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Posted by: Coffee

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Ottava_Rima&oldid=324205438

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

"I am gone. I don't know when I will be back..." -- Ottava

Pity he didn't say he was leaving on a jet plane -- it would've been a fitting tribute to the late Mary Travers.

Posted by: everyking

I recommend a technical measure to ensure that he doesn't cut his vacation short.

Posted by: Anonymous editor

I concur, especially after skimming this:

Posted by: cyofee

Let's start a betting pool about Ottava's date of return to Wikipedia.

My preliminary guess would be around two weeks from now.

Posted by: Somey

Hasn't he done this sort of thing before? Or am I confusing him with someone else?

If you can manage to get through the whole entry, you'll see that he doesn't say anything particularly nasty about anyone. That's unusual, and while it seems logical to assume it means he'll be back in more like two days, I'm not so sure. Ottava is extremely stubborn and uncompromising, so something like that could very well mean that he's going to make a real effort to beat the psychological withdrawal and get off the drug.

Baah, what am I saying? Four days.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

Considering that it looks like the Arbcom was actually going to accept the case this time, I predict his return will be a rough one. Not a good play at brinksmanship.

Posted by: Eva Destruction

Four days. The Arbcom elections start on 10 November, and I don't believe Ottava will let the chance pass to share his opinions. Upper limit of 21 days, assuming Malleus still runs for RFA on 27 Nov, since there's no way Ottava won't wade into that particular argument.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

My money is on the theory that he's already returned under a new username.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

I am surprised he didn't channel Terry Jacks and start singing "Goodbye to you, my trusted friend /we knew each other since we were nine or ten..."

You will also notice that he talks to a good percentage of the same 150-200 people who inevitably migrate to RfA, RfArb, ANI, AfD or various talk pages and "projects" that set off our radars. For a project that supposedly encompasses 10.5 million registered users, it always seems fishy that the exact same people keep turning up over and over and over again in these discussions/farewells/smackdowns/non-vote !votes/trivia.

He will be back by this time next week.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

But of course, most of them are me.

Ja Ja

Posted by: EricBarbour

Agreed--the Arbcom election is irresistible to him.

And supposedly he already has at least 20 socks set up. (A little birdy told me. )

Posted by: Wiki Witch of the West

If he ever did this before I don't remember it. Since August he's contributed 7 featured articles and nearly 30 good articles on scholarly topics. Fantastic content writer; here's wishing he were better with people. Let's give him a little breathing room.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Godwin strikes again …

Jon

Posted by: Wiki Witch of the West

Just because you're such a sweet person, Jon, here's the http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/481.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZtQh5EIgWQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cJauX_q6wI&feature=channel!

Posted by: SB_Johnny

Just curious Durova: when did I become a steward?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FCase&action=historysubmit&diff=323942496&oldid=323931669

(And, uh, that was aimed at the people shooting the spitballs actually, more than at your buddy.)

Posted by: Wiki Witch of the West

Sometimes I go by memory, which can be faulty. Apologies if the recollection was faulty. Must've been too much blood in my caffeine system.

Thought you'd appreciate the visuals for "whiskey, tango, foxtrot". But on a more serious note the criticism is well intentioned and serious.

It's hard to relate unless you've ever found yourself at the eye of a gale force wikistorm. But really, there were expletives tossed around at that discussion that stand out like sore thumbs to the person who's in sharpest focus. In that sort of situation it is very tempting to point to the inconsistency--he's being grilled for incivility while people with a much more obvious level of incivility go without a polite reminder. One of the hardest things to do in that situation is to make a realistic assessment of one's own shortcomings. A quiet and calm response really is better.

Posted by: Tex

If Ottava is a decent page maker he should just go to Wikipedia Review or Everything2, or something equivalent. No point in having your pages smashed by casual ip addresses, since the governors of the site have no interest in implementing better software.

Posted by: Coffee

Oooh me too... put me down for... 1,000 WikiDollars please!

Posted by: everyking

How persistent and severe would Ottava have to be in his attacks on other editors before his conduct would be deemed intolerable? Do you think it's possible that Ottava has been doing all that constructive editing because he realizes that he'd otherwise be quickly banned? If he was restricted in some way that prevented him from trolling, he'd probably lose interest in editing altogether, which may in fact be essentially what happened this time.

Posted by: Malleus

How "persistent and severe" do your own attacks have to be before your conduct is deemed "intolerable"? Are you seriously proposing that anyone would work on 7 featured articles and 30 GAs just to avoid being banned?

You're way beyond crazy everyking.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Or, even better, he can write for a professional media outlet.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

I've seen stranger behavior in the context of cults (Scientology, the Family, stuff like that). It's not incomprehensible.

Posted by: Viridae

I think you are being way too cynical, I certainly wouldn't put the effort into contributing all that he does just so he can troll with impunity - of course, he might have realised he can be a troll as a side project in addition to the content which he seems to enjoy contributing. That said, I don't think he is particuarly trollish, just has a filthy temper and has discovered he can (up till now) make people back down by screaming harrasment. Frankly is you want to troll with impunity, either edit ED, go play on/b/ or become an admin, all of which are easier options that doing what he is doing.

Posted by: everyking

It's more likely that the constructive editing is the side project and the trolling is the main event. After all, when confronted with the imminent likelihood of sanctions that would limit his ability to troll, he chose to leave and not write articles anymore. Doesn't that speak volumes about his priorities? Also, considering that he's a religious fanatic, I don't think playing around with a bunch of vulgar children would have much troll appeal for him.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

But Everyking, his fingers pressed keys that the magic wiki spun into gold, so you miss him sorely, right?

Posted by: Malleus

It is to me.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Perhaps you should change your name to Horatio, then.

Posted by: Malleus

Perhaps. Oh, what I'd give to be omniscient like you.

Posted by: Tower

Anyway to come back to topic, I see Ottava is back on WP now. Posting on Malleus's talk page. Even talking about us over here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Malleus_Fatuorum#Hmm

Hi Ottava.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Daddy's home! Daddy's home!

Posted by: Cedric

Back?? http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&limit=500&target=Ottava+Rima

Nothing more here than a lot of attention-whoring whining of a type we have seen hundreds of times before. Honestly, people!

Posted by: SB_Johnny

I'm under the impression he's an avid WR reader... actually the wikibreak might have gone on a little longer if he was free to post here.

Aw, c'mon now. He took over 36 hours off!

Posted by: Casliber

Writing Featured Articles is an antidote to that, as a consensus flagged-stable-revision-thingy, and was my prime motivation for writing Featured content in the first place (as an anchor once the articles start to erode like sandcastles at the beach...)

Posted by: everyking

Since Ottava isn't really gone, the ArbCom should hurry up and accept the case and do something about him. Antandrus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Statement_by_Antandrus: "When not editing content, Ottava Rima is the single most disruptive, time-wasting, drama-creating, wikilawyering unsanctioned editor I have encountered in almost six years editing. Please accept this case to look closely at his conduct. There is no way to measure how much of the time of otherwise-productive Wikipedians he siphons off into his dramas."

Posted by: Eva Destruction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions. An http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FCase%2FOttava_Rima_restrictions%2FEvidence&action=historysubmit&diff=324939003&oldid=324936668 as the first post, too: "Please can Arbcom reject this case, because I think Ottava's crazy".

Posted by: everyking

I remember admins used to say "Wiki is not therapy" when banning crazy people.

Posted by: Malleus

Most people are certified "crazy" by a qualified psychiatrist though, not some wikipedian on a mission to improve the world's grammar.

Posted by: Somey

Nobody is suggesting he be certified in any way, Mr. Malleus - only that he be removed from the stress-inducing factor. The fact is, Fowler&fowler (T-C-L-K-R-D) is right, and some of the entries on Ottava's talk page do indicate severe WP-induced mental stress, which many of us have seen before and none of us want to see again. An immediate indefinite ban would actually be the best way to help him, whereas an ArbCom case would be the best way to make his mental state even worse.

None of this is meant to suggest that I've changed my mind about Ottava's behavior here on WR, which I still believe to have been an experiment in how far a person like him can go to annoy us here before getting his account suspended. Nevertheless, the mere fact that he would even do that at all should have been a strong indication to ArbCom and the admins that Ottava was, and is, a nervous breakdown waiting to happen. The further away he can get from Wikipedia, the better off he'll be.

Posted by: Malleus

So you're a qualified psychiatrist too. Fair enough.

Posted by: Somey

I understand your reluctance to accept this, Mr. Malleus - nobody wants to believe that a mere website could cause a person that much stress. But it does happen, I've seen it happen, and Ottava is currently displaying many of the same indicators - in fact, the stage he's currently in (expressing resignation/regret over past mistakes while still defending his intentions as honorable and/or justifiable) is usually the last stage before the person either goes apeshit and starts posting a lot of crazy weirdness, or else snaps and disappears completely.

There was a case on Uncyclopedia where we were able to find out what was really going on at home with one of these guys, because his wife was posting stuff about it to another website - she didn't really understand what was happening, and in fact she thought her husband was up until 4 AM every night "working." She actually believed his job was causing him all that stress, driving him nuts, etc., when in fact it was a wiki site, and not even Wikipedia, where the stakes are much higher. I assume he eventually ended up on happy pills, and I think he may have even kept his job, but who knows - it might have ended pretty badly under just slightly different circumstances.

And Ottava, if you're reading this, forget everything I've ever said about you - none of that matters. Just get away from the damn computer for a while. Don't think that just because you're smart and know you're doing the right thing, you're immune to stress-induced psychosis. Force yourself to get some perspective - it's just not that big a deal.

Posted by: Malleus

There we probably can agree.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

I think the most memorable case we had here was AB, and I think that there was civil enough communication with Wikipedia that all sides recognised that AB was spiralling down into some mental chaos and all sides encouraged a disengagement from Wikipedia and the Review.

It is in the nature of WR that we will attract such people, and although we are not experts, common sense dictates that where it seems that an individual is in distress that basic humanity requires we attempt to act responsibly, even if we only have blunt tools to use.

Wikipedia is the same. I think, for example, that if people are found to be editing for extreme amounts of time, and I'd suggest for a voluntary site even a couple of hours a day on a regular basis suggests that there is too much enthusiasm for Teh Interweb over The Real World, (I certainly bother about the time I spend here being excessive) then a concerned site administration should be suggesting that these people should be backing off, instead they are idolised.

Posted by: Eva Destruction

I see it the opposite way in this case. Certainly, if someone were clearly mentally ill, or if an obvious child were being bullied, there's a duty of care - but Ottava's clearly an adult, and to me just looks annoyed, not nuts. While I've now lost whatever faith I had in Wikipedia as a project, I've been in the state where I could spend two-three hours a day there, and even in retrospect I don't see an issue, as long as one can and does walk away. I don't and never did subscribe to the "for the greater good" line on Wikipedia; I see it as the online equivalent of building model railroads, crocheting, or modding autos. Sure, I agree that "walk away if it isn't fun" is a healthy attitude, but different people have different ways of working - IIRC Ottava is some kind of Jesuit or similar in real life, and probably has a considerably higher tolerance to arguments than most.

(I think that was part of his problem on both WP and WR - what he sees as debating-society style close analysis, hypothetical points and displays of formal logic, look to other people like nitpicking, rambling speculation and smartassery, respectively. Jon Awbrey and Peter Damian had the same problem.)

Posted by: Moulton

By now, it should be recognized as an axiom that WikiCulture is a crazy-making culture. Some people are more susceptible than others to being driven to distraction by the shenanigans of that drama-laden site.

What varies is how people react and respond when they are being driven crazy.

Some just walk away. Eventually.

Some go off the deep end.

Some search for functional solutions (which may not even exist to be proposed, let alone adopted).

Ottava took his unsolved problem from WP and reified it here on W-R, to see if anyone here could act back a functional solution. W-R failed to present Ottava with a functional solution that he could ferry back to WP. Instead, W-R just banned him.

I happen to believe there does exist a functional solution, but neither WP nor W-R seem inclined to embrace it.

Posted by: Eva Destruction

Moulton, did you just say something I agree with?

Posted by: Moulton

Hopefully so.

Posted by: LaraLove

Better than being a drama-mongering douchebag that doesn't contribute much of value to the project. WP certainly has a few of those as well.

Did I just call Ottava a drama-mongering douchebag? Maybe... but not necessarily.


This assumes that he doesn't genuinely believe he's been harassed. I talk to Ottava often in IRC, mainly because he's pings me incessantly and I rarely ignore such messages. Anyway, I can't tell, despite all these chats, exactly what's up with him. I do, however, believe that he seriously thinks he's been harassed. Whether or not it's the actual case, I haven't looked into it to be able to give an opinion. I also think he enjoys the drama, and I think he defends his enemies to keep them from attacking him later, and that he does what he can to form alliances that he thinks will benefit him in the future.

Now, whether he's highly intelligent and does all this as a game for his own amusement, or there's some sort of psychological issue that drives him to keep the drama turned to 11 at all times, I'm not sure about.

He gets in arguments over all sorts of things in IRC with people as well. I don't even recall all of the topics, but one lighthearted discussion of the apocalypse (where some of the boys in the room were discussing hypotheticals and possible strategies to survive), Ottava joined in and it eventually turned into a nasty discussion. Everyone else seemed to be having fun with it, but he disagreed with something and just... bad times. Another time there was a discussion about the differences between the affects of toxins and hallucinogens, and that got ugly too, and all of a sudden. Some random comment seemed to set Ottava off for no apparent reason and it just spiraled out after that.

Crazy shit, but whether it's actually crazy or him just being a troll, hard to tell. He also often seems not to realize when he's being trolled, but don't call him an Aspie. He'll freak out.

Posted by: Peter Damian

I quite liked some of the points Ottava was making. He pays close attention to detail, and carefully and painstakingly argues his points, and he is very persistent. These are all qualities highly regarded in academia, and are no doubt important in the construction of reliable reference sources. I don't know whether they are of any value on Wikipedia.

Posted by: Malleus

I'd just look puzzled. What's an "Aspie"?

Posted by: Eva Destruction

Aspies. "[Aspies] often display behavior, interests, and activities that are restricted and repetitive and are sometimes abnormally intense or focused" could sum up about 95% of the people on Wikipedia, it has to be said.

Posted by: Friday

Asperger Syndrome. "...people with it therefore show significant difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests..."

It's a fancified word for what I would simply call a "kook". Altho, it's a particular specific type of kook.

Posted by: Malleus

Ah! I'm firmly in the Thomas Satz camp; "mental illness" is a fiction dreamt up by medical doctors.

Posted by: Friday

You've been around Wikipedia how long?

How is it possible that you don't believe in mental illness?

