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_ General Discussion _ A general question regarding Brandt and WP: NPA

Posted by: Jonathan

Why is it that it is okay for members of the Wikipedia Brethren/Cabal to constantly call Brandt all sorts of horrendous names as expertly covered in Brandt's website when WP: NPA is quite possibly the most overly quoted policy used by admins (other than, of course, WP: AGF).

Is it the case that members of the Wikipedia Elite ™ are basically able to do whatever the fuck they want? Cool! In which case, it would be great to infiltrate Wikipedia by becoming an admin, because then you could use your shiny brand new powers to send Wikipedia crashing to oblivion from within. And considering as how Wikipedia will probably be dead and buried in 10, maybe 15 or perhaps 20 years time, just who is going to give a damn when a beacon of abuse and unreliability goes down in flames?

But seriously, the fact that people like Raul, Snowspinner and Freakofnurture and SlimVirgin can do what they like is deeply troubling. I can't understand why Jimmy can't simply revoke their adminship status and ban them forever. Just what the hell can they do?

Posted by: LamontStormstar

The admins personal attack people all the time, even in block reasons. But a mere criticism of their actions is considered a personal attack by them and you get banned for it.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(Jonathan @ Wed 6th December 2006, 6:17am) *

Why is it that it is okay for members of the Wikipedia Brethren/Cabal to constantly call Brandt all sorts of horrendous names as expertly covered in Brandt's website when WP: NPA is quite possibly the most overly quoted policy used by admins (other than, of course, WP: AGF).

Is it the case that members of the Wikipedia Elite ™ are basically able to do whatever the fuck they want? Cool! In which case, it would be great to infiltrate Wikipedia by becoming an admin, because then you could use your shiny brand new powers to send Wikipedia crashing to oblivion from within. And considering as how Wikipedia will probably be dead and buried in 10, maybe 15 or perhaps 20 years time, just who is going to give a damn when a beacon of abuse and unreliability goes down in flames?

But seriously, the fact that people like Raul, Snowspinner and Freakofnurture and SlimVirgin can do what they like is deeply troubling. I can't understand why Jimmy can't simply revoke their adminship status and ban them forever. Just what the hell can they do?


FYSMI (Funny You Should Mention It), since I have been meaning to discuss this very issue for quite a while now, under the heading of Oppressive Niceness, but I was waiting till I could think of a good subtitle.

The way that the English Wiki Peerage (EWP), also known as the ASOTAC, exploits the rules of WP:AGF and WP:NPA to abuse the English Wiki Serfs (EWS) is a textbook case of a specific pathology in organizational dynamics. One has the preaching and the pretence of a high degree of civility being used as a cover for the practice of persistent persecution in the form of one putsch and pogrom after another. Of course, one of the things that makes this possible is the split-screen doubling of standards that is so prevalent in the English Wikipedia, but there are in addition a number of other contributing factors that I am still in the process of trying to trace.

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: Nathan

That is a very VERY good point.

Posted by: nobs

I been trying to follow this Danial Brandt controversy for a year now. I know he heads Namebase, used to work on the Organizing Committee for the Fifth Estate, etc. I'm gonna try to read his wikibio tonite. But can anyone gimme a thumbnail gossipy scetch what the big feud is all about.


Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(nobs @ Thu 7th December 2006, 12:13am) *
But can anyone gimme a thumbnail gossipy scetch what the big feud is all about.

Thumbnail gossipy sketch...? Well, there's always the "video game version":

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Brandt_%28video_game%29

It hasn't been updated for a while, though. But for a more serious executive summary, perhaps Mr. Brandt himself would prefer to do that... Though it's actually a rather complex situation, in my opinion. Maybe you'd better stick with the video game for the time being!

Posted by: Daniel Brandt

I can't improve on the video game. But it does need updating:
IRC logs, plagiarism report, Google finally recognizes Wikipedia-Watch...

That's three points right there!

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

QUOTE(nobs @ Wed 6th December 2006, 10:13pm) *

But can anyone gimme a thumbnail gossipy scetch what the big feud is all about.


I can offer a different one, since I was something of a bystander. It begins with my epic battle versus SlimVirgin, Will Beback, and CBerlet (Chip Berlet,) which concluded with a crushing defeat for me before the ArbCom, thus forever endearing the ArbCom to me. But I digress.

