Gary Weiss on the verge of a nervous breakdown Options

[WordBomb]

I'm told that all the recent tinkering with the article autobiography on Gary Weiss has put Weiss himself in a strange place, psychologically. He -- as Mantanmoreland -- has been begging many former allies for intervention and even asked ArbCom -- as Stetsonharry -- to be unbanned.

Of course, Stetsonharry was shown the door, but not before expressing his deep, DEEP, red-faced, vein-bulging, scowling disappointment.

Apparently it was Huldra's inspired addition of the Wikipuffery category that really set him off.

If had a devious side, it might suggest that just a little more improvement of the article (and it could certainly use more than a little improving) would yield some really interesting Weissian fireworks.

[Alison]

I'm told that all the recent tinkering with the article autobiography on Gary Weiss has put Weiss himself in a strange place, psychologically. He -- as Mantanmoreland -- has been begging many former allies for intervention and even asked ArbCom -- as Stetsonharry -- to be unbanned.

Looks like MONGO is back to fight his corner!! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ohmy.gif)

[Herschelkrustofsky]

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/popcorn.gif) The downside of being really successful at gaming the WP system is that one runs the risk of eventually becoming [ahem] Notable. I am waiting for the inevitable Linda Mack (T-H-L-K-D) edit war to erupt.

[WordBomb]

I'm told that all the recent tinkering with the article autobiography on Gary Weiss has put Weiss himself in a strange place, psychologically. He -- as Mantanmoreland -- has been begging many former allies for intervention and even asked ArbCom -- as Stetsonharry -- to be unbanned.

Looks like MONGO is back to fight his corner!! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ohmy.gif)

Can you imagine how awkward that conversation was?
"Hello, MONGO. It's me. Mantanmoreland. Yeah...I know...I lied to you big time. And really embarrassed you. And your whole Cabal. Actually, it wasn't me, it was Samiharris. And he only lied because Bassettcat and Janeyryan told him to. I know...it's really complicated. Anyway, I was wondering if you could do me a favor. I'm not Gary Weiss or anything, but maybe you could help me fend off improvements to his article. I know...it's complicated. If you don't want to do it, I'll just ask David Gerard. No big deal."

Crap. That would be worse than asking the ex-girlfriend you broke up with if she would mind giving back that cassette tape of U2's The Joshua Tree which you said she could keep back when you were still dating during your freshman year of college.

Tip: let her keep the tape.

[One]

Crap. That would be worse than asking the ex-girlfriend you broke up with if she would mind giving back that cassette tape of U2's The Joshua Tree which you said she could keep back when you were still dating during your freshman year of college.

Tip: let her keep the tape.

This advice would have saved me a lot of grief.

[Mr. Mystery]

I've never understood MONGO's relationship to Weiss. Even Slim Virgin more or less acknowledged that Weiss had played them from the beginning. I think MONGO somehow still thinks its 2007 and that Weiss was unjustly banned.

[Piperdown]

Gawy's prolly peeved that Word-B is now being quoted more than he is in his own backyard on things NSS:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/shor...J#ixzz0gYj5GRDg

I've never understood MONGO's relationship to Weiss. Even Slim Virgin more or less acknowledged that Weiss had played them from the beginning. I think MONGO somehow still thinks its 2007 and that Weiss was unjustly banned.

Mongo has no relationship with Weipped other than a shared batshit insane anger over being on the same wrong side of a flame war. Which usually explains much of WP's weirdness, and Usenet's weirdness before that. I think Mongo's pawning in the game of NSS started with his attempt to Down the Piper on Gary's bidding after I got on the wrong right side of both of them.

This post has been edited by Piperdown:

[RDH(Ghost In The Machine)]

I've never understood MONGO's relationship to Weiss. Even Slim Virgin more or less acknowledged that Weiss had played them from the beginning. I think MONGO somehow still thinks its 2007 and that Weiss was unjustly banned.

"Mongo only pawn in game of life..."