Posted by: Milton Roe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Evidence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions#Final_decision

See, Moulton, that's your problem. You seem to think that all people who have severe mental problems A) are curable, and B) might be curable here on WR with "talk" therapy. As for the first assumption, it's your dead fish; good luck with it. As for the second, Somey or some mod should give you your own fishtank subforum so we can all watch to see how you "cure" somebody like Ottava of his "issues."

Now, the "issues" that Ottava has are indeed narcissistic wounding, since Ottava believes he is a worldclass expert on whatever issue he happens to be arguing about, and that other people are either idiots or evil or both. He quickly elevates all arguments into an academic face-off, which, if he starts to lose, degenerates almost instantly into a personalized attack which (on WP) he attempts to carry on into Wikipolitics. Moreschi (T-C-L-K-R-D) has documentation of lots of this, and if you see the Otttava-generated WP:LAME discussion of how to name the poet Byron, you will get the gist of it. Here is more, with links from Moreschi in the first link above:



We saw all this here on WR, remember? In my own case, Ottava characterized himself as a world class expert on the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church, which he decided all agreed (and HAD always agreed) on his own particular view of abortion. When he started to lose the academic and citation argument, he simply slipped to refusing to argue on grounds that I had made a minor mistake in nomenclature and thus could not possibly have any further valid points. That was where this sort of thing stopped on WR because we don't have any RfC or ArbCom, but on WP, Ottava typically carries such arguments beyond incivility and into suggesting that others be banned or blocked. His own RfA went down with much horrification, needless to say.

Here on WR, Ottava wore out a number of people with such stuff on other topics (not only me), and was banned (not by me-- I have no "say" on WR). On WP, he continuted it with many other people (thank God not me), until there are hundreds of pages of these sorts of WP:LAME Ottava-generated arguments on a most ridiculous range of topics. It isn't that Ottava's battles are all over him being expert in subject X. If that were so, we could tag him as being one more expert that WP has picked up, chewed, and spat out. Rather, it is/was the case that Ottava claims total expertise in what ever he writes about, with total scorn for all other viewpoints, classical Russian/Rand style. See evidence above. It wasted many people's time just collecting it.

Now, the problem is that WP has the same term for editors who are real experts, and editors who are faux-universal-expert narcissists. They are are called "disruptive," if they tweak the WP power structure's POV. This is rather unfortunate for us here at WR, as we see both editors who have valid points, and editors who are mentally ill, all kicked off WP with the same basic bee-hive process. The workers smother and mob the bee-wolf and eject from the hive. All the ostraca are counted and Socrates gets to chose between banning and poison. I think Moulton thinks these processes are the same, but they aren't. Sometimes you're banning Socrates, and sometimes you're just banning an ordinary asshole who has nothing to contribute but aggrivation.

Posted by: Malleus

Fair point.

To answer you seriously though, I believe that there are some physical conditions that result in behavioural disorders, but not all (or even most) behavioural disorders are rooted in a physical condition, so the concept of "mental illnesss" is meaningless.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Um, how do YOU know whether or not most behavorioral disorders are rooted in a physical condition? The best you can say is that most are not rooted in any physical condition we can find, but since they are problems with the performance of the brain-as-computer, we wouldn't EXPECT to, so that's not worth much. We can't examine the brain very well at the level of software and programming. But each time we do, we find evidence that behavioral pathology is connected to physical pathology we not aware of.

The terms "software" and "hardware" when it comes to computers are still useful terms, although I defy you to define either one in a way which naturally excludes the other (which one is "firmware"?).

Mental illness is a term useful for behavioral problems which are resistant to simple behavioral modification. At least some of these are physical. We don't know about the others. This no more makes the term "mental illness" meaningless, than "software corruption" is made meaningless because we don't have a hard definition of "software."

Posted by: SB_Johnny

I have too, at least twice before. I even got pretty close to the brink myself a few years back. I know there are people studying this sort of thing lately, but not sure what (if any) results are in. Online "communities" really can't be discussed as communities without scare quotes: something different and novel goes on in these relationships that we probably aren't well adapted for. Or maybe it's different with people who grow up with them. Or maybe this needs a whole new thread somewhere.

Personally, I think at least part of Ottava's problem is that he's playing one MMPORG (wikicup), while on the other hand trying to transfer his "points" to an entirely different MMPORG (wikipedia management and "society").

I don't even know what to think of it... in terms more familiar to me, he might be a great goat breeder and have wonderful things to say to the 4H kids, but he's obviously not the sort who would be at all gifted when it comes to organizing a county fair or discussing rules.

I'm also completely unsure whether I'm supposed to weigh in on the arbcom case... he made numerous attempts to drag me in on random dramas via IRC (a similar experience to Lara's, I suspect), which annoyed me to the point that I've more or less given up on IRC, which used to be a nice wind-down at the end of the day (and he was doing this on #wikiversity-en, which in theory has nothing whatsoever to do with Wikipedia and it's dramahs).

Posted by: Malleus

I don't need to "know", I simply need to be able to find Occam's Razor. For many conditions, nothing is explained by the medical model of "illness" that can't be equally well explained by more straight-forward psychological explanations.

Or to put it another way, I don't believe in mental illness for the same reason I don't believe in ghosts, or life after death.

Your analysis is also very simplistic, ignoring as it does the cultural aspects of "mental illness". Many of those revered as saints in medieval times would be considered the most hopeless lunatics if they were alive today. When do you think that the concept of mental illness first emerged?

Posted by: Milton Roe

But you have not a single instance where somebody provably survived death, or some ghost was proven to exist. If you did, you'd have a tough time applying Occam's razor to all the other cases. You could say that if you found 99 swans that weren't black, that the 100th would also not be black. That might be Occam's razor, but Occam cannot be trusted even there. If you do find ONE, then what does Occam tell you THEN?

In the case of mental illness, we have many types of psychosis which are demonstrably caused by physical factors, many (indeed most) of which were initially not recognized. For example mental illness in niacin and thiamin deficiencies, and later increased risk of schizophrenia in soldiers who had sustained pentrating head wounds. Inductively, I would suppose that many more causes of mental illness have yet to be identified, and that we have not come to the point that "psychological explanations" suffice for all the remainder that we have not so-far classified as "organic." Occam's razor doesn't really apply here: I could just as well argue that the fraction of psychoses associated with physical causes has risen over the years, and that Occam's razor suggests that it will continue to rise to 100%.

It's hard to say, but roughly it does correspond to the time of the post-Newtonian enlightenment, when religious explanations for everything were on the wane.

However, if you give up religion, you're left as a mechanist. The brain is a mechanical computer, programmed by culture, and all the programming shows up as mechanical changes to tissue (firmware)-- some of it reversible and some not. By this reasoning, there are no "purely" psychological behavioral problems. They're all a result of some change in the brain which may (or may not) be reversible by further verbal conversation or behavioral modification. Simple enough. Why do you assume they should be? Do you really think that every change I can make to a mechanical computerized system with a software command, is reversable with a software command fix? I sure as hell am not going to make you head of National Computer Security, then. Again I'm arguing inductively, but if you want to toss out religion and view the brain as a very complicated mechanical device, you have little other choice but to argue by analogy to the computers we do understand.

And if you want to argue from biology, there are any number of experimental models were you can show that behavioral imprinting on young animals is absolutely irreversible later with the same techniques. What is your "psychological" model for that? Indeed the same is true for humans in ways that are very familiar: for example, most people can learn to speak any given language (or more than one) without an accent, if exposed to it as toddlers. But it's a rare person who can learn a second one without any accent, after puberty. The psychological stimuli are the same, but the outcomes are different. So what is the "psychological" explanation of that behavioral imprint? What would Occam say?

Posted by: Malleus

I suggest Milton that you take some time out to at least peruse Thomas Szatz's book, because you're quite clearly completely unaware of the anti-psychiatry movement. You could always start at The Myth of Mental Illness.

But isn't this a digression? I thought this thread was about Ottava?

Posted by: tarantino

Many of the symptoms exhibited by saints could be explained by a physical illness, http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=130. From personal experience, I believe this to be a likely explanation.

A relative of my mine exhibited many symptoms of various mental disorders. They had rapid mood swings, auditory and visual hallucinations and violent outbursts, among several other problems. After years of ineffectual and sometimes harmful treatment by psychiatrists, a neurologist was consulted, and it was discovered they were having seizures. An effective anti-epileptic was soon found and all symptoms were significantly lessened or disappeared entirely.

Posted by: Milton Roe

I'm well aware of the book and read it years ago. Szasz reminds me of those people who refuse to believe that HIV causes AIDS or that cigarettes cause cancer. How do you PROVE it to them? Turns out you can't. It's almost impossible to prove a causal relation to somebody who refuses to believe it, if you can't do the demo where you deliberately cause the effect. As here. Szasz gets rid of all mental diseases by refusing to recognize them. I can do the same with all physical diseases as well, for Szasz is quite wrong that only mental disease require a participatory judgement to be recognized. Recognition of all pathology requires a judgement. Consider the problem of a veterinarian at a zoo. How do you know which animals are ill? One solution is simply to decide that none of them are, no matter what they do and how they look. There you go. Even if they die, nobody claimed zoo animals are immortal, did they?

Of course, no zoo will pay you to be that kind of a vet. And nobody would pay Szasz to be that kind of a shrink. It's not a very helpful attitude.

Posted by: Obesity

You may also wish consider the wisdom of a different Thomas, one Thomas Mapother IV, who offered a similar sentiment:
"You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."

Posted by: Malleus

I'm glad that your relative was finally sorted out, sounds like quite a distressing experience. My point though was that such behaviour would not have been considered a symptom of "illness" during the medieval period, whatever its cause, whereas depression is now one of the most common "illnesses" in many countries. I think I'm right in saying that depression is now the most common illness in the UK. Depression in its more severe forms may be debilitating, but an illness?


A causal relationship can be demonstrated to be statistically significant rather easily, as I'm sure you know. What's rather more difficult to prove to any individual is that their own smoking will shorten their life, as it's only a probability after all, not a certainty; "My mother lived to be 98, and she smoked 20 cigarettes every day of her life."

Posted by: tarantino

An exception, certainly, that was most famously exemplified by George Burns and the jazz musician http://mickeymccord.com/RagtimeEubieBlake.htm who smoked (they say 2 packs of cigarettes a day) for 85 years. Shortly before Blake's death at the age of 96 he said " If I'd known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.".

Burns smoked 10 cigars a day for 70 years and lived to be 100. He said “smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.”

Posted by: Happy drinker

I'm surprised to see George Burns accused of plagiarism.

Fletcher Knebel (T-H-L-K-D)

Posted by: Milton Roe

Actually, it's worse than that. Forget the grandmother and her n = 1 contribution. How does one demonstrate that smoking causes cancer, with mere statistical evaluation of people who chose to smoke vs. people who don't? Turns out that you can't do it. Even if one group has more disease than the other, past all reasonable possibility of chance association, this only suggests some kind of causality, but not necessarily the kind you're interested in. For example, if A correlates with B, it may be that A and B are caused by C. In the case of smoking, people who choose to smoke are NOT THE SAME POPULATION as people who don't. So they're self-selected, and different to begin with. You can't control for such differences unless you design a randomized controlled trial in which people are randomized to smoke or not, and then this is enforced to make sure that those assigned to smoke do so, and those who don't, don't. You'll never see such a study. The closest that thas ever been done is several smoking intervention trials in which people were assigned at random to heavier or lighter pressure to stop smoking. Alas, no intervention trial is perfect and many people will be unable to quit. And again there's every reason to suppose that those who try to quit but cannot, are not the same people as those who try and succeed. So they undoubtedly differ in other ways from the smokers, than just smoking.

If you think such factors aren't important, you should take a look at the epidemiology for vitamin E supplementation and the statistics behind hormone replacement for post-menopausal women. In each case, the evidence that vitamin E supplementation and hormone replace were beneficial, was massive. But this was all post-hoc analysis, which could not control for the fact that pill-popping women tend to take care of themselves better than woman who don't bother, IN GENERAL. So they're not the same groups to begin with, even disregarding the hormone/nutrient effects.

Finally, the biomed establishment was forced to run some double-blind prospective randomized placebo controlled trials of vitamin E. And also (different trials) hormone replacement. These resulted in massive failures. Very few of the good effects suggested by the epidemiology were seen. So the differences seen in retrospective statistics were NOT due to the molecules, but were INDEED self-selection bias. Wups. Now-- prove that's not happening for cigarettes, but in the other direction.

Don't expect any help from animal models-- if you're looking for lung cancer or heart disease produced by smoking in animals, forget it. It's never been seen.

Posted by: Malleus

You'll get no argument from me. I've never smoked, but my wife does and she's a professional pharmacologist, with a PhD. She's often pointed that there's actually no very convincing study on the harmful effects of smoking. Or even, come to that, any bad effects from driving after having consumed a moderate amount of alcohol. In fact some studies seem to suggest that it's actually beneficial. Or so I'm led to believe.

I'm always amused, btw, seeing a 1930s/40s film in which someone visits a doctor. Inevitably the doctor will offer his patient a cigarette.

Posted by: Newyorkbrad

I'm not known for name-calling, but this is blithering idiocy.

Posted by: Malleus

Then you're clearly a blithering idiot, as it's perfectly true.

Posted by: everyking

At first I thought we had drifted hopelessly off-topic, but then I read this post and I thought of Ottava again.

Posted by: Malleus

I'm encouraged that you're capable of "thinking".

Posted by: everyking

Even if Ottava is banned, his spirit will endure as long as editors are still insulting one another for no good reason.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

You make Ottava sound like Elton John's tribute to Marilyn Monroe: your candle burned out long before your legend ever did.

Which may be the first (and probably last) time Ottava was compared to Marilyn Monroe. Goodbye, Norma Jean, indeed!

Posted by: Milton Roe

Actually, Ottava's work is there being compared with Elton John lyrics. A much better match...

Posted by: Malleus

I don't know if you saw the Queen's performance (I mean Elton John, of course) at Princess Diana's funeral, for which he changed the words so as to refer to Diana instead of Marilyn. I have rarely seen such a vomit-inducing travesty in my entire life.


What leads you to believe there's "no good reason"?

Posted by: everyking

Elton John gets this treatment too? It seems to me you're sympathetic to Ottava and hostile to virtually everyone else, which is, on reflection, vaguely horrifying.

Posted by: Malleus

And your opinion is of interest to me why exactly?

Posted by: Cedric

Really? Was it that much more vomit-inducing than her brother's eulogy? The scion of one family of inbreds calling out another family of inbreds during a funeral service with the children of the deceased present? Despite the applause of the crowds outside, I found it all quite self-indulgent and disgusting. I and my siblings may be the product of many generations of British peasants, and yet we had no difficulty at all in interring our parents' remains after quite respectable and moving funerary services. What a curse it must be to be a nob.

