New arbitrators are quite young Options Rating

[Kelly Martin]

Here, you express concern that several members of the Arbitration Committee are relatively young and still in school. Awhile ago, you opined that, as an older person with life experience, I was risking my career by editing Wikipedia and should certainly have nothing to do with its Arbitration Committee. These positions are mutually exclusive.

Not at all. Both statements are consistent with the position that nobody should be involved in Wikipedia.

[EricBarbour]

Then again, we have Risker, Rlevse, FloNight, Newyorkbrad etc who aren't children.

And yet, sometimes they behave like children. And violate their own WP rules.

(And if you say something about it here, NYB will pop up, moaning about how "wrong" you are.

Does that make him the "Piggy" character?... or maybe he's Simon?
Either way, nobody's getting off the island. )

[One]

I would probably be more disturbed if I didn't realize that, for example, some of KnightLago's classmates will be basically writing law on federal courts of appeal next year. These drafters, unlike Wikiarbitrators, won't even sign pseudonyms to the opinions they write.

I wanna hear how Brandt stopped the draft again.

[Kelly Martin]

I would probably be more disturbed if I didn't realize that, for example, some of KnightLago's classmates will be basically writing law on federal courts of appeal next year. These drafters, unlike Wikiarbitrators, won't even sign pseudonyms to the opinions they write.

The difference is that every such opinion will be reviewed and ultimately issued over the name of a federal judge who can, in theory, be removed by the Judicial Council and, if necessary, impeached by Congress. Ultimately, somebody's name and reputation is on the hook, at least in theory, for those opinions and the existence of that theory is enough to curb the worst abuses. Plus the judges who do sign those opinions know who is writing them, and they'll make sure the chickens come home to roost.

Frankly, comparing clerking for a federal judge to serving on Wikipedia's kangaroo court suggests a rather severe lack of perspective. It's a bit like comparing judging a grade school art contest with sitting on a federal court of appeals.

[One]

Frankly, comparing clerking for a federal judge to serving on Wikipedia's kangaroo court suggests a rather severe lack of perspective. It's a bit like comparing judging a grade school art contest with sitting on a federal court of appeals.

I couldn't have said it better myself. How many grade school art judges are named on Brandt's site?

The primary difference is that Brandt wants us to resign, and he hopes that this provides some incentive for us to do so. The rest of his arguments--whether arbitrators are allegedly too immature or are shaming their profession--are just BS excuses for his primary objective. It is, and always has been, a means for Brandt to extract favors and concessions. There are no deeper principles at work here. People are listed or not depending on whether Brandt feels that he has enough control over the subjects. It is, and always has been, a power trip. Although I've often hoped Brandt would do better than that, he consistently disappoints me.

I think it's better to give him no control and let him run his self-debasing games and offers without any takes. I hope that those who are and will be named just ignore it--most of the world does. If you don't want to be named, just don't post openly on this site and don't run for ArbCom--Brandt only rarely looks beyond here.

I don't see why I should be concerned about it one way or another.

This post has been edited by One: Fri 25th December 2009, 11:13pm

[Daniel Brandt]

I wanna hear how Brandt stopped the draft again.

I'm not falling for that trick again. The last time I cited the Ninth Circuit case on a Wikipedia talk page to argue that my bio was inaccurate, improperly focused, and should be deleted, that entire Ninth Circuit decision was turned into its own separate Wikipedia article. Then this article was used to assert that I was obviously notable, and my bio was therefore justified. Something similar happened when I quoted stuff from the student newspaper where I was an undergraduate. I mentioned one incident, and Gamaliel dug out a New York Times from 1968, page 20, and that went into the bio too. I was a slow learner, but I eventually figured out how Wikipedia works.

Basically, I and thousands of others gummed up the works: demonstrations at induction centers, noncooperation with the draft, draft-card burnings, loophole draft counseling by volunteer counselors at many dozens of counseling centers in every major U.S. city (offered free to anyone who preferred to stay out of an unjust war in Vietnam), alternative newspapers, an open-door immigration policy in Canada for draft refugees, Joan Baez and David Harris, The Resistance, etc. I did all of the above except emigrate to Canada.

The draft boards and federal courts couldn't handle it. Don't take my word for it; books have been written about this. A good one is: Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation by Lawrence M. Baskir and William A. Strauss (1978). There's almost nothing in Wikipedia about resistance to the war in Vietnam, so don't waste your time looking.

Civilization will do just fine without Wikipedia because a huge amount of important stuff is trivialized, inaccurate, just plain missing, or whipsawed back and forth by juvenile Wikipediots. Civilization will also do just fine without any more ugly wars like the one in Vietnam.