[Piperdown]

Only Gary Weiss would hop back on the "Smear Campaign" and GW articles with his local IP. WP addicktion is a hard thing to get down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...ns/98.14.254.27

[Cla68]

It might be dawning on Weiss that he has lost control over his WP bio. Perhaps we might soon see an OTRS request to the Foundation asking for its deletion?

[taiwopanfob]

It might be dawning on Weiss that he has lost control over his WP bio. Perhaps we might soon see an OTRS request to the Foundation asking for its deletion?

... and it will be instantly acted upon in the affirmative?

[Heat]

Put him out of his misery and start an AFD on his bio.

[Mr. Mystery]

Put him out of his misery and start an AFD on his bio.

Pfft. That helped Cla's adminship get derailed the first time. (Interesting in retrospect how pivotal this case was in wiki-politics. In (un)real terms, it might have all gone towards helping One to ArbCom, apart from ending the rest of our wiki-careers, such as they are, or "were.")

[CharlotteWebb]

Pfft. That helped Cla's adminship get derailed the first time. (Interesting in retrospect how pivotal this case was in wiki-politics. In (un)real terms, it might have all gone towards helping One to ArbCom, apart from ending the rest of our wiki-careers, such as they are, or "were.")

So, if you could go back and change one thing about it…

[The Adversary]

I'm told that all the recent tinkering with the article autobiography on Gary Weiss has put Weiss himself in a strange place, psychologically. He -- as Mantanmoreland -- has been begging many former allies for intervention and even asked ArbCom -- as Stetsonharry -- to be unbanned.

Of course, Stetsonharry was shown the door, but not before expressing his deep, DEEP, red-faced, vein-bulging, scowling disappointment.

Apparently it was Huldra's inspired addition of the Wikipuffery category that really set him off.

If had a devious side, it might suggest that just a little more improvement of the article (and it could certainly use more than a little improving) would yield some really interesting Weissian fireworks.

Well; I´m not interested in seeing the Weiss-article as an attack-article; but: there is, or should be, a space between having it as an attack-article and a puffery-piece.

Which it is today, unfortunately.

When one reads the "back-ground"-articles, the presentation in the article today looks insane. Take the Roddy Boyd January 2010-article: it is an attack-piece on Patrick Byrne/Overstock, and Weiss is mentioned ......once!...on page 5, together with several other journalists. Needless to say, the article is not mentioned in the bios of the other journalists... (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/sick.gif)

However, with people like Mongo and JzG protecting the article; it will remain a puffery-piece.

....and it gets me angry, thinking back on the time I spent discussing with Stetsonharry et al. over at the Byrne-article: there he did everything he could to keep positive information out of the article. So, it is one rule for himself, and another rule for others. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/mad.gif)

[Abd]

It's still happening. I was presented by email with a link to WordBomb's account of the whole affair, introducing me to the financial wizardry of NSS. I had previously paid little attention to this, just noticing the Mantanmoreland/Samiharris arbitration for its use of meticulously researched statistical evidence, never realizing that this was all necessary because massive and more direct evidence, surely known to Jimbo et al, provided by WordBomb, was suppressed under various excuses. (Whereas actually illegal evidence was cheerfully used in the EEML case.)

Realizing that the Wikipedia story might be much darker than the AGF I'd been able to sustain, on the theory that setting up processes for mass consensus (very different from mob rule) was not well-understood, and that the chaos that is Wikipedia was, then, simply natural, I've started to look from a new perspective. That AGF is now disintegrating. The chaos is actively being maintained, because it's far easier to manage and control, where control is "important." Community processes that might eventually lead to broad consensus process were crushed, many times.

Looks to me like Gary Weiss just edited, five days ago, Naked short selling. diff..

IP contributions showing multiple proximity to Mantanmoreland (Gary Weiss) establishing substantial presumption.

Ban violation. But that's a technicality, what about the substance? Added text by Weiss in bold.

There has been speculation that naked short selling played a role in driving Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy, but a bankruptcy trustee report on Lehman proved the reports to be wrong.
[reference:]"Don't Blame Shorts for Lehman Demise," by Rachel Beck, Associated Press, March 19, 2010 "Short sellers didn't bring down Lehman; company squashed itself through risk."

