Will no one rid Wikimedia of this meddlesome hypothesis?, Odd Socracy questions Wikiversity's ad hoc Ochlocracy. Options

[Ottava]

Moulton, why repeat the same thing without addressing my offer to unblock you and reblock you myself?

[mikeu]

Experimental Outcome

H0 (the Null Hypothesis) stands unanimously refuted and H1 stands reified by unanimous consent of Wikiversity custodians, and is hereby adopted as the Prevailing Model of Wikiversitan Politics.

H1 is the hypothesis that "an unknown number of (unidentified) admins requested that Jimbo be the one to make the block" on the (reliable) theory that there would then not be an immediate consensus to overturn the block, even if the consensus were that it was inappropriate for Jimbo to have been asked to make the block on their behalf (and improper for him to have acceded to doing so).

Wikiversity is thus self-characterized by its dominant custodians as having succumbed to the corruption that has lamentably overtaken other WMF-sponsored projects.

Wikiversity is thus self-adjudged to have voluntarily and unanimously eschewed and rejected the core principles of Scholarly Ethics.

Did you even notice that I answered your question about H1 in private irc last night?

I suppose it would spoil your Po Mo Theatre of the Absurd performance to pause for a moment and listen, instead of endlessly repeating yourself. For someone who claims to want answers, you don't make much of an effort seeking them out.

Do me a favor and stop private messaging me in irc. I have spent _many_ hours in chat listening to your incoherent rants while trying to patiently explain things to you, and all I get in return is grandstanding in pubic forums about how no one has answered you. Stop falsely claiming that no one is responding, when it is really due to your own inattention. And, please, stop being such a dick.

-mikeu

[Moulton]

Experimental Outcome

H0 (the Null Hypothesis) stands unanimously refuted and H1 stands reified by unanimous consent of Wikiversity custodians, and is hereby adopted as the Prevailing Model of Wikiversitan Politics.

H1 is the hypothesis that "an unknown number of (unidentified) admins requested that Jimbo be the one to make the block" on the (reliable) theory that there would then not be an immediate consensus to overturn the block, even if the consensus were that it was inappropriate for Jimbo to have been asked to make the block on their behalf (and improper for him to have acceded to doing so).

Wikiversity is thus self-characterized by its dominant custodians as having succumbed to the corruption that has lamentably overtaken other WMF-sponsored projects.

Wikiversity is thus self-adjudged to have voluntarily and unanimously eschewed and rejected the core principles of Scholarly Ethics.

Did you even notice that I answered your question about H1 in private irc last night?

I suppose it would spoil your Po Mo Theatre of the Absurd performance to pause for a moment and listen, instead of endlessly repeating yourself. For someone who claims to want answers, you don't make much of an effort seeking them out.

Do me a favor and stop private messaging me in irc. I have spent _many_ hours in chat listening to your incoherent rants while trying to patiently explain things to you, and all I get in return is grandstanding in pubic forums about how no one has answered you. Stop falsely claiming that no one is responding, when it is really due to your own inattention. And, please, stop being such a dick.

-mikeu

Here is what I have from IRC...

