MONGO quits, The cabal loses another one Options

[Herschelkrustofsky]

...I believe that the real significance of the Wikipedia is not its status as a compendium of information, but rather its ability to provide a record of how we see ourselves, our heritage, our current events and our culture in real-time as those perceptions evolve.

I didn't know what to make of it at the time, and I guess I still don't. On the one hand, he's probably right. On the other, it's this kind of apologist spin-doctoring that's going to ultimately result in our having nothing left but anonymously-produced collaborative websites left as information resources in the future, which is really not something to look forward to.

At the same time, if people generally accept that sort reasoning, then I suppose MONGO really should be desysopped. After all, by trying to keep the conspiracy-theorists out of Wikipedia, he's actually reducing the accuracy of the cultural snapshot, isn't he? It's like the very height of irony, in a way.

I remember having an exchange with some ArbCom member a few years ago, where I was fuming about some editor introducing falsehoods into Wikipedia, and said ArbCom member pointed out that Truth was not an objective of Wikipedia, only source-verifiability. Or words to that effect. So with respect to the "accuracy of the cultural snapshot," the struggle at Wikipedia is not so much to reflect it as to create it. The one who dies with his POV imposed on the most articles wins. This is a variant, perhaps, on the old saw that history is written by the victors. In this modern-day world of cyberspace and virtual reality, someone like MONGO may aspire to be a cyber-godling, by creating a tidy virtual microcosm of the universe, where all the forbidden viewpoints may be excluded by a gang of semi-demiurges.

[LamontStormstar]

At the same time, if people generally accept that sort reasoning, then I suppose MONGO really should be desysopped. After all, by trying to keep the conspiracy-theorists out of Wikipedia, he's actually reducing the accuracy of the cultural snapshot, isn't he? It's like the very height of irony, in a way.

MONGO is not the only one who has been screwing up the 9/11 articles. There's a guy Peephole and some more that have been refusing to even acknowledge that the Loose Change Video used Wikipedia as its sources and the person could have even made a temporarily vandalized version of the site and video taped it as their evidence. Some watered down version of this eventually got in for a while.

It's lots of people. Sure MONGO hides facts like the JFK assasination was more than Harvey Oswald, the US government hides its knowledge of extraterrestrials of which it has some amount of X-Files like knowledge, and 9/11 happened because the Bush administration either let it or caused it to happen (I mean these guys always hold fake meetings with the public where they screen people who ask scripted questions like "I love you Mr. President")

[guy]

The Wikipedia model is broken: "anyone can edit" means that there will never be a way to trust Wikipedia as anything other than a glorified blog written by a million monkeys, and the administrative structure that exists now works, at best, orthogonally to accuracy and credibility and, as in this case, most often much worse than that. If this is anon's thesis, then I heartily agree.

???

I think that by "orthogonally" gomi means "at right angles to" which can be stretched to mean "uncorrelated with".

[LamontStormstar]

The one who dies with his POV imposed on the most articles wins.

No, once they die those who disagree with them immediately go and fix the articles.

[Somey]

At the moment, the only thing preventing User:MONGO from being desysopped is the failure of the ArbCom to "close" the case. This is mostly because JayJG, having apparently recused himself earlier, showed up at the last minute to oppose closure:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=93914192

It should, of course, be noted that the "great deal of concern" he refers to stemmed from an anonymous (aren't they all, though) pro-MONGO e-mail to WikiEN-L from someone calling himself "ConcernedWikipedian." This e-mail was clearly meant to stir things up and start a huge amount of infighting and controversy - which it succeeded at, quite effectively. The person not only didn't identify himself (and was even criticized by Jimbo for it), he essentially dropped out of the discussion after the e-mail was posted, sat back, and no doubt laughed long and hard at all the brouhaha he'd caused.

Apparently, if the ArbCom can't get 4 "clear" votes to close the case, the whole thing is dropped, right? So, in effect, trolling wins again!

Isn't that nice.

[gomi]

???

I think that by "orthogonally" gomi means "at right angles to" which can be stretched to mean "uncorrelated with".

Guy correctly translates my geek-speak. Sorry for being opaque. In the future I will eschew obfuscation.

