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Posted by: Shalom

Maunus you are AWESOME for doing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Lhb1239&diff=465485588&oldid=465453958

...and causing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&oldid=465726229#Maunus_and_beyond_uncivil

Maunus, for one sentence you wrote, you caused three screens of wikidrama! EPIC WIN!!

Posted by: radek

With all the stuff going on Wiki these days I totally missed this. Anyway. While Maunus caught some flak here, mostly for being an admin, generally speaking he is one of the "good guys" on that site, and I think this illustrates it.

Btw, good luck.

Posted by: mbz1

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Maunus&oldid=465488501
Maybe not all, but way too many.
Some of them are cowards, some of them assholes, most of them simply cannot care less, or rather they only care about keeping their mops

Posted by: SB_Johnny

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with telling a moron to fuck off (assuming the guy deserved it, which I can't be bothered to look into), I'm not sure how that illustrates good-guy-ness.

Posted by: radek

It doesn't, that part was based on my other-familiarity with maunus. But it does show a bit of chutzpah, especially coming from an admin, which I do respect.

Posted by: Maunus

Well, I'm not particularly proud of any of that. But that particular guy had been nagging me over several days where he was continously borderline uncivil and doing the "oh but you're an admin (and everybody knows and all admins are assholes) so I expect power abuse so I'll comply but your wrong and I'm right " passive/aggressive schtick, basically baiting me as much as he could, and making it painfully clear that he'd cry "admin abuse" if I made any use of the tools in his neck of the wiki. The suggestion to fuck himself was a response to this last message of his http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AMaunus&action=historysubmit&diff=465482818&oldid=465472806

This coupled with the fuss over a completely legitimate block I made which I refused to undo because I believed and believe it was solid (while I had said I didn't mind other people to unblock) - it made me think that the kit wasn't really worth the hassle.

So that's why I decided to loose the toolkit and tell the asshole what he needed to hear. But I'd like to note for the record that I was not an admin when I said that to him. Basically I think admin-haters like you guys are making it worse for wikipedia rather than better - only people who don't give a fuck about what people think can tolerate the abuse that's thrown at them and sane people either don't run for admin or give it up.

"Involved admin" is the most ridiculous crap accusation you can throw at people - it is basically a get out of free card you can use if the same admin happens to catch you with the hands in the cookie jar twice. Wikipedia will have the administrators it deserves.

Posted by: mbz1

well, I am not sure what kind of involvement they were talking about in your situation, but please imagine this situation:
A user and an admin are having content disagreement over an article. Then admin blocks the user.

Another situation:
A user and an admin are parties of the same arbitration case. The user says that in a few hours he is going to submit evidences against the admin. The admin blocks the user, and removes his talk page access.

Another situation
For whatever reason an admin does not like a user. When he finds a reason to block this user, he does

In the situations I described above that admin behaves as a teen, who is beating a baby, does he not?

Posted by: radek

Hmm. Well... there's basically so many dysfunctional aspects of Wikipedia at work here, some of them intersecting with each other, some of them offsetting each other, some of them amplifying each other in both negative or positive ways, that's it's really hard to comment on specific individual cases.

Admin-hating is there for a reason - the competency or intelligence level of the average admin is well below what one would expect from any decently run internet forum (so here the standard of comparison is other internet forums out there, which, to be perfectly honest, is a pretty low threshold), never mind any real world organization. Given this ... dullness, of your average admin, it's particularly grating that the mop gets given for life and that once they get it, it's a "you'll pry the admin privileges from my dead cold hands" kind of thing (you're proving yourself to be a notable exception - but that's more or less an actual quote there). It's essentially feudal. And on top of that the whole process by which admins get chosen is admitted to be completely wack by EVERYONE, even by Wikipedia insiders. Everyone know's it's fucked yet no one wants to do anything about it. The end result is that you get a bunch of know-nothing 16 years old - or their older equivalents - who have never done shit for the encyclopedia harassing and abusing people who actually have written most of it. But hey. Judging by the latest, it's pretty obvious that they take their ques from the top, with Jimbo trashing on Cla68 and mocking his 'track record'.

An the whole "involved admin" card. Yes, yes, yes. It gets abused. The first... the zero pillar of Wikipedia is that "any policy, no matter how sensible in its intent, can and will be gamed, and this applies to WP:GAME as well". If you didn't have trully involved admins, who are buddies with some certain users, plain ol' axes to grind or just simply being part of an established "good ol' boys network" (I think the word "cabal" is more traditional) showing up to various drama boards and, with a straight face, engaging in pharisee levels of hypocrisy and lying by saying shit like "I am not really familiar with this matter but..." then this would never come up.