Posted by: Somey

I'd have to say that if you're espousing ideas like "there's no such thing as mental illness" and "there has been no very convincing study on the harmful effects of smoking," then there are perfectly good reasons to conclude that insulting those who disagree with you is unreasonable - both of those are distinctly unorthodox ideas, at least in the modern world.

Whereas, the fact that Elton John's re-working of the song "Candle in the Wind" was vomit-inducing was, and is, perfectly evident to anyone who heard it or saw it. So, this might conceivably open you up to accusations of trying to associate your unorthodox ideas with your orthodox one(s), so as to legitimize them in a reflective sort of way.

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Then I guess that would also dictate that no physical ailment can possibly be psychosomatic. So much for mind-over-matter…

Posted by: cyofee

Please post what your wife thinks about smokers' lungs.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Yes...I was disappointed that he didn't wear his Donald Duck costume from his Central Park concert.





One of my best friends is HIV+ and a lifetime smoker. Much to his surprise, his doctor told him to keep smoking -- he had no signs of lung cancer and the nic habit helped calm and relax him (which was certainly needed when he got the news of his HIV status).

Posted by: Malleus

What have smokers' lungs got to do with anything? People who don't smoke also get lung cancer, for instance.


As if I'd be likely to be bothered about that.

Posted by: Eva Destruction

Yes, but people who smoke are 20 times more likely to. There are issues around causality - does smoking cause cancer, does being prone to cancer make people more likely to take up smoking to soothe their lungs, or is there an environmental factor common to smokers and people prone to cancer (poverty, increased likelihood of binge drinking, concentration in areas with high pollution levels)? - but you can't seriously be denying that there's a clear statistical relationship. Sorry, but you sound like a hardline NRA-er denying that there's any link between guns and people being shot.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Whereas, if he HAD had signs of lung cancer, the doc would have told him to quit immediately?

You do know the cure rate in lung cancer once you find it, is 5%.

Posted by: Malleus

Of course I'm not denying that there's a statistical relationship, but between what? Smoking and lung cancer? Smoking and social deprivation? Smoking and a genetic disposition to lung cancer?

Just to be clear, I don't smoke, I've never smoked, I dislike it, and I wish that nobody smoked.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

If Jimbo had meant for Ottava to smoke, he would have set him on fire.

Posted by: Somey

Given that Ottava never really left WP, I'm wondering... Is it just me, or is this thread being kept alive simply because people really like seeing the words "Ottava leaves Wikipedia" displayed on the WR home page?

I mean, that's why I'm still posting to it, obviously. I'm just wondering about everybody else.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Nobody? Not even....





Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, NY -- trust me, there are WP admins who are smarter than the physicians they have on staff, and that ain't sayin' much!

Posted by: Happy drinker

So your wife is an expert. According to some people here, she should write the Wikipedia article on the effects of smoking, and would do a better job than people who are not expert pharmacologists and can only cite reliable sources by say Sir Richard Doll, Sir Austin Bradford Hill, Sir Richard Peto ...

Posted by: anthony

You're much funnier now that I've realized you're a troll.

Wikipedia Review: proof that having a PhD doesn't mean that you have any clue what you're talking about.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

People who assert unconfirmed credentials and hold extreme positions outside the mainstream of their disciplines are exactly who already write many WP articles. People who have credentials and function inside the mainstream of their disciplines have better outlets. That is according to "some people here," of course.

Posted by: Somey

It's not an obscure topic, is it?

Besides, pharmacology is not the ideal core discipline for experts on the effects of smoking. It's far from being unrelated of course, but ideally you'd want a toxicologist, an epidemiologist, a physiologist, and a forensic biologist. Together, they could be the Fantologistic Four!

Posted by: EricBarbour

That little fact finally percolated in?.......



(um, wasn't this thread about Ottava?....)

Posted by: the fieryangel

I found thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Moreschi&diff=prev&oldid=325270129on his talkpage especially telling, regarding OR's Catholic faith, which Moreschi calls "radical" :

Does anybody know anything about this "column" (which I assume uses OR's RL name....) and where one might read it? Is it syndicated? Does OR have his own WP BLP? It would be interesting to know more about this aspect of this business...

Hmm, it would seem to me that "offwiki" interests and prejudices of "various parties" as being used to weave another one of the tangled webs that Wikipedia is famous for. Already, the "evil twins" are at it again, with Folantin playing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop#Proposals_by_Moreschi and the statements by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions#Statement_by_Folantin then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions#statement_by_Moreschi and then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions#Statement_by_Antandrus. These three often work as a tagteam, http://toolserver.org/~mzmcbride/cgi-bin/wikistalk.py?namespace=0&all=on&user1=Moreschi&user2=Folantin&user3=Antandrus&user4=&user5=&user6=&user7=&user8=&user9=&user10= Folantin and Moreschi are clearly meatpuppets of each other, as they always vote the same way, comment using the same POV etc :

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242 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Islam inside Hungarians 2/2 [1, 2]
243 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Islam and pork 2/2 [1, 2]
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245 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Infamous cases of child murder after 1900 2/2 [1, 2]
246 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Il dolce suono... Ardon gl'incensi... Spargi d'amaro pianto 2/2 [1, 2]
247 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Human rights in pre-Saddam Iraq 2/2 [1, 2]
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250 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Historical persecution by Jews (2nd nomination) 2/2 [1, 2]
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261 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Everlasting wind 2/2 [1, 2]
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264 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Enemy of Islam 2/2 [1, 2]
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267 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/EMS-05 Agg 2/2 [1, 2]
268 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dylan Reese 2/2 [1, 2]
269 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Double-Standards and Human Rights Protection 2/2 [1, 2]
270 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Doctor Who clichés 2/2 [1, 2]
271 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Discord of perception 2/2 [1, 2]
272 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Digital marxism 2/2 [1, 2]
273 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Destruction of Idol Temples 2/2 [1, 2]
274 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Destruction 2/2 [1, 2]
275 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Denial of Soviet occupation 2/2 [1, 2]
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278 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Currency debasement 2/2 [1, 2]
279 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Controversies of the Polish-Soviet War 2/2 [1, 2]
280 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Controversial literature 2/2 [1, 2]
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282 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Christos Papachristopoulos 2/2 [1, 2]
283 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Children of the Prime Ministers of Canada 2/2 [1, 2]
284 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chicken and Rice 2/2 [1, 2]
285 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Challenge of Qur'an 2/2 [1, 2]
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290 Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Buddha and the Seven Ascended Masters vs. Godzilla 2/2 [1, 2]
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321 Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests 2/2 [1, 2]
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329 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Richard Wagner 2/2 [1, 2]
330 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Subpage for organizing CopyVio Cleanup 2/2 [1, 2]
331 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera 2/2 [1, 2]
332 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Deletion 2/2 [1, 2]
333 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers 2/2 [1, 2]
334 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music 2/2 [1, 2]
335 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography 2/2 [1, 2]
336 Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia 2/Proposed decision 2/2 [1, 2]
337 Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Kuban kazak/Proposed decision 2/2 [1, 2]
338 Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Dbachmann/Proposed decision 2/2 [1, 2]
339 Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Dbachmann/Evidence 2/2 [1, 2]
340 Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Moreschi 2/2 [1, 2]
341 Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship 2/2 [1, 2]
342 Wikipedia talk:Good articles 2/2 [1, 2]
343 Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations 2/2 [1, 2]
344 Wikipedia talk:Good article criteria 2/2 [1, 2]
345 Wikipedia talk:Fringe theories/Noticeboard 2/2 [1, 2]
346 Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy 2/2 [1, 2]
347 Wikipedia talk:Catholic Encyclopedia topics 2/2 [1, 2]
348 Wikipedia talk:Canvassing 2/2 [1, 2]
349 Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard 2/2 [1, 2]
350 Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list/Proposed decision 2/2 [1, 2]
351 Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests 2/2 [1, 2]
352 Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard/Geopolitical ethnic and religious conflicts 2/2 [1, 2]
353 Wendy's 2/2 [1, 2]
354 W. S. Gilbert 2/2 [1, 2]
355 Venus and Adonis (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
356 User:Pigsonthewing 2/2 [1, 2]
357 User:Moreschi/Workspace 1 2/2 [1, 2]
358 User:Moreschi/The Plague/Nationalist hotspots 2/2 [1, 2]
359 User:Moreschi/Consensus 2/2 [1, 2]
360 User:Folantin/Userspace Folantin5 2/2 [1, 2]
361 User:Folantin 2/2 [1, 2]
362 User talk:Voceditenore 2/2 [1, 2]
363 User talk:VartanM/Archive4 2/2 [1, 2]
364 User talk:Til Eulenspiegel 2/2 [1, 2]
365 User talk:Szpawq 2/2 [1, 2]
366 User talk:Ssilvers 2/2 [1, 2]
367 User talk:Ryulong 2/2 [1, 2]
368 User talk:Rune.welsh 2/2 [1, 2]
369 User talk:Rlevse 2/2 [1, 2]
370 User talk:Relata refero 2/2 [1, 2]
371 User talk:Reddi 2/2 [1, 2]
372 User talk:Pocopocopocopoco 2/2 [1, 2]
373 User talk:Pigsonthewing/Archive 19 2/2 [1, 2]
374 User talk:Paul Barlow 2/2 [1, 2]
375 User talk:Ottava Rima 2/2 [1, 2]
376 User talk:Nishkid64 2/2 [1, 2]
377 User talk:Newyorkbrad 2/2 [1, 2]
378 User talk:Moreschi/The Plague/Nationalist hotspots 2/2 [1, 2]
379 User talk:Moreschi 2/2 [1, 2]
380 User talk:Melodia 2/2 [1, 2]
381 User talk:Makemi/Archive7 2/2 [1, 2]
382 User talk:Makemi/Archive6 2/2 [1, 2]
383 User talk:Makemi/Archive5 2/2 [1, 2]
384 User talk:Makemi/Archive4 2/2 [1, 2]
385 User talk:Makemi 2/2 [1, 2]
386 User talk:LiniShu 2/2 [1, 2]
387 User talk:Ling.Nut 2/2 [1, 2]
388 User talk:Kyoko/Archive11 2/2 [1, 2]
389 User talk:Kleinzach 2/2 [1, 2]
390 User talk:Kirill Lokshin 2/2 [1, 2]
391 User talk:JzG/ArchiveCurrent 2/2 [1, 2]
392 User talk:Joopercoopers/Archive 1 2/2 [1, 2]
393 User talk:Itsmejudith 2/2 [1, 2]
394 User talk:GuillaumeTell 2/2 [1, 2]
395 User talk:Gretab 2/2 [1, 2]
396 User talk:Ghirlandajo 2/2 [1, 2]
397 User talk:Georgewilliamherbert 2/2 [1, 2]
398 User talk:Geogre 2/2 [1, 2]
399 User talk:Future Perfect at Sunrise 2/2 [1, 2]
400 User talk:Fred Bauder 2/2 [1, 2]
401 User talk:ForDorothy 2/2 [1, 2]
402 User talk:Folantin 2/2 [1, 2]
403 User talk:Elonka 2/2 [1, 2]
404 User talk:Elaragirl/Archive 5 2/2 [1, 2]
405 User talk:Dougweller 2/2 [1, 2]
406 User talk:Dbachmann 2/2 [1, 2]
407 User talk:Cielomobile 2/2 [1, 2]
408 User talk:Carcharoth 2/2 [1, 2]
409 User talk:Captain Obvious and his crime-fighting dog 2/2 [1, 2]
410 User talk:Antandrus 2/2 [1, 2]
411 User talk:Alison 2/2 [1, 2]
412 Urartu 2/2 [1, 2]
413 Topical outline of opera 2/2 [1, 2]
414 The opera corpus 2/2 [1, 2]
415 The Tales of Hoffmann 2/2 [1, 2]
416 The Rite of Spring 2/2 [1, 2]
417 The Oprichnik (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
418 The Indian Queen (play) 2/2 [1, 2]
419 The Fairy-Queen 2/2 [1, 2]
420 The Castle of Otranto 2/2 [1, 2]
421 Template:Cavalli operas 2/2 [1, 2]
422 Template talk:Infobox musical artist 2/2 [1, 2]
423 Tarare (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
424 Talk:Van Beethoven family 2/2 [1, 2]
425 Talk:Topical outline of opera 2/2 [1, 2]
426 Talk:The opera corpus 2/2 [1, 2]
427 Talk:The Tales of Hoffmann 2/2 [1, 2]
428 Talk:The Castle of Otranto 2/2 [1, 2]
429 Talk:Sémélé 2/2 [1, 2]
430 Talk:St. Bartholomew's Day massacre 2/2 [1, 2]
431 Talk:Russia 2/2 [1, 2]
432 Talk:Origins of opera 2/2 [1, 2]
433 Talk:Orfeo ed Euridice 2/2 [1, 2]
434 Talk:Opera in English 2/2 [1, 2]
435 Talk:Opera 2/2 [1, 2]
436 Talk:Modest Mussorgsky 2/2 [1, 2]
437 Talk:Michel Pignolet de Montéclair 2/2 [1, 2]
438 Talk:Ludwig van Beethoven/Archive 3 2/2 [1, 2]
439 Talk:Ludovico Ariosto 2/2 [1, 2]
440 Talk:Louis de Cahusac 2/2 [1, 2]
441 Talk:Louis XIV of France 2/2 [1, 2]
442 Talk:Lodewijk van Beethoven 2/2 [1, 2]
443 Talk:List of opera topics 2/2 [1, 2]
444 Talk:List of opera librettists 2/2 [1, 2]
445 Talk:List of major opera composers 2/2 [1, 2]
446 Talk:List of important operas/Lists1 2/2 [1, 2]
447 Talk:List of important operas 2/2 [1, 2]
448 Talk:List of attacks by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia 2/2 [1, 2]
449 Talk:La Juive 2/2 [1, 2]
450 Talk:Jean-Jacques Rousseau 2/2 [1, 2]
451 Talk:Italian opera 2/2 [1, 2]
452 Talk:Iphigénie en Tauride 2/2 [1, 2]
453 Talk:Hungarian prehistory/Dumping ground 2/2 [1, 2]
454 Talk:Hungarian prehistory 2/2 [1, 2]
455 Talk:Human rights 2/2 [1, 2]
456 Talk:Gilbert and Sullivan 2/2 [1, 2]
457 Talk:Giacomo Puccini 2/2 [1, 2]
458 Talk:George Frideric Handel 2/2 [1, 2]
459 Talk:Frédéric Chopin/Archive 4 2/2 [1, 2]
460 Talk:French opera 2/2 [1, 2]
461 Talk:Eric Crozier 2/2 [1, 2]
462 Talk:Die Entführung aus dem Serail 2/2 [1, 2]
463 Talk:Dido and Aeneas 2/2 [1, 2]
464 Talk:Claude Nicolas Ledoux 2/2 [1, 2]
465 Talk:Christoph Willibald Gluck 2/2 [1, 2]
466 Talk:Byzantium 2/2 [1, 2]
467 Talk:Burma 2/2 [1, 2]
468 Talk:Armia Krajowa 2/2 [1, 2]
469 Talk:Armenian Genocide 2/2 [1, 2]
470 Talk:Agrippina (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
471 Talk:Adam Mickiewicz 2/2 [1, 2]
472 Talk:2008 South Ossetia war 2/2 [1, 2]
473 Sémélé 2/2 [1, 2]
474 Swedish literature 2/2 [1, 2]
475 Statira principessa di Persia 2/2 [1, 2]
476 Sri Lanka 2/2 [1, 2]
477 Solomon (Handel) 2/2 [1, 2]
478 Serse 2/2 [1, 2]
479 Semi-opera 2/2 [1, 2]
480 Safavid dynasty 2/2 [1, 2]
481 Russian opera 2/2 [1, 2]
482 Russia 2/2 [1, 2]
483 Ruslan and Lyudmila (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
484 Rinaldo (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
485 Richard Strauss 2/2 [1, 2]
486 Poro (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
487 Porgy and Bess 2/2 [1, 2]
488 Platée 2/2 [1, 2]
489 Pigmalion (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
490 Pelléas et Mélisande (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
491 Pastoral 2/2 [1, 2]
492 Oscar Wilde 2/2 [1, 2]
493 Orpheus 2/2 [1, 2]
494 Orlando furioso (Vivaldi) 2/2 [1, 2]
495 Orlando Furioso 2/2 [1, 2]
496 Orlando (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
497 Origins of the Hyksos 2/2 [1, 2]
498 Origins of opera 2/2 [1, 2]
499 Orfeo ed Euridice 2/2 [1, 2]
500 Opéra comique 2/2 [1, 2]
501 Opera in German 2/2 [1, 2]
502 Opera 2/2 [1, 2]
503 Nélée et Myrthis 2/2 [1, 2]
504 Nicolò Minato 2/2 [1, 2]
505 Nicolas-François Guillard 2/2 [1, 2]
506 Naïs 2/2 [1, 2]
507 Narendra Modi 2/2 [1, 2]
508 Nader Shah 2/2 [1, 2]
509 Muhammad 2/2 [1, 2]
510 Modest Mussorgsky 2/2 [1, 2]
511 Mitanni 2/2 [1, 2]
512 Michel Pignolet de Montéclair 2/2 [1, 2]
513 Michael Nyman 2/2 [1, 2]
514 Ludwig van Beethoven 2/2 [1, 2]
515 Ludovico Ariosto 2/2 [1, 2]
516 Louis XIV of France 2/2 [1, 2]
517 List of opera topics 2/2 [1, 2]
518 List of opera librettists 2/2 [1, 2]
519 List of major opera composers 2/2 [1, 2]
520 List of important operas 2/2 [1, 2]
521 List of compositions for organ 2/2 [1, 2]
522 List of compositions by George Frideric Handel 2/2 [1, 2]
523 List of attacks by the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia 2/2 [1, 2]
524 List of Orphean operas 2/2 [1, 2]
525 Liancourt Rocks 2/2 [1, 2]
526 Les surprises de l'Amour 2/2 [1, 2]
527 Les sibarites 2/2 [1, 2]
528 Les fêtes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour 2/2 [1, 2]
529 Les fêtes de Ramire 2/2 [1, 2]
530 Les Troyens 2/2 [1, 2]
531 Les Paladins 2/2 [1, 2]
532 Les Danaïdes 2/2 [1, 2]
533 Le temple de la Gloire 2/2 [1, 2]
534 Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo 2/2 [1, 2]
535 Lakmé 2/2 [1, 2]
536 La virtù dei strali d'Amore 2/2 [1, 2]
537 La vestale 2/2 [1, 2]
538 La sonnambula 2/2 [1, 2]
539 La princesse de Navarre 2/2 [1, 2]
540 La naissance d'Osiris 2/2 [1, 2]
541 La guirlande 2/2 [1, 2]
542 L'incoronazione di Poppea 2/2 [1, 2]
543 Juvenal 2/2 [1, 2]
544 Judas Maccabaeus (Handel) 2/2 [1, 2]
545 Josquin des Prez 2/2 [1, 2]
546 Josias Priest 2/2 [1, 2]
547 Jonathan Swift 2/2 [1, 2]
548 John Corigliano 2/2 [1, 2]
549 Jean-Philippe Rameau 2/2 [1, 2]
550 Italian opera 2/2 [1, 2]
551 Iphigénie en Tauride 2/2 [1, 2]
552 Iphigénie en Aulide 2/2 [1, 2]
553 Io (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
554 Indonesia 2/2 [1, 2]
555 Il re pastore 2/2 [1, 2]
556 Hungarian prehistory 2/2 [1, 2]
557 Hungarian Turanism 2/2 [1, 2]
558 Human rights 2/2 [1, 2]
559 Horacio Quiroga 2/2 [1, 2]
560 Homer 2/2 [1, 2]
561 History of Russia 2/2 [1, 2]
562 History of Georgia (country) 2/2 [1, 2]
563 History of England 2/2 [1, 2]
564 Henry Purcell 2/2 [1, 2]
565 Grand Opera 2/2 [1, 2]
566 Giovanni Boccaccio 2/2 [1, 2]
567 Gilbert and Sullivan 2/2 [1, 2]
568 Giacomo Puccini 2/2 [1, 2]
569 Georgia within the Russian Empire 2/2 [1, 2]
570 Georges Bizet 2/2 [1, 2]
571 George Frideric Handel 2/2 [1, 2]
572 Gaetano Guadagni 2/2 [1, 2]
573 Frédéric Chopin 2/2 [1, 2]
574 French opera 2/2 [1, 2]
575 Francesco Cavalli 2/2 [1, 2]
576 Felix Mendelssohn 2/2 [1, 2]
577 Faust (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
578 Farnace 2/2 [1, 2]
579 Eritrea (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
580 Eliogabalo 2/2 [1, 2]
581 Edvard Grieg 2/2 [1, 2]
582 Edison Denisov 2/2 [1, 2]
583 Don Quixote 2/2 [1, 2]
584 Don Giovanni 2/2 [1, 2]
585 Dioclesian 2/2 [1, 2]
586 Dido and Aeneas 2/2 [1, 2]
587 Dardanus (Sacchini) 2/2 [1, 2]
588 Daphnis et Eglé 2/2 [1, 2]
589 Concerto delle donne 2/2 [1, 2]
590 Comédie-Italienne 2/2 [1, 2]
591 Comic opera 2/2 [1, 2]
592 Claude Debussy 2/2 [1, 2]
593 Ciro 2/2 [1, 2]
594 Christoph Willibald Gluck 2/2 [1, 2]
595 Castor et Pollux 2/2 [1, 2]
596 Byzantium 2/2 [1, 2]
597 British Empire 2/2 [1, 2]
598 Bluebeard's Castle 2/2 [1, 2]
599 Attila the Hun 2/2 [1, 2]
600 Armida (Salieri) 2/2 [1, 2]
601 Armida (Dvořák) 2/2 [1, 2]
602 Armenian Genocide 2/2 [1, 2]
603 Ariodante 2/2 [1, 2]
604 Antonín Dvořák 2/2 [1, 2]
605 Antonio Salieri 2/2 [1, 2]
606 Anacréon 2/2 [1, 2]
607 Alexander's Feast (Handel) 2/2 [1, 2]
608 Alcina 2/2 [1, 2]
609 Alceste (Gluck) 2/2 [1, 2]
610 Albert Camus 2/2 [1, 2]
611 Agrippina (opera) 2/2 [1, 2]
612 Achaemenid Empire 2/2 [1, 2]
613 Acante et Céphise 2/2 [1, 2]
614 Aaron Copland 2/2 [1, 2]
615 2008 South Ossetia war 2/2 [1, 2]


