Moulton blocked on WV by Jimbo, !!! Options

[Rootology]

http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?titl...=User%3AMoulton

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity..._for_incivility

Block of Moulton for incivility

After discussion with other admins, in which I was requested to personally make this block, I have indef blocked Moulton from this project. It is my belief that he was not here in a good faith effort to create learning materials, but rather was here to carry out his ongoing campaign against people who he thinks treated him unfairly at Wikipedia. After reviewing his case at Wikipedia, I think this is clearly not the case: he was properly blocked at Wikipedia, and should be blocked on sight from any Wikimedia project where he surfaces with a similar agenda.

I would recommend that a significant number of the attack pages be deleted, and the project protected at least for now, pending a good community discussion of what something like this should look like.

There are always difficult growing pains for young commuities; I have seen it in many languages and many projects. I encourage Wikiversity to review the "ethics" project - which, it seems to me could be an interesting project if handled appropriately - with an eye towards developing principles for dealing with such projects in the future. One idea that I would like to propose is an explicit ban on "case studies" using real examples of non-notable people, in exchange for hypotheticals. I would also like to encourage you to consider clarifying the scope of Wikiversity to make it more clear that it is not a place for people to come and build attack pages in the guise of learning materials.

In any event, I hope that my action here will be viewed as helpful. I did not act quickly, but only after discussion with important people, and only after hearing that 3 bureaucrats support this action. It is not my intention to be the "God King" of Wikiversity, although I do request that this block only be overturned upon a very careful consideration of the possible implications for the future of the project.

The first major internal conflict and ban is always tough. My thoughts are with you, and I wish you well.--Jimbo Wales 19:18, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

[Moulton]

I am not familiar with the notion of a "legalistically-oriented social contract" as that would be an oxymoronic contradiction in terms.

I disagree, but perhaps we can agree to disagree...

A social contract is a set of promises made voluntarily. It has nothing to do with the Hammurabic Method of Social Regulation. Covenents and Social Contracts were devised as a sane alternative to Hammurabi's Idiotic Idea.

With respect to the E-Mail addresses of the responsible officials and respondents at ArbCom, you will note that they are openly published at Wikipedia.

Are you saying that the "full headers" of the e-mails in question contained only a reply-to/from address, already available on a WMF site, with no IP address or server routing information whatsoever?

Go read what I posted, verbatim. Do you see any headers?

I accept that it is an egregious and unforgivable violation of WMF policy to Bear Accurate Witness in accordance with the Principles of Scholarly Ethics, and that I will predictably be roundly excoriated, blocked, banned, bound, gagged, kicked, and unceremoniously locked up in the hall closet for having the temerity chutzpah to engage in authentic scholarship. So be it.

If it was good enough for Socrates, Beckett, Galileo, Mendel, and Darwin, Piaget, and Speilrein, it's good enough for me.

Knock off the martyr routine. You've been engaged in a crusade, not scholarship. The only reason you've gotten blocked and your talk page protected at WV is because you made damn sure they had no other choice. I have a hard time believing you didn't know exactly what would happen when you posted an email with the full header on your talk page.

The Greek word martyr means witness. In cyberspace one doesn't have to die to bear witness. And even if they try to kill off one's avatar for having unmitigated gall to bear accurate witness, the act of annihilation is futile, since it's only an Internet avatar.

What I posted was a copy of outgoing mail from me to ArbCom. It didn't have any headers on it because copies of outgoing mail have no headers, full stop.

At least Rosalind Picard has the good sense to realize that Wikipedia is, in the big picture, not that big of a deal. Really, getting your user space deleted was "reminiscent of Kristalnacht"? Is that your "scholarly" assessment? Remind me, just how many people died as a result of that deletion? Arrested? Injured? Lost property? Really bad paper cut?

Do you realize that what was in my userspace was evidence used to convict FeloniousMonk (and also to indict the rest of IDCab). Rosalind Picard has less than zero interest in the fate of FeloniousMonk, a disposable avatar whose name she is entirely unaware of.

However, you might bother to ask Ottava Rima what he knows about Don Hopkins or the others who published false and defamatory BLPs on Wikipedia.

Frankly, I don't think I plan on supporting any unblock action on WV until you can stop acting like a jackass. Like the latter part of Norman McLaren's short film Neighbours (from my sig), you seem to have lost all perspective regarding any tangible goal, and just fight for the sake of the fight.