[TungstenCarbide]

It is, and always has been, a means for Brandt to extract favors and concessions. There are no deeper principles at work here. People are listed or not depending on whether Brandt feels that he has enough control over the subjects. It is, and always has been, a power trip.

Would you agree that Brandt feels he was violated in various ways by Wikipedia and its people? Would you agree that these people had power over Brandt's reputation and privacy, or the lack there of? Would you agree that these administrators acted like arrogant little pricks with the power that they held over Brandt?

"How the HiveMind Began" answers those questions positively.

I've thought about this for a few years and keep coming to the conclusion that Brandt is acting both in self defense and for the greater good, and that he's justified and correct in doing so. And that he's had some success.

Your rant against him seems puerile and personal in comparison.

This post has been edited by TungstenCarbide: Fri 25th December 2009, 11:45pm

[wikademia.org]

nice. maybe they are smart enough to have a fresh perspective. !





maybe they will ban JimbAO

[One]

Circa April 23, 2006, Brandt sets up and promotes his Hivemind page.

By April 27, he had struck a deal with an admin to remove his entry in exchange for favorable edits to Brandt's biography, which led to the admin's desysop. This set the tone for hivemind--Brandt has publicly and privately offered bargains and threats to add or retain entries unless his conditions are met. This is widely known.

There's certainly a small gain in transparency from this site, but the objective has everything to do with Brandt, and very little to do with the "public good."

Wikipedia should have deleted Brandt's stuff a long time ago, and I understand that he was defending himself. Brandt should keep up the criticism, but if he doesn't want to use hivemind in a principled way, it discredits him.

This post has been edited by One: Sat 26th December 2009, 1:24am

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Here, you express concern that several members of the Arbitration Committee are relatively young and still in school. Awhile ago, you opined that, as an older person with life experience, I was risking my career by editing Wikipedia and should certainly have nothing to do with its Arbitration Committee. These positions are mutually exclusive.

That is the kind of logic, and statement, only a kid would make ... which, as Brad is an old fart, probably goes to discredit the 'lack of age factor' criticism and re-assert the 'lack of intellectual integrity' factor.

Personally, I would say the latter is more widely prevalent on the Pee-dia and more concerning. Age can also increase wile and prejudice.

I had to smile at Kelly Martin's comment that both statements are consistent with the position that nobody should be involved in Wikipedia. Both comments would also be consistent with a 'balancing of the tendency to excesses'.

I wanted to pick up something actually very worthy that Durova mentioned in the Wikivoices broadcast on Children and the Wikipedia, that there are possibly millions of young people in China who have been born Post-Tiananmen Square protests (1989) and brought up 'knowing' that no murder of protesters happened, basically following the party indoctrination ... and who are ripe for a spell at Wikipedian serfhood. What happened to consensus when that wave hit the shore? 

Of course, this is just one example of many, many cultural blind spots, the dumbance down and prejudices of American education being another obvious one. I have banged my drum about the lack of understanding and appreciate of the depth and strength of other active racial or cultural prejudices.

Despite all of their whimperings to the opposite, Arbcom and Admins are CONSISTENTLY making "content decisions" ... decisions based on the willful and absolute ignorance of the topics involved. Decisions to the opposite of the quality and accuracy of the content. It is often the practice of willful and absolute ignorance about the content that allows them to do what they.

To that end ... and the "encyclopedia" becoming a Google scrubber ... having lots of young and younger people involved is great because they are far better at it not knowing so much about life.

But isn't it just another one of those typical cult-like elements of the Pee-dia? Cults are always recruiting on campuses and targeting young inexperienced people.

[Daniel Brandt]

Circa April 23, 2006, Brandt sets up and promotes his Hivemind page.

By April 27, he had struck a deal with an admin to remove his entry in exchange for favorable edits to Brandt's biography, which led to the admin's desysop. This set the tone for hivemind--Brandt has publicly and privately offered bargains and threats to add or retain entries unless his conditions are met. This is widely known.

There's certainly a small gain in transparency from this site, but the objective has everything to do with Brandt, and very little to do with the "public good."

Wikipedia should have deleted Brandt's stuff a long time ago, and I understand that he was defending himself. Brandt should keep up the criticism, but if he doesn't want to use hivemind in a principled way, it discredits him.

I am doing this in a principled way. Here is a statement of my principle. I posted it in a hidden forum on this site three days ago, and had a couple of requests to repost it on a public forum, so here goes:

Frankly, it pisses me off that the critics of Wikipedia have to play Master Web Sleuth in order to get anywhere with our critique of Wikipedia. I wish I had the time back that I spent trying to identify Essjay, for example, or SlimVirgin. This is an absurd state of affairs, and I have no sympathy whatsoever for anyone who claims to be contributing to an encyclopedia, and at the same time claims that this is dangerous undercover work that requires a screen name.