This is clearly a central part of this problem, but will it be addressed by Arbcom? The real solution would be to tell these three (and others) to leave OR alone and get back to the sweatshop where they belong to continue rewording the New Grove Dictionary of Music so that "the project" can have free copies of that....

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=6947&hl=

What will happen? OR will be banned. And these three clowns will go along their merry way....

Posted by: gadfly

I am much more concerned by this admission: that you even watched the funeral on the TV! and did not, like myself and all my sensible academic colleagues (though my idiotic academic colleagues) merely carry on as usual, thus getting a comparatively enormous amount of work done because the majority of people were succumbing to the hysteria and thus not getting in our ways.

Shocked and dismayed!

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

I am not surprised that Ottava is a professional writer -- his behavior may create increased levels of aspirin consumption, but his command of the language stands out from the usual "you suck" dialogue that permeates much of WP's talk pages.

Posted by: Moulton

Jeffrey writes an occasional column on ethics and religion in the local paper serving the Catholic University community. At least one of those columns was (perhaps still is) available online.

Posted by: Happy drinker

So does the theory that only experts should write Wikipedia articles only apply to obscure topics? If so, who decides what is an obscure topic?

Posted by: thekohser

HD, you don't seem to understand something. I don't think any of us are arguing who "should" or "should not" write Wikipedia articles. We're concerned that many Wikipedians claim that the articles they have determined (and we are to trust) were predominantly written by amateur nobodies are in fact better than articles elsewhere written by experts. We're also concerned that Wikipedians market their site as the "sum of human knowledge" and as an "encyclopedia". And finally, we're concerned that often times, expert contribution to this compendium of mostly amateur-generated content is shunned or even prohibited via blocking of expert accounts.

But, if it pleases you, go ahead and continue to reframe arguments here, so that we look stupid or intractable or misinformed or unrealistic or whatever. We can see that you get a kick out of that. Maybe I'll dream of punching you in the face, too, since that seems to keep you running with the needle on red for a few weeks, too.

Posted by: Somey

No, of course that's not what I meant at all. Perhaps I should be more explicit: It's an extremely well-covered topic, one which has been directly in front of the general public for many, many years. As a result, the number of people claiming to be "experts" (as well as actually being experts) is likely to number well into the thousands or tens of thousands. A traditional encyclopedia would have a difficult task choosing who, among those experts, fulfills the requirements of being qualified, unbiased, editorially talented, etc. - but they would make that choice, and take responsibility for it. Wikipedia's "choice" is based on who gets there first and who hangs around longest, and nobody takes responsibility for it at all.

On an obscure/less-prominent topic (such as medieval philosophy), that decision would be much easier for the traditional encyclopedia, but Wikipedia's choice is still often based on who gets there first and who hangs around longest. However, there's at least a small possibility that if someone who's completely unqualified and/or biased attempts to dominate a particular obscure article or topic, they can be voted down by a relatively small group of qualified editors - as long as the unqualified person isn't an administrator or an otherwise favored user.

My point (hopefully) is that with highly visible and controversial topics, such as the effects of smoking, there are enough experts to make the issue of who should write the Wikipedia article essentially moot. There is simply no way by which Wikipedia, under the current system, can produce unbiased, expert-driven content when the experts are numerous and not in general agreement. (However, the vast majority will at least tell you that smoking is harmful.) What Wikipedia will produce is a lot of edit-warring, drama, and general hostility, along with an article that's likely to be too long, full of misplaced emphasis, and riddled with lots of irrelevant and extraneous information, even if most of it is reasonably well-sourced.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

This makes some sense. I have had extended arguments over social and political matters on this site. His positions do, at least retrospectively, seem to line up with radical right wing Catholics of the Pat Buchanan kind. I didn't see his arguments as very sophisticated. In fact I thought him likely to be a kiddie. But you wouldn't expect an 18 year old to be influenced by that particular form of radicalism.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Yes. Meats they may be (you've noted the very high shared politcal TALK concordance) but socks they are not (despite the 160 shared articles edited). Moreschi is clearly a very committed Catholic, as he NEVER edits on Sundays (whereas this is Folantin's favorite edit day). No wonder he's especially irritated by Ottava's personal brand of Catholicism (which Ottava feels, like everything else he does, is beyond question).

Moreschi, interestingly, seems to have named himself from Alessandro Moreschi, the famous Italian castrato who sang for Catholic choirs. This in keeping with Moreschi's interests in Catholicism and opera.

Folantin is interested in opera, but if he's a sock of Moreschi, he's an EVIL sock. And one that needs more sleep than Moreschi does , although they keep similar hours due to being in the same place. IOW, not the same person, I think.

Early in his career, as he started out editing the A. Moreschi bio, user:Moreschi revealed his IP to be 86.131.110.151. That geolocates him to the UK. Where Folantin doubtless is, also. Just FYI.

Posted by: Number Six

Where is the line between meat puppetry and "wiki-friends" with mutual philosophies and interests? I'm not trying to be snide - not here anyway - but I'm genuinely curious. Surely there is a difference, though it's often hard to tell.

Posted by: the fieryangel

Yes, but what's local? A specific city in the UK?



Yes, Folantin geolocates to the University of Leeds, some sort of "linguistic laboratory". The only confirmed information about Moreschi is that he is a tennis pro located in the UK.



The abuse level.

If it doesn't lead to abuse, it's "wiki-friends". Here, we have a long history of abuse which is coordinated between two accounts, with Antandrus serving as an enabler account.---think Antandrus is the "mommy" who the kiddies run to when they're in trouble....

Clearly, part of the solution to this ARBCOM case involves solving this long history of coordinated abuse. One can only hope that ARBCOM will finally, years later, address this issue.

Posted by: the fieryangel

Hmm, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Moreschi&diff=32571on Moreschi's talk page :

Yes, indeed. How did Moreschi find OR's column.

Especially, where? In what paper?

Enquiriring minds want to know!

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop&diff=prev&oldid=325708602

These "guys" are slick...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Folantin/Userspace_Folantin12&diff=prev&oldid=325670375

psst! OR! You picked the wrong meat puppets!

Posted by: tarantino

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Catholic_University_of_America&diff=201068066&oldid=200437057.

Posted by: the fieryangel

I'd hardly call the CUA radical. Catholic, yes. Radical, no.

However, Moreschi clearly is reading this locally in the UK.

Posted by: Number Six

Food for thought. I cannot comment on the abuse aspect, maybe I need to read up more. I will say I've seen better work from Moreschi and Folantin than I ever have from Ottava Rima.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Okay, so where is the link to Ottava's real-life column?

Posted by: Number Six

He says. I simply can't see how the column I've seen would have been picked up here.

Posted by: the fieryangel

You've obviously never read the Grove dictionary of Music and Musicians. They just spend their time rewording that. Any elementary school student capable of a book report could do this kind of work.

Folantin at least has slightly broader interests and is a bit more intelligent. Moreschi is simply incredibly stupid, close-minded about other perspectives and unbelievably rude. These two need to be put in their place here.