My goals have been published on my talk page for over a year.

They had another choice. They could have decided to advance from Kohlberg Level Four (Anankastic Machiavellianism) to Kohlberg Level Five (Rawlsian Social Contract Model).

What died was any claim to being an authentic encyclopedia, crafted by authentic scholars with authentic credentials, who defend their scholarship with authentic peer review.

Ah, so deleting your user space was the end of scholarship on WP. Now where have I heard that particular brand of egotism before? That's right, it's the same as the "IDCAB", when they've equated opposing their behavior with being "anti-science".

There has never been any scholarship on WP. It is against the rules to engage in scholarship on WP.

The blame for your experience at WV failing to reach Kohlberg level 5 lies primarily with you and your overblown ego, Moulton. A social contract would involve a little give-and-take, meaning that you occasionally listen to others when they tell you your behavior is inappropriate, and change accordingly. You insisted on doing things your way to the detriment of other editors, so you got tossed, and I didn't see anyone terribly surprised that it happened (only at the way it went down). Frankly, your love for bringing up Kohlberg's model might be a little more convincing if I saw a little evidence you understood any of it.

Kohlberg Level Four behavior is, by definition, inappropriate in a community that evolves and advances from Level Four to Level 5. Anankastic Machiavellianism is anathema to Kolhberg Level 5 and higher.

They had another choice. They could have decided to advance from Kohlberg Level Four (Anankastic Machiavellianism) to Kohlberg Level Five (Rawlsian Social Contract Model).

So if it was you and JWScmidt vs... the entire rest of the WMF, did you ever even consider you may the one that's wrong, or are you too smart to admit that that you weren't smart enough?

"Think about right and wrong, and one immediately falls into error." —Taoist Proverb

"If you want to get the plain truth, be not concerned with right and wrong. The conflict between right and wrong is the sickness of the mind." —Seng-Ts'an

I am not familiar with the notion of a "legalistically-oriented social contract" as that would be an oxymoronic contradiction in terms.

The mutually agreeable terms of engagement (whatever they might turn out to be) would (by tautological definition) be mutually agreeable terms of engagement. If one of those terms embraced anonymity (instead of authenticated bona fides as a credentialed scholar), then that would become a defining characteristic of the site. If the anonymous characters presented themselves as 1) garbed in animal costumes and 2) not subscribers to or adherents of Scholarly Ethics, then I would likely apprehend the site to be a variety of Post-Modern Theater (perhaps even a Theater of the Absurd) modeled after Cats or FurryMuck or Wikipedia.

The way I have come to understand Moulton is that it is his view that absent a mutual agreement between himself and the sites he participates on he does not accept the legitimacy of any rules, be they "community" or provided by the operators of the site. Moulton is then free to engage in behaviors, obnoxious to others, that he would almost certainly be willing to "trade off" in the course forming the "social contract." The only limits he then recognizes are whatever external ethics he brings with him.

It's not that I do not accept the legitimacy of rules. It's that I understand rules to define a class of system known as a "game". In general such rule-driven systems may take on the character of a drama rather than a simple game (like chess). However, rule-driven systems are what they are (and are generally not what most people obliviously imagine them to be). Mathematicians have known for well over a century that rule-driven systems are mathematically chaotic.

Of course I am interpreting here and Moulton might care to correct my understanding.

The reason I propose to evolve from dysfunctional rule-driven systems to function-driven systems is because function-driven systems are functional. I prefer functional systems to dysfunctional ones. (So did Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Augustine, Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Lagrange, Poincare, Einstein, Gandhi, King, von Neumann, Feynman, etc, etc. It's not exactly a new idea.)

I am not familiar with the notion of a "legalistically-oriented social contract" as that would be an oxymoronic contradiction in terms.

The mutually agreeable terms of engagement (whatever they might turn out to be) would (by tautological definition) be mutually agreeable terms of engagement. If one of those terms embraced anonymity (instead of authenticated bona fides as a credentialed scholar), then that would become a defining characteristic of the site. If the anonymous characters presented themselves as 1) garbed in animal costumes and 2) not subscribers to or adherents of Scholarly Ethics, then I would likely apprehend the site to be a variety of Post-Modern Theater (perhaps even a Theater of the Absurd) modeled after Cats or FurryMuck or Wikipedia

The way I have come to understand Moulton is that it is his view that absent a mutual agreement between himself and the sites he participates on he does not accept the legitimacy of the any rules, be they "community" or provided by the operators of the site. Moulton is then free to engage in behaviors, obnoxious to others, that he would almost certainly be willing to "trade off" in the course forming the "social contract." The only limits he then recognizes are whatever external ethics he brings with him.

