Abd, blah, blah, blan. How long before indef? A day. A year? A lifetime? Options Rating

[thekohser]

Between you and Moulton, I'm pretty sure you could get all of Massachusetts blocked from Wikipedia.

[Abd]

Between you and Moulton, I'm pretty sure you could get all of Massachusetts blocked from Wikipedia.

Only if We Are Powerful and can Make Them Do It.

Moulton pretty much forced it, with outing requiring revision deletion, at least that is a plausible position. But Moulton, I am not. None of the intemperate response to my "evasion" has been forced.

If there had been no enforcement action at all, none would have been necessary from "damage" requiring action. That's the point of self-reversion: no action required, therefore no need to "punish" the editor for "wasting the community's time."

(If I'd harassed anyone, outed, was grossly uncivil, etc., the situation would be quite different.)

Put it another way: the admin community's position of "we must stop all socking" is self-punishing.

I'm not editing today, not because I can't. Just because. Maybe later.

[Abd]

Came across this in the Deletion log:
# 20:50, 12 May 2011 Jafeluv (talk | contribs) deleted "Abd Is Innocent!" ‎ (G3: Vandalism)
# 20:50, 12 May 2011 Jafeluv (talk | contribs) deleted "Abd Sehr Gut" ‎ (G3: Vandalism)
# 20:49, 12 May 2011 Jafeluv (talk | contribs) deleted "Abd is Innocent!!" ‎ (G3: Vandalism)
# 20:49, 12 May 2011 Jafeluv (talk | contribs) deleted "Abd for President" ‎ (G3: Vandalism)
# 20:49, 12 May 2011 Jafeluv (talk | contribs) deleted "Free abd" ‎ (G3: Vandalism)
# 20:49, 12 May 2011 Jafeluv (talk | contribs) deleted "Abd is innocent" ‎ (G3: Vandalism)

Somebody was busy! Yeah, that would be vandalism. I had no idea....

This would be FusedKalt (T-C-L-K-R-D) , from the timing of the block and the Talk page edit. Cold fusion. I looked at the name for a while before I got it. Must be getting old.

This post has been edited by Abd: Sat 14th May 2011, 1:09am

[Abd]

Since they have beaten the cat to death, no harm in letting him out of the bag.

EnergyNeutral (T-C-L-K-R-D) was indeed me. Checkuserblock by Coren, an arb. My,my, I must be important. No sign of any complaint have I see, so I have an arb checking me out. oooo it makes me soooo excited. My very first discovered sock. History in the making.

The account was being useful, negotiating compromises between factions that were, in fact, being accepted. No disruptive editing. This was, indeed, ban violation, specifically the cold fusion ban, but the MYOB ban was wikilawyered to death anyway, so might as well toss that in. No other socks were blocked. This one was obvious to check, because of the interest in cold fusion, but, in fact, anyone who edits cold fusion who knows the topic has been suspect for a long time. There are now at least four editors who are "banned." If one looks at what EnergyNeutral stirred up, especially JzG, you can see that there are editors on the other side who are totally outrageous, and who have been this way for years, and nothing is done. That's how Wikipedia gets warped, preferential treatment of factions.

VanishedUser314159 (T-C-L-K-R-D) nee Joshua P. Schroeder nee ScienceApologist finally did get banned, but his close accomplices are still Users In Good Standing. Reviewing the history of cold fusion, and the activities of Enric Naval, I decided to, again, retire EnergyNeutral. Enric is not interested in a neutral article, he displayed, as he always has, a clear POV and readiness to push it, and the others who showed up behaved as they had always behaved.

I came across an SSP report filed by Hipocrite on one of the banned editors, Nrcprm2026. The checkuser closed the report as "interesting," and chastised an unnamed editor participating (you know who you are) to stop the socking. It's obvious who it would be, Hipocrite. So ... why was that tolerated?

The answer is obvious. It depends on who your friends are.

Hipocrite is currently not editing under that name, claims to have been "harassed off," in his last edit. I was originally banned from cold fusion by William M. Connolley as a result of very clear harassment of me by Hipocrite, WMC then intervened "neutrally" to ban both Hipocrite and I, and rather quickly lifted the ban against Hipocrite, since Hipocrite didn't protest at all. Which was obviously because he didn't care at all about cold fusion, he was just there because he'd been sent by his friends.... (or had spontaneously gone to aid them; how I first encountered him, he was involved in a Machiavellian scheme with ScienceApologist).