OR is a real writer. And that's the problem right there.




He says indeed. AGF and all of that.

Posted by: the fieryangel

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop&action=history

Moreschi (T-C-L-K-R-D) ....Folantin (T-C-L-K-R-D) ....and....Voceditenore (T-C-L-K-R-D)

They could be a little more subtle about it....

And the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Moreschi#Question

and then the other "evil twin" goes :



So, somebody tipped 'em off, eh?

This is getting to be more interesting by the minute!

On evidence page, OR takes the more elegant stance and shttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Ottava_Rima

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Moreschi and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Evidence#Evidence_presented_by_Folantin hysterically post accusations, without discussing the underlying conflicts.

Who loses in this kind of situation?

If ARBCOM were to go about this intelligently, they would look at the past history of all editors and see the underlying pattern of abuse on the part of Moreschi, Folantin et Cie...

However, what they will probably do is only look at what is on the page and make the most simple decision, which is to exclude the one person who isn't pointing fingers, namely OR.

I'm not saying that OR doesn't deserve some kind of chastisement for his actions. I'm only saying that Moreschi and Folantin are just as guilty, if not more so, and also need to be restricted for interacting with OR, and threatened with other sanctions if they do this type of tagteam operation again.

Posted by: Peter Damian

I don't understand the significance of these knights. What do they have to do with smoking.

Posted by: the fieryangel

A lot of high-jinx hijinx by Moreschi and Folantin has been documented here by yours truly Perhaps a run-down of some of these incidents might be useful :

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=5560&view=findpost&p=19231

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=6381&view=findpost&p=21590

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=19870&view=findpost&p=121705

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Folantin&diff=107357049&oldid=107353314

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Folantin&diff=231890470&oldid=231888127

So, who's being distruptive here?

Posted by: Happy drinker

Read their Wikipedia articles.

Posted by: Peter Damian

They are all statisticians.

Posted by: MZMcBride

All of the fun that comes from using the term "hijinx" (or "hijinks") is derived from being about to use three dotted letters in a row. Sheesh.

Posted by: Somey

Perhaps he meant to suggest that Messrs. Moreschi and Folantin were intoxicated at the time of these incidents.

Meanwhile, Fiji is a nice vacation spot where people can indulge in all sorts of hijinks mit jij, as they say somewhere in Scandinavia.

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Öŕ ĵüśť ďőť ‘ėṁ äĺĺ àńď ĺėť ģŏď ŝöṙṫ ‘éḿ ȯůť… (as Grawp and/or Ryulong would surely say).

Posted by: Milton Roe

A fun word. I'll put it in my list of fun words.

Bookkeeper
Phlegm
Hijinks

Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.

Posted by: MZMcBride

"nth" is great as it contains no vowels. "ixnay" is great for playing hangman or SCRABBLE®. (Is this thread sufficiently off-topic yet?)

Posted by: LaraLove

Next meetup, I'm bringing SCRABBLE®. You missed the noise complaint that we, four nerds on laptops, got in the hotel, but we can try again with a word game next time.

Posted by: thekohser

RHYTHM is a great Hangman word, too.

Posted by: anthony

Make sure you bring the official dictionary too. "ixnay" isn't in it (unless maybe you're using the pig latin edition?).

Posted by: Somey

Well, like I posted earlier, if the whole point is to keep the words "Ottava leaves Wikipedia" on the WR homepage as long as possible, or at least long enough for it to stimulate the "pleasure centers" of everyones' brains, then it really doesn't matter what we talk about, as long as the thread title remains constant.

So let me ask you all this, then: Is it really appropriate for a 50-year old in 2009 to go to a cocktail lounge and request that the 67-year-old entertainer play Perry Como songs? Or is that, like, "ageism"?

Posted by: MZMcBride

Have you learned nothing from Wikipedia? It's not about whether the word is in the dictionary, it's about who can shout the loudest and argue (or complain) the most. Beside, every real SCRABBLE® player defers to Wiktionary, obviously.


I think it'd be more inappropriate, though likely much more amusing, to ask the entertainer to play Jay-Z songs. Though you know how old people are, he'd probably just stare blankly. Much like I did at the Perry Como reference. God bless Wikipedia.

Posted by: Coffee

Damnit... to think you could have actually gotten kicked out if I had been there...

Posted by: the fieryangel

Hey, it's trad, Dad! Hot diggeity!

On a related note, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Evidence#Folantin_and_Moreschi.27s_relationship

As I've said before, the only real solution here is to place editing restrictions on Moreschi and Folantin to avoid interactions with OR, and to forbid Moreschi to take any administrative action against him.

...and it might be nice if, for once, the Arbcom told these people that the rules apply to them too!

Posted by: the fieryangel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ottava_Rima#WR_evidence_analysis

The number of concordant AfD votes is pretty damning. It would be helpful if others could comment on these diffs and stats.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_compositions_for_harp The entire discussion was an attempt to get revenge because they had to source their pet opera lists....So, the "opposite sides of the fence" here is only an attempt to create more drama.

PS: for context Adam Cuerden (T-C-L-K-R-D) is now editing as Shoemaker's Holiday (T-C-L-K-R-D) , both active on the Opera project and also active on the so-called "Fringe Theories Noticeboard".

Posted by: the fieryangel

Then there's http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop&diff=prev&oldid=325269320:

....This looks to me as if it's crossed the line into personal attacks. It's on the Arbcom Workshop case, so the Arbs can't say that they didn't see it.

The question is : in a project which tries to pretend that it is the "sum of all human knowledge", is there room for conflicting viewpoints?

People are orthodox jews/muslems/catholics/protestants etc. There are enough of them that their viewpoint form part of "the sum of all human knowledge".

How is labeling these belief systems as "radical" helping the process of writing an encyclopedia? And isn't this the core issue here?

Posted by: Mathsci

Nice to see that fieryangel is using this as an opportunity to get back at wikiproject music editors. There's nothing like settling a grudge, is there? Funny thing when wikipedia doesn't have articles on Francis Poulenc's sextet for piano and wind but has plenty of articles on the lesser known works of "Les Six". (I wrote the article on Darius Milhaud's wind quintet, but then again I wasn't the publisher.)

The OUTING of Ottava Rima has been noticed on wikipedia and the giveway quote on Moreschi's talk page removed. It might be oversighted although it's probably too late, particularly since the quote has been posted in this thread, I agree with Fowler&Fowler that OR's writing skills, even as a would-be rural hack, are not impressive, certainly not those I would expect of a professional writer. One of those whom OR has attacked is Dieter Bachmann whose biography can be read http://www.literaturfestival.com/bios1_3_6_405.html. It's very hard to imagine why, since dab is completely reasonable and very knowledgeable. He is also almost 70.

OR does remind me a bit of Peter Haines. There are various similarities. Things worked out fine for Peter in the end.

Posted by: GlassBeadGame

I think the comparison to the world religions is not helpful to understanding what "Moreschi" is getting at. A better comparison would be with Marxism-Leninism which purports to being "scientific." This notion that one's views on political and social matters have scientific underpinning is highly seductive and can lead to great intolerance to other views. In the case of Marxism-Leninism this can cause people who set out as humanists pursuing sympathetic ends to adopt tolalitarian means. "Moreschi" is saying that OR has characteristics similar to these in his pursuit of covering the humanities on WP. It is this belief in the "science" of his views that makes OR radical.

An appropriate encyclopedic approach to the world religions is to catalog the beliefs practices variations viewed from inside each of the various thought systems, not figure out which one is right of better.

Posted by: the fieryangel

Neither was I, although I was accused of that. (I wish I was, however...). I would write the article about Poulenc's sextet, but I was told that I have a COI because of Les Six....even though I don't publish anything by Poulenc....and, of course, I'm still indefinitely blocked, out of process, by Moreschi...

Moreschi and Folantin have abused this system for too long. Hopefully, they'll get what they deserve.

If anything that I do furthers this objective, so be it.

Clear?



Exactly. Which is why things such as the Fringe Theory Noticeboard should not exist. An encyclopedia is not in the business of judging. It's only purpose is to describe how things are, at any given time. So, pasting "fringe" labels on things is outside of the act of creating an encyclopedia.



Yup, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jbmurray#Ah.2C_yes...Moreschi just isn't very smart to begin with.... (PS if OR wants this information redacted here, all he needs to do is to post that on his talkpage...However, I believe that this incident is more valuable to him if the proof remains documented here.)

Posted by: the fieryangel

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Evidence&diff=prev&oldid=325846238

...except, that when you follow the links to so-called "incivility" and "personal attacks", two things become clear: Antandrus is not a neutral party here at all and OR is being goaded into making these attacks.

Clearly, the problem is with both sides. Perhaps finally this point will become apparent.

Just because one is a longterm "content producer" doesn't mean that one has a pass to IAR...

Posted by: the fieryangel

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Evidence&diff=prev&oldid=325995951

So, Bishonen, is this helpful?

(I think that they're all losing their marbles over there....)

If you http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Bishonen&diff=319096031&oldid=319085290, you get this :



No "fuck offs", No "stupid twats", nothing even remotely close to the things that JzG dishes out without even a warning...Not nearly as snide as Slimmy can be.

Are you people's skins getting thinner or something? Or it that tinfoil hat on your head?

(and maybe, just maybe, these people also need to start following the rules too? and maybe she should have been banned for some of this, since other were indeed banned for much less?)

So, ARBCOM, do the rules apply to everybody or do they not? That's the question here.

Just for the record : I sent an email to several ARBCOM members about this inappropriate behavior on an "evidence" page for an ARBCOM case. We'll see if anything is done...

Posted by: the fieryangel

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Evidence&diff=325995206&oldid=325994885

Moreschi acting out of process again? You don't say?

We must have a thread somewhere about this busines, but I can't find it...

Posted by: Somey

He's giving it his best shot, but as usual, he can't resist adding the inflammatory and utterly false misdirection towards the end, where he includes the line "Moreschi attacks my faith and real life work," followed by links to three diffs in which Moreschi does absolutely nothing of the sort. Obviously this is a classic, time-honored Wikipedian tactic, but you'd think he'd realize that he'd be under more scrutiny than the average gamer by now.


Well, they could tell them, but they're never going to believe it.

Posted by: Somey

I'm pretty sure it was mentioned, but IIRC it was while Ottava was an active member here, so naturally it immediately devolved into a flamewar between him and everyone else, godless heathen scum that we are.

Frankly, most of us probably would have been cheering the Bishonen/Geogre/Moreschi team on during that incident, rather than pointing out any perceived hypocrisy or lack of fairness on their part.


True, but they won't find us by Googling his name, which is the main thing. I actually think this is one of those cases where it's important that Wikipedians know where this particular "editor" is coming from, ideologically speaking. That doesn't mean they have to know anything more than his name and where to find his column - they don't - but regardless, this is definitely not a person who appears to be inclined towards "neutrality" on much of anything, despite his protestations to the contrary.

Ottava is also fortunate in that there's a perennial third-party presidential candidate with the same name as him, whose politics are about as far from Ottava's as one can practically get. Most of the Google hits, etc., are going to be for that guy, which is always nice if you're trying to stay "under the radar."


But they are those I would expect of a semi-professional polemicist...

Posted by: Kelly Martin

In a fight between Moreschi and Ottava, I'm going to side with Moreschi. Moreschi has his flaws (such as sympathy for the likes of Bishonen, who at this point is nothing more than a troll, and never terribly mature to begin with), but they pale to insignificance in comparison with Ottava.

Moreschi is capable of being, and occasionally willing to be, a responsible, contemplative encyclopedia editor, something which I have seen absolutely no evidence of from Ottava.

I think reminding people that there are no 'grand alliances' on Wikipedia, only momentary juntas of convenience, is in order here. The fact that two people have 'collaborated' on the same side of some issue in the past is absolutely nonpredictive of future collaborations. Wikipedia is a mercenary culture; alliances rise and fall on a moment's notice.

Posted by: Ceoil

"the likes of Bishonen, who at this point is nothing more than a troll".

Kelly you have been a self admitted troll for what now two years? And a bit? Stones should not be thrown, as I think such a role is valued, it gives people licence to say what the think, rather than what they can get away with, and honesty in WP is a rare currency.

I would be from the far spectrum of Ottava's beliefs and values, but to be fair, he never hid his identity, and while all the drama surrounding the RCC FACs and related RFC's were going on, he never stepped in; to his credit.

Posted by: Somey

"Takes one to know one," right?


You mean Bishonen's role, then? She strikes me as someone who has become disillusioned with the whole Wikipedia experience and is mostly hanging around so as to let everyone know why. However, she does still do a fair amount of content-related stuff, so it's probably not fair to call her a "troll." (Not that she would care about what any of us had to say about her in any event.)

Posted by: Ceoil

Bishonen is still cranking out the odd FA or two, while all the while casting a haughty eye on the rest of us. She is not inclined to shoot blanks, or suffer fools, and for that we thank her.

I would not position her with Kelly, whom, it must be said, is not inclined to shoot blanks, or suffer fools any day. But the roles are different.

Um, I had a point earlier...........gone from me mind now.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Bishonen is one of Wikipedia's many semi-talented writers, people who write for the ego thrill of having other people read what they've written, whether or not it's any good. She's a half-way decent writer, which means, by the standards of the Wikipedia cesspool, she's amazingly good.

Like many other ego-driven writers, she's also prone to trolling. It stands to reason that Wikipedia would draw ego-driven writers; such people crave having their writing read, or at least being on prominent public display, and Wikipedia is a great vehicle for that. She's not particularly remarkable; merely one of the more prominent of a rather numerous breed. The reason people like her don't leave Wikipedia outright is that they continue to get the ego boost from publication on Wikipedia, which is their primary motivation for writing there in the first place.

Bishonen has written some decent articles, but from the standpoint of effective governance of Wikipedia she has never had anything meaningful to add. Her motivations have always been toward getting her content published in the form she wants it, and very little else. When she involves herself in governance, it is almost always on behalf of one of the other ego-driven writers who has run into some problem (usually, by writing something on a topic that an ideological editor has decided to own).

All in all I'd say that the ego-driven writers are a minor concern in Wikipedia; the main problem they create is occasional abrasiveness and friction when someone steps on one of their private garden plots. The ideological editors are far more of a problem.

Posted by: Ceoil

"It stands to reason that Wikipedia would draw ego-driven writers"

You were never a writer, I never saw an interest in content from you. So what is it you were? That you can judge now. "semi-talented" - "for the ego thrill". You were a player.

"Her motivations have always been toward getting her content published". As opposed to what, exactly. Being septic (and read by 1,000's), as you were?

Posted by: the fieryangel

I'm not taking sides here. I'm just saying that if OR deserves to be punished (and he probably does) then Moreschi and Folantin deserve to be punished as well. They're all guilty.