[Somey]

In the future I will eschew obfuscation.

Well, you should always eschew before swallowing, or you'll get a tummy-ache!

Anyway, I'm not sure what to make of this situation. I mean, you saw it, we all saw it... I went back and wasted precious minutes of my life that I'll never, ever get back counting the e-mailers on WikiEN-L, for and against the desysopping of User:MONGO. (By the way, I'm finally getting used to the idea of not putting the word "desysopping" in quotes, which probably means I've completely lost touch with reality.) It came out to 16 in favor of desysopping and 9 opposed. Several of the respondents were too equivocal to be counted, including Jayjg himself - he really only showed up in order to attack "Parker Peters," who seems to be a decent sort of person... so, no wonder!

Many of them were, shall we say, waffling just a smidge, so you have to read the e-mails carefully - disconcerting as that is - to figure out where they stand. It's possible that I've got it wrong in one or two cases. Maybe even three... But here's how it broke down, as I read it:

In favor of desysopping, though not necessarily hostile to MONGO:

Jeff Raymond
The Cunctator
Alphax
Thomas Dalton
George Herbert
Matthew "Morven" Brown
NSLE (Where have you been, man? The "idiots" miss you!)
Andrew Gray
Rob "nobs" Smith
Ray Saintonge
Rob (gamaliel)
Gregory Maxwell
Stephen Bain
Theo Clarke
M Roget
Michael Bimmler

Against desysopping, though not necessarily friendly to MONGO:

ConcernedWikipedian (who probably shouldn't count)
Fred Bauder (who definitely shouldn't count)
KillerChihuahua ("Puppy")
Jim Schuler
Guy "JzG" Chapman
Brian Haws
Parker Peters (sort of)
Guettarda
Stan Shebs

Personally, I think these people should all just accept the imperfections of the system they themselves have created, and just let it do its thing. Letting it drag on, which is what Jayjg seems to be doing by opposing the closure, really just prolongs the agony for everyone else. MONGO, meanwhile, is probably a nervous wreck over this. Even if he does retain his admin privileges, he probably isn't going to be the same ultra-loyal attack dog after this experience that he's been in the past. He may just drop out entirely.

Anyway, it's an interesting problem! For them, that is.

[guy]

Against desysopping, though not necessarily friendly to MONGO:

Fred Bauder (who definitely shouldn't count)

Does that mean Fred Bauder should recuse himself from any further ArbCom discussion of MONGO?

[Skyrocket]

My Boy Scout troop had a rectangular set of axes.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Against desysopping, though not necessarily friendly to MONGO:

Fred Bauder (who definitely shouldn't count)

Does that mean Fred Bauder should recuse himself from any further ArbCom discussion of MONGO?

Fred Bauder should recuse himself from any further ArbCom discussion, period, although as a disbarred attorney he occupies a position of singular prestige in that august body. He seems to write most of the decisions.

[LamontStormstar]

Guy correctly translates my geek-speak. Sorry for being opaque. In the future I will eschew obfuscation.

All you have to do is before you post, read it aloud. I've seen others who write in ways that make encyclopedia Brittanica sound like plain English in comparison. Just read it aloud.

[Somey]

Does that mean Fred Bauder should recuse himself from any further ArbCom discussion of MONGO?

No, nothing so extreme as that... I just meant that he probably shouldn't be counted among the nine e-mailers who came out against desysopping MONGO. His positions are already known and well-documented, and he isn't actually against the idea in principle - apparently he just wants to "suspend" him or put him on some kind of probation, and is willing to hold up the closure vote to try and lobby for that. (Meanwhile, there's been no talk of suspension/probation for Seabhcan whatsoever.)

So if you remove Freddy from the list, and also "ConcernedWikipedian," then that's just 7 pro-MONGO people, and if you also remove "Parker Peters" (who really isn't for or against, he just seems to be using the incident to make the same point he's been making all along about abusive admins), then you're down to 6. Also, Jim Schuler (whoever he is) didn't specifically say that MONGO shouldn't be de-opped; I was only gleaning that from his tone of disgust at the whole proceeding.

