Moulton arbitration request Options

Do you remember that famous Bob & Ray Komodo Dragon Routine where one is interviewing the other, but the interviewer isn't paying attention to the answers, and the interviewee provides information beyond the stale questions?

What's fascinating about my Request for Arbitration is that the respondents seem not to have noticed what questions I put before them.

They are responding to the question they presumed I would have asked, without bothering to read the actual questions on the table.

Link: http://www.videoevolved.com/?tag=bob+and+r...tag&per_page=10

Click on the green panel for the Komodo Dragon routine.

Thanks for the Bob and Ray link. I always loved Bob and Ray.

Speaking of a lack of listening skills, have you ever observed an argument between two people who were actually agreeing with each other, but were completely unaware of it? Quite amusing and instructive.

Speaking of a lack of listening skills, have you ever observed an argument between two people who were actually agreeing with each other, but were completely unaware of it? Quite amusing and instructive.

Yes. I believe the UseNet term of art for that is to note that the parties are "violently agreeing with each other."

Sorry. Didn't mean to upstage you.

There's room in the docket for all of us.

It's just that your farce is far too subtle —

It's confusing the children …

At least you appreciate that creative problem solving can be subtle without being malicious.

I will leave that degree of subtlety to divinities —

There's less risk of children missing the lesson if it's blatantly obvious.

Besides, confusion is the first step towards enlightenment.

Watch that first step — it's a doozy …
Boing !!!

Jonny

Alas, I'm not dealing with children, who are generally full of hope for tomorrow.

I'm dealing with woe-filled characters who despair of any likelihood of future improvement.

Alas, I'm not dealing with children, who are generally full of hope for tomorrow.

I'm dealing with woe-filled characters who despair of any likelihood of future improvement.

Wikipedia is not the only play, not the only game in town.

Those of us who see hope for the future see it Elsewhere!

Let me try another analogy.

Back in the days when Pharmaceutical Companies did far more controlled clinical trials and far less experimenting on the public at large, I used to work with data that derived from those types of clinical trials. There are protocols that some people call Stopping Rules — the language is various — and some types of Stopping Rules determine when you have learned enough about the effects of drugs under test that you need to halt the study and report the findings, in part to forestall the risk that people in your test groups and people in the general population are suffering needlessly.

Wikipediot is a social experiment that has shown us all we need to know in order to write up the results.

Wikipedia is well past its Stopping Rules, and it needs to be stopped before any more damage is done.

The only reason that WikiPharmaceuticals, Inc. continues this WikiPharce of an experiment on the public at large is because continuing to do so lines it own WikiPocketses.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 7th December 2007, 3:58pm

Wikipediot is a social experiment that has shown us all we need to know in order to write up the results.

Yes. I've done that.

But science is about independent replication of findings.

As you know, I am currently running a follow-up experiment to make sure my original findings were not a one-off fluke.

And then I need to learn how to map such scientific research into a well-crafted story for public consumption.

Wikipediot is a social experiment that has shown us all we need to know in order to write up the results.

Yes. I've done that.

But science is about independent replication of findings.

As you know, I am currently running a follow-up experiment to make sure my original findings were not a one-off fluke.

And then I need to learn how to map such scientific research into a well-crafted story for public consumption.

It's also about reading the reports of other observers.

There is no need to personally replicate every experiment yourself.

Banging your head on the Wall once or twice may be an experiment, after that the Head Doctors call it repetition compulsion.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 7th December 2007, 4:32pm

It's also about reading the reports of other observers.

I read the report of Douglas Hofstadter, and also the anonymous reporter who supplied additional evidence of the pattern I encountered.

It's also about reading the reports of other observers.

I read the report of Douglas Hofstadter, and also the anonymous reporter who supplied additional evidence of the pattern I encountered.

There is, believe it or else, a vast amount of re*peated experience re*ported in the pages of this Re*view. Indeed, one of the reasons that I find your "experimental drama" so re*dundant is that I have seen it all before, in ♠. We used to have an active participant, Nobs, who had the same White Wales obsession with ArbCom. The local mods had to give him his own subforum just to keep it all in one circus ring. I don't know what happened to that subforum — if it was still there I would assign it to you for required reading, just to return the favour.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 7th December 2007, 4:44pm

You mean I am not sui generis?

I am so chagrined.

We used to have an active participant, Nobs, who had the same White Wales obsession with ArbCom. The local mods had to give him his own subforum just to keep it all in one circus ring. I don't know what happened to that subforum — if it was still there I would assign it to you for required reading, just to return the favour.