The rules should apply to everybody, regardless of political alliances. That's not the case, but maybe that will change here...(although I'm not holding my breath...)

Posted by: the fieryangel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop#Proposals_by_User:JzG

...you just can't make this stuff up....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop#The_Grand_Cabal citing the evidence of Folantin and Bishonen as well as NYBrad's reaction to a statement of Folantin to source this claim, although

...neither of which involved any civility violations, goading, taunting, and plotting between Folantin and yourself?

...You brought that subject up, I didn't...

In contrast to this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop#Proposals_by_Ottava_Rima rather than the "burn the witch!" tactics currently used by Moreschi, Folantin, JzG et al....

Hopefully, this type of sanity in the face of the insanity of the others will lead to a balanced decision by the arbitrators. It's quite obvious that this issue is not one-sided...

Posted by: the fieryangel

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop&diff=prev&oldid=326052049

Some people just don't know when to shut up...Keep up the good work, Moreschi!

He must be reading this, since http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop&diff=prev&oldid=326053718

Posted by: Mathsci

I agree with you, Somey. The column is helpful in understanding him. Oddly enough I do feel a little sorry for OR. He seems to have got into a terrible trap, although mostly of his own making. One of those seven deadly sins rearing their ugly heads again ...

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Ego-driven writers? I've yet to meet a writer who wasn't ego-driven!

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Well, there's ego-driven … and then there's ego-drivelin' …

Ja Ja

Posted by: Milton Roe

And for everybody straining their brains due to not having the time to keep up with all the redacted clues, here is that link again:

http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/articles/2009/11/04/features/religion/columns/jeffrey_peters/peters986.txt

Zoominfo will even create a site for you automatically if you have a column and put in your email address. So here are links to three more columns, just for grins:

http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/ReferencesView.aspx?PersonID=1326864186

I finally figured out who Ottava reminds me of: Peter Griffin's stepfather Francis Griffin.

http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/Francis_Griffin

I'm particularly fond of the scene where Francis tells the Pope he's too liberal.

Posted by: the fieryangel

Yes, and whose trap is this? Can anyone, other than OR, be considered responsible for this situation? Could it be that your friends are not as innocent as you would like to have us believe?

Feeling empathy is often the first step towards understanding. Congratulations! You're finally seeing the harm that this kind of railroading can create.

(Not to say that OR didn't bring much of this on himself. It's just that he's not the only person here who's created this mess...)

Posted by: Mathsci

Fieryangel, you seem to be using this thread as your own blog.

I notice I've been mentioned along with my tag-team member Dougweller by Folantin on the evidence page. OR was trying to dismiss a university lecturer in the University of Cambridge, on the grounds that it's extremely easy to be appointed lecturer. That is quite untrue. However, it is the sort of thing that jumped up graduate students say all the time on wikipedia. Their other error is to think that everybody else is also a jumped up graduate student.

Posted by: the fieryangel

Thank you for pointing this out. You might try reading this last bit aloud several times a day, to remind yourself of this fact.

Wikipédia, comme la réligion Catholique, a ses rituels qui sont absolument necessaire à respecter, mais qui sont, également, soumis à la structure hiérarchique pour leur pratique dans l'absolue.

En effet, vous et vos amis, en tant qu'administrateur, sont (théoriquement) soumissent à une comportement plus formellement polie que celle des simples utilisateurs. Donc, vos manquement frequentes à ces règles comportementales sont ainsi plus condemnables. Si la comité d'arbitration était vraiment juste, vous et vos semblables seraient punis plus sévèrement que les utilisateurs. Mais, pour les raisons politiques (la comité est, sur le papier, soumise à la commauté, autrement dit les cinquante personnes qui, comme vous, sont responsable pour la plupart des ces diversions tellement amusantes....), ceci n'est point appliqué.

C'est bien cette atmosphère de non-conformité aux regles que je trouve injuste ici et je denounce fermement. Que vous l'acceptez ou pas, c'est bien ma position.

Dans le cas présent, il n'y a pas l'un pour l'achèter l'autre....

Are you satisfied now? Can we go back to English? (I don't mind continuing in French, if you're so inclined, but it's rather impolite...not that this has stopped any of you before...)


http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop&diff=326144430&oldid=326140260



Yeah, kind of like http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=5560&view=findpost&p=19231

At least he's being careful how he phrases things, since he obviously knows that people are onto this tagteam game....http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop#Edit_warring

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

As a writer, OR is actually closer in style (not substance) to the syndicated column that is distributed in the US under Rev. Billy Graham's byline (I doubt that Graham himself is still writing it, given his health problems). The stylistic intensity of OR's focus is very pronounced and, as I am reading it, it is closer to US evangelical Christianity media rather than contemporary Catholic media.

Posted by: the fieryangel

It looks as if http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop&diff=326178016&oldid=326175490

As long as OR doesn't take the bait and lash out, then I think that he's scoring some major points here...

Good job!

However, Folantin provides this fascinating view of how he's helping Wikipedia :

My, we are impressed, aren't we!

Posted by: Eva Destruction

http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2557586.

Posted by: everyking

As I've read this thread in the last few days, I've just shook my head in exasperated confusion. Why exactly are you defending Ottava? Didn't you ever read that thread where Ottava ranted about his psychotic extremist views until he finally had to be banned? He's unfit for Wikipedia for the the same basic reason that he was unfit for WR: he picks fights, attacks without provocation, and causes disruption until he becomes completely unbearable.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

If I didn't know better, I would guess that OR was really Sarah Palin.

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Not very nice. That is, I think she would find that suggestion deeply offensive.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

You betcha?

Posted by: Somey

Actually, I think Mr. Fieryangel was on one of his hiatus-periods at the time. In any event, this could be one of those "enemy of my enemy" sort of situations - Moreschi and Folantin were quite heavily involved in Mr. Fieryangel's own issues with Wikipedia, and not in a good way.

Besides, I don't think he's defending Ottava so much as merely agreeing with his assessment of Moreschi and Folantin. It may look like he's defending him, but I suspect Mr. Fieryangel would admit quite readily that he wouldn't get along so well with Mr. Ottava personally, if it were to ever come to that.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Just bumping Ottava, His Hands Waving Fare Thee Wales, E-Quivocal back on top for a bit, y'know, for Old Slimes' Take.
And Stop Calling Him "OR" !!!

Jon

Posted by: Random832

ü ṙ ḋöïṅ ïṫ ṙöṅġ.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Indeed. Remember that most alliances in Wikipedia are ephemeral, and that the mere fact that two people argue the same points does not mean that they are acting in concert. I think it's safe to say that, where Moreschi is concerned, Fieryangel is not an unbiased source.

Posted by: the fieryangel

....because Moreschi and Folantin are worse, because they do their dirty work in camera.

At least OR looks you in the face when he punches you in the nose....



What does it matter whether or not I'm an unbiased source? We're talking about Wikipedia, not anything remotely important....

Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out. I'm not picking sides here, but I'm definitely happy that somebody has finally put all of this evidence in front of arbcom. If OR gets punished, he probably deserves it. But Moreschi and Folantin do as well.

Just to temper this a bit, I've just been informed that Moreschi is only 18, and was only 15-16 when he became an admin. That explains quite a bit of the childish behavior and stupidity of his actions. It's a pity that these things are not made apparent, but Wikipedia should not be placing kids in these sorts of positions to begin with.

Actually, I don't care who 'wins' here, because I'm done playing the WP game. I'm just happy that the jig is up for those two clowns. And if they go down, then a lot of other people are going down with them. If Wikipedia would learn not to put children in positions of power, then these sorts of things would not happen.



And if anybody hadn't figured this out by now, you were definitely not paying attention! And now that I know that this person was only 15 when he did these things, it makes a whole lot more sense.

By the way, I wonder if he ever ended up selling that softshell jacket, size small, in black?...

Posted by: SB_Johnny

@the fireyangel: looks like he's blowing it now. Any advice for him?

Posted by: Malleus

Quite.

Posted by: SarekOfVulcan

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454#1732454

Posted by: Nerd

It's difficult if you don't know their age to begin with.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

Well, your honor, she typed like she was 18!

Posted by: Malleus

But it's not difficult when you do. Except that all sorts of clowns come shouting and screaming "Ageism" at you if you do.

Posted by: everyking

Although virtually everyone seems to agree now that something has to be done about Ottava, Ottava himself is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop#Proposed_remedies_3 that several of his enemies be desysopped, topic banned, blocked, and/or admonished.

Posted by: Milton Roe

No! How out-of-character.

Rarely does one encouter self-righteousness this pure. Though on Wikipedia it seems to be common. Idle question: do such people gravitate there, or does the WP environment actually bring out and nurture such tendencies, in otherwise not particularly disfunctionally inflexable people?

It 's a veritable Electronic Crucible. Where is our Arthur Miller to chonicle it, allegorically?

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

I'm going to ban them all, Sir.



Finally, something we agree on …

Jon

Posted by: dogbiscuit

There is definitely something about the Wikipedian environment that catalyses this behaviour.

Reflecting on my own experiences, as someone who recognises a strong self-righteous streak in himself, the environment is one where after trotting along on your own merry way, someone lifts a rope across the path and then when you complain you are faced with the suggestion it was your fault for not seeing this deliberately laid trap. The natural reaction is outraged indignation at such obvious perfidy.

There are two or three ways to go: fight fire with fire; use your own righteous indignation to drive through a campaign of reform as you discover that such behaviour is not only condoned but endorsed by the powers that be; or slink away as you recognise that you have sunk into the murky world of fighting on points of principle.

The sanest fall into the latter category after passing through the middle phase. The less robust may be stuck in the middle phase, and the weakest are condemned to be trapped in the eternal torment of the first.

Most are weak.

Posted by: MZMcBride

This is likely (hell, it is) a topic for another thread / discussion area, but I'm curious what your analysis is of those who post on this site regularly. Of course it could be awkward and far too meta to post those thoughts here, but I'd still be interested in them. For all the neuroses and quirks of Wikipedia's contributors, I've found that the people who spend a measurable amount of time solely criticizing Wikipedia are far more interesting. Your mileage may vary, of course.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

If you've followed my posts, you'd be quite aware that I have no problem in seeing WR's posters as a pretty entertaining bunch of characters in both the best and worse senses of that

What is interesting is that I can rationalise the membership here - they have a selection of identifiable motives - some laudable, some not.

However, in the end, WR is a little gnat nibbling at the sensitive parts of Wikipedia, hoping that one bite may one day cause a serious infection. Wikipedia is a global phenomenon impacting on the daily lives of most users of teh Interweb - AND - on a significant number of people who have been entrapped into deeper involvement.

On that second point, it is interesting that here on WR that deeper involvement generally seems to result in a tendency to the odd rant and pointless argument and a general waste of time. On Wikipedia, deeper involvement seems to point to a dislocation from reality, where discussions on Wiki suggest that editors become embedded in an alternative world of values, and that they then take those values out into the wider world.

So although a deeper introspection on the workings of WR may be entertaining, the real value is looking at Wikipedia.

Posted by: Lar

Define "interesting" in this context? ... it wasn't the first word I thought of.

OR, fundamentally, isn't that interesting, so you may be on to something. Dogbiscuit certainly is, but then he usually is pretty astute.

Posted by: victim of censorship

All this yackity yack... but after all that has been said this is the general consensus of WR
as well as those who know wiki and are out side of it....

1. Wikipedia has no governance to speak of. Its a land of Jungle law.
2. Wikipedia has no respect for people and their works. People are treated on Wikipedia like shit.
3. Wikipedia can not be trusted for information considering the agenda pushing street gangs of wiki.
4. Wikipedia pollutes the internet diminishes scholarship. It flood and pollutes the search.
5. Wikipedia needs to be bought under the rules of slander, liable, defamation, and copyright laws.
6. Wikipedia should be stripped of its 501c3 status.

Wikipedia is out of control and with out rules, ethics or accountability. It would be a favor to the internet body politic to sell the domain to a more responsible group, purge the servers and sell them and to the highest bidder and give the money realized to feed African children.

Posted by: thekohser

Spot on.

I'm somewhere between "weak" and "driving through".

Posted by: Cedric

I find this a very interesting analysis as well. By these lights, I would rank on the sane end of the scale, although that is definitely not how I perceived things at the time I left WP. What I remember was feeling rather angry; somewhat angry at myself for being fooled, but mostly angry at WP's leadership for their ethical obliviousness and irresponsibility. It wasn't until some weeks or months after I left WP that I truly realized what I had been involved in. I just didn't pay that much attention to wiki-politics while I was there, as I lacked any desire to be an admin.

Now that I think on it, I suppose I might have realized on a subconscious level that my sanity was at stake. If so, it was very fortuitous; that, and the fact that the Essjay scandal came along just as I was starting to spend a really significant amount of time on WP. As Moulton often says, WP is truly a crazy-making place.

I still suspect I was simply more lucky than sane, but this gives me something to ponder on.

Posted by: everyking

The drama is continuing on the arbitration pages; Ottava is truly in his element, engaging in all manner of histrionics. Yesterday he proposed that the ArbCom ban him and warned that he would leave the project if even one arbitrator voted in favor of his mock-proposal. That prompted Newyorkbrad to actually try to talk him down, soothingly reassuring him that they didn't really want to ban him, although they would do so if absolutely necessary. (I can imagine what the arbitrators would say to me if I indulged in such theatrics: "don't let the door hit you on the ass", perhaps?)

How many weeks are going to pass before the ArbCom puts a stop to all this? Are they waiting to see how much drama Ottava can generate in the meantime? If for some reason the ArbCom chooses not to ban Ottava (no matter how obvious a conclusion may be, you can never safely assume that the ArbCom will accept it), how many people will leave the project in frustration and disgust?

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Question: What does Ottava have in common with Jeff V. Merkey?

Answer: Ask Daniel - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop&diff=prev&oldid=327744865

Posted by: Mathsci

Wizardman has now posted the proposed decision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Proposed_decision#Ottava_Rima_banned.

I hadn't realized that Ottava Rima had also called John Beer from Cambridge a "hack". He and his wife Gillian, or rather Dame Gillian, were not the greatest fans of Jacques Derrida. There were votes of "placet" and 'non placet" in the Senate House for a proposed honorary doctorate which closed off the middle of Cambridge one Saturday morning in the 90s..

Posted by: everyking

Didn't Ottava say he would leave Wikipedia if even a single arbitrator called for him to be banned? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Workshop#Immediate_ban_Ottava_Rima_vote: "I have stated multiple times and for a long time that if just one person from the WMF, any of the FA coordinators, or any member of ArbCom states that I have no place on Wikipedia and that I should be banned, that I would immediately leave and not come back."

Well, isn't this your cue, Ottava?

Posted by: Mathsci

Ah yes, but if it is two or more, as is now the case, that might completely change things. Another evil cabal?

