Ashley Van Haeften, Commons admin? Options

[thekohser]

Application withdrawn in response to a "threat" made against Mr Van H and his civil partner.

Van Haeften says:

I recommend careful scrutiny of the key accounts involved in those Wikipedia Review posts and their tag-team contribution patterns which harass, distort the facts and manipulate Wikimedia Commons consensus process. Just because allegations have been posted off-wiki or multiple times on-wiki does not turn them into "facts", as a community we should be strongly evidence based and as others have pointed out here, speculation and rumour is not evidence.

I think the best evidence is Van Haeften's refusal to clearly concede or deny whether the subject of the bondage photographs is himself. If he would only go on record as saying he is not the subject of the photographs, then that would bring clarity to the issue, and perhaps the Clarity Digital Group (Examiner.com) could be sued for alleging that Van Haeften was the subject of the photos. Van Haeften and his civil partner could then use the hefty settlement award to donate a large sum to Wikimedia UK, so that this proud and accomplished organization might live on in perpetuity off of an annual endowment stipend.

This post has been edited by thekohser: Mon 2nd January 2012, 2:39am

[melloden]

If he would only go on record as saying he is not the subject of the photographs, then that would bring clarity to the issue, and perhaps the Liberty Media Group (Examiner.com) could be sued for alleging that Van Haeften was the subject of the photos.

But that would be lying!

[melloden]

The sequence goes something like:
Wikipedia dominates the web through Google.
Wikipedia articles overshadow other more reliable sources of information.
Those other sources wither and die.
Wikipedia is not being managed responsibly, therefore it does not fulfil the obligation that goes with its position.

What you said.

Plus, it's already the #1 source for plagiarism by students.

It is helping not only to make the web suck, it is slowly polluting education.
A perverse database of some-not-bad articles and a vast pile of cartoon crap
and Doctor Who trivia, all vandalized, semi-coherent, and containing
difficult-to-find errors. And having references that are often wrong, repetitive,
or point to dead web links. Not to mention its secret biases, in favor of
Israel and against Scientology, TM, and a mixed bag of other things.

Reforming Wikipedia is like reforming the conservatism out of Fox News or the liberalism out of NPR. The only argument I see is that Wikipedia corruption is bad because people believe everything they see on the site, in which case that's a problem of raising stupid children rather than stupid editors on Wikipedia.

[Peter Damian]

Reforming Wikipedia is like reforming the conservatism out of Fox News or the liberalism out of NPR. The only argument I see is that Wikipedia corruption is bad because people believe everything they see on the site, in which case that's a problem of raising stupid children rather than stupid editors on Wikipedia.

Fox News doesn't claim to be an encyclopedia, nor does it aim to bring the sum of all human knowledge on the planet, nor does it raise money on the strength of such claims. Nor does it run 'chapters' to which it diverts charitable donations. Etc etc.

[melloden]

"very good article" my ass. Gregory rarely writes very good articles. He sometimes writes very interesting articles, and other times very biased articles, but they're hardly very good articles.

I'm hoping he might learn a thing or two from Bali ultimate about writing articles that actually contain a small bit of credibility.

Gregory, do you write for the Patch? I think you would be very good at it, especially tracking local corruption and the like.

"melloden", I will happily answer your question about the Patch, if you'll just kindly tell me who you are. I don't feel the need to cooperate with some pseudonymous git who enjoys insulting my work. Fortunately, others can conclude that "good" articles can be written from a very biased perspective. For heaven's sake, with what do you think the op-ed page of any newspaper is filled?

Anyway, in less than 18 months of writing for Examiner, I've had over 58,000 page views. It's hard to believe that "non-good" content would be so popular.

It's OK, Gregory. If I told you who I was, you wouldn't believe it, now, would you?

Op-eds aren't news. They're more opinions that happen to be opposite the editorial page. Even Wikipedia says so.

Also, I feel obligated to point out that 58,000 pageviews is a little over one-third of what some article about an octopus garnered in one day. The moral is that people like reading about octopi more than Wikipedia. And no one cares about journalistic integrity when reading about octopi, I hope.

[carbuncle]

Since so many comments seem to be [redacted] on Commons lately, here is the threat in full:

If the pictures are not of you...

Then sending them (there are always copies) to your civil partner should be no big deal. Yes/no? 98SA447 (talk) 07:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Note that there is nothing here which suggests that sending the images to Van Haeften's partner is in any way contingent on his request for admin rights, although this was the stated reason for abandoning the request.

[melloden]

Reforming Wikipedia is like reforming the conservatism out of Fox News or the liberalism out of NPR. The only argument I see is that Wikipedia corruption is bad because people believe everything they see on the site, in which case that's a problem of raising stupid children rather than stupid editors on Wikipedia.