Wikipedia is full of worms like this. Whatever decency there is in ArbComm gets rubbed off quickly.

I was fooled by the decision in RfAr/Abd and JzG, because it looked like ArbComm considered that fairly. No, it was simply such an open and shut case that the cabal stayed away. With RfAr/Abd-William M. Connolley, they saw their opportunity to strike back. And they did, and they know how to manipulate that crowd. JzG was "reprimanded" in the first RfAr. That meant nothing at all, he's repeated the very same behavior, and nobody has said "boo!" to him. The place is utterly corrupt and beyond recovery, so damaged has it been from years of mismanagement, so poisoned has become the nest. JzG is still at it, see

new attempt to blacklist cold fusion library
JzG's nice response to my comments on his meta talk page. This latter was posted because JzG basically collected a series of lies he'd told over the years, densely presented on the spam blacklist page, and I decided to actually respond to them, which would be very foolish on the blacklist page, it would simply irritate the blacklist administrators..... but they won't ding him for raising all those irrelevant arguments, that's the sad thing.

He will probably not be successful this time, but I do keep in mind that he carried the day in early 2009 with a request that was no better, with Mike.lifeguard ultimately "confirming" it. Based on no linkspam, just bullshit.

[Abd]

Hey, I've arrived! I must have done something right.

An impersonation account was created today, Dennis Abd Lomax (T-C-L-K-R-D) . Took Tnxman four hours to do something (thanks, Tnxman!). It's a "checkuser block," but he didn't say who the puppet master was. It sure wasn't me! I saw this because I have google searches set on Abd Lomax....

This post has been edited by Abd: Tue 26th July 2011, 6:36pm

[Mathsci]

Hey, I've arrived! I must have done something right.

An impersonation account was created today, Dennis Abd Lomax (T-C-L-K-R-D) . Took Tnxman four hours to do something (thanks, Tnxman!). It's a "checkuser block," but he didn't say who the puppet master was. It sure wasn't me! I saw this because I have google searches set on Abd Lomax....

Also Bad Lomax (T-C-L-K-R-D) . It did not look like you.

[Abd]

Also Bad Lomax (T-C-L-K-R-D) . It did not look like you.

Yeah. Tyciol (T-C-L-K-R-D) ???

Those "Lomax accounts" were reverting edits by AwesomeCoffee (T-C-L-K-R-D) who's been identified as a sock of Tyciol. See history of one of these pages.

Yeah, kinda doesn't look like me. Pure disruption, oddly based on reverting what look like good edits of a banned user. That's kinda anti-Abd. Awesome Coffee, indeed. Good work, Tyciol, if that's actually you. Boring as hell, to be sure, but to each his own.

I'm getting interested in Tyciol. WTF?

[-DS-]

I'm getting interested in Tyciol. WTF?

What do you mean by that, Abd?

[Abd]

I'm getting interested in Tyciol. WTF?

What do you mean by that, Abd?

I mean that I'm seeing someone who is blocked with the reason being quite obscure. I'm sure that the "in crowd" knows the reason. From what little I could find, it seems he's considered a "pedo-pusher."

Given the danger that such people could represent to young users, what would make sense would be, not blocking them, but watching them. Block them, you can't watch them without major effort. That fails.

There would be ways, but it would require thinking differently, I'm not holding my breath as to Wikipedia!

[jayvdb]

I'm getting interested in Tyciol. WTF?

What do you mean by that, Abd?

I mean that I'm seeing someone who is blocked with the reason being quite obscure. I'm sure that the "in crowd" knows the reason. From what little I could find, it seems he's considered a "pedo-pusher."

Given the danger that such people could represent to young users, what would make sense would be, not blocking them, but watching them. Block them, you can't watch them without major effort. That fails.

There would be ways, but it would require thinking differently, I'm not holding my breath as to Wikipedia!

You like to watch pedos?

[Abd]

I'm getting interested in Tyciol. WTF?

What do you mean by that, Abd?