Posted by: the fieryangel

The "sanctions" againsthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Proposed_decision#Moreschi_remindedare incredibly lame :



Are you going to take him out to lunch and have a man to man talk with him too?

These kiddie admins all need to be dessysoped on principal.

Posted by: Mathsci

Oh dear, Wizardman forgot to do anything about Folantin. That must have really upset old ange de feu.

Posted by: Angela Kennedy

I don't know which end I was on really. I was treating Wikipedia as I would a newspaper or journal who was printing crap about a patient community for whom I advocate, which I needed to challenge. It wouldn't be the first or last time I've done that. I've challenged newspapers, medical journals, TV programme producers, Government ministers, political journals, doctors themselves, even the OED at one point (that was to rectify a wrong claim made by someone else to them.) I may be self- righteous to a degree, but that is tempered by the fact I believe I'm fighting for my daughter's survival in this situation.

When someone (can't remember who- it might have been JFW) said join before we take you seriously, I suppose alarm bells should have rang immediately, they did slightly, but I decided to do it (though I didn't contribute editorial, just discussed on a 'COI' ticket). THAT on hindsight was wrong. I should never have 'joined'. But at the time I was wobbly about doing it. I thought there was something deeply dysfunctional as soon as I encountered key people on the talk pages.

But I think on reflection I agree with all said above. I was wholly relieved when I got banned. It allowed me to go back to criticising WP and its vagaries from the outside, and to stop pretending WP was something fair and reasonable, capable of due process, a community etc.

As someone who critiques power operations from a sociological perspective for a living, I guess I was struck at how quickly 'even' I got sucked into the WP machine, really hoping that others on WP could see how inappropriate certain behaviour was. I even went through the various processes they claim you should follow for redress, only to realise I was on an everlasting loop of intransigence.

But I certainly learned a lot about abusive power relations and irrationality from that experience. Yay?

Posted by: Mathsci

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Wizardman&diff=prev&oldid=331469959

How many times now has Ottava left wikipedia?

Posted by: SB_Johnny

Apparently it takes a considerable amount of practice to get it right.

Posted by: the fieryangel

Actually, to be truthful, it did. Folantin is poisonous and really needs to be taken out.

Unfortunately, no one else will see this until it is too late.

You heard it here first.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

And what utter stupidity, too! "If you cannot work with others on a wiki, then there is nowhere on the site for you, no matter how good your content work may be." So is the W-man going to start banning the other resident malcontents on the site (including Mr. Gerard, Mr. Sinclair, and Mr. Chapman, to start with), or is this just a convenient way for him to pick apart the guys he personally dislikes?

And for being "banned" -- really, even W-man's fellow arbitrators openly acknowledge there is no way to enforce such stupidity.

Why bother going through the charade -- just to flex flabby muscles and give the impression of an authority that Mr. Godwin kicks aside with a toe tap?



I hope it sticks -- he really is too smart for this playground.

Posted by: MZMcBride

I think "Pastor Ottava" has a nice ring to it, and it looks like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ListUsers/Pastor_Ottava!

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

A Catholic zealot like Ottava would do better as Archbishop Rima.

Posted by: Mathsci

CardinalSin has already been taken.

UtterlyPretentious is still available.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

How about Fourth Man on the Trinity? Is that taken?

Posted by: the fieryangel

They've reserved that one for you.

Man I can't believe it : they think that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Proposed_decision#Moreschi_admonished




There is no difference between this and the other one. Moreschi needs to be dessysoped and banned, as he's done much worse than anything OR has done. Folantin needs to be banned as well.

Posted by: the fieryangel

The fact that this person is a teenager needs to be factored into comments such as http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Proposed_decision&diff=prev&oldid=331469369 :
And http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Proposed_decision&diff=prev&oldid=331485973

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Elen_of_the_Roads&diff=prev&oldid=331412304

For their own good, this child needs to be desyssoped and then both of these children need to be banned. It's a matter of strict comment sense.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

Well, in principle, banning someone who is genuinely disruptive is quite a sensible thing. The trouble is that they rarely seem to be able to tell the difference between disruption and sheer frustration at the daily stupidity to be tolerated and the likely results of that, and as you rightly point out, they have been magically blind to the disruption of some of the old guard.

In fact in terms of disruption to the project, who has done more harm, Ottave Rima or Peter Damian, who may be difficult to deal with but ulitmately are individual nuisances to the project, or the old guard of Gerard, SlimVirgin and so on who have consolidated the dysfunctional organisation of Jimbo's vision of Wikipedia and whose influence is enmeshed in the fabric to the extent it is proving impossible to reform.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

In principle, I agree. In reality, it is not happening. No one is "banned" -- an account is disabled, that's all. When everyone stops pretending otherwise, we might be able to have some degree of progress in making WP work.



If that was the case, then David Gerard, FT2 and a host of other losers would have been booted ages ago. Arbcom is playing kiddie games -- they have no control over the site and, sadly, they know it. This is just shabby pantomime, not serious administrative functioning.



Ottava and Petey don't have the friends to back them up, hence their pariah status with some WP people. Giano, for example, should have been booted ages ago if we were to apply the same standards, but he is still there.

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

I don't consider Giano disruptive ... He participates in due process to resolve grievences, asks for accountability of people he believes treated him unfairly and who are bad for the project, and speaks truth to power as the saying goes. He's motivated by what's good for the project and the community. I consider that leadership, not disruption.

A skeptic might make the argument that Giano's motivation is to attract attention to himself and stir up trouble, and that he picks just causes to do so. But that doesn't hold up when you consider he was a quiet and productive contributor before that asinine 'hate speech' block.

Posted by: Somey

So... Ottava seems to be claiming that http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ottava_Rima&diff=prev&oldid=331549041 in which he lists all of his many featured articles and so on on his http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ottava_Rima&oldid=331549571.

If it helps keep Ottava out of Wikiland for good, and hopefully the interwebs in general, then I'd just like to point out that his stellar contributions to Wikipedia will be shining examples to the rest of us for years, even decades to come, showing the true potential that can be reached when extraordinary talent is combined with true, selfless dedication to an ideal. I think I can speak for all of us when I state (categorically, of course) that without Ottava, Wikipedia will be an empty, cold dark place, completely lacking in moral, ethical, or editorial standards (though admittedly, that's been the case all along). Ottava was truly the wind beneath our wings, the cream in our coffee, the codpiece in our rubber Batman suit. He will be missed, for as long as he's gone, which I expect will be about 3 days.

Anyway, I guess it's back to watching old Morrissey videos on YouTube!

Posted by: The Joy

What's funny is the comments on the Proposed Decision talk page with people exclaiming "But if OR is banned for a year, that means he'll eventually come back in a year. What are we going to do when that happens? Panic! Panic!"

So, don't feel bad, Ottava. Even while banned or in self-imposed exile, people will still feel your presence. When an IP corrects a Catholic-related article, the Persian Empire, the Lucy Poems, or any 18th-century British Literature article, they will speak in hushed but fearful whispers "Is that just someone helping out... or... OTTAVA RIMA! "

Posted by: EricBarbour

Can we agree on one thing: call him "The Rubber Codpiece" henceforth?
Because I am going to vomit if I have to read any more of his ravings.
Perhaps mockery will keep him off the 'pedia, and my puke off the keyboard?

Actually I don't know which is worse, his ravings, or Arbcom's attempts to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Proposed_decision#Proposed_principles,
using Ottava (cough cough) Codpiece as a whipping boy.

And yeah, Moreschi deserves a similar fate. So, Arbcom misses 2 birds with one stone.

(I will fuck off now, thank you very much.)

Posted by: everyking

Obnoxious and hostile people are a dime a dozen, but there's only one Ottava.

Posted by: Mathsci

On the other hand he can get on with writing his Ph.D. dissertation, from which wikipedia can only have been a distraction. The rigid format of the wikipedia articles on poems that he has been helping to produce can hardly have been useful for that purpose. By the nature of wikipedia, it was plagiaristic - there was no room for originality. I hope for his sake that he has not been as petty, stubborn and disrespectful with his thesis advisor as he has been with editors on wikipedia. The normal rule in RL is that graduate students are forgiven such misdemeanours if they reform. Either that or they change supervisor and sometimes university.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

I don't know how people can write those "goodbye messages" without being horribly embarrassed by it. Or keep a straight face while acting in Adam Sandler movies, for that matter.




He could also go the "transwiki route" and import the stuff to wikibooks or wikiversity and work in a quieter atmosphere. I somehow suspect he prefers the drama though.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

The guy is like a porcupine in a nudist colony. Granted, he is hilarious -- but in the scheme of things, you know a dust storm is coming whenever Giano shows up.




Anyone who clones Ottava will get a horseshoe in the chops!



Yes, we've had enough of Mr. O.R. Hyde -- let's see Dr. O.R. Jekyll.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Alas, while every Dr. Jekyll has a Mr. Hyde, unfortunately not every Mr. Hyde has a Dr. Jekyll. The reasons are still being ellucidated, but it apparently has something to do with MCAT and GRE scores.

Posted by: everyking

I just hope the ArbCom follows through and imposes the ban even though Ottava says he has left. If they dropped the matter, he'd be back in no time.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Meh. No "ban" is being imposed -- if the O.R. account is disabled, our hero can simply start another one and pick up where he left off. It will probably be better for him, considering the baggage he is already carrying.

Posted by: everyking

Of course, it would quickly become obvious because he wouldn't be able to keep from making his trademark irrational attacks. I think almost everyone (aside from a few of the most dogmatic "banned means banned" types) would be happy to have an Ottava sock that edited productively while also engaging with others like a rational human being, but I don't think it will happen. Most likely he only did his productive work in order to increase his own life expectancy as an editor, knowing that if all he did was attack people without doing content work he'd be banned quickly. As a sock, he'd have to edit quietly to survive, and that would leave him no incentive to contribute.

Posted by: wikademia.org

all i have to say is "good ridance"

i am not sure how OR contributed positvely to Wikiversity.

But i hope if OR can find ways to contribute positively, then he returns. yay.

and I don't mean all that entirely. i mean it in a nice way. I think I have turned into one of those cold jerks that I used to opine Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation was full of. unforunate. oh well.

Posted by: carbuncle

Do you think you could turn into one of those people that uses capital letters at the beginning of sentences? That would be nice.

Posted by: wikademia.org

Perhaps. Thanks for the feedback.

Posted by: Malleus

I agree. A new beginning as Pastor Rima is the best bet now. I'm thinking of Cardinal Malleus for myself.

Posted by: Krimpet

With the recent http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Young-earth_creationist_Kent_Hovind%27s_doctoral_dissertation of http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/12/read_for_yourself_kent_hovinds.php, it's clear he has a high standard to strive for.

Posted by: everyking

There's a new proposal that's getting ArbCom approval: "Should Ottava Rima elect to return to editing Wikipedia, he shall be placed on probation for a period and under conditions to be determined prior to his return to editing. Should he wish to return to editing, Ottava Rima shall contact the Arbitration Committee via email after completing not less than half of his scheduled ban to discuss terms of the probation; the discussion may include the involvement of the community at the applicable noticeboard or as a motion of the Arbitration Committee."

As much as I think the ArbCom is doing the right thing here, that isn't quite the approach I'd take. If Ottava was willing to behave in a rational and respectful manner, and made a public statement to that effect, I'd say let him come back whenever he wants--subject to being blocked again at the first hint of trouble. You should only ban someone to keep them from causing trouble and to give a signal that "we mean business"--you shouldn't treat it as a sentence which ought to be served to allow time for reflection or to demonstrate contrition. So if there's some good reason to think someone will not cause trouble anymore, and particularly if they have a history of good content work, then by all means, let them back whenever they want. There just needs to be a good reason--in Ottava's case that seems exceedingly unlikely, but I think the principle's worth stating.

Posted by: Malleus

Lots of PhDs aren't worth spit. So what's new?

Posted by: everyking

Malleus, will Ottava's downfall have any effect on your own abrasive editing style?

Posted by: Mathsci

That depends on the university, the department and the supervisor amongst other things. There doesn't seem to be a problem with Ottava's university, even if it's not that well-known. Ottava may have been irritating and argumentative on wikipedia but he has shown extraordinary dedication in article writing. Not quite the same thing as originality, of course.

Anyway Risker has added a remedy to the proposed decision that allows a return to editing once he accepts that there have been problems with his behaviour.

BTW Hovind seems to be very confused about the third century BC (300 BC - 201 BC).

Posted by: The Joy

With Ottava gone, GWH, Chillum, and the Colorful Signature Kiddie Kabal will focus on Malleus like a Death Star on Alderaan.

But Malleus has some socially/politically powerful friends and usually gets along with people (the FA people, Parrot of Doom, etc.) whereas Ottava started many battles at once with too many people. It's just once in awhile someone gets Malleus's goat and he swears at them. If people would stop acting aghast every time he says a dirty word and just move on, most of the drama that surrounds him would dissipate. Ottava never cursed IIRC, but he would not stop until people were calling him to be blocked. At least Malleus knows when to break off contact.

In defense of Ottava, I did not agree with his ultra-conservative theology and views, but I did admire him at times, especially when he challenged Moreschi, Folantin, and Doc glasgow. That was fun.

Posted by: Malleus

Do you mean "When did you last beat your wife?"

Posted by: Malleus

I think that's about right. I advised Ottava many times to be more careful about the battles he chose to fight; nobody can fight everyone all at the same time.

His most serious error though was his faith in the honesty and integrity of wikipedia's upper echelons, as evidenced by his absurd promise to leave if even one of them thought he should.

Posted by: Mathsci

This is getting to be like Jaws.

Just when you thought it was safe to go in the water, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Proposed_decision&curid=25026817&diff=331832020&oldid=331796028 is back.

Posted by: Milton Roe

"At least he knows when to break off contact"


This is "newbie" Ottava, who doesn't know the first thing about Wikipedia, complaining about "lack of mentorship." IOW, many people told him his views regarding the Persian Empire were retarded, but he couldn't identify a "mentor" among them, so he ignored them.

I couldn't make this up.

Posted by: The Adversary

"Quitting smoking wikipedia is easy. I've done it a thousand times" -Ottava "Mark Twain" Riva.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Maybe I should come back as Pasta Theo -- do you think that the disguise of a jovial Italian noodle vendor will work?

Posted by: Milton Roe

Father Guido Sarducci!

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

I actually think Lazlo Toth would be a better fit for Wikipedia.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Or, I could really go politically incorrect as Papa Giano -- the old world father of our favorite troublemaker (complete with Chico Marx accent).

I am curious if anyone ever tried bad dialect comedy as a Wikipedia persona.