And you're very much looking at it from the "me, the oh so pure innocent abused admin" point of view. Maybe that's what you are. But that's not what most are, and that's why you get suspected by the nature of your status. But think of it this way - you do some admin action against a particular user, they complain that you're involved ... what's the worst that will happen to you? Your block will get reversed? Someone might say the awful words "you were wrong"? Ok. That's what usually happens. Whining about this kind of thing is essentially complaining about the fact that someone didn't "respectah your authority" enough. But think of it from the complainer's point of view, even if they're wrong. If they get abused by a truly involved admin, what recourse do they have? Basically, at that point they're fucked (unless they have a meaningful mailing list to back them up... (don't pay attention to that, that's old news)) They loose they're editing privileges, they get slandered, their name is shit from then on. Now, maybe... 7 out of 10 times the "involved admin" really is "uninvolved", but the other three is enough to really ruin it for a whole lot of people who probably gave a lot to the encyclopedia only to see themselves shat on and thrown away.

You're very much thinking about things in terms of you social class here. You're smart enough to realize that there are problems but still can't make sense of why it's happening. Well, it's a start.

Anyway, finish your studies first, and good luck.

Posted by: Maunus

Social class? Are you mad? Being an admin is not about class - and in this case I'm not even an admin anymore. I have never claimed to be innocent of anything - the point is in fact that I am not. The hole thing was pretty much my own fault - if I'd been able to keep my cool I would have had no problems. And neither would anyone else. I just lost my temper and told an asshole to go fuck him self (and also a couple of people who didn't deserve it). A stupid thing to do for an adult.

If wikipedia wants innocent admins then it will have none.The point is that admins are guys just like anyone else - some are assholes and some aren't. But if you treat someone like as assholes a priori chances are that they'll become assholes. I agree that power comes with responsibility - but the responsibility should be relative to the power and admins have no power except what the community gives them at any given time. Having the block button is not power. The only kind of power that exists on wikipedia is having many friends who watch ANI. It doesn't matter if your an admin or not if you have sufficient friends at ani you're untouchable.

Regarding my thesis defense I've done what I had to do by now thanks.

Now for MBZ1 scenarios: the problem in those cases is not that the admin was involved but that the person blocked did not commit a blockable offense. If someone does something wrong it shouldn't matter who presses the blockbutton.

Posted by: mbz1

But "wrong" and "right" could differ, depending on who you ask. That is why, if one is involved with a user in any way, it is better to leave blocking of that user to someone else. Agree?

Posted by: Maunus

If a block is wrong it gets unblocked - usually within an hour. If it doesn't you basically have unlimited attempts, untill some admin falls for it. So what if you couldn't edit wikipedia for an hour - hardly an infringement of a human right.

Posted by: mbz1

I missed, when we started talking about "infringement of human right." I believed we were talking about blocking by an involved admin.
But the thing is that sometimes even a very short, wrong block makes an editor to leave wikipedia. Remember !! (T-C-L-K-R-D) ?

Posted by: Maunus

Lots of things make people want to leave wikipedia. As someone recently noted in an email to me few of those things are worth making a fuss about.

Posted by: jd turk

To begin with, congrats on the thesis. Now have a beer or two and relax, you deserve it.

As for admins, I'm certainly not anti-admin. The problem with the admin cadre is that once empowered, it takes an act of God to get the tools away. When you have an admin who doesn't get it, the only hope you have is that either they'll wise up, get tired of other admins "trouting" them for foolish behavior, or that they'll eventually anger the wrong people high enough up the food chain to get the tools away from them.

To non-admin editors, every admin has the same powers and abilities. Some of them are very responsible, sure, but in all honesty a couple of them scare the Hell out of me.

Sorry, but the block button is power, especially if you're an editor with less than a couple of thousand edits who doesn't know how things work yet.

Just to be clear here, I'm not talking about Maunus in any of my comments.

Posted by: mbz1

Of course, but some things that make editor leave wikipedia could and should be avoidable, and this including being blocked by an involved admin. Maunus, I know you are a caring, and a reasonable person, and I know you understand that an involved admin could get irritated, and be not exactly fair to a user. You said it was not a big deal to get blocked for an hour, but isn't it even lesser deal to be told that you are involved admin?

Posted by: Maunus

Yes, it is a very small thing in the large scheme of things. Which is also why I am not wasting many tears on leaving the "wikipedia admin" part of my life behind me. It was just the particular very small thing I happened to be pissed of at at the moment.

But I must say it felt really good to troll for a little while. One might just get addicted to it.

Posted by: jd turk

I agree with Maunus here, if it's something blockable, block the editor. "Involved admin" is often used as a get-out-of-jail card, and the worst offenders have a laundry list of admins who've blocked them who are now "involved," and shouldn't use the tools again simply because they already know the user's MO.