(05:42:32 PM) Moulton: How do I place an {{unblock}} request if my talk page is locked? I would like to request an unblock for the purpose of dispelling H1, as defined here: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:M...ional_Practices
(05:42:32 PM) User is not logged in
(09/25/2008 07:55:38 AM) Moulton: Posted on SBJ's IM Window....
(07:55:38 AM) mikeu <AUTO-REPLY> : away
(07:55:41 AM) Moulton: (07:53:07 AM) Moulton: Thank you for moving Barsoom Tork's Unblock Request to Moulton's page. Now we await the outcome of The Final Experiment to Test H1.
(07:55:41 AM) Moulton: (07:53:56 AM) Moulton: This is the WV's last best opportunity to absolve itself from being defined by the thesis set forth in H1.
(07:55:41 AM) mikeu <AUTO-REPLY> : away
(07:55:41 AM) mikeu <AUTO-REPLY> : away
(08:47:07 AM) Moulton: (08:45:22 AM) Moulton: (08:43:04 AM) Caprice: "As of 1st September 2008, User:JWSchmidt has posted a lot of material on the page about me (not on the talk page; on the page itself) which is probably intended to be offensive and provocative." . --McCormack 17:36, 1 September 2008 (UTC) <== "probably intended" is a theory of mind about JWSchmidt's intent. What McCormack should have said is that he was offended and felt the need to respond, without imputing Schmidt's motives. I can't speak for JWS, but it annoys and offends me when others adopt and act on haphazard theories of mind regarding my beliefs, desires, intention, motives, or pretensions of knowledge. To my mind it is arrogant to presume to have an accurate theory of mind about another person without validating they theory by submitting it to a test for falsification. Notice how I have submitted H1 for falsfication. That's how we do science, at least on Mars. Perhaps Earthlings have a different protocol for arriving at the ground truth.
(08:47:07 AM) mikeu <AUTO-REPLY> : away
(09/26/2008 02:08:05 PM) Moulton: Why are you doing Jimbo's dirty work for him? He made the block. Let him do the drudge work to enforce it.
(02:08:36 PM) Moulton: You have better things to do with your valuable time than to do Jimbo's drudge work. Let him hire his own robots.
(02:09:16 PM) mikeu: don't you get it moulton? jimbo barely beat us to it
(02:10:00 PM) Moulton: So are you reifying H1?
(02:10:34 PM) mikeu: you might have had another day or two to work on the project with ottava, but your crap was going to get you blocked real soon by any number of admins
(02:10:56 PM) Moulton: You haven't answered my question. Are you reifying H1?
(02:11:35 PM) mikeu: it is a joke to think that just back jimbo did a block that it would be "harder to unblock you" - no one wants you unblocked
(02:11:56 PM) mikeu: just because
(02:12:00 PM) Moulton: Let me rephrase the question for you. Are you reifying H1?
(02:12:27 PM) mikeu: maybe if stopped your obsesive questions, and listened once in a while, you would learn something
(02:12:45 PM) Moulton: I am trying to learn if there is anyone who cares to falsify H1.
(02:13:47 PM) mikeu: give up your silly H's and pay more attention to how your actions have disrupted the community
(02:13:58 PM) mikeu: you are not welcome to continue doing that
(02:14:35 PM) Moulton: I have no evidence to support that thesis, Mike. I have copious evidence that the community was disrupted by CofA, SofD, KC, CB, and JW.
(02:15:24 PM) Moulton: Can you refute the thesis that the community was not disrupted by the ambassadors from IDCab?
(02:15:24 PM) mikeu: XOFF moulton
(02:16:15 PM) Moulton: We hold these precepts to be discoverable, that all scholars are creative equals, that they are endowed by the architecture of their brains with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are 1) the right to engage in discovery learning by the scientific method and 2) the reciprocal right to remain utterly oblivious by the adoption of inscrutable methods currently unexamined by modern science. To demonstrate these alternatives, dramatic encounters arise, deriving their predictable scripts from the recurring anecdotes of human history. Whenever any form of liminal social drama arises, it is the duty of the scholarly ethnographers to document and analyze it, and to derive new insights into challenge of promoting improved scientific scholarship. <== I accept that you have elected the right to remain oblivious. It's your unalienable right, and I respect it.
(09/27/2008 09:57:31 AM) Moulton: Please take note of http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk...ntleman#Moulton
(10:48:11 AM) mikeu: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=132563
(11:56:44 AM) Moulton: Many responses so far. I am off to the Museum of Science now for the rest of the day. I'll look in on that thread tonight.
(08:56:24 PM) Moulton: (11:57:46 AM) Caprice: Here is what I am interested in today: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=20505 <== What a phreaking disaster. Do you see a shred of authentic scholarship there?

So where, exactly, is any answer other than an express reification of H1?

[dtobias]

H0 H0 H0!

[Ottava]

So where, exactly, is any answer other than an express reification of H1?

Seems very clear right here: "(02:09:16 PM) mikeu: don't you get it moulton? jimbo barely beat us to it"

Your fate was sealed when you kept throwing out real names and kept insulting people in the chat. You were warned constantly.

[Moulton]

So where, exactly, is any answer other than an express reification of H1?

Seems very clear right here: "(02:09:16 PM) mikeu: don't you get it moulton? jimbo barely beat us to it"

Your fate was sealed when you kept throwing out real names and kept insulting people in the chat. You were warned constantly.

How does that kind of boast refute H1?