I mean that I'm seeing someone who is blocked with the reason being quite obscure. I'm sure that the "in crowd" knows the reason. From what little I could find, it seems he's considered a "pedo-pusher."

Given the danger that such people could represent to young users, what would make sense would be, not blocking them, but watching them. Block them, you can't watch them without major effort. That fails.

There would be ways, but it would require thinking differently, I'm not holding my breath as to Wikipedia!

You like to watch pedos?

Watch them what? Jay, are you a total idiot, or are you hiding your intelligence? It is impossible to keep them out of the wiki playground, so don't you think it would be safer if they can be watched, than if they can't?

You think like a typical Wikipedia administrator who imagines he has Real Power with those block buttons. It's a joke. Only incompetent noobs have any difficulty socking, if that's what they want to do. There is a purpose to block buttons, it's even legitimate, but there are limits to that, and collateral damage.

And I didn't describe what could actually be done, and in typical Wikipediot fashion, you are completely uninterested.

You and people like you are the reason why Wikipedia is so monstrously unfair and monstrously inefficient.

[jayvdb]

...It is impossible to keep them out of the wiki playground, so don't you think it would be safer if they can be watched, than if they can't?..

Report them to authorities and let them do the watching. We cant keep them out of the wiki playground, but we can eject anyone who acts inappropriately, whether they act inappropriate outside the playground or inside it.

And I didn't describe what could actually be done, and in typical Wikipediot fashion, you are completely uninterested.

Write an essay on how we should improve our approach to pedos, real world stalkers, self-harmers, identity thieves, etc. Be sure to include expert opinions on the matter.

This post has been edited by jayvdb: Mon 1st August 2011, 1:23am

[Somey]

Given the danger that such people could represent to young users, what would make sense would be, not blocking them, but watching them. Block them, you can't watch them without major effort. That fails.

Wikipedia is, unfortunately, in a no-win situation regarding pedophiles and pedophilia advocates. In theory, you'd actually be correct, in so far as such people could be "watched" - but in fact, they can't really "watch" them to anything even close to the necessary extent, given the limited capabilities they have. And you should never underestimate such people - they can be extremely clever at getting what they're after, and User:Tyciol is right up there among the cleverest. For one thing, he'll never admit to actually advocating pedophilia, much less being a pedophile himself, and might even deny both if pressed on the subject. If your site has an "Assume Good Faith" rule, that can be a serious (or at least time-consuming) problem.

It looks like what they've ultimately decided to do (generally speaking) on WP is assume they can monitor the high-value target articles indefinitely, and just revert whatever looks like pedo-advocacy immediately. It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it is their rationale, I suppose. Who knows how long that will last, but in any event, it makes no sense to keep known pedophilia advocates unblocked just to "study them" - the PR hit alone easily overcomes that rationale.

But getting back to a nicer subject, I'm still sort of interested in your points earlier about self-reverting, though my complete silence on the subject over the past 3 months might suggest otherwise. You're right, of course, that they care much more about revenge and retaliation against "tendentious editors" than they do about improving article quality or anything of that nature... but I'll admit, I've been surprised - pleasantly, even - to see that some WPers are willing to restore these self-reverted edits. It's almost... heartwarming!

I think you also may be right about self-reversion being an incentive to post high-quality material, but I'd still be surprised if they could find enough people to restore the self-reversions if the practice became really widespread. Then again, when you think about it, there's no reason why it should become really widespread, given the relatively small number of people who are banned but still want to post things there.

[Abd]

...It is impossible to keep them out of the wiki playground, so don't you think it would be safer if they can be watched, than if they can't?..

Report them to authorities and let them do the watching. We cant keep them out of the wiki playground, but we can eject anyone who acts inappropriately, whether they act inappropriate outside the playground or inside it.

And I didn't describe what could actually be done, and in typical Wikipediot fashion, you are completely uninterested.

Write an essay on how we should improve our approach to pedos, real world stalkers, self-harmers, identity thieves, etc. Be sure to include expert opinions on the matter.

I'll be doing that, quite likely, on Wikiversity. I can't do it on Wikipedia, you know why. It's really of greater import, it has to do with structure, structure that is consistent with the adhocracy that was set up. I.e., it would still allow the adhocracy to work, but would protect and cover for the rough edges.