Well... things got a little out of hand with Nobs. What he did, kinda-sorta, was to try and trace back several nasty things that were happening on WP to his own ArbCom case, as though his case was the root-cause and progenitor of all those things - including the whole 18-month Brandt-article slugfest. In some cases (including that one) he actually made some decent points, at varying levels of convincing-ness... but he did it so often, and so obtrusively, that we had to give him his own top-level forum so that people could use the "Roll-up" feature in order to more easily ignore him.

He eventually stopped doing it, I suspect mostly because he's an admin on Conservapedia now and has other things to occupy his time... so we've since subsumed the threads in question back into their original subforum assignments.

Nobs actually came up with the term "ideological profiling," which he was a victim of, and which (IMO) may be his greatest legacy...

Anyhoo, Moulton isn't doing any of that, AFAIK. I believe we've always operated under the principle that it's perfectly fine for members here to post details, observations, or "rants" regarding their efforts to resolve their issues with WP, as long as they don't annoyingly try to "hijack" threads that are supposed to be about completely different subjects.

Which is a lengthy way of saying, "carry on, folks!"

Can you summarize his concept of "ideological profiling"?

No, I wasn't comparing Moulton to Nobs in that way. It's clear that Nobs took ArbCom as seriously as if it were not Kangarooled over by Kartoonish Marsupials, but I cannot farce myself to believe, just yet, that Moulton is not engaging in something closer to Terry Southern's Candy than Voltaire's Candide.

No, my critique of his performance is more that it's Too Damn Good, and that it consequently runs the risk of leading some our more unsuspecting spectators back into the Cave.

Of course, if this were a live performance, the due amount of mugging and wincing would serve as clues to even the most clueless spectator, so maybe a judicious use of emoticons could help out there.

Jon Awbrey

This post has been edited by Jonny Cache: Fri 7th December 2007, 5:40pm

Now's not the ideal time to go to Arbcom.

Fred Bauder's still there.

This post has been edited by Disillusioned Lackey: Fri 7th December 2007, 6:43pm

Inside the Prankster's Studio

One of the features of a situation comedy in the style of Moliere is that the same situation appears radically different to the different characters in a drama, whilst the audience is typically in on the joke.

Prior to my RfC, I didn't even know there was a pseudo-judicial process on Wikipedia, let alone one modeled after the Spammish Inquisition. I frankly did not expect the Spammish Inquisition when the Wikipedia Project on Intelligent Design sprung it on me three months ago.

And it admittedly took me a while to warm up to the unexpected role they generously cast me in.

But given that Wikipedia turned out to be an MMPORG with shades of Monty Python thrown in for good measure, it occurred to me that there must be a dialog move that reframes and exposes the presumptive and superficial seriousness of the quasi-judicial process for the sham it quickly reveals itself to be. To my mind, the best way to do that is to bring out the pythonesque character of the drama by subtly morphing it into comedy worthy of the genre.

So stay tuned, because I am about to be eaten by a boa constrictor, and I don't mind it very much.

This post has been edited by Moulton: Fri 7th December 2007, 6:36pm

Can you summarize his concept of "ideological profiling"?

I suppose so... the idea is that there are certain ideologies that are both all-encompassingly vague (or is it vaguely all-encompassing?) and unpopular, and that you can use the scope of such an unpopular ideology as a Big Brush to tar your opponent in an edit war.

Nobs identified four such ideologies, some of which are actually pseudo-ideologies ("neo-confederate," "anti-communist," "LaRouchie," and "Holocaust denier"), but he only came up with four because the really crucial one, "LaRouchie," would have looked a bit lonely by itself, and it had to have some company just so it wouldn't feel unloved.

Now, Lyndon LaRouche has a history of writing lengthy screeds condemning various political and social movements, historical/political figures, competing ideologies, etc., and these screeds tend to be all over the map - he goes after both fascists and communists, socialists and capitalists, hippies and militarists. (And, of course, moderates....) The only people he doesn't attack are the Founding Fathers, Jesus, and maybe JFK. So, there's a pretty good chance that if someone disagrees with you on a political point, you can find a Lyndon LaRouche quote that agrees with that person - and even if that person could just as easily find a LaRouche quote that agrees with you, the assumption is that the person isn't going to stoop that low, and probably doesn't even know enough about LaRouche to realize that it can work both ways.