Where is the evidence, Jeff?

Where is the public dialogue?

Where is the analysis and reasoning?

Where is the scholarly peer review in accordance with Scholarly Ethics?

Where are the voices of Erkan, Emesee, Hillgentleman, and JWSchmidt in the non-existent public dialogue?

And more to the point, why did Erkan and Emesee abruptly turn in their bits (and SBJ conveniently go on hiatus), thereby each dissociating themselves from the cowardly and corrupt ochlocracy of the remaining WV officials whom Mike alludes to as his ethically-challenged co-conspirators?

[mikeu]

Just to clarify, when I said "I have spent _many_ hours in chat listening to your incoherent rants while trying to patiently explain things to you..." I was refering to the times _before_ the log that you posted. The log is also incomplete, because it does not show how many times you private messaged me after I had told you to stop.

You have had many opportunities to discuss these issues with myself and others. A number of people have spent hours trying to have a dialogue with you, both on wiki and in chat. You have exhausted our patience. Worse, you have misrepresented our many attempts to accomodate you as "lack of communication" like you are sitting there in the dark without a clue as to why this is all happening. You would know the answer if you had been paying attention for the past couple of weeks instead of babbling about the London fetish scene and bondage.

-mikeu

[Random832]

How does that kind of boast refute H1?

Where is the evidence, Jeff?

Where is the public dialogue?

Where is the analysis and reasoning?

Where is the scholarly peer review in accordance with Scholarly Ethics?

Those are beyond the scope of your hypothesis - the core claim is that you would not have been blocked if not for Jimbo.

What sort of thing do you imagine could refute it? If there is no way to refute the "hypothesis" then it's not a valid theory in the first place - it lacks falsifiability.

[Moulton]

Just to clarify, when I said "I have spent _many_ hours in chat listening to your incoherent rants while trying to patiently explain things to you..." I was refering to the times _before_ the log that you posted. The log is also incomplete, because it does not show how many times you private messaged me after I had told you to stop.

That's the only content I have, in my current PM window. (I don't keep logs.) If you have more logs, please post them in their entirety.

You have had many opportunities to discuss these issues with myself and others. A number of people have spent hours trying to have a dialogue with you, both on wiki and in chat. You have exhausted our patience. Worse, you have misrepresented our many attempts to accommodate you as "lack of communication" like you are sitting there in the dark without a clue as to why this is all happening. You would know the answer if you had been paying attention for the past couple of weeks instead of babbling about the London fetish scene and bondage.

-mikeu

Fortunately I am a very patient man, Mike. I may have to wait until my dying day to establish a functional communication channel with you, but I'll keep trying.

How does that kind of boast refute H1?

Where is the evidence, Jeff?

Where is the public dialogue?

Where is the analysis and reasoning?

Where is the scholarly peer review in accordance with Scholarly Ethics?

Those are beyond the scope of your hypothesis - the core claim is that you would not have been blocked if not for Jimbo.

What sort of thing do you imagine could refute it? If there is no way to refute the "hypothesis" then it's not a valid theory in the first place - it lacks falsifiability.

My core claim is that there was no consensus for a block (which is why a few custodians corruptly called in Jimbo).

Of course H1 is refutable (but only if it's false).

There is good evidence there was not unanimous consensus among the WV Custodians. JWS was openly opposed to the block. There is good circumstantial evidence that Erkan and Emesee were not joining in any consensus either. The evidence regarding Hillgentleman and SBJ is harder to evaluate, because they are more inscrutable. H1 asserts that the small subset of custodians in favor of a block (primarily Cormaggio and McCormack, as near as I can tell) went to Jimbo knowing that he could be induced to make the block, whereupon the remaining custodians would be too intimidated to overturn Jimbo.

H1 asserts the remaining admins are indeed too cowed to overturn Jimbo. So two of them (Erkan and Emesee) turned in their bits, and two or three others (Dark Mage, SBJ, possibly Hillgentleman) vacillated between retiring, withdrawing, and/or going on extended break.

The one custodian who had the cojones to speak up (JWS) was inexplicably stripped of his bits and blocked without just cause in a shameful display of bad faith and inept management by SBJ.

If the custodians had any ethical backbone, they would have told Jimbo to go jump in the lake.

H1 asserts they lack the requisite ethical backbone. SBJ admitted as much.