Basically, Wikipedia came down against "bureaucracy," which was interpreted to mean any kind of structure, thus rejecting many centuries of human experience, in favor of an experiment. In a mature wiki, there would be structure, serving the positive functions that bureaucracies serve. Bureaucracies are typically built from the top, under central direction, but what's of interest to me is bottom-up structure, built from the bottom, founded in the freedom and independence of all the individual members of the community.

[A Horse With No Name]

Jay, are you a total idiot, or are you hiding your intelligence?

Nah, he's an idiot.

You and people like you are the reason why Wikipedia is so monstrously unfair and monstrously inefficient.

Oh, he's just a run of the mill idiot. I think you are giving him too much credit with that comment.

[EricBarbour]

Jay, are you a total idiot, or are you hiding your intelligence?

Nah, he's an idiot.

You and people like you are the reason why Wikipedia is so monstrously unfair and monstrously inefficient.

Oh, he's just a run of the mill idiot. I think you are giving him too much credit with that comment.

I wish I could state with reasonable certainty that you're being unnecessarily cruel to Mr. Vandenberg.
Sadly, all the evidence I've seen to date has tended to support your thesis.

If he were smarter, he either would have quit by now, or have started some kind of campaign to
reform its governance. But he's quite happy to let the freak-show grind onwards, replete with
the sports trivia/militarism bias of the database, the defamatory BLPs, the endless penis photos,
the barking craziness and backstabbing on AN/I and SPI every day, and Erik Moeller overseeing
it all. Plus, he seems to really enjoy calling himself "the president of Wikimedia Australia",
something I do not consider to be the act of someone who knows better.

(And oh, just by the by: did you know there's a photo section on Commons called
Modification_of_the_human_male_penis? Completely NSFW, or anyone....)

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Mon 1st August 2011, 8:37pm

[Abd]

Aw Somey, you point to my favorite topic. Sorry, but now that I spent some valuable time writing this, I don't have time left to boil it down. Avert your eyes if allergic to Abd Wall-o-Text™. Dramamine might help.

Given the danger that such people could represent to young users, what would make sense would be, not blocking them, but watching them. Block them, you can't watch them without major effort. That fails.

Wikipedia is, unfortunately, in a no-win situation regarding pedophiles and pedophilia advocates. In theory, you'd actually be correct, in so far as such people could be "watched" - but in fact, they can't really "watch" them to anything even close to the necessary extent, given the limited capabilities they have.

That's correct. Given the assumption of "limited capabilities." That, indeed, is the core issue, the belief in limit. Effective watching would take structure so that watching is validated as occurring, so that it's fail-safe.

And you should never underestimate such people - they can be extremely clever at getting what they're after,

My, they are powerful! Of course "they" can be clever! So can "we!" As long as we conceptualize this situation as "us" vs. "them," we are stuck, and we have a battleground, forever.

and User:Tyciol is right up there among the cleverest. For one thing, he'll never admit to actually advocating pedophilia, much less being a pedophile himself, and might even deny both if pressed on the subject. If your site has an "Assume Good Faith" rule, that can be a serious (or at least time-consuming) problem.

I see no conflict between AGF (which is properly a behavioral principle, often neglected, not a "recipe for suicide" as claimed) and taking precautions to handle certain possibilities. The key would be in designing the precautions so that good-faith actions are rewarded and encouraged, while bad-faith actions tend to result in consequences undesirable to the actor. That is, specific actions result in consequences, and "bad faith" doesn't even need enter into the calculations. But Wikipedians, like many people, prefer to simplify their world by assuming "bad people" who have "bad faith," whatever that is. Real people are often far more complex, with complex motivations that they may not even understand themselves.

It looks like what they've ultimately decided to do (generally speaking) on WP is assume they can monitor the high-value target articles indefinitely, and just revert whatever looks like pedo-advocacy immediately. It's a dirty job but somebody's gotta do it is their rationale, I suppose. Who knows how long that will last, but in any event, it makes no sense to keep known pedophilia advocates unblocked just to "study them" - the PR hit alone easily overcomes that rationale.

