Giano's morons, Giano today, Malleus tomorrow? Options Rating

[Newyorkbrad]

Geogre stopped editing completely, which is regrettable.

He's better off now.

Did you ever ask Ann why she condoned Geogre's deception?

In the immortal words of Nero Wolfe, "I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions."

[tarantino]

In the immortal words of Nero Wolfe, "I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions."

Of course, as a wikipedian, you must assume good faith.

You said on WT:FAR that Geogre had made comments on the template. Are you saying Utgard Loki is Geogre? YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 00:44, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The last person who ranted on my page about the passive voice was Geogre, who regularly rants about it; to be honest, I didn't really look at the signature and just assumed... Risker (talk) 02:59, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

[Kelly Martin]

Giano and Bishonen are strong content contributors. Their sock-puppets have more in common with with in-house office humour than with social networking. There are plenty people who are about Wikipedia for social networking - but that's the crowd who create only little articles, maybe a DYK and then spend their time inventing new barnstars or signing up for 400 useless wikiprojects - or those who hang out on ANI looking for drama. Sure, Bishonen and Giano do a bit of useless (and sometimes childish) pissing about (who doesn't?), but they also put in many long lonely hours on FAs. You can criticise that, but it isn't done for cheap and quick attention.

No, that's exactly why it's done. Both Giano and Bishonen write the occasional article (Giano more than Bishonen, who has not authored any significant content in years) on obscure topics that could well be utter fabrications because nobody cares enough about them to check, for the sole purpose of getting that little kiddy thrill of knowing that someone out there might possibly someday read something they wrote. (Although the odds of that are actually pretty low because they're writing on topics that very few people care to read about.) As to "long, lonely hours": poppycock. It's fairly obvious that both are compulsive writers, and for them writing itself is fun and pleasurable. Those hours are neither long nor lonely, not for them.

In any case, both of them are entirely about cheap, quick attention. They just get it in a slightly different way than the other people on Wikipedia who are also in it for cheap, quick attention, but the difference is only superficial.

[Kelly Martin]

Yes, Geogre was desysopped for also editing as Utgard Loki. (I strongly opposed the desysopping, which I thought was a huge overreaction under the circumstances, but the majority ruled.) Perhaps in response to that decision, Geogre stopped editing completely, which is regrettable. Your bringing up his name and grave-dancing two years later is disgusting.

On the contrary. Geogre was a highly toxic individual and should have been ejected years ago. Yes, he had some mediocre talent as a writer (as do both Giano and Bishonen), but in his case, even more so than in Giano's or Bishonen's, he was completely unwilling to "play well" with anyone he deemed to be his intellectual inferior, which was basically everyone at Wikipedia. Geogre was fine as long as you protected his fragile ego; fail to do that and he turned into a raging maniac. That's entirely not the personality that belongs in a collaborative environment. Wikipedia's failure to recognize people like Geogre and manage them appropriately is a huge part of its organizational failure, and its failure to materialize as a serious encyclopedia.

Is Wikipedia really an encyclopedia, with editors working toward a common goal, or merely a publishing platform, with customers that provide content in exchange for receiving recognition for having provided content? The Wikipedia Geogre (and Giano and Bishonen) have consistently striven to create is the latter. The thing is, if any of them were really any good, they'd be publishing in more traditional media. You know, the ones where you write something, and get paid for it in real money.

[Sololol]

Is Wikipedia really an encyclopedia, with editors working toward a common goal, or merely a publishing platform, with customers that provide content in exchange for receiving recognition for having provided content? The Wikipedia Geogre (and Giano and Bishonen) have consistently striven to create is the latter. The thing is, if any of them were really any good, they'd be publishing in more traditional media. You know, the ones where you write something, and get paid for it in real money.

I believe we know the answer to that question =)
That's the strangest thing about this project; everyone of talent or virtue is banned or ham-strung (Exhibit A: This guy is topic banned, the target of his poetic barbs,this guy, yes it's the editor of the same name, is not) If you want to edit, remember middle school and employ those tricks well.

This post has been edited by Sololol: Sun 1st May 2011, 7:07am

[bi-winning]

Gee, it's getting close to the two year anniversary of Geogre's "leaving".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geogre

Ahhhh!

Addendum: I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Utgard_Loki was one of the sock puppets.

Look at their contributions! How intertwined they are with Giano et al. And with Bishonen!

So Bishonen clearly knew Geogre was using sock puppets.

And Elen of the Roads (and Risker) thought that was ok.

What were the other socks?

[chrisoff]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Utgard_Loki

The Utgard Loki account of Geogre wasn't even blocked. Geogre merely had to list it as an "alternate account", for those (unlike Risker) who didn't already know.