So H1 is reified rather than refuted or falsified.

To falsify it, at least one custodian would have to manifest the cojones to overturn Jimbo.

So far, only Jeff has suggested might consider doing that.

[dtobias]

How does that kind of boast refute H1?

Maybe somebody needs to dump some H2O over your head?


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via FoxyTunes


This post has been edited by dtobias: Sun 28th September 2008, 4:39am

[Lar]

Fortunately I am a very patient man, Mike. I may have to wait until my dying day to establish a functional communication channel with you, but I'll keep trying.

It strikes me as a haphazard theory of mind that what you are trying to do is actually communicate. My hypotheis is that you are not.

Do you have any evidence that you actually are? Make sure that whatever evidence you present is within the terms of our mutually acceptable social contract.

[Moulton]

Title: Do You Really Want To Block Me?
Artist: Gastrin Bombesin
Composer: Culture Club and Barsoom Tork Associates
Midi: Do You Really Want To Hurt Me? (Culture Club, 1983)

Give me pain
To rephrase my stain
Let me loathe with zeal
I have danced
Inside your eyes
How can snubs be real

Do you really want to snerk me
Do you really want to
Put me down
Precious disses
Words that burn me
Flamers never ask you why
In my heart
The fires burning
Choose my colour
Find a star
Killer pooches always tell me
That's a step
A step too far

Do you really want to block me
Do you really want to
Shut me up
Do you really want to snerk me
Do you really want to
Put me down

Words are many
I have spoken
I could waste ten thousand bytes
Wrapped in sorrow
Words are token
Come inside and snatch my fears
You've been talking
But believe me

If it's true
You do not know
Moulton posts without a reason
He's prepared
To let you crow

If it's bile you want from me
Then take it away
Everything is not what you see
It's Original Spin


CopyClef 2008 Culture Club and Barsoom Tork Associates.
Resurrection Hackware. All Wrongs Reversed.

[mikeu]

Actually, it was the aliens on the grassy knoll that conspired against you... Elvis was part of the Cabal to bind and gag you... Delusional conspiracy theories do not make for a sound hypothesis.

Don't flatter yourself. Many of us were so disgusted by the overall incivility that we were tempted to toss it in and leave.

You were going to get blocked. Full stop. It would have happened earlier that day if I hadn't been stuck on a train. It would have happened earlier that week if I hadn't decided to let others waste their time trying to get through to you. It would have happened another time, by someone else, for other reasons that I don't even know of. But, it would have happened. The only reason that it took so long was because of the extreme tolerance and liberal attitude of wv, which you abused.

-mikeu

[everyking]

Actually, it was the aliens on the grassy knoll that conspired against you... Elvis was part of the Cabal to bind and gag you... Delusional conspiracy theories do not make for a sound hypothesis.

Don't flatter yourself. Many of us were so disgusted by the overall incivility that we were tempted to toss it in and leave.

You were going to get blocked. Full stop. It would have happened earlier that day if I hadn't been stuck on a train. It would have happened earlier that week if I hadn't decided to let others waste their time trying to get through to you. It would have happened another time, by someone else, for other reasons that I don't even know of. But, it would have happened. The only reason that it took so long was because of the extreme tolerance and liberal attitude of wv, which you abused.

-mikeu

I have had no luck in attempting to persuade Moulton of the need to make concessions, so I'll ask you: under what specific conditions would you agree to allow Moulton to edit again?

[mikeu]

Actually, it was the aliens on the grassy knoll that conspired against you... Elvis was part of the Cabal to bind and gag you... Delusional conspiracy theories do not make for a sound hypothesis.

Don't flatter yourself. Many of us were so disgusted by the overall incivility that we were tempted to toss it in and leave.

You were going to get blocked. Full stop. It would have happened earlier that day if I hadn't been stuck on a train. It would have happened earlier that week if I hadn't decided to let others waste their time trying to get through to you. It would have happened another time, by someone else, for other reasons that I don't even know of. But, it would have happened. The only reason that it took so long was because of the extreme tolerance and liberal attitude of wv, which you abused.

-mikeu

I have had no luck in attempting to persuade Moulton of the need to make concessions, so I'll ask you: under what specific conditions would you agree to allow Moulton to edit again?