The added text is deceptive, not confirmed by source. The source is referring to short selling, not naked short selling. Short selling is quite legitimate. Naked short selling amplifies the effect of short selling, with practically no limit. The trustee report is not cited as addressing naked short selling at all. The edit is blatant POV-pushing, as I immediately saw before looking at the source, because of the telltale word "proved."

Quack!

I'd revert the edit, and I'm under no ban to prevent me, except that my friends at ArbComm have, shall we say, "suggested" that I avoid all controversy. Sorry, friends, but I see blatant disregard of NPOV policy all the time, I'd have to stop looking at Wikipedia and what's related, entirely, and it's entirely too frustrating to see stuff clearly that is damaging the project and say nothing.

I have no prior involvement here at all, but, having read the devastatingly deep research done by WordBomb, I do now have a POV, pending any kind of refutation based on, er, evidence. Pleased to meet you, WordBomb. Excellent work.

[Milton Roe]

Looks to me like Gary Weiss just edited, five days ago, Naked short selling. diff..

Geolocates to Glenside, Pennsylvania. Yep. Geez he must be getting pretty desperate. Probably a throwaway Starbuck's hotspot IP.

[Abd]

I was asked to provide the URL of the blog post that led me to the WordBomb slide show. Done. I had been asked to look at this by private email.

It only takes a few minutes to find duck droppings, looking around this. The last paragraph in the article at this moment is

In an article published in October 2009, Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi contended that Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were flooded with "counterfeit stock" that helped kill both companies. Taibbi said that the two firms got a "push" into extinction from naked short-selling.[99] However, this was disputed in an article in The Big Money, a financial news website operated by Slate.com, citing, inter alia, a study by finance researchers at the University of Oklahoma Price College of Business, which found "no evidence that stock price declines were caused by naked short selling."[100].

[99] Taibbi, Matt (October 2009). "Wall Street's Naked Swindle". Rolling Stone: pp. 50–59. . Retrieved 2009-10-15. Cf. p.53: "But the most damning thing the attack on Bear had in common with these earlier manipulations was the employment of a type of counterfeiting scheme called naked short-selling. From the moment the confidental meeting at the Fed ended on March 11th, Bear became the target of this ostensibly illegal practice -- and the companies widely rumored to be behind the assault were in that room."
[100] # "The Biggest Wall Street Conspiracies: A field guide to wild and woolly financial theories.", by Gary Weiss, 12 Nov 2009 hosted at thebigmoney.com

Cool! The text carefully wikilawyers the presumption of reliable source, i.e, it actually mentions Slate, but the actual source is Mantanmoreland Gary Weiss. Now, that's balance for you! Why not just say that the article was authored by Gary Weiss? And then fix the Gary Weiss article! (But it should probably be mentioned that Gary Weiss is not exactly a neutral reporter here...., and if there isn't reliable source on that.... weird.)

What does Mr. Weiss say?

Christopher Cox, chairman of the SEC, didn’t help this alternate history of the financial crisis when he said in July 2008 that there was no “unbridled naked short selling of financial issues.” It was completely debunked in a little-noticed academic study, conducted in May 2009 at the University of Oklahoma (PDF), which examined the same trading data cited by the conspiracy theorists. It found that there was "no evidence that stock price declines were caused by naked shorting." Any naked shorting, they found, took place after the two companies' stocks crashed.

So, the real source is the paper. Published? Not independently. The paper itself says only that the authors are "at" the University of Oklahoma. Students, I presume. The paper is not even hosted by the University of Oklahoma, but by cfri-cologne.de. Some reliable source, eh? "Little noticed?" For sure.

In any case, what does the paper actually say?

We find that, except for one instance in June 2008 of
possible stock price manipulation through naked shorting in relation to Lehman Brothers
Holdings Inc., most of the time, naked short selling was too low to reasonably “cause”
significant stock price distortions, and when naked shorting did become abnormally heavy, it
was after dramatic price declines, not before, indicating that naked short sellers were responding
to public domain information about the firms, rather than being responsible for triggering the
observed precipitous price decline.