The genesis of the Daniel Brandt conflict may be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:John_Train_Salon I and another editor were using Brandt as a source, which caused SlimVirgin to denounce Brandt:

QUOTE
Weed, I removed Daniel Brandt. He's not a credible source, not a journalist, and seems to write only for his own website i.e. he's a blogger. It's not appropriate to use someone's personal website as a source. There's no evidence that Roy Godson is an intelligence operative and the weasel catch-all phrase "representatives from intelligence-linked funding sources" is typical Brandt and typical LaRouche.


The ever-vigilant Daniel Brandt picked this up in his web scanning, and thus paid his first editing visit to Wikipedia, also on that page. SlimVirgin, true to form, put him immediately on her hit list, while feigning politeness (see this very early edition of http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Daniel_Brandt&oldid=25567623)

Shortly thereafter, SlimVirgin authored the article http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daniel_Brandt&oldid=24251234 which became a famous bone of contention.

Brandt responed with an open letter, which was suppressed, but I archived it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Brandt/open_letter

This concludes my short, gossipy account. Now perhaps Daniel would care to correct it or expand upon it.

Posted by: Daniel Brandt

SlimVirgin started the bio on me before I ever became a user on Wikipedia. I noticed the stub on a search engine, and emailed SlimVirgin to object. She replied that they don't take articles down just because someone doesn't want their biography on Wikipedia. Jimmy backed her up and scolded me. Then I signed up as a User, primarily to see what would happen if I challenged my bio as a User. I have never had any interest whatsoever in editing Wikipedia apart from this. I saw my User experience as a way to learn more about how Wikipedia operates. It worked -- I learned a lot about who has the power and who doesn't. I learned that subjects of articles have zero power.

That seemed perverse to me at the time, and it still does. As the situation evolved, they ganged up on me and my article got longer and longer. Gamaliel, who was a grad student in library science, had access to databases and pulled out stuff from 30+ years ago to expand the article. What started as a couple of paragraphs got longer and longer. I was banned twice for legal threats. I think intelligent legal threats are entirely appropriate in civil society -- what's the purpose of the law if you aren't allowed to reference it? Civil law is a way to keep people from taking justice into their own hands when they get mad, but Wikipedia feels that it's above the law because Web 2.0 is its own law.

I want the whole thing deleted. I've learned a lot about the legal situation with respect to Wikipedia, and I've learned a lot about who the people are behind Wikipedia. I think time is on my side, and my bio will get deleted someday. In the meantime, Wikipedia's reputation will take hits from me whenever I can manage it.

They should just admit that SlimVirgin exercised poor judgement in starting that stub on me, and take the thing down. Even SlimVirgin has argued for a take-down on the mailing list. But the teenie-boppers won't have it, and they will fight to keep the article merely because I need to be taught a lesson. Okay, I'm up for a war.

Meanwhile, the Foundation office pretends that they are a service provider and not a publisher, so they don't even answer my emails and faxes. They have to pretend that they're hands-off in order to argue that they have immunity under Section 230. My feeling is that they don't have a case any way you look at it.

But because they keep hands-off, the situation deteriorates thanks to the teenie-boppers who need their ego trips. By now it's like Lord of the Flies -- the teenagers (and that includes some older editors who are immature) control the situation by default.


Posted by: JohnA

QUOTE(Jonny Cache @ Wed 6th December 2006, 6:43pm) *

QUOTE(Jonathan @ Wed 6th December 2006, 6:17am) *

Why is it that it is okay for members of the Wikipedia Brethren/Cabal to constantly call Brandt all sorts of horrendous names as expertly covered in Brandt's website when WP: NPA is quite possibly the most overly quoted policy used by admins (other than, of course, WP: AGF).

Is it the case that members of the Wikipedia Elite ™ are basically able to do whatever the fuck they want? Cool! In which case, it would be great to infiltrate Wikipedia by becoming an admin, because then you could use your shiny brand new powers to send Wikipedia crashing to oblivion from within. And considering as how Wikipedia will probably be dead and buried in 10, maybe 15 or perhaps 20 years time, just who is going to give a damn when a beacon of abuse and unreliability goes down in flames?

But seriously, the fact that people like Raul, Snowspinner and Freakofnurture and SlimVirgin can do what they like is deeply troubling. I can't understand why Jimmy can't simply revoke their adminship status and ban them forever. Just what the hell can they do?


FYSMI (Funny You Should Mention It), since I have been meaning to discuss this very issue for quite a while now, under the heading of Oppressive Niceness, but I was waiting till I could think of a good subtitle.