Moulton, can you clarify if GBG is correct? That's what I'd always, thought, too.

GBG has formed a flight of fancy unsupported by solid evidence, sound reasoning, or coherent analysis. However I give him credit for submitting it to scholarly peer review by a subject matter expert on Moulton's mindset.

I hope you are now disabused of GBG's amusing flight of fancy.

[Somey]

Go read what I posted, verbatim. Do you see any headers?

You could have just said so in the first place... Anyway, if that was all it was, then indeed their stated rationale for banning you was bogus. (That's not to say you don't have an uncanny ability to make people want to produce bogus rationales for banning you, of course!)

As for the other thing, well... any social contract that doesn't provide a means of grievance-redress, usually in the form of legal restrictions and remedies, isn't really a social contract - it's just an exercise in Utopian folderol production, which on the internet would be absurdly easy for people to game and abuse if actually put into practice. And you'll never get there on any Wikimedia (or related) project - their system is already too easy to game and abuse, and the kind of unanimity-of-purpose required for something like that can't possibly exist in the kind of contentious environment they've created. You might be able to do it on some sort of "ideologically pure" invitation-only site, though... But if I were in your shoes, I'd probably just give up on the internet completely, except for private e-mail, and maybe MP3 downloads.

I suppose that's just my opinion...

[Moulton]

I hope you are now disabused of GBG's amusing flight of fancy.

I hope you realize that I am trying here. I described what I had seen in what I hoped was fair and neutral terms without taking cheap shots. Could you please continue to disabuse me by:

• Telling me what then is the substance of your "social contracts, and;"
  
• Can you provide an example of somewhere you have joined a community that has extended a social contract that you found to just and mutual.

The substance of the social contracts is define here, along with an example. At the bottom of the example are links to the model site upon which the example is built. The model site (which is now a commercial enterprise) is founded upon the seminal work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger who (literally) wrote the book on Communities of Practice. That model site also has a model social contract. In the late 1990s that site hosted a public community, of which I was long a member. (As their business grew, the site discontinued the public community in favor of devoting all their staff to supporting their corporate client communities.)

Go read what I posted, verbatim. Do you see any headers?

You could have just said so in the first place...

It hadn't occurred to me that people had formed a wholesale flight of fancy based on el zippo de nada, rather than inquiring into the substance of the issue. I would have thought that by now people here would have learned to be skeptical of haphazard claims and assertions. I would have thought that by now people here would have learned to independently verify anything they heard from the quarters of Wikipedia, since it is widely known (and even openly admitted) that Wikipedians are not a source of reliable information.

Anyway, if that was all it was, then indeed their stated rationale for banning you was bogus. (That's not to say you don't have an uncanny ability to make people want to produce bogus rationales for banning you, of course!)

And therein lies the moral of the story. Do you see how easy it is for people to gin up bogus rationales, utterly unsupported by a shred of evidence, analysis, or reasoning? And do you see how astonishingly gullible people are when it comes to uncritically accepting such bogus claims? That's how the US got into an idiotic war in Iraq.

Somey, a culture that throws away science doesn't have future, full stop.

As for the other thing, well... any social contract that doesn't provide a means of grievance-redress, usually in the form of legal restrictions and remedies, isn't really a social contract - it's just an exercise in Utopian folderol production, which on the internet would be absurdly easy for people to game and abuse if actually put into practice. And you'll never get there on any Wikimedia (or related) project - their system is already too easy to game and abuse, and the kind of unanimity-of-purpose required for something like that can't possibly exist in the kind of contentious environment they've created. You might be able to do it on some sort of "ideologically pure" invitation-only site, though... But if I were in your shoes, I'd probably just give up on the internet completely, except for private e-mail, and maybe MP3 downloads.

Somey, the Internet is a collection of host computers that abide by a sophisticated protocol known as TCP/IP. It's an ingenious protocol, unprecedented in the annals of human history. And guess what, Somey? It works beautifully. It's highly functional. It routinely resolves conflicts efficiently and without an intervening judging agent. The principles of TCP/IP are apparently ill-understood and unappreciated by the lay public, even though the public now relies on it for their daily bread.