Utgard Loki posted to Risker's page regularly, but she claimed she didn't notice.

This post has been edited by chrisoff: Sun 1st May 2011, 3:23pm

[Peter Damian]

Is Wikipedia really an encyclopedia, with editors working toward a common goal, or merely a publishing platform, with customers that provide content in exchange for receiving recognition for having provided content? The Wikipedia Geogre (and Giano and Bishonen) have consistently striven to create is the latter. The thing is, if any of them were really any good, they'd be publishing in more traditional media. You know, the ones where you write something, and get paid for it in real money.

Which articles did you create, Kelly?

Oh I remember you went in for stuff like this http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...tin&namespace=0 . Great writing there.

So you were more the 'create a common goal' type. So, mediocre writers, mediocre proof readers, mediocre petty functionaries. Sounds about right.

You need to remove the promise to be uncivil from your talk page. Such conduct is utterly unacceptable. I removed it once, and I see you've reinstated it, proving your intentions to be deliberately uncivil. Deliberate incivility is grounds for a block; if you do not turn from this course your continued participation in this project will not be welcome, and you will be asked to leave. Kelly Martin (talk) 13:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

No, you do not see I have re-instated - I did not. No you do not see a promise to be uncivil. Please check you facts. Thankyou Giano | talk 13:44, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I re-instated it - I didn't see what business it was of yours what Giano has on his talk page, surely that's a matter for him - and your reasons for it's removal are fallacious - there is no promise to be uncivil.--Mcginnly | Natter 13:50, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I concur. The war admins vs. editors is hitting up! I suppose that most admins should stop threating hard-working contributors with blocks and get to editing themselves. Giano is right in proclaiming that our aim is writing an encyclopaedia, not wikilawyering or protecting abstract admins from imaginary incivility. Please stop bickering and start writing articles instead. Thanks, Ghirla -трёп- 13:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gia...civil.2C_please

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Sun 1st May 2011, 3:39pm

[chrisoff]

Yes, Geogre was desysopped for also editing as Utgard Loki. (I strongly opposed the desysopping, which I thought was a huge overreaction under the circumstances, but the majority ruled.) Perhaps in response to that decision, Geogre stopped editing completely, which is regrettable. Your bringing up his name and grave-dancing two years later is disgusting.

I believe that Geogre/Utgard Loki were responsible for the Durova arbcom, along with Giano and sockpuppets Disinfoboxman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Disinfoboxman

and User:!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:!!

probably many, many more. Geogre, Bishonen, Giano and their various accounts were/are responsible for much trouble.

And Malley boy has always defended them.

[Malleus]

Yes, Geogre was desysopped for also editing as Utgard Loki. (I strongly opposed the desysopping, which I thought was a huge overreaction under the circumstances, but the majority ruled.) Perhaps in response to that decision, Geogre stopped editing completely, which is regrettable. Your bringing up his name and grave-dancing two years later is disgusting.

I believe that Geogre/Utgard Loki were responsible for the Durova arbcom, along with Giano and sockpuppets Disinfoboxman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Disinfoboxman

and User:!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:!!

probably many, many more. Geogre, Bishonen, Giano and their various accounts were/are responsible for much trouble.

And Malley boy has always defended them.

Really? You seem to see much that isn't there.

[chrisoff]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Disinfoboxman

Look at their contributions. Show the box on Disinfobxman's page and there is a link to User:!!

Obviously socks of Giano.

Geogre used his socks to defend Bishonen's and Giano's articles and to get Durova in Arbcom (through Utgard Loki).

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=174916052

"Someone else sent the text of the e-mail (not the whole thing) to me in the aftermath of the block. I was stunned. I could not believe how laughably amateurish it was, nor indeed readily comprehend the bad-faith assumptions from start to end. ''Here's a troublemaker whose username is two exclamation points with no letters.'' I could not very well keep it to myself. Giano, indeed, was mentioned as player in the "team". I was then speaking to Durova off-wiki, and didn't want to prejudice our discussions mt disclosing the report, although it was rather galling to be told that Durova made a simple mistake based on my heinously "suspicious" activities."

But this darn hummingbird is a give away: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...alibr%C3%AD.gif

This post has been edited by chrisoff: Sun 1st May 2011, 8:56pm

[Doc glasgow]

I'm not even going to bother responding to Christoff's rant - it isn't worth it.

Yes, as willing as I am to defend Giano's contributions (and I may be in a minority in enjoying his articles) I will not defend Geogre. Kelly is right, he was a humourless dick who's departure was welcome.

