Sandifer calls "Brandt, Bagley" "nutjobs", ...odd, B&B's proof shows Sandy's WP friends to be nuttter Options

[Piperdown]

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ber/082715.html

[Derktar]

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ber/082715.html

Sandifer tears into everyone in that piece. Sandifer consistently manages to baffle everyone, even on Wikipedia, which is very interesting.

[Somey]

I still can't understand why they don't realize that every time they dismiss the evidence of you-know-who's identity as "nonsense" and "unfounded rumor," it simply encourages people to come here and check it out, at which point (if they're rational, sane types), they'll see that there's something in it after all.

But hey, they don't want us to be right about anything, so since they can't actually disprove any of it, and heaven forbid they might not be allowed to have what they want... there you have it. I guess they figure if they just repeat it enough times...?

[Derktar]

But hey, they don't want us to be right about anything, so since they can't actually disprove any of it, and heaven forbid they might not be allowed to have what they want... there you have it. I guess they figure if they just repeat it enough times...?

MUST ASSIMILATE...ASSIMILATE...bzzt...bzzt...

[Jonny Cache]

It's amazing how much of their time those wikipanderers of a "Non-Censored" site devote to discussing what to censor and what not, and not the usual things that Community Standards guardians want to censor, but whether to censor people who simply do what normal reasoning people always do, namely, (1) criticize everything in sight, and (2) demand to know who warrants the assertions they see.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 12th October 2007, 5:12am

[Proabivouac]

The underlying problem is that Wikipedia has no good way to discuss something without also publishing it.

[Jonny Cache]

The underlying problem is that Wikipedia has no good way to discuss something without also publishing it.

Maybe that's the difference between a Raving Idiot Party (RIP) and a Real Encyclopedia Publisher (REP).

Jonny

[The Joy]

The underlying problem is that Wikipedia has no good way to discuss something without also publishing it.

They usually use IRC for such things. Personally, I wish they'd publish more for transparency reasons.

Regarding Sandifer and friends: This is certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

[WordBomb]

I still can't understand why they don't realize that every time they dismiss the evidence of you-know-who's identity as "nonsense" and "unfounded rumor," it simply encourages people to come here and check it out, at which point (if they're rational, sane types), they'll see that there's something in it after all.

100% truth. The way I know one of these comments has been posted to the list is the amount of search traffic arriving at AntiSocialMedia.net via variations of "SlimVirgin" and "[Name Redacted]" jumps tenfold. Literally. This is bad for SV particularly because she has no opportunity to rebut. The best thing they could do to deflate ASM and WR would be to truly internalize tough, honest self-criticism on that very site. But as long as those with the most to lose are in control, it will never happen.

But hey, they don't want us to be right about anything, so since they can't actually disprove any of it, and heaven forbid they might not be allowed to have what they want... there you have it. I guess they figure if they just repeat it enough times...?

To be fair, many of WR's most active posters don't want WP to be right about anything, either. There's ideological blindness on both sides. SlimVirgin could admit she's the mythical "Mega" and the same people would deny it. Similarly, Jimbo Wales could start fixing his little creation but get attacked on these boards like before.

As obvious an agent provocateur "Revision" is, s/he has a point when it comes to the lack of value of criticism for criticisms's sake alone.

[Jonny Cache]

As obvious an agent provocateur "Revision" is, s/he has a point when it comes to the lack of value of criticism for criticism's sake alone.

Bulloné. Some of us WRdos have written whole essays on the sake for which criticism is. But our latest Rien-Visionist, who never did anything but biatch for biatch's sake, never took the trouble to look them up.

Just for a hint, the purpose of criticism is to improve the genre, not necessarily to get an individual auteur, like Jimbo Wales, to revision an individual work, like Wikipedia, especially when the auteur in question constantly proves to be one or more of the following: (1) incapable of appreciating criticism, (2) incapable of respecting critics, (3) incapable of controling the material.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 12th October 2007, 6:36am

[blissyu2]

I don't mind what Sandifer says. He seems to say a lot of smart things, increasingly so lately. He said that a lot of people were idiots with how they handled things.

[GlassBeadGame]

[Just for a hint, the purpose of criticism is to improve the genre, not necessarily to get an individual auteur, like Jimbo Wales, to revision an individual work, like Wikipedia, especially when the auteur in question constantly proves to be one or more of the following: (1) incapable of appreciating criticism, (2) incapable of respecting critics, (3) incapable of controling the material.

Jonny

Yes, exactly right.

[Daniel Brandt]

The ArbCom and/or Slim could have stopped all of this in its tracks long ago, and if this was the real world it would have stopped long ago.

ArbCom: Request that Slim submit her résumé since 1988, and make it available to journalists on request. I'm talking about information that any employer would insist on. It's also information that would give us a flurry of leads to check out for a few weeks, and then we would have nothing else to add. We would get bored, and start looking for something else to do.

Slim: Make a statement and respond to reporter's questions. Even email interviews are okay — she doesn't have to reveal her exact location in central Canada. But when I'm talking about an email interview, I'm assuming that she will respond honestly, and present information about herself that the reporter can verify from other sources. When I asked Slim by email in October 2005 if she owned the slimvirgin.com domain, she denied it, twice, by email, and I was pretending to be just some dude who buys cool domain names. This sort of game-playing is not what I have in mind.

This whole sorry saga would have been handled this way in the real world. Of course, it's ArbCom's option to keep yakking away about attack sites, and it's Slim's option to the tell the ArbCom to go to hell even if they do the sensible thing. It's also Slim's option to not make a statement and not answer email. But these options, as we have seen, just raise the stakes for both Slim and Wikipedia. What both ArbCom and Slim have to realize is that this is not a situation that tin-foil-hat wackos like me have imposed on them, but instead it's a situation that they have created themselves, and continue to defend.