The way that the English Wiki Peerage (EWP), also known as the ASOTAC, exploits the rules of WP:AGF and WP:NPA to abuse the English Wiki Serfs (EWS) is a textbook case of a specific pathology in organizational dynamics. One has the preaching and the pretence of a high degree of civility being used as a cover for the practice of persistent persecution in the form of one putsch and pogrom after another. Of course, one of the things that makes this possible is the split-screen doubling of standards that is so prevalent in the English Wikipedia, but there are in addition a number of other contributing factors that I am still in the process of trying to trace.

Jonny cool.gif


It reminds me of the early stages of the Russian revolution, where some of the early revolutionaries themselves were attacked as part of a "counter-revolution", given show trials and summary execution.

Nothing I have seen on Wikipedia is that surprising when you've studied a little of the history of Marxist movements. History really does repeat itself like that.

Posted by: Jonny Cache

QUOTE(JohnA @ Thu 7th December 2006, 5:47am) *

It reminds me of the early stages of the Russian revolution, where some of the early revolutionaries themselves were attacked as part of a "counter-revolution", given show trials and summary execution.

Nothing I have seen on Wikipedia is that surprising when you've studied a little of the history of Marxist movements. History really does repeat itself like that.


Exactamundo !!! Sadly, some people just never learn these lessons. I guess they would object that the lessons of history are too ambiguous and polymorphously perverse to permit the drawing of firm conclusions, but I suspect that it's really just the arrogance of indolence that is too lazy to reflect on the course ahead.

Besides, they are so busy trying to sell us on the idea that they are doing something new and revolutionary that they don't want to think about the fact that they are merely re-inventing methods of dispute resolution that our primal horde ancestors had in play long before they had wheels.

https://lists.purdue.edu/pipermail/citizendium-l/2006-October/000635.html

Jonny cool.gif

Posted by: nobs

QUOTE(Daniel Brandt @ Thu 7th December 2006, 1:08am) *
...I learned that subjects of articles have zero power....
Not necessarily so...in the midst of an ArbCom hearing where the basis of the Defense was the policy statement, "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:No_original_research&diff=31673356&oldid=31673253, that language was removed from the Policy page.

Brandt's wikibio reads this statement from the god-king,
QUOTE
"I don't regard him as a valid source about anything at all...

In preparation for an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:AMA_Requests_for_Assistance/Requests/November_2006/Nobs02#Motion_2_by_Nobs01, my draft included the language,
QUOTE
[John] Loftus serves on Daniel Brandt's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_Information_Research

It appears now I have to modify that language to
QUOTE
Loftus formerly of the Carter Administration Justice Dept. Nazi hunting Office
because if the statement is misunderstood as guilt by association, the original language may undermine my case.

The picture looks something like this: Brandt & Berlet were buddies who followed the same career path among various organizations some people say to be KGB front organizations responsible for the loss of the War in Vietnam. Circa 1991 Brandt and Berlet had a falling out over the issue of Holocaust denial, Berlet's rendition is that Brandt allowed infiltration of fascists into thier organization.

Of course anyone familiar with Berlet would know he'd call his mother a fascist if she served him cold cereal instead of oatmeal for breakfast.

That is why I prefer to wait til subjects are dead before writing biographical material, cause then we see thier whole life in perspective, and make sense of this garbage -- without fear of defamation suits.

Posted by: Daniel Brandt

Your version makes it sound like I supported Holocaust denial. In fact, Berlet's anger was directed at PIR because Berlet found himself on the PIR board of advisors along with http://www.prouty.org/.

Prouty's unforgivable sin was to let Liberty Lobby republish his book, http://www.namebase.org/sources/AJ.html, which is one of the early anti-CIA books (Ballantine, 1974). This was a very significant book, and copies were already difficult to find by the early 1980s. No one else would reprint it. Prouty himself didn't have an anti-Semitic bone in his body. But the association with Liberty Lobby, which was anti-CIA and anti-Zionist, caused Berlet to fly off the handle. He expected me to kick Prouty off of the PIR board of advisors, with the suggestion that if I didn't, Berlet himself would have to leave. So I politely thanked Berlet for his past support, and whipped out the white-out, and removed Berlet from the Board.