Here's the crucial post from Nobs on the subject:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showt...009&#entry23009

What happened to Nobs (who by all accounts is just a traditional conservative, though a rather persistent one) was that Chip Berlet, noted pseudo-liberal, lumped him in with the "LaRouchies" in order to get Nobs to stop editing the article on... wait for it... Chip_Berlet! And it worked, too, because SlimVirgin, Will Beback, and the rest of the gang found Berlet useful for a number of other things, and backed him up.

At least that's how it looked to me, anyway...

Hrmmm. Those are political ideologies and/or historical revisionists.

I guess my own biases are more based on philosophical concepts such as Experimental Epistemology.

It appears that the requirement to abide by WP policies and guidelines is so difficult to meet that even one of the admins improperly participated in a verboten threaded dialog on my RfAr, which yet another admin was obliged to factor out.

I can't blame the admins for being unfamiliar with the WP policies and guidelines. I frankly don't see how anyone, no matter how well intentioned, could possibly avoid crossing the foul lines whilst seeking to discharge their roles on Wikipedia.

Can you summarize his concept of "ideological profiling"?

I suppose so... the idea is that there are certain ideologies that are both all-encompassingly vague (or is it vaguely all-encompassing?) and unpopular, and that you can use the scope of such an unpopular ideology as a Big Brush to tar your opponent in an edit war.

Nobs identified four such ideologies, some of which are actually pseudo-ideologies ("neo-confederate," "anti-communist," "LaRouchie," and "Holocaust denier"), but he only came up with four because the really crucial one, "LaRouchie," would have looked a bit lonely by itself, and it had to have some company just so it wouldn't feel unloved.

Thanks for the plug, Somey. There is an entry on the subject.

Now, Lyndon LaRouche has a history of writing lengthy screeds condemning various political and social movements, historical/political figures, competing ideologies, etc., and these screeds tend to be all over the map - he goes after both fascists and communists, socialists and capitalists, hippies and militarists. (And, of course, moderates....) The only people he doesn't attack are the Founding Fathers, Jesus, and maybe JFK. So, there's a pretty good chance that if someone disagrees with you on a political point, you can find a Lyndon LaRouche quote that agrees with that person - and even if that person could just as easily find a LaRouche quote that agrees with you, the assumption is that the person isn't going to stoop that low, and probably doesn't even know enough about LaRouche to realize that it can work both ways.

Here's the crucial post from Nobs on the subject:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showt...009&#entry23009

What happened to Nobs (who by all accounts is just a traditional conservative, though a rather persistent one) was that Chip Berlet, noted pseudo-liberal, lumped him in with the "LaRouchies" in order to get Nobs to stop editing the article on... wait for it... Chip_Berlet! And it worked, too, because SlimVirgin, Will Beback, and the rest of the gang found Berlet useful for a number of other things, and backed him up.

At least that's how it looked to me, anyway...

Fair analysis.

Update: After a recent private mediation with SlimVirgin (mediated by MONGO, incidentally) I've moreless agreed to stay away from Wikipedia Review, because of the guilt by association smears with HK being a mod, etc. But let me update how the political situation has changed in two years.

Berlet is leading the charge now against 9/11 Truthers who, according to Wikipedia, constitute 42% of the American electorate 12 months prior to the General Election. The stratagy is to drive a wedge between the "LaRouche neo-fascist one world anti-Semitic anti-globalization Truther movement," and the "legitimate anti-Iraq war movement." So I'm moreless being asked to forge a Leninist-style united front with Berlet, Slim, MONGO, et al, to dispose of the Truther slime. Here's one discernible problem: we can thank Michael Moore for this crap, but nobody told Fred Bauder who recently said,

...many of us like Michael Moore very much ... Applying our policy in a rote manner (Without consideration of the unwritten rule that we support prominent subjects that we like)...

which of course is the special exemption precedent from the Nobs01 case.

There's currently a request at WP:RFAR to review Moulton's indefinite block. I'm a bit confuzzled. No arb has yet voted on whether to accept it or not, and I know they're active - the Episodes and characters RFAR just went from evidence fo voting. Will he win a reprieve like Ferrylodge? Or will he be sunk like Iantresman?

Looks like Iantresman has bobbed to the surface in ArbCom, together with all the usual suspects, including JoshuaZ, ScienceApologist, JzG, and Raul654.

Insults, innuendo, and insinuations are already flying. Clinton and Barack could probably pick up a couple of tips.