidence presented before I had touched the article. Enric (like the rest of the Cab) was taking a position rejected by ArbComm in that arbitration; my subsequent editing was intended to fulfill the principles of that decision, which was sound, as far as it went.

I'm suspecting that the arbs voting for that finding didn't read it, they just read the header, and assumed that it was my position Enric was describing. Or I don't know what, but it makes no sense that this would be evidence about tendentious editing. I've now described this on the Proposed decision talk, but we'll see if anyone picks up on it beyond the IP editor.

Discussion started by an IP editor on the arbitration proposed decision talk page.

Cab. I've removed the "al" from the end to match the removal of the conspiracy theory from the claim of social involvement.

Will ArbComm realize that it cannot decide fact by vote? That what it rejected as unsupported by evidence wasn't what I claimed, and that what I claimed is common knowledge and was supported? Will Abd wake up and realize that none of this matters at all?

Maybe.

Hey, Mathsci! You've claimed I don't know beans about cold fusion. I've stated on the proposed decision talk page that the recent peer-reviewed sources entirely assume the reality of LENR (colloquially, "cold fusion"), and that that the bulk of peer-reviewed publication, overall, since 1989, favors the positive, i.e., there is a real anomaly, unexplained still (but with new major publications proposing theories). Can you contradict this?

[Moulton]

I really don't get this bogus charge of "tendentiousness". People everywhere argue for their position on and off the Internet and have done so since the dawn of civilization. Only in Wikipedia would that be defined as a bannable offense.

[Mathsci]

Hey, Mathsci! You've claimed I don't know beans about cold fusion. I've stated on the proposed decision talk page that the recent peer-reviewed sources entirely assume the reality of LENR (colloquially, "cold fusion"), and that that the bulk of peer-reviewed publication, overall, since 1989, favors the positive, i.e., there is a real anomaly, unexplained still (but with new major publications proposing theories). Can you contradict this?

Nobody becomes an expert on a fringe science topic by four months of home reading. Abd seems to be trying to "reinvent" himself on wikipedia. On his own admission, he is not a trained university-level research scientist in real life. No matter how much he wishes it were so, not even his favourite tooth fairy could make it happen. Anyway, as he is well aware, it doesn't matter on wikipedia.

Meanwhile back on wikipedia, amongst other things, Abd wrote this as a future promise:

I would continue to confront, within boundaries (including mentor consent), the problems of factional affiliation/involvement and Majority POV-pushing, again proactively, using dispute resolution at the lowest level that works.

This is a record that seems to have beome stuck in the same groove.

[No one of consequence]

I really don't get this bogus charge of "tendentiousness". People everywhere argue for their position on and off the Internet and have done so since the dawn of civilization. Only in Wikipedia would that be defined as a bannable offense.

My view (FWIW) is that people are expected to advocated for their own position, but in doing so to respect others and their positions, and to eventually settle down to a compromise. Wikipedia:Tendentious editing, to me, means things like denegrating the editor as a tactic to devalue his edits, refusing to give a fair hearing to other people's positions, reopening old disputes that have previously been settled, trying to win by attrition or by out-shouting the other side, not respecting your co-workers, and so on.

There are tendentious people where I work in real life, who won't forgive old grudges, who argue their point incessantly, who belittle people lower than them on the ladder. It's not just a wikipedia thing, but it's harder to deal with on wikipedia.

[Moulton]

Incivility is not the same thing as vigorously arguing for one's point of view. I don't know if they still have Debate Clubs in high school, but one can vigorously debate on a position without ridiculing one's opponent.

[No one of consequence]

Incivility is not the same thing as vigorously arguing for one's point of view. I don't know if they still have Debate Clubs in high school, but one can vigorously debate on a position without ridiculing one's opponent.

I know that and you know that. If we were the only two Wikipedia editors I'm sure we'd get along famously.

[Moulton]

The point is that if they can't silence or marginalize you for a valid infraction, they will make one up. Among the bogus reasons I ran into, "tendentiousness" was the first and "having no interest in writing an encyclopedia" was the second. The third was having the temerity to develop course materials on managerial ethics, which Jimbo then declared "beyond the scope of the project."