Then Berlet contacted the other advisors and denounced me. Three other "progressive" advisors quit in the wake of this: Holly Sklar, Martha Wenger, and Tom Barry. It's no big deal -- the board of advisors has zero power and it's the Board of Directors that's important. Berlet also contacted Dennis Brutus, a poet and professor who spent time in prison with Nelson Mandela for ANC activities, and quite an impressive activist. But Dennis Brutus would have none of Berlet's bullshit, and he's still on our Board of Directors.

Prouty was a reasonable, highly-motivated critic of the Secret State with a lot of insider Pentagon experience to draw on. He was the so-called "Man X" in Oliver Stone's movie "JFK." Once he became a critic, Prouty was someone who was impossible to compromise. When it came to making a choice between Prouty and Berlet, it was a rather easy decision for me to make.

Posted by: nobs

QUOTE(Daniel Brandt @ Thu 7th December 2006, 3:39pm) *

Your version makes it sound like I supported Holocaust denial.

Actually that part was culled from the wikibio,

QUOTE
Between 1990 and 1992, three members of Brandt's Public Information Research (PIR) advisory board, including Chip Berlet, resigned after complaining that another board member, L. Fletcher Prouty, was openly working with and defending Liberty Lobby and the Holocaust denial group the Institute for Historical Review, which republished Prouty's book The Secret Team.
thus linking Mr. Brandt with holocaust deniers. This is symptomatic of how Berletized Wikipedia is in danger of becoming. I raised this same issue on this forum last March, extracted,

QUOTE
What do Ted Bundy, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, and Jeffrey
Dahmer all have in common? They nolonger are in Category "controversial people".

Who has taken their place? David Irving, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell,
Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter.

Hence, Ann Coulter is now in the same category as Holocaust denier David Irving.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-March/042146.html

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=252&st=0&p=1848&#entry1848

Posted by: nobs

QUOTE(Daniel Brandt @ Thu 7th December 2006, 1:08am) *

SlimVirgin started the bio on me before I ever became a user on Wikipedia. ...

Can anyone add anything further about SlimVirgin's rationale to begin this stub. Slim does not act randomly, and it must've been related to some other areas she was involved in at that point. And I know broadly some of the things she was involved with just then, too. Let's walk the dog backwards....

Posted by: Selina

Controversial people is a POV category by its very nature.. it's basically like why stuff that could be offensive isn't censored ("who is it for us to judge, on a worldwide scale") - whether they are a controversial person is POV. brandt is controversial pretty much only to people who edit wikipedia, plenty of muslims agree with bin laden and think he's a cool uncontroversial person, and nazis agree with holocaust deniers and dont find them controversial at all ;0

Posted by: Somey

QUOTE(nobs @ Sat 13th January 2007, 12:04pm) *
Can anyone add anything further about SlimVirgin's rationale to begin this stub. Slim does not act randomly, and it must've been related to some other areas she was involved in at that point. And I know broadly some of the things she was involved with just then, too. Let's walk the dog backwards....

Nobs, you're not getting Alzheimer's, are you? (No offense to Alzheimer's sufferers...!) http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=5315&view=findpost&p=18634 answered that question a month ago, and it was in this very same thread, in response to essentially the same question, posted by you yourself...?

So are you looking for something that predates even that? There probably isn't anything, IMO. Remember, we're talking about Slimmy here - she doesn't need a reason to go on the attack, overtly or covertly. She just does it - that's how she is. You're right that she doesn't act randomly, but she doesn't act congenially, either, if you know what I'm sayin'. I almost admire her sheer determination and tenacity, actually - I just wish she would use her powers for goodness, instead of badness. sad.gif

Posted by: nobs

QUOTE(Somey @ Sat 13th January 2007, 12:11pm) *

QUOTE(nobs @ Sat 13th January 2007, 12:04pm) *
Can anyone add anything further about SlimVirgin's rationale to begin this stub. Slim does not act randomly, and it must've been related to some other areas she was involved in at that point. And I know broadly some of the things she was involved with just then, too. Let's walk the dog backwards....

Nobs, you're not getting Alzheimer's, are you? (No offense to Alzheimer's sufferers...!) http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=5315&view=findpost&p=18634 answered that question a month ago, and it was in this very same thread, in response to essentially the same question, posted by you yourself...?

So are you looking for something that predates even that? There probably isn't anything, IMO. Remember, we're talking about Slimmy here - she doesn't need a reason to go on the attack, overtly or covertly. She just does it - that's how she is. You're right that she doesn't act randomly, but she doesn't act congenially, either, if you know what I'm sayin'. I almost admire her sheer determination and tenacity, actually