On the other hand, when an admin shows they don't get it and issues a bad block, they should have that blocking right removed for a period of time. I know the software won't allow it, and that's one of the problems. All admins and tools are not created equally.

Posted by: Maunus

Everyone should get the tools after making 5000 article edits.

Posted by: jd turk

And with that platform, I'll go ahead and support your re-RFA.

Posted by: Ottava

Chutzpah? More like his disregard for anything realistic or credible. Remember, he did this abusively while an admin. He merely kept up his bullying tactics after. This is the guy who said that 66% to keep a page was not enough consensus merely because three of his friends were in the minority.

Posted by: Zoloft

Thought he dropped the admin bit before he tagged the guy.

Posted by: jd turk

Don't stop him, he's rolling.

Posted by: Zoloft

But He's Riding Dirty.

Posted by: radek

Ottava, just shut the fuck up already please. Any reasonable person would've done the same damn thing in the circumstances. While once in a blue moon you have something worthwhile to say (and recently you managed one or two posts to that effect), and while you might have some knowledge of 19th and 18th century British kitsch, you're way out of your league here.

Posted by: EricBarbour

FYI, the permanent archive is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive731#Maunus_and_beyond_uncivil.

No one noticed the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive731#Organgemarlin_and_Captain_Occam right below it?
Golly. I thought you all hated OM, and you'd be rejoicing.

Posted by: Ottava

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=312007024&oldid=312006472

5 people, all Maunus's friends, wanted to delete the Persian Empire page because they did not like it for whatever silly reason got into their head. He is saying that 9 people against removing the page is not enough for a "controversial decision" when the controversial decision was to remove a page of that size and importance. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Persian_Empire&action=history because he and 3 admin wheel warred the deletion via turning it into a redirect against consensus and threatened to block anyone who disagreed, even though Wizardman and other prominent members were part of the consensus against them.

Basically, he said "fuck it" to all behavioral and editing standards and used his adminship to try and remove a page that there was no reason to remove. Maunus was one of the worst admin out there and has a long history of tag teaming with other equally bad admin. He has absolutely no respect for content or the community. And this is not an isolated case and he has done similar things to many people here and in the WMF community as a whole.

This is fact and cannot be disputed. I don't know why you are suddenly defending the worst offenders at the Wiki, but it is a really weird trend lately.

This is an obvious case of a highly abusive user who has a 100% tract record of destroying articles and many violations of behavioral and content based standards of burning out and making his abuse as utterly visible as possible. He should be indeffed and cast out like Rlevse.



As a note, Maunus got people to block me for incivility when I never once cussed like that, attacked people like that, etc. It is all part of the double standard of the abusive admin corps who only care about doing whatever they want. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Alarbus&diff=prev&oldid=465486575? Seriously? How can anyone defend such things?


I find it odd - Maunus is claiming to be defending his thesis at Brown while being an "alumni" at Brown. He also had an MA in the same field from the University of Copenhagen. I don't really know why people would duplicate MAs but it is never a good sign. It would explain the near constant errors in his claims.

Posted by: It's the blimp, Frank

Except when it's not. Surely you must have noticed that some people work hard to become admins, because they see it as a license to push POV.

Posted by: chrisoff

Ottava, why on earth do you post this link to a 2009 AN/I discussion that is godsmack example of your trolling behavior on WP and the exact reason why you were banned?

Posted by: mbz1

Agree with Ottava on this. Imagine an user saying something like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Lhb1239&diff=465485588&oldid=465453958
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Alarbus&diff=prev&oldid=465486575?

and then an arbitrator http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=465528935


Elen, do you you really mean you have "the utmost sympathy" with people, who wish others "to get gonorrhea"? I wish I knew it before. There were a few users I could have wished it too, if for nothing else just to earn your "utmost sympathy" you know

I doubt very much that if an user said something like that he would have been allowed to go on a self-requested block leave alone to be offered an unblock.

The observation I expressed above has nothing to do with Maunus personally.
It was intended more as a general comment about treatment of admins versus treatment of non admins.

Posted by: Ottava

Trolling? Because I and many other well respected content editors said that a page on the Persian Empire detailing the various empires that rose and fell and were all linked by the same cultural group and would blend into its various dynasties should not be turned into a redirect by a handful of people who wanted to "just because"?

It is one example of hundreds of him making ludicrous statements to defend the destruction of content with the sole reason of "my friends want it so I will say whatever I can to put up a bad justification for it".

He abused adminship to destroy articles. That is all he was known for. He was an awful editor and an awful admin, and is the pinnacle of horrible admin abuse. Everyone here should celebrate that he took himself out because we know it is almost impossible for such people to be removed because of how broken the system is.