Meanwhile, on the side that favors de-opping MONGO, you could take away Morven for the same reason as Fred, and you could also take away Alphax as being too equivocal. So the numbers are definitely "fuzzy" - I'm not trying to suggest they aren't - but I do think it's reasonably safe to say that the "de-oppers" outnumber the "pass-givers" by about 2 to 1.

[Jonny Cache]

I swore off following long and winding threads ever since that initial unpleasantness with the Adminotaur in Knossos, so tell me qwik, I can't stand the suspense --

Yet Another Sysop to Kerberos, or Knot?

Jonny

[Somey]

Well, I think what we're seeing is the inevitable triumph of "trolling" and "gaming the system" by the masters of the art. I'm beginning to believe now that in the end, they'll get their way - the hard-liners will convince the ArbCom to lighten MONGO's "remedy" to some sort of probation, or a 6-month suspension, and a year from now they'll be right back to where they started.

Remember, this all began when MONGO "trolled" his own talk page by writing "trollings wins" and then pretending to leave, followed by an anonymous e-mail to WikiEN-L about how "nobody's perfect" and that MONGO is some sort of special case because of what he does, i.e., "defend the wiki" against 9/11 conspiracy theorists. These kinds of chess-moves have worked in the past, they're working now, and evidently they'll continue to work in the future.

In a way, User:Cyde actually has the right idea with his WP:RBI essay - "Revert, Block, Ignore." Unfortunately, it's unlikely they'll ever apply that concept to themselves!


--------------
More fun diffs for the whole family:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=94439384

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=94474356

[Somey]

Wrong again, Somey...

OK, when I wrote earlier that "in the end, they'll get their way," I intended that, uh, metaphorically? It looks like Fred B. has concluded that the ongoing "drama" is, indeed, worse than the alternative of having MONGO lose his admin status:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=94482999

So, presumably it's just a matter of having Jimbo ratify the decision, right? Which he's almost certain to do, I suspect.

The only remaining issue is how MONGO deals with it personally... I think he'll be OK, though it's going to be tough for him at first. In the end he'll be better off, I think - some people just gravitate toward stress-causing things without realizing it, or how much damage it can potentially cause. MONGO is clearly such a person, at least as far as his internet persona is concerned.

So this is one of the few times when I can genuinely state that the WP'ers made the right call - maybe not for the right reasons, and I'd still have to say that many of the people "supporting" MONGO weren't really doing him any favors. But they still got there in the end. Good for them.

[nobs]

On Dec 17, 2006 6:57 PM Jimmy Wales wrote:

[quote]I reckon MONGO will take a rest for a few months and come back as an
admin. When he does, I will almost certainly take the very very rare
step of actually voting yes to support his adminship.



This post has been edited by nobs: Mon 18th December 2006, 4:37am

[Nathan]

I wouldn't be surprised if this is MONGO:

Go to here, it's a very nice article on ED stealing other sites' content. (I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of linking to them anywhere else)

Check the comments and find this:



Either way, someone please tell this moron that the word "hilarious" only has one "L". It's fine to cut down others but make sure you don't give others new material for them to cut you down in the process.

[Morton_devonshire]

What a bunch of weenies you all are. MONGO is one of the few people on the WP who keep the Nutburgers from taking over.

Or are all of you 9/11 Truthers too?

Morton Devonshire

[LamontStormstar]

What a bunch of weenies you all are. MONGO is one of the few people on the WP who keep the Nutburgers from taking over.

Or are all of you 9/11 Truthers too?

Morton Devonshire

Read the shizophrenia article. There's a lot of "science is unsure" stuff. And then a lot of "alternative theories" -- though the brain parasite toxo-something that most people in the world have looks promising.

[everyking]

What a bunch of weenies you all are. MONGO is one of the few people on the WP who keep the Nutburgers from taking over.

Or are all of you 9/11 Truthers too?

Morton Devonshire

I don't agree that MONGO should be judged according to the beliefs of his opponents, even if those beliefs are blatantly absurd (and I don't think the views of "9/11 Truthers" are absurd). Shouldn't he be judged according to his own deeds? If he won't follow the rules, he should expect criticism.