Bottom line: It will never happen. Wikipedia is permanently stuck in a mode that rewards the occasional Essjay more than it rewards accountability, and Slim doesn't care about this or that encyclopedia. This means that Slim will continue to drag Wikipedia down with her. Sandifer is right about that.

[Kato]

I can't even begin to get a handle on the scale of ineptitude over at Wiki-EN on this matter, but this post from Sandifer caught my eye:

It is a pressing question, I think, how a complete nutter like Brandt
can get taken so seriously by an utterly reputable news source.

Where was Sandifer during the Essjay controversy, or the Seigenthaler controversy? When "utterly reputable news sources" were quoting Brandt verbatim? And Brandt was correct on both occasions. And the funniest thing about it is that Wikipedia itself quotes Daniel Brandt on both those matters!

So lets have a re-read of Sandifer's comments again...

It is a pressing question, I think, how a complete nutter like Brandt
can get taken so seriously by an utterly reputable news source.

[Jonny Cache]

The ArbCom and/or Slim could have stopped all of this in its tracks long ago, and if this was the real world it would have stopped long ago.

ArbCom: Request that Slim submit her résumé since 1988, and make it available to journalists on request. I'm talking about information that any employer would insist on. It's also information that would give us a flurry of leads to check out for a few weeks, and then we would have nothing else to add. We would get bored, and start looking for something else to do.

Slim: Make a statement and respond to reporter's questions. Even email interviews are okay — she doesn't have to reveal her exact location in central Canada. But when I'm talking about an email interview, I'm assuming that she will respond honestly, and present information about herself that the reporter can verify from other sources. When I asked Slim by email in October 2005 if she owned the slimvirgin.com domain, she denied it, twice, by email, and I was pretending to be just some dude who buys cool domain names. This sort of game-playing is not what I have in mind.

This whole sorry saga would have been handled this way in the real world. Of course, it's ArbCom's option to keep yakking away about attack sites, and it's Slim's option to the tell the ArbCom to go to hell even if they do the sensible thing. It's also Slim's option to not make a statement and not answer email. But these options, as we have seen, just raise the stakes for both Slim and Wikipedia. What both ArbCom and Slim have to realize is that this is not a situation that tin-foil-hat wackos like me have imposed on them, but instead it's a situation that they have created themselves, and continue to defend.

Bottom line: It will never happen. Wikipedia is permanently stuck in a mode that rewards the occasional Essjay more than it rewards accountability, and Slim doesn't care about this or that encyclopedia. This means that Slim will continue to drag Wikipedia down with her. Sandifer is right about that.

I think that pretty much sums it up, Daniel. Folks who haven't been watching the off-scene Beehivior of the Beest will scratch their heads until a portal to their brain opens up, or not, Sandifer and his Sandinistas will continue to run about like the Unctious Uncle in The Good Earth (film), loudly proclaiming "I predicted it!" about events they insistently denied the very possibility of until they actually happened, and so it goes …

Those of us who would like to understand the outcome of this particular open-field experiment that somebody chose to try on us rats will ask the question —

Why?

Why this particular sequence of events?

Jon Awbrey

[badlydrawnjeff]

Can someone please explain to me how anyone can take Fred Bauder seriously anymore? Anyone? Please?

[Kato]

Can someone please explain to me how anyone can take Fred Bauder seriously anymore? Anyone? Please?

I actually feel a bit sorry for Fred on Wiki-EN. Though, of course his analysis of the SV data is wilfully negligent, I know what he's trying to say to those BADSITES crows, you see. All he's saying is "don't be an arsehole". Nobody is going to get into trouble for linking to Slate.com or anything else, but don't start going around rubbing a page about a wikipedia editor in people's noses.

I have a sense that all this jabbering about BADSITES on the list is a substitute for the fact that people are too afraid to talk about the elephant in the room. Which is SV's background and online activity. The listers can sense the drama and are stoked up, but they've got no outlet in which to express it. So they're turning on Fred or anyone else there to whip up some straw man argument about BADSITES to let off steam.

[Jonny Cache]

Can someone please explain to me how anyone can take Fred Bauder seriously anymore? Anyone? Please?

Apt question.

FB serves the same function as Ronnie Raygun, Dubya, or Jimbo, that is, DOPE.

DOPE is a kind of salve that brings fast, temporary relief to the True Believer who has just been disturbed by the irksome possibility of almost having an Independent Reality-Oriented Thought (IR-OT). Its effective ingredient is a pasty white-washy wiki-washy white-noisey substance that appears to say just what the hearer wants to hear at that moment, even though it really says nothing at all.

People have been known to abandon everything they once held dear, to fight nightmarish quagmirish wars, to rat on their friends and sell out their loved ones, to sacrifice their very lives, all for one ounce of this DOPE.

Jonny

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 12th October 2007, 2:22pm

[GlassBeadGame]

Beehivior

Nice one.

[badlydrawnjeff]

I actually feel a bit sorry for Fred on Wiki-EN. Though, of course his analysis of the SV data is wilfully negligent, I know what he's trying to say to those BADSITES crows, you see. All he's saying is "don't be an arsehole". Nobody is going to get into trouble for linking to Slate.com or anything else, but don't start going around rubbing a page about a wikipedia editor in people's noses.

Fred can't be that dumb, though. He knows that's exactly what's going to happen.