If you don't want to be identified, then stop pretending to be an editor of an encyclopedia. Find some other role-playing game that doesn't have social consequences.

Anyone who promises to leave Wikipedia forever, and notifies me of their promise, will be purged from all pages on Wikipedia-Watch.org. Anyone who doesn't is fair game. That goes double for administrators, and triple for arbitrators and above.

Social ethics is not rocket science. I spent three years in grad school studing social ethics and political philosophy, and I find that this whole Wikipedia thing insults my common sense and wastes my time.

Remember, it's not as if I wrote my own bio, and then didn't like it when Wikipediots began mucking around with it. SlimVirgin started it without notifying me, and I discovered it by accident at a time when I barely knew that Wikipedia even existed. After working with SlimVirgin (who is a brilliant editor and can seem very professional), I realized in about a week that I did not have any rights on Wikipedia with respect to my bio, and requested that it be deleted. Slim backed off, Jimbo did a "Jimbo" and backed up Slim over my wishes, and that left the door open to get the bio immediately reinstated by some faceless admin. Now I didn't even have Slim to reason with, as she was apparently uninvolved (who knows what was really happening behind the scenes?). I had to fight juvenile Wikipediots through 14 AfDs, and a bunch of DRVs, over the next two years. Then the whole thing started again with the PIR article, which was number one in a search for my name due to a redirect from the bio.

The only successes I've had with Wikipedia during the last four years have been due to the leverage that the wikipedia-watch.org site, and particularly the hivemind pages, have provided.

What would any reasonable person do who had easy access to website creation, given my circumstances? The answer I've most often heard from those who support Section 230 immunity in the U.S., is this: "Well, if you don't like it, start your own web site."

So I did. And if you don't like my website, then leave Wikipedia forever and your name will disappear from my site.

[Milton Roe]

Civilization will also do just fine without any more ugly wars like the one in Vietnam.

No doubt, but you can't stop Vietnam-like wars by simply not going. What happens then is that big countries eat smaller ones, until finally the war comes to you. It's like ignoring a small fire in one corner of your house, on the grounds that it hasn't reached your room, yet. Why not let Godwin just have the Sudetenland? Because he keeps going, is why.

I don't support the draft by any country at any time. I figure if you can't scrape up enough volunteers to fight any given war, that's a sign it's probably not that good an idea. If you're being directly attacked (Pearl Harbor) and still can't do it THEN, you probably don't deserve to survive as a country.

Should the US have intervened in Vietnam with a volunteer army? Maybe. It might have been simpler just to threaten to nuke China, the way Truman threatened to do in Korea, and MacAurthur actually wanted to just go ahead and do. Of course, things were complicated by the fact that by Vietnam, China had a few nukes of its own. Still, I think we could have made them stay out. Unfortunately, we decided to let them come in and do things the hard way (rather like Korea).

Again, it's hard to know who should own and have sovereignty over any given piece of land. China once ruled the land we now call Vietnam for a thousand years. Sometimes the north and south were separately ruled. Then the French muddled with their own colonialism. Though all this time, the Hmong wanted to stay in the mountains and be left alone by everybody. And why not? So who had the "right" to form a state from all this, and determine its shape, and impose laws on everybody? Perhaps he should have given the Hmong a few nukes and the techs to maintain them. The Tibetans, too.

[Nerd]

...if you don't like my website, then leave Wikipedia forever and your name will disappear from my site.

You still have editors who have left Wikipedia on Hivemind, so I don't believe this at all.

[Daniel Brandt]

...if you don't like my website, then leave Wikipedia forever and your name will disappear from my site.

You still have editors who have left Wikipedia on Hivemind, so I don't believe this at all.

None that have notified me that they promise to leave forever. Nerd, I wish you would learn how to read.

"Anyone who promises to leave Wikipedia forever, and notifies me of their promise, will be purged from all pages on Wikipedia-Watch.org."

[Nerd]

...if you don't like my website, then leave Wikipedia forever and your name will disappear from my site.

You still have editors who have left Wikipedia on Hivemind, so I don't believe this at all.

None that have notified me that they promise to leave forever. Nerd, I wish you would learn how to read.

"Anyone who promises to leave Wikipedia forever, and notifies me of their promise, will be purged from all pages on Wikipedia-Watch.org."

Oh, my apologies.

[Hell Freezes Over]

Remember, it's not as if I wrote my own bio, and then didn't like it when Wikipediots began mucking around with it. SlimVirgin started it without notifying me, and I discovered it by accident at a time when I barely knew that Wikipedia even existed. After working with SlimVirgin (who is a brilliant editor and can seem very professional), I realized in about a week that I did not have any rights on Wikipedia with respect to my bio, and requested that it be deleted. Slim backed off, Jimbo did a "Jimbo" and backed up Slim over my wishes, and that left the door open to get the bio immediately reinstated by some faceless admin. Now I didn't even have Slim to reason with, as she was apparently uninvolved (who knows what was really happening behind the scenes?).