The goal would not be to 'study' them. The goal -- in the narrow consideration of my post -- would be to watch them, to channel their activities into what is harmless at worst. The fact is that, for the encyclopedia, any "advocacy" is a problem. Not just "pedo-advocacy." Indeed, anti-pedo advocacy is a problem. What's in reliable source?

But getting back to a nicer subject, I'm still sort of interested in your points earlier about self-reverting, though my complete silence on the subject over the past 3 months might suggest otherwise. You're right, of course, that they care much more about revenge and retaliation against "tendentious editors" than they do about improving article quality or anything of that nature... but I'll admit, I've been surprised - pleasantly, even - to see that some WPers are willing to restore these self-reverted edits. It's almost... heartwarming!

It's actually normal. I saw this with self-reversion every time it's been tried. It doesn't work when there are not enough editors paying attention, i.e, the self-reversion breaks down when the edits are ignored, so the editor may eventually give up, and either stop editing entirely, or, more likely, stop self-reversion.

In theory, self-reversion could turn ban enforcement into positive contributions. I've seen that work, too.

What is ideally involved would be a quid pro quo. In return for the banned editor self-reverting, which acknowledges and respects the ban, making enforcement much easier, in fact, the wiki would not consider self-reverted edits to be ban violations. This was, in fact, old thinking, and it went out of favor almost precisely because I proposed it as applied to self-reversion. (The sense was that "harmless edits," like spelling corrections, shouldn't be considered ban violations. A self-reverted edit is almost completely harmless. Unless it is, and my definition of a harmful self-reverted edit would be gross incivility, possibly, or anything requiring revision deletion.)

If this were accepted, what would have happened, in effect, would be that "banned editors" would not be completely banned, but would rather be converted into editors whose contributions must be "seconded." Self-reverted edits are the simplest and easiest way to propose an edit. I often use it to propose complex edits to policies, for example. Spelling corrections are not worth the effort to describe them. Actually making the edit is quick and simple, and self-reversion -- which is only necessary in order not to complicate ban enforcement -- is also easy, as is the review and restoration of the edit.

For spelling corrections, someone who *really hates the editor* and who is therefore watching for edits, may still review the edit and bring it back in. Or not.

Consider this: if such an editor were to complain about a self-reverted edit, but didn't fix it, if it were obviously good, they would be exposing themselves as to having a personal agenda... that, in fact, is what happened with William M. Connolley, when he blocked me for a harmless edit that was self-reverted. He acknowledged it, that was his comment about "nailing his colors to the yard-arm." He knew what he was doing!

I think you also may be right about self-reversion being an incentive to post high-quality material, but I'd still be surprised if they could find enough people to restore the self-reversions if the practice became really widespread. Then again, when you think about it, there's no reason why it should become really widespread, given the relatively small number of people who are banned but still want to post things there.

Here is how it actually worked, in some cases: there is a cooperating unbanned editor, who agrees to review the edits. That editor may actually bring back in what is obviously good, or make a note of it on Talk, soliciting comment from those who know the subject. It's easy, and there are editors who will do this.

It's actually easy to do this. It generates more good content per minute than about anything I can imagine. It's also a voluntary relationship, and builds cooperation.

And if an editor has been so disruptive and so contentious that nobody will cooperate, well, he made his bed, and he could still try self-reversion, but he'll need to be patient, very patient.

Self-reversion is a kind of trick, that's all, that resulted inexorably, in my thinking, from considering multiple policies and principles. It has, in fact, been shown to work, and the only damage, so far, has been from senseless "ban enforcement." It's far less damage than from serious concealed socking. I did one concealed sock, and, that was also successful, i.e., it resulted in good content probably worth the minimal effort put into enforcement. Or not. I would not have gone there if self-reversion had not been so heavily sanctioned.

Demonstrating the dysfunctional response without actually *causing* it has been my purpose. Some Wikipedia administrators followed wp:RBI, and, while not ideal, this wasn't harmful. It was only proceeding into range blocks, revision deletion, and setting an edit filter, that collateral damage was caused. And that was actually violation of RBI, as well as of revision deletion policy, and the edit filter was downright stupid.

There are a series of stupid objections that are sometimes raised regarding self-reversion. I won't bother with those unless someone brings one up.