Fox News doesn't claim to be an encyclopedia, nor does it aim to bring the sum of all human knowledge on the planet, nor does it raise money on the strength of such claims. Nor does it run 'chapters' to which it diverts charitable donations. Etc etc.

That's not my point. My point is that the corruption in Wikipedia is a defining characteristic that there is little point to change anymore. Many people absorb every detail churned out by Fox or NPR even if it's biased or wrong. Some people won't believe it. Same with Wikipedia. The argument that just because Wikipedia is influential doesn't give adequate reason for why it ought to be reformed.

People cheat off Yahoo Answers for homework, and believe it for pregnancy information, and ask for dating advice there, etc. And it's more of a shithole than Wikipedia. But no one cares, do they? I certainly don't. Some places will never be respectable or reliable sources of information and it's best to just let them die off quietly.

[Michaeldsuarez]

That post was removed from Ashley's talk page by the new wikipedia arbiter, 22 year old Anthony "AGK" Gibb of Stevenston, Scotland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...es/AGK#No_faith

More people should've taken my statement about AGK seriously.

[Peter Damian]

Some places will never be respectable or reliable sources of information and it's best to just let them die off quietly.

That would be fine if they died off quietly.

[Michaeldsuarez]

That post was removed from Ashley's talk page by the new wikipedia arbiter, 22 year old Anthony "AGK" Gibb of Stevenston, Scotland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...es/AGK#No_faith

More people should've taken my statement about AGK seriously.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?t...&oldid=64477923

At this point, it's fair to say that AGK is familiar with the Fae drama. Despite this, AGK is a supporter of Fae. Either AGK has a poor sense of judgment or he's supporting Fae due to a grudge with me. He didn't provide a reason for his "support" !vote.

Also, take note of the following:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?t...&oldid=64568869

AGK is mostly inactive on Commons, so how did he learn of the RfA so quickly? And why did he decide to break his inactivity in order to participate?

He also voted around 20 hours before oversighting Fae's talk page, so it's unlikely that he leaned about the RfA from the oversight request.

This post has been edited by Michaeldsuarez: Fri 30th December 2011, 5:33pm

[mbz1]

He also voted around 20 hours before oversighting Fae's talk page, so it's unlikely that he leaned about the RfA from the oversight request.

This oversight or rev-del is strange especially after this statement

You are correct. All the edits made by User:Bali ultimate have been restored to full visibility. I suppose the elephant in the room; this is a nasty personal attack regardless of its factual basis or the availability of the information being used. [[User:Fred Bauder]] [[User talk:Fred Bauder|Talk]] 04:32, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

[EricBarbour]

And now, Rd232 has blanked the request page......who's "canvassing" now?

Wikipedia is so pathetic. Just like a corrupt municipal police department--they hire each others'
friends and relatives, lie about everything, and are also workplace-incompetent.

Bonus: unlike a police department, these idiots can sockpuppet themselves into multiple jobs,
and never have to identify themselves, or even show up to work. Do it aggressively enough
for a few years, and you can talk you way into an actual paying job with the WMF or their
affiliates.

Very few people even notice the old-fashioned ward heeling, because they're "bringing all
human knowledge" to the world.

And it seems that Commons is even worse.

[Fusion]

Anyway, in less than 18 months of writing for Examiner, I've had over 58,000 page views. It's hard to believe that "non-good" content would be so popular.

How many Wikipedia article have had more page views in that time? It's hard to believe that "non-good" content would be so popular.

[thekohser]

Anyway, in less than 18 months of writing for Examiner, I've had over 58,000 page views. It's hard to believe that "non-good" content would be so popular.

How many Wikipedia article have had more page views in that time? It's hard to believe that "non-good" content would be so popular.

This point was already made by "melloden", Fusion. Please keep up with us!

[Fusion]

Also, I feel obligated to point out that 58,000 pageviews is a little over one-third of what some article about an octopus garnered in one day.

This point was already made by "melloden", Fusion. Please keep up with us!

It is not the same. Melloden said that one article about an octopus had attracted many views. I was asking (not making a point, genuinely asking a question to get information) how many articles in total in Wikipedia had had so many views.

[thekohser]

It is not the same. Melloden said that one article about an octopus had attracted many views. I was asking (not making a point, genuinely asking a question to get information) how many articles in total in Wikipedia had had so many views.

Oh, you were being sincere?! I'm not used to that here, sorry.

We can probably deduce an average page views per Wikipedia article statistic in a couple of ways.

Some facts:
There are about 16 billion monthly page views of all language Wikipedias, (I assume) including article and non-article pages.

English Wikipedia articles represent about 20% of all language Wikipedia articles.