At the moment we are trying to determine the specific conditions under which we would consider unprotecting his talk page. Let's take it one step at a time.

There are also 10 ip addresses that he has used in the past 2 or 3 days that are blocked for between 1 week and 1 month.

Make that 11, as of 2 min. ago.

-mikeu

[Angela Kennedy]

The 'unconscious' motivation speculation brings it into the quasi-Freudian realm.

Or not. Unless its sexual related unconscious desires.

Oh for goodness sake - I did say 'quasi' Freudian. Also- I'M not applying quasi-Freudian analysis here- I'm saying mikeu is. And it's irritating, and poor argument.

This post has been edited by Angela Kennedy: Sun 28th September 2008, 11:19am

[Milton Roe]

At the moment we are trying to determine the specific conditions under which we would consider unprotecting his talk page. Let's take it one step at a time.

There are also 10 ip addresses that he has used in the past 2 or 3 days that are blocked for between 1 week and 1 month.

Make that 11, as of 2 min. ago.

-mikeu

Well, obviously your present strategy is not having the intended effect. One of the oldest games on Wikipedia, used very successfully for awhile against Bagley/Wordbomb (who is still banned) was get somebody blocked for any reason or no good reason, then tar them as a sockpuppet when they try to ungag themselves in self-defence. After that, you can safely forget what got them blocked in the first place (and in Bagley's case it's not only been forgotten, but oversighted too so that nobody can check people's bad memories). Personally, I can't think of much reason to block somebody's personal TALK page except to irritate them. Perhaps if they posted more sexually explicit material than WP does? But that's a shifting line, no?

The law enforcement counterpart to all this would be to get somebody into prison in any old way, even on a trumped up charge, then convict them righteously for successful or unsucessful escape attempts. Which you can continue even if the original conviction is overturned.

Paul Newman died this week. He was a fine actor and fine man, and my favorite of his characters was Cool Hand Luke, who kept tweeking the nose of the system by escaping and mocking them, until "the community lost patience" with him, and they shot him. "What we have here," said the guard, "is failure to communicate." Indeed. But such failures are almost always two-ended.

[Moulton]

Actually, it was the aliens on the grassy knoll that conspired against you... Elvis was part of the Cabal to bind and gag you... Delusional conspiracy theories do not make for a sound hypothesis.

Then we agree: Fear, ignorance, and mistrust are not a sustainable foundation for a functional regulatory process.

Don't flatter yourself.

Do you have any evidence to support the curious and evidently pointless thesis that I'm flattering myself?

Many of us were so disgusted by the overall incivility that we were tempted to toss it in and leave.

Many of us were so disgusted we were literally throwing up.

I was heaving buckets of stomach acid from the incivility, as was Erkan. JWS also said, on more than one occasion he was sick to his stomach.

I began heaving buckets of stomach acid when I came home late Friday night, a week ago, to discover that JWS had been unjustly blocked by SBJ.

You were going to get blocked. Full stop. It would have happened earlier that day if I hadn't been stuck on a train. It would have happened earlier that week if I hadn't decided to let others waste their time trying to get through to you. It would have happened another time, by someone else, for other reasons that I don't even know of. But, it would have happened. The only reason that it took so long was because of the extreme tolerance and liberal attitude of wv, which you abused.

-mikeu

Mike, it occurs to me that you and your allied custodians have been preaching and acting from the pulpit of fear, ignorance, and mistrust.

I put it to you, Mike, that fear, ignorance, and mistrust are not a realistic or sustainable foundation for managing an authentic educational enterprise.

Full stop.

[Ottava]

Oh for goodness sake - I did say 'quasi' Freudian. Also- I'M not applying quasi-Freudian analysis here- I'm saying mikeu is. And it's irritating, and poor argument.

And I clearly disagree.

Now, if you want to discuss a quasi Freudian topic, we could easily bring up Moulton's claims that Wikiversity was a BDSM group that sought to put him into intellectual bondage. The ramifications of that statement are astounding.

[dtobias]

I was heaving buckets of stomach acid from the incivility, as was Erkan. JWS also said, on more than one occasion he was sick to his stomach.

If involving yourself with this stuff is actually making you physically ill, then perhaps it's time to withdraw yourself from it, turn off your computer, and go away from anything to do with it. That's probably what your doctor would advise you.

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via FoxyTunes