I'm not currently self-reverting, though I've thought of starting up again. Mostly it's that I have insufficient motivation to edit Wikipedia at all. My edits are rare, recently. I'm not bothering to sock, why waste a sock when I can just make an IP edit and nobody really knows it's me. I did try self-reversion, until the response escalated and the edit filter made the acknowledgment of the edits impossible.

Basically, natural consequences apply to the 'community' too! Punish cooperation, and it stops. Like, duh!

However, if someone wants to agree to review all my edits, I'd start it up again. I'd do what I was doing before, I'd document all the edits on a page, probably on Wikiversity, since the community decided to allow that page. This is not "meat puppetry," it would be completely open. There is no risk if the editor exercises due caution.

Obviously, if massive range blocks are used again, it would become difficult. But at least some more experience would be accumulated.

See, to my knowledge, nobody has tried this before, except for two prior, short experiments that I facilitated, that worked.

There is a variation, that I used with Moulton. Moulton was an editor who sometimes contributed valuable insights, but who also was highly disruptive, making edits that, by policy, required revision deletion. I suggested self-reversion to him, and he made a couple of edits, but he was really trying to find out what was wrong with it, not what would work.

But then what I did was to watch for Moulton edits. He cooperates to the extent that he always made them obvious, he'd sign them. I'd immediately revert them. He hated that, but what I was doing was pre-empting response. I'd list all these edits on a page for that, inviting objection. Some edits I immediately rejected myself, but most of his edits were actually okay. I'd leave them there for a decent time, then, with no objection, I'd revert them back in.

It worked. It broke down when an administrator who was "ban is a ban" finally set extensive range blocks. He's gone. Moulton was eventually unlocked and unblocked, but without any agreement or supervision, I'd never have done that with him. The predictable ensued, and he's now indef blocked again. He prefers it that way, obviously.

What was really interesting about this was that there was some flak over what I was doing, but only generally, and it was toothless. Nobody ever objected to the proposed edits. In one case, as I recall, an editor reverted my restoration, so I replaced it with a reference to history, and that stood.

These techniques work. They are not often tried. It does take some courage.

[jayvdb]

Jay, are you a total idiot, or are you hiding your intelligence?

Nah, he's an idiot.

You and people like you are the reason why Wikipedia is so monstrously unfair and monstrously inefficient.

Oh, he's just a run of the mill idiot. I think you are giving him too much credit with that comment.

I wish I could state with reasonable certainty that you're being unnecessarily cruel to Mr. Vandenberg.
Sadly, all the evidence I've seen to date has tended to support your thesis.

If he were smarter, he either would have quit by now, or have started some kind of campaign to
reform its governance. But he's quite happy to let the freak-show grind onwards, replete with
the sports trivia/militarism bias of the database, the defamatory BLPs, the endless penis photos,
the barking craziness and backstabbing on AN/I and SPI every day, and Erik Moeller overseeing
it all. Plus, he seems to really enjoy calling himself "the president of Wikimedia Australia",
something I do not consider to be the act of someone who knows better.

(And oh, just by the by: did you know there's a photo section on Commons called
Modification_of_the_human_male_penis? Completely NSFW, or anyone....)

I did try to promote reform in 2009. Many of those reforms were successful, and I am content with what was achieved in 2009.

This year I'm not putting nearly as much effort into reform of Wikipedia. I am proud to be part of Wikimedia Australia as I believe that the Wikimedia chapters, which are associations of members, are important to the health of the Wikimedia movement. Wikimedia would look very different if the WMF had been established as an association of members back in 2006.

[RMHED]

I am proud to be part of Wikimedia Australia as I believe that the Wikimedia chapters, which are associations of members, are important to the health of the Wikimedia movement. .

The Wikimedia movement splashed down in the toilet bowl some time ago, it's time to flush that turd.

Wikimedia would look very different if the WMF had been established as an association of members back in 2006

Yadda, yadda, yadda, now where's those ruby slippers...

[A Horse With No Name]

This year I'm not putting nearly as much effort into reform of Wikipedia.

This year? 2011 is more than halfway over...what year are you living in?

Yadda, yadda, yadda, now where's those ruby slippers...

Oh, there's no place like home.