And chrisoff, I always defended you on Wiki even though you were a complete an utter dick to me and my friends. Why? Because I don't play those kind of games like Maunus is known for. You should get some sense and realize that your defending of such abusive people wont ever get you in their good side or benefit you in any way. The only people who were willing to defend you were those like myself who cared about integrity and doing the right thing for the right reasons.

Posted by: Maunus

...

Posted by: Vigilant

What an utter load of horseshit.
So many people are indef'd with their talk page access removed and nobody EVER comes to help.

You remain clueless about how WP really works.

Here's and exercise for you:

Go and look at how the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Vigilant account was handled. I don't have any desire to edit there anymore, but it's completely instructive.



This free conversion from Ottava to English is provided by the VigilantBot:

"Blah, blah blah, ah blooo, ah bloooo

LOOK AT ME, I'M IMPORTANT!!!1oneEleven!!"

Posted by: TungstenCarbide

anything new up between you and Merkey?

Posted by: Maunus

Looks to me that you were there to practice some weird and misguided form of online vigilantism rather than contribute to the project of writing an encyclopedia. At least half of your very few edits are attack edits. What did you expect? That they'd deputize you?

Posted by: Vigilant

Taking note of my username...
Merkey was a cancer that the high and mighty coddled.

Take a look at banned users, AN/I, block logs, sockpuppets, etc

Posted by: jd turk

You can't possibly expect people to figure out from 5 1/2 year-old edits what it is you're so angry about, can you? Saying "Take a look at banned users, AN/I, block logs, sockpuppets, etc" is pretty vague. It's like saying "I hate you, and I've left all the evidence against you in the New York City Public Library system. I'll wait while you go find it."

Posted by: SB_Johnny

I'm stealing that.

Posted by: A Horse With No Name

What's wrong with horseshit?

Posted by: EricBarbour

Indeed, hanging around here and being fed big chunks of it, now it's starting to taste like filet mignon....

Posted by: iii

You haven't noticed that administrators have a higher status and more power on Wikipedia? Oh wait! You say:



You have to have a very warped sense of what "power" entails if you think that having the ability to prevent another person from interacting on a website is not power. Just because there are additional social constraints on the use of that power (as cultish and as capricious as they may be) doesn't make the admin-class powerless.

Posted by: mbz1

Maunus, I'd like to ask you please what statements of Egg Centric you were referring to, when you wrote this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&diff=prev&oldid=465490886?

Thanks.

Posted by: Abd

OMG, Maunus was an administrator,http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ABureaucrats%27_noticeboard&action=historysubmit&diff=465473524&oldid=465250759 and apparently requested to be blocked.

Wikipedia --> burnout. No surprise, really.

Posted by: Abd

What's wrong with it? Even horses want to get rid of it!

Posted by: Ottava

I just think it is amusing to point out that the word "hysterical" comes from the Greek word dealing with all things womb related and would be inherently linked to PMS (which was what the term was original used to denote, or, in general, men's view of female mania). So, it isn't really "sexist" except in its origin of the word.

Posted by: Maunus

That would be this one: "(S)he is obviously committing suicide by mod. A preventative 24 hour block so (s)he can sober up/take pills/get over hormones or whatever should cool things down"

Which is of course sexist in that it implies that PMS causes the kind of obnoxious behavior that I was displaying. He went on to say even worse stupidities and so did Hans Adler. When I wrote a hysterical attack i was of course drawing on the Greek etymology and the history of Victorian treatments of "hysteria" - which were of course also sexist.

Posted by: that one guy

Maunus, if I ever retire i wanna go out with a bang like that

Posted by: Alison

I'd have been annoyed, too, had I see that. So yeah - well said I notice Kafka Liz replied saying, "Sexist much? Jesus fucking Christ. To think I actually thought this anti-woman thing was a myth. Kafka Liz (talk) 17:51, 12 December 2011 (UTC)
"

Posted by: Ottava

You mean masturbation? That was the number one Victorian treatment.

Posted by: Vigilant

Quite right.

I'm not angry. I'm merely contemptuous of the power structure on WP and those that act as apologists for them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=jeff*%20merkey&fulltext=Search&profile=all&redirs=1

I haven't seen hide nor hair of him since he buggered off to New Mexico to live in a single wide trailer.



With the amount of mental masturbation you do Jeffrey, you could be deemed an honorary psychologist in Victorian times.

Posted by: thekohser

So, that includes the mons pubis, right?

Posted by: mbz1

Agree with Alison. Well said, Maunus.

Posted by: Maunus

Yes and babies.

Posted by: SB_Johnny

Yummy, yummy babies, marinated in teriyaki souce. Yummmmm, nom, nom, nom.