I've had my run-ins with Giano and Bishonen, but they both have a sense of humour, and both know that their combativeness is at least partly a role-play. That means you can actually relate to them without having to kiss the ego all the time (although a little certainly helps). Not so with Geogre, I tried but it was all spite and nastiness - no soft centre.

Brad, I know "assume good faith", and "don't speak ill of the dead", but really? Yes, Christoff is certainly grave digging, and trolling, and two years on who cares. But there is little need to walk past this particular grave with deference and respect. Good riddance.

[Ceoil]

Geogre set the foundation for many of the pillars of wikipedia, and was an extreamly bright and talented writer. He was one of the main proponents against the people who follow the letter rather than the spirtit of the law, that ruin the place, that dominate the notice boards with their semi austic auto responces. And he was very witty in his turn of phrase, but in the end got ground down by idioticay, Mattisse, Ideogram, Ottava, and a cast of about a thousand others. No wonder he needed a sock to contribute, given he was such a magnate for the damaged.

Oh and Disinfoboxman is probably Wetman, who is probably one of the finest, best people we have. Appeasment of people like Mattise by dissing people like Geogre is just, well. Kelly, what did you ever do, except contribute spite and contempt."A thousnad people look to me". Look at the articles on Geogre's userpage.

This post has been edited by Ceoil: Sun 1st May 2011, 10:05pm

[chrisoff]

Geogre set the foundation for many of the pillars of wikipedia

Disinfoboxman is probably Wetman

Explains the rot, then. It has been going on a long time. Geogre set the standards, you're saying?

So sock puppets are common for everyone, you seem to agree. And that is ok.

Explains why arbcom condones sock puppets for their friends. Geogre must have gotten on the wrong side of someone to be caught and told he had to disclose his sock puppet.

I guess the pillars that he set up condoned good hand/bad hand sock puppets?

[radek]

No, that's exactly why it's done. Both Giano and Bishonen write the occasional article (Giano more than Bishonen, who has not authored any significant content in years) on obscure topics that could well be utter fabrications because nobody cares enough about them to check, for the sole purpose of getting that little kiddy thrill of knowing that someone out there might possibly someday read something they wrote. (Although the odds of that are actually pretty low because they're writing on topics that very few people care to read about.)

Uh, I don't know about Bishonen, but I HAVE actually checked one or two or three of Giano's articles and by that I mean read them through quite carefully and looked up the sources that were being used. You wouldn't know it though because I didn't comment on them because ... there really was nothing to comment about. They were not fabrications. They might have had a very minor inaccuracy or two (like here) but this is something you'd always expect even in academic writing. Absence of criticism, in this case may very well indicate absence of good reasons for criticism rather than absence of attention - and given this is Giano we're talking about I'm pretty sure it's not the latter. Even if you find him irritating at times, you know there's a legion of people out there who would love nothing else but to show up Giano and point out his errors to him. The fact they don't, means that they can't, rather than that they don't want to.

Anyway, as a person who tends to edit in "obscure topics" that "nobody cares about" I think this kind of accusations is pretty damn foolish (and inconsistent, I believe with some of your past comments). What's a "non-obscure topic that everyone cares about"?

I tell you what:
Justin Bieber's fucking Hair.
What's her face's newest boyfriend.
That guy from that tv show's drug problem.
That funny looking cartoon character and his ambiguous sexuality.
"Intimate" terms that if you type into Google search, you'll be scared by what comes up
Various forms of Nekkidness and what you can do with them
Nutzoid billionaires who wanna be Presidents with even more nutzoid hair

Or in other words, things which I try very very very hard to avoid as much as possible in my everyday life but which nonetheless always find a way of imposing themselves on me. Wikipedia's got a lot of faults and only a few advantages. But "people writing about obscure topics that nobody cares about" is probably in the plus column. There should be more people like that.

In any case, both of them are entirely about cheap, quick attention.

Not gonna dispute that they're about attention. But it's not the "cheap, quick" kind. If I were going to be cynical about it (not me!) I'd say that Giano (and people like him) put in a lot of hours of work with a conscious predetermined a priori purpose of having that (real) work justify them mouthing off to various big shot people and causing all sorts of fun trouble.

In a way the whole phenomenon was inevitable. Someone like Giano was never suited to become an administrator on a site like Wikipedia. So he wasn't gonna get to be a big dog there via the (cheap, quick, actually - as Doc says) route that a lot of others take. But given that a "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is pretty much a natural venue for someone like him, he obviously was ambitious to be a player on the site. So he spend a lot of time and did a whole lot of work to create a bunch of real content - to upstage the "official" big dogs, and shove in their face when needed - created the Giano-persona we've all come to know and love, and embarked on a multi year drama fest to put himself in the position that he is now. Sure, in a way it is self-serving. But it's also earned.