A few years ago, Rosalind Picard wrote an allegory for the computer age, entitled Machines That Can Deny Their Maker. TCP/IP literally made the Internet work. And now we have cyberspace inhabitants who similarly deny the foundation principles of the highly functional protocols that make their astonishing denial possible.

I suppose that's just my opinion...

And now you have mine, as well.

This post has been edited by Moulton:

[Somey]

It hadn't occurred to me that people had formed a wholesale flight of fancy based on el zippo de nada, rather than inquiring into the substance of the issue. I would have thought that by now people here would have learned to be skeptical of haphazard claims and assertions.

Sorry, I just assumed it had been oversighted.

And therein lies the moral of the story. Do you see how easy it is for people to gin up bogus rationales, utterly unsupported by a shred of evidence, analysis, or reasoning? And do you see how astonishingly gullible people are when it comes to uncritically accepting such bogus claims?

Are you saying I "uncritically accepted" their claim that you'd posted an e-mail with "full headers"? (And it wasn't even to you, it was from you!) If that were true, why did I ask you about it, instead of them? And words like "astonishingly" are just hyperbole, Moulton - this isn't the sort of thing most people would take the trouble to look up even if it actually were as important as, say, a false pretext for military adventurism.

Somey, the Internet is a collection of host computers that abide by a sophisticated protocol known as TCP/IP. It's an ingenious protocol, unprecedented in the annals of human history....

Evasion. You know what I mean by the term "the internet," and besides, all I was saying was that you're wasting your time trying to reform (or advance the social development of) that system. Either way, the nuts 'n' bolts inner workings of the network aren't what we're discussing.

[Moulton]

It hadn't occurred to me that people had formed a wholesale flight of fancy based on el zippo de nada, rather than inquiring into the substance of the issue. I would have thought that by now people here would have learned to be skeptical of haphazard claims and assertions.

Sorry, I just assumed it had been oversighted.

I have no idea why Mike Umbridge Umbricht oversighted my outgoing mail to members of ArbCom and to other principal respondents in the case. That makes no sense to me.

And therein lies the moral of the story. Do you see how easy it is for people to gin up bogus rationales, utterly unsupported by a shred of evidence, analysis, or reasoning? And do you see how astonishingly gullible people are when it comes to uncritically accepting such bogus claims?

Are you saying I "uncritically accepted" their claim that you'd posted an e-mail with "full headers"? (And it wasn't even to you, it was from you!) If that were true, why did I ask you about it, instead of them? And words like "astonishingly" are just hyperbole, Moulton - this isn't the sort of thing most people would take the trouble to look up even if it actually were as important as, say, a false pretext for military adventurism.

I presume you asked me rather than them because I am a more reliable source of accurate information than them. But as to their reasons, I have no theory of mind to explain why they act as they do. (However, JWSchmidt likens it to the McCarthy era "red scare".)

Somey, the Internet is a collection of host computers that abide by a sophisticated protocol known as TCP/IP. It's an ingenious protocol, unprecedented in the annals of human history....

Evasion. You know what I mean by the term "the internet," and besides, all I was saying was that you're wasting your time trying to reform (or advance the social development of) that system. Either way, the nuts 'n' bolts inner workings of the network aren't what we're discussing

Please don't assume I know what you mean. The Internet is a well-defined term to those of us who were already using the Internet long before Al Gore invented it.

[Random832]

Mike Umbridge Umbricht

And that's another thing.

The cheap shots really aren't helping win people over to your side (though that one at least is not NEARLY as bad as the comparisons to kristallnacht and 9/11)

[mikeu]

Mike Umbridge Umbricht

And that's another thing.

The cheap shots really aren't helping win people over to your side (though that one at least is not NEARLY as bad as the comparisons to kristallnacht and 9/11)

The Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher is offering classes at wikiversity on techniques to block curses, hexes and jinxes cast by Moultons and other Dark Creatures.

-mikeu

[Ottava]

The Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher is offering classes at wikiversity on techniques to block curses, hexes and jinxes cast by Moultons and other Dark Creatures.

-mikeu

We could totally nerd out for Halloween and do a Harry Potter theme.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)