Just a tiny correction (the same one I always have to make). You asked that it be deleted and I *did* delete it. You then asked Jimbo to guarantee that it would stay deleted, and of course he couldn't. You further asked that I not be involved anymore -- even though Jimbo told you that wasn't a good idea, because I'd likely be able to help, and indeed would have helped -- and you continued discussing the issue on blogs. Inevitably, one of the blog owners recreated the article from scratch.

[Milton Roe]

Just a tiny correction (the same one I always have to make). You asked that it be deleted and I *did* delete it. You then asked Jimbo to guarantee that it would stay deleted, and of course he couldn't.

Why not? He seems to be doing quite a good job with Carolyn Doran. Nobody can guarantee a page won't go up for a few seconds or minutes under some really odd title that nobody has thought of yet, but it's rather dishonest to suggest there's not a thing Jimbo (or anybody else) can do about this stuff, and that eventually every interesting variation can be creation-protected.

You further asked that I not be involved anymore -- even though Jimbo told you that wasn't a good idea, because I'd likely be able to help, and indeed would have helped -- and you continued discussing the issue on blogs. Inevitably, one of the blog owners recreated the article from scratch.

So what? Again, have neither you or Jimbo ever heard of WP:SALT?

You can bullshit the public, but don't try it here on WR.

[Hell Freezes Over]

So what? Again, have neither you or Jimbo ever heard of WP:SALT?

Daniel asked that I not be involved, so there was nothing I could do at that point. You're right that Jimbo could have deleted it, but remember, there was nothing inherently problematic about Brandt's bio (except that he didn't want it), and when Jimbo had tried to salt bios that clearly *were* problematic (e.g. Brian Peppers), he got shit for it -- and in fact that case triggered the creation of Wikitruth. I'm wondering why I never saw criticism of Wikitruth on this site, given that they were reposting deleted BLPs.)

If Daniel had kept quiet after the first deletion, it would almost certainly have stayed deleted. But it was recreated amid a giant fuss, and it was the fuss that made it hard to delete again.

This post has been edited by Hell Freezes Over: Sat 26th December 2009, 4:57am

[Jon Awbrey]

Deja Re*Vu All Over Again —

Daniel,

If you look at the sequence of events that transpired with the Wikipedia Bio on George William Herbert, you can see that they already have in place what pretends to be an automatic process for dealing with this very issue — If & When & For Whom they really want to.

Jonny

[Milton Roe]

So what? Again, have neither you or Jimbo ever heard of WP:SALT?

Daniel asked that I not be involved, so there was nothing I could do at that point. You're right that Jimbo could have deleted it, but remember, there was nothing inherently problematic about Brandt's bio (except that he didn't want it), and when Jimbo had tried to salt bios that clearly *were* problematic (e.g. Brian Peppers), he got shit for it -- and in fact that case triggered the creation of Wikitruth. I wonder why I never saw criticism of Wikitruth on this site, given that they were reposting deleted BLPs.)

The idea that Jimbo ever cared about "getting shit" for laying down one of his "non-negotiable" dictums (or laying one of this negotiating victims, for that matter) is pretty funny. Wikitruth is indeed about all the stuff that has been deleted, oversighted, salted, and otherwise oublietted and forgetted. Nobody requires that WP succeed in this (the internet being what it is). All that is required is that they try. Which here, they didn't (although when the truth embarasses them, as in the case of Doran, they seem to succeed pretty well-- there wasn't anything wrong with her biography either, except that it missed containing all the public dirt that was later discovered about her)

I'm not going to defend Wikitruth, as I have nothing to do with it. It looks to be interested in keeping the truth about those who would like truth to be very selective (as in favoring their own version). Sauce for the goose should be for the gander, I say, until WP abjures all BLP completely. Then I'll criticize all bios on Wikitruth.

If Daniel had kept quiet after the first deletion, it would almost certainly have stayed deleted. But it was recreated amid a giant fuss, and it was the fuss that made it hard to delete again.

Oh, it was SOOOO hard. They just couldn't make their poor bleeding fingers type the commands.

I've seen Jimbo delete something and threaten to desysop anybody who changed it. Don't give me the song and dance about how HAAARD it is for the WMF people to do whatever they want on WP. Save it for the newspapers, who might actually believe you.

The only thing that is HARD for Jimbo to do directly, is change bios of his bed-partners, as then he'd be accused of COI-tal mismanagement. So he needs a shill, there. But I don't think he was sleeping with Brandt.

Brandt, is there something you're not telling us?