If Giano didn't exist, somebody would just invent him (in the same way that Giano invented Giano). The nature of "the project" dictates it.

Ok, part of the above came out wrong Nothing wrong with Nekkidness and should not be avoided. Obsessions with other people's Nekkidness probably should.

[Ceoil]

Geogre set the foundation for many of the pillars of wikipedia

Disinfoboxman is probably Wetman

Explains the rot, then. It has been going on a long time. Geogre set the standards, you're saying?

So sock puppets are common for everyone, you seem to agree. And that is ok.

Explains why arbcom condones sock puppets for their friends. Geogre must have gotten on the wrong side of someone to be caught and told he had to disclose his sock puppet.

I guess the pillars that he set up condoned good hand/bad hand sock puppets?

Mattisse, I quite liked you on wikipedia, sought your openion a fair few times, and you helped me a few other times, but this kind of shit from you is not worth bothering with. Let the old grudges go, what in the name of god is to be achieved in bitching about the socks of an editor gone since about two years ago. Your better than this. I understand your angry because you invested so much, and are unlikely to ever be let back, but look inwards rather than project outwards. Lack of insight is mostly why you lost out. Pity.

This post has been edited by Ceoil: Mon 2nd May 2011, 12:26am

[A Horse With No Name]

Did you ever ask Ann why she condoned Geogre's deception?

In the immortal words of Nero Wolfe, "I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions."

A more appropriate Nero Wolfe quote, given the circumstances, would be this:

"As between the intolerable and the merely distasteful, I must choose the latter."

Wikipedia, in general, and Anne Clin, in particular, are merely distasteful. They are not intolerable, however, because we tolerate their idiocy -- perhaps out of boredom or mere snarkiness.

Besides, is there any truth to the story that Anne Clin had an affair with Teddy Roosevelt during the Battle of San Juan Hill?

[Ceoil]

Did you ever ask Ann why she condoned Geogre's deception?

In the immortal words of Nero Wolfe, "I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions."

A more appropriate Nero Wolfe quote, given the circumstances, would be this:

"As between the intolerable and the merely distasteful, I must choose the latter."

Wikipedia, in general, and Anne Clin, in particular, are merely distasteful. They are not intolerable, however, because we tolerate their idiocy -- perhaps out of boredom or mere snarkiness.

Besides, is there any truth to the story that Anne Clin had an affair with Teddy Roosevelt during the Battle of San Juan Hill?

''their idiocy''. Am, excuse me, were you not an admin at a few stages (we know of one, there were likely others), and blocked for amongst other things, multiples accounts. Point that distastefulness at yourself. The hypocrisy here is just appaling. Such self righteous crap aimed at sins ye all are guilty of yerselves. Jesus christ.

This post has been edited by Ceoil: Mon 2nd May 2011, 1:36am

[Kelly Martin]

Anyway, as a person who tends to edit in "obscure topics" that "nobody cares about" I think this kind of accusations is pretty damn foolish (and inconsistent, I believe with some of your past comments). What's a "non-obscure topic that everyone cares about"?

I have no problem with people writing about obscure topics that nobody really cares about. To some degree, that's what encyclopedias are for. My point, which most people seem not to care to get, is that people like Giano write because they enjoy writing, and they publish on Wikipedia because it's a vehicle to publish writing that they'd otherwise probably not be able to get published, or at least they can get more potential readers via Wikipedia than they'd get any other way.

Fundamentally there's nothing wrong with this; Wikipedia ought to be able to find an accommodation between the Gianos of the world and its own mission. But Wikipedia is not able to do so, because it lacks leaders who both care about Wikipedia's supposed purpose while also understanding how to manage volunteers successfully. Wikipedia's community culture assumes that the motivation of every editor at Wikipedia is some sort of weird selfless devotion to the creation of a universal encyclopedia. That's not what motivates the Gianos of the world, and the conflict between the expectation of Wikipedia's community and this actuality is what generates the friction.

I don't know how long Giano spends writing his articles. My point is that, however long it is, he clearly enjoys doing it (or at least does so for some nonmaterial gain beyond stature within Wikipedia), and so those hours, no matter how long or short, are not "long and lonely", as others have tried to suggest. It's not as if he spent those hours digging ditches.

[A Horse With No Name]

''their idiocy''. Am, excuse me, were you not an admin at a few stages (we know of one, there were likely others), and blocked for amongst other things, multiples accounts.

So? I know of at least one current arbitrator who operates multiple accounts and has even blogged about doing it. (It is not difficult to guess which one it is.)

The whole thing is an idiotic game. The difference is that I had a laugh at the expense of those who took it very, very seriously.