Notice that the paper contradicts the SEC chairman's statement, but Weiss pushes the paper as having "completely debunked" the "conspiracy theorists." It's another source being distorted to make a point.

It's tempting to comment on the argument in the paper, which is logically shallow, but I won't. I'm not writing about naked short selling, per se.

Who made that edit? AmishPete. The Weiss story was dated November 12. Amish Pete pops the reference to the "University of Oklahoma" paper November 14. Reverted as non-RS by Cojoco, AmishPete comes back with the ref to Slate. No mention of Weiss, the author, in the note. Cojoco is apparently satisfied. The full reference mentioning Weiss was filled out by WJhonson on November 30. Nobody seems to have noticed.

AmishPete was indeffed on January 5, 2010, by Lar, citing strong correlation to JohnnyB256. The editor registered fifteen minutes before making his first edit, to Lehman Brothers, about naked short selling. The editor proceeded to edit highly related articles including the NSS article itself, Patrick Byrne, Overstock.com. But AmishPete made a remarkable disclosure:

I disclose as follows: I have in the past been a short-seller of Overstock.com. However, I have no current position in the stock, and have had no position in the stock for two years. I am a member of message boards and occasionally post on the Weiss-Overstock conflict. I am not acquainted with Mr. Weiss personally, but admire his journalism.

SPA, for sure. More than that? I can smell "experienced editor" here. Ikip thought so, too. The response was classic.

In spite of Lar's block log annotation, the checkuser finding was for Mantanmoreland, i.e., Gary Weiss.

What does this mean about the ability of the Wikipedia community to watch for POV-pushing in an article that is supposedly highly watched due to prior controversy? The reference is still there, without the explicit attribution (and explanation of relationship) that would be necessary to use it properly for balance. But writing by Patrick Byrne, whose opinions on naked short selling are very notable, is being kept out of the article. The Rolling Stone article was by an independent journalist ... being balanced by someone highly enmeshed in the controversy.

And the WMF can just wring its hands and say, "We can't micromanage the project, the community is responsible for that." And whenever the community begins to develop structures that might actually do this, it's mysteriously crushed. And when the community is defiant, Jimbo steps in, as with WikiVersity, and he delayed the day of reckoning for Mantanmoreland and dismissed the charges as rubbish. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's deliberate, which means that Wikipedia is, as many have said here many times, a positive harm as to the collection of "all human knowledge." It will be allowed to harmlessly collect trivia or even useful scientific fact, but nothing that offends the masters. And it will succeed as long as the larger community remains in naive trust, and is passive or in despair.

Again, I cannot remove that text because of my MYOB ban as it is being interpreted by ArbComm.

Pass me some wikiswill, whoever you are sitting next to me, I've had a hard day. I think I'm giving up. People interested in fixing this can come to me. And I'm not preparing for a flood of them. The ones who might actually be able to help don't believe anything is possible.

This post has been edited by Abd:

[Jon Awbrey]

The Education — Or Not — of Wiki-Pollyanna

You do all that work and still can't figure out that Wiki-Prevarica is that way because someone wants it that way.

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/frustrated.gif)

[Abd]

The Education — Or Not — of Wiki-PollyannaYou do all that work and still can't figure out that Wiki-Prevarica is that way because someone wants it that way.
Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/frustrated.gif)

Well, I can forgive you. I've only said in this thread twice, now (once explicitly and once implicitly if you watch the source I gave, WordBomb's presentation), that it's that way because someone wants it that way. I'll say it again. The evidence is becoming strong that the problems of wikipedia are no longer accidental, even if they were that way originally.

The problems are because someone wants it that way.

Noticeable enough for you, Jon? You can stop beating your head against your own brick wall. Next time, if you have something cogent to say, try supporting it with evidence instead of just loudly proclaiming your conclusions. People who prefer evidence to be strong before concluding bad faith might be more inclined to listen.