Posted by: everyking

I remember those movies never ended well for the shark.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Yes, the real Lazlo Toth. As for the Don Novello immitation of the same name, he's a mascot already on WR. Kurt Weber sometimes does a great Lazlo, albeit not intentionally.

Posted by: The Joy

How about User:Pope Beenadick?

Posted by: Milton Roe

But good luck getting that past the WP personalized license plate username police.

Posted by: Mathsci

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3AArbitration%2FRequests%2FCase%2FOttava_Rima_restrictions%2FProposed_decision&action=historysubmit&diff=331951664&oldid=331950568

When will this end?

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Oh no, don't end it -- especially with this juicy quote that cries for a response:

"I would like an answer as to why Risker refused to recuse herself even though Moreschi deleted my RfC on her pointing out that she consistently allowed Geogre to continue socking inappropriately on Utgard Loki (with statements to Yellow Monkey which made it clear she knew he was a sock 5 months before he was desysopped)."

So, is this correct -- did Risker know about that sock act for five months? She is on record condoning certain sock accounts -- but this rivals Cas and Law/TU.

And, by the way, who is this Risker broad in real life? A name and location would help in the book research!

Posted by: Newyorkbrad

Could we please not start again with this sort of thing?

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Big boy, the Horsey express left the station a long time ago. Don't worry, you'll be contacted later on for your input in the book!

Posted by: Mathsci

Far too classy for you, Horsey.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

He left his http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ottava_Rima#Parting_words, so perhaps it ended?

Posted by: The Joy

It won't end until they ban him and protect his talk page.

He doesn't know when to break off contact. Now, he's going to act like martyr to invoke sympathy. Why can't people just leave quietly instead of giving some martyrdom speech before being banned from an ill-managed website like Wikipedia? My goodness, he'll be back in a year at the most, it is not like ArbCom is sentencing him to death. I wonder if Ottava will try to circumvent his ban? Will the temptation be too great?

Say, Milton, how about User:Katty KissEm? User:Sanked TeeMoaneeus? User:Cat Again II? User:Paypal Inhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fowler%26fowlerbility? User:Holly Ceptforher? User: Its Cat Headress?

Maybe I should stop before we are all struck down?

Posted by: Mathsci

I hope this is not going to turn into the Daily Sermon from Ottava.

Posted by: The Joy

I didn't realize that Ottava created the "The Awful German Language" by Mark Twain article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Awful_German_Language

I wish he had done more Mark Twain articles.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

That would be interesting.

Posted by: Cock-up-over-conspiracy

I'd put on some Tchaikovsky and leave a consolation note for his damaged soul ... but I cannot be bothered re-booting the router in order to be able to edit.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Classy? When I hear "classy," I expect "Breakfast at Tiffany's" -- this is "Lunch at Burger King." Phooey!

Hey, someone get Lara back in here -- winter is coming and we need her to heat up the space!



I assume that, not unlike Twain, reports of Ottava death are also greatly exaggerated.




Put on some Spike Jones music -- more appropriate for the Wikipedia mood music.

Posted by: anthony

Twain is still alive? Nevermind, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shania_Twain.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Ah, horsey, there's nothing actually classy about the "dry hussle." In the end you realize that lunch at Burger King with the happy ending is better than "look, can't touch." That window at Tiffany's is a METAPHOR, you know.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Well, I can dream, can't I?

Moooooooooooooooooooon riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiver, wider than a mile, I'm crossing you in style some day...

Posted by: Milton Roe

Okay, Huckleberry friend. You and Jimbo.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Hey, can any of our Huckleberry friends go over to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_River article on WP and clean it up? Down in the References section, there is a misplaced sentence relating to the song's use in the film "Born on the Fourth of July."

And speaking of our Huckleberry friend:

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

Horrible casting as the lead actor was only born on the third of july (and is a scientologist, but I digress).

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Ottava into Risker into Audrey Hepburn into Huckleberry Hound into Tom Cruise. Okay, where does conversation go now?

Posted by: Milton Roe

I'm not through with the dry hustle a popular bar hustle in the 1950's when Capote wrote his novellete. It's not mentioned as such in the Wiki on either the film OR the story, so don't bother to look there. But it's how Holly makes her living in NYC. There's some connection to the diamonds in the bank-glass window display, AND to Wikipedia's flagged revisions and the people who keep promising them for their own gain....

Could we get Jay Walsh a REALLY long cigarette holder, as a prop? And Jimbo, too, if he's that much into Rand.

Posted by: CharlotteWebb

They've been able to blow smoke up our asses even without such paraphernalia.

At this point I'm just http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?act=findpost&pid=210363.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Oww!! Ooooh!!! Eeee!! Ahhhh!!

Are you SURE they're not using menthol??

Posted by: Trick cyclist

As indeed was the author of the song from which the title comes.

George M. Cohan (T-H-L-K-D)

Posted by: Milton Roe

Alas, James Cagney was 17 July. Missed it by a whole 13 days.

Posted by: everyking

If the analogy holds, we've still got two more sequels to sit through. "Ottava 4: The Revenge" promises to be the worst of them all.

Posted by: EricBarbour

Posted by: The Joy

Posted by: Mathsci

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Proposed_decision#Where_is_Moreschi.27s_desysop.3F

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Coren#CU_suspicions_of_Moreschi_sock_puppeting

These presumably will be Ottava's last contributions under this username for a while, because the ArbCom case will be closed fairly soon.

Somehow Ottava seems to have been born in the wrong period. He would have had so much more fun working with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomás_de_Torquemada.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

Apparently, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Proposed_decision#Just_a_question. Now it all makes sense!

Posted by: Eva Destruction

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Ottava_Rima&oldid=332732226#Evidence_submitted_by_Hans_Adler. Even Durova in her prime would have thought "both users' IPs resolve to the United States" was insufficient evidence for a sockpuppetry case, but Hans Adler (T-C-L-K-R-D) apparently doesn't.

Posted by: EricBarbour

He's just using their own ad-hominem tactics against them......

Posted by: everyking

Stephen Bain added some last minute votes; remarkably, after everything that's happened, he's against banning Ottava: "I see no reason not to at least try rehabilitative remedies." Have they not been tried already? Has Stephen even read the case? It's a little disturbing that by this point there'd be anyone at all (except Malleus, of course) opposed to a ban.

Posted by: Viridae

Certainly looks like he hasn't read the case. Isn't that one of the arbs we are getting rid of this time?

Oh and argumentative to the end: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Newyorkbrad&oldid=332784177#Re:_Wikipedia:Arbitration.2FRequests.2FCase.2FOttava_Rima_restrictions.2FProposed_decision.23Academic_sourcing

Posted by: The Joy

But.. but that's what Dispute Resolution is for! You try everything to get a person to change their behavior and, failing that, you go to Arbitration.

So isn't it too late to look for "rehabilitative remedies?" Ottava wants to play the martyr and accuse everyone of being against him. Regardless of his good content, his behavior has made him too many powerful enemies. It is just not going to work out.

At some point, whether the individual is right or wrong, you have to realize that his/her behavior is not conducive to a collaborative environment. Eventually, as strange as it may sound, you're going to have to say "I'm sorry, you're a good content editor... and you have to leave."

Giano and his most ardent supporters may be facing that day soon.

Posted by: MBisanz

This applies more to situations like Kurt than to Ottava, but I like to analogize it to the real world example of an Elk's Club. If every week a person came to the group meeting and motioned to disband the organization, people would probably laugh the first couple of weeks. But if they kept doing it every meeting, yelling at the top of their lungs for the disbandment of the organization, at some point the other people in the organization would probably say "it doesn't matter that he supports the aims of the Elk, he is unable and unwilling to work with us" and then show him the door.

And I know many people will say that the unfair part is that Wikipedia is the only game in town on the internet and that there are usually many recreational groups in a town, but that is really a creative construction, since someone could move to any of the 50 other major user-created content places like blogger, digg, flickr, etc, if they find WP so inhospitable.

Posted by: Mathsci

Stephen Bain has been a lazy arbitrator: he didn't read the case pages of Abd&WMC properly and he hasn't taken into account the interaction of NYB, SandyGeorgia and Jpgordon with Ottava. I doubt he would have been elected had he stood for re-election.

I do feel a little sorry for Ottava (but only a very little). Perhaps adding a little sugar and spice could reduce his toxicity, if that's the right WP term. Certainly going out with a bang rather than a whimper in his flame war with Risker will not exactly endear him to ArbCom if and when he decides to come back officially in 6 months time,

Posted by: SB_Johnny

That sort of reminded me of when he jumped on IRC a few dramas ago and said something like "I suppose you're going to accuse me of being paranoid now"... he more or less just proved everyone else's point.

Just curious though: what's this "petition" stuff about? Has ArbCom ever been over-ridden by petition?

Posted by: Mathsci

Petition?

Posted by: Sarcasticidealist

Moved - the verb is moved. A motion is that which is moved, not the action itself.

Goddammit.

Posted by: Viridae

What petition? And no. Though it is technically possible if enough of the community disagrees, to simply ignore an arbcom decision, I really doubt that would happen here.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

It's on the decision talkpage somewhere, iirc. I was just curious if that sort of thing happens. It's just somehow hard to believe that this drama has actually come to an end.

Posted by: Mathsci

Yes, at the end of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Ottava_Rima_restrictions/Proposed_decision#Is_Wikipedia_still_about_its_content.3F.

Time for the Christmas Panto. Who'll play Widow Twankie and when's the puppet show?

Posted by: Malleus

It's nothing personal, I'm opposed to any editor being banned as things stand. Specifically, I'm opposed to the inherent dishonesty in the way that editors are banned, and the hopelessly pedantic distinction between blocks and bans, neither of which can be enforced anyway, so what's the point?

Posted by: Nerd

Sometimes I wish I were banned so I could carrying on editing anyway, just to show how pointless bans are.

Posted by: Malleus

Given that there's no practical difference between a block and a ban, no matter what the wikifaithful parrot at RfA, Horsey has already proved how pointless they are, in spades.

Posted by: The Joy

Thanks to Greg, the WP:BAN policy reads (bold is my emphasis):



So Ottava can continue editing his talk page as long as he doesn't do anything disruptive like continuing his fights there.

With a site like Wikipedia, you can never really ban someone. They can technically come back anytime they wish and, as long as they do not draw negative attention to themselves, they can usually go along editing merrily.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Been there, done that...got the t-shirt made from child labor, too!




Well, don't forget Law/The Undertow -- he actually got a bunch of admins (including at least three members of Arbcom) to play along with the charade of his post-banned sock!

Posted by: Malleus

I've occasionally been tempted as well to prove to the fools who think otherwise how easy it would be to take over a dormant administrator account (not any old dormant account, but some), but I haven't as yet. Hardly any point either, as even dying doesn't lose you the bit.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Well, arbitrator Anne "Risker" Clin openly stated that she approves certain sock accounts. Plus, CHL/One claims that Mantanmoreland is still editing -- no block on that sock. So who is f**king whom?




It ain't worth the bother, Malley. Trust me, adminship is just like Gertrude Stein's opinion of the city of Oakland, California: when you get there, there is no there there. That is why people (mostly kids) with no brains thrive in admiship while anyone with half-a-life gets bored and leaves.

Posted by: Malleus

I'm quite sure you're right. I could probably count on the fingers of one hand (using binary notation) the number of times I found there was something I wanted to do that I couldn't, and almost all of them were to do with moving pages or deleting sandbox pages.

Posted by: The Joy

You'd think the developers could give you those tools as an editor in good standing. It's not like admins work with a full set of tools anyway.

If adminship were something automatic you gained gradually over time while "in good standing," maybe there would be less drama in going through RFA and less privilege in being one.

Then again, my idea of how adminship should be gained would mean that Giano, Malleus, Ottava, and Kurt would be admins by now. Hmmm... maybe that's not such a bad idea!

Returning to Ottava, I like radicals like him and Giano, but I don't think it would work out between us if we crossed paths on Wikipedia in content or policy areas. I can be as stubborn as both of them. It's easy for me as an outsider to root for them, but if I were more deeply involved in WP's processes and community, I couldn't stand the tension they bring.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

It would benefit the project to have intelligent adults who are genuinely concerned about content to be admins, rather than the OCD cases and clueless kids. It is a shame that one of the current RfA candidates, a highly intelligent content creator with the handle of Polargeo, is getting such a rough treatment from the usual suspects -- none of whom contribute one word of genuine scholastic input to the site's contents. It is also amusing (in a sick way) to see someone like Tan sneer at Polargeo for perceived incivility -- getting a lecture from Tan on incivility is like getting a lecture from Tiger Woods on marital fidelity.

Posted by: Milton Roe

That may have been true during the 13 years when Stein lived there from 1878-91, leaving at age 17. At that time Oakland was just the "wrong side of the tracks" of San Francisco (or wrong side of the bay if you will), and there really was no "there" there. No large buildings...

The ghetto-fication and urbanization (complete with skyscrapers) we know as Oakland today, is all post WW II. I still remember (having been in Oakland not long before) my shock at hearing Sinatra sing in 1965 (in my favorite of his albums), an even older song by Alec Wilder & William Engvick:

That year in Oakland High
when I was seventeen
The grass from there to San Jose was high and cool and green
I see it now

Too brash and young was I to know what time could mean
The old Acacia, long cut
down, was felt but never seen
I see it now

That world I knew is lost to me
Loves have come and gone

The years go racing by, I live as best I can
And all at once I know
it means the making of a man
I see it now

The lyrics are by Californian Engvick, who was born in 1914 and would have been age 17 in Oakland high school about 1931, a time when you could be nostalgic about high school in Oakland (no more!).

I was sometime before I realized just why an Acacia tree could be "felt" but never seen. . Obviously some transcribers of the lyrics of this song don't get it, either, because they transcribe it "the old Acacia lawn [sic] cut down". No clue.

There, have I derailed the thread enough? Pre WW II California fascinates me. Most of the things that make it suck now, weren't there, then.

Posted by: Mathsci

Ottava has now been blocked from sending WP email. I'm not sure whether he can still edit his talk page.

Posted by: Viridae

He still has talk page access.



Indeed, and as long as they aren't drawing attention to themselves, they aren't causing problems so who cares if they are there.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

Of course he can edit it -- only the OR account has been disabled. If he can shed that skin and take on a new persona, the Wiki is all his!

Posted by: Nerd

I expect he has created a new account already.

Posted by: Malleus

I rather doubt it. It's always a mistake to judge others by one's own standards.

Posted by: everyking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ottava_Rima#Cheers are 30 people who somehow avoided Ottava's wrath and never got to see what a lunatic he really is. I suppose if he never came at you hurling insane accusations from out of nowhere, it would be easy enough to imagine that he was just a poor, maligned content creator.

Posted by: Malleus

You've apparently not been keeping up. I've fallen out with Ottava several times, and he with me. I just don't get my knickers in a twist about it like so many others do.