Some assumptions:
Article traffic probably constitutes at least 50% of all page traffic on the English Wikipedia.

The English Wikipedia probably gets at least 150% more than its relative "share" of multi-language global page traffic, given that it's the largest Wikipedia and English is a globally dominant language.

+++

Given those facts and assumptions, one might conclude:
16,000,000,000 x 0.20 x 0.50 x 1.50 = 2,400,000,000 English Wikipedia article page views per month

Given that there are about 3.9 million English Wikipedia articles, that's about 615 page views per article, per month, on average.

###

Another way of checking might be to take X random English Wikipedia articles, then check their actual monthly page views with the Henrik tool.

I tried 15 random articles, and their November 2011 page views were as follows:

166
3359
75
908
375
60
248
76
200
312
2476
189
104
7877
243

Or, an average of (13143 / 15) 876 page views per article per month.

Note that my 58,000 Examiner page views are now spread across 53 articles all together, but I began 18 months ago with just 1 article, so is it somewhat fair to say that my average page views per article are something like 58,000 divided by (let's say) 30, or approximately 1,933 page views per Examiner article, which we would then divide by 18 months to get an average of 107 page views per Examiner article per month?

Or, we could look at the 3,400 page views I've had in December, across 51 or 52 existing articles, which would be in the neighborhood of 65 or 70 page views per Examiner article per month.

Therefore, one might conclude that my Examiner articles are proportionally anywhere from one-twelfth to one-seventh as popular as a typical Wikipedia page. Plus, I get paid. For both.

This post has been edited by thekohser: Sat 31st December 2011, 3:31pm

[melloden]

It is not the same. Melloden said that one article about an octopus had attracted many views. I was asking (not making a point, genuinely asking a question to get information) how many articles in total in Wikipedia had had so many views.

Oh, you were being sincere?! I'm not used to that here, sorry.

We can probably deduce an average page views per Wikipedia article statistic in a couple of ways.

Some facts:
There are about 16 billion monthly page views of all language Wikipedias, (I assume) including article and non-article pages.

English Wikipedia articles represent about 20% of all language Wikipedia articles.

Some assumptions:
Article traffic probably constitutes at least 50% of all page traffic on the English Wikipedia.

The English Wikipedia probably gets at least 150% more than its relative "share" of multi-language global page traffic, given that it's the largest Wikipedia and English is a globally dominant language.

+++

Given those facts and assumptions, one might conclude:
16,000,000,000 x 0.20 x 0.50 x 1.50 = 2,400,000,000 English Wikipedia article page views per month

Given that there are about 3.9 million English Wikipedia articles, that's about 615 page views per article, per month, on average.

###

Another way of checking might be to take X random English Wikipedia articles, then check their actual monthly page views with the Henrik tool.

I tried 15 random articles, and their November 2011 page views were as follows:

166
3359
75
908
375
60
248
76
200
312
2476
189
104
7877
243

Or, an average of (13143 / 15) 876 page views per article per month.

Note that my 58,000 Examiner page views are now spread across 53 articles all together, but I began 18 months ago with just 1 article, so is it somewhat fair to say that my average page views per article are something like 58,000 divided by (let's say) 30, or approximately 1,933 page views per Examiner article, which we would then divide by 18 months to get an average of 107 page views per Examiner article per month?

Or, we could look at the 3,400 page views I've had in December, across 51 or 52 existing articles, which would be in the neighborhood of 65 or 70 page views per Examiner article per month.

Therefore, one might conclude that my Examiner articles are proportionally anywhere from one-twelfth to one-seventh as popular as a typical Wikipedia page. Plus, I get paid. For both.

I'm rather impressed.

[mbz1]

Here's one more image of Ashley . The author's name stated as "a1ien2 from United Kingdom User:AshleyVH". The description states: "Photo of myself wearing an aussieBum wonderjock. Bought for the colour rather than for Canada". The image is released in public domain, and is used on one of wikipedias

[thekohser]

I'm rather impressed.

Well then, I'm floored! Maybe we'll make friends now, Mel.

Here's one more image of Ashley . The author's name stated as "a1ien2 from United Kingdom User:AshleyVH". The description states: "Photo of myself wearing an aussieBum wonderjock. Bought for the colour rather than for Canada". The image is released in public domain, and is used on one of wikipedias

It's amusing to note that a no-more-graphic image recently ended an established US senator's career.

[Vigilant]

Here's one more image of Ashley . The author's name stated as "a1ien2 from United Kingdom User:AshleyVH". The description states: "Photo of myself wearing an aussieBum wonderjock. Bought for the colour rather than for Canada". The image is released in public domain, and is used on one of wikipedias

I think this one is probably more representative and to the point.

Hey mods, how come we don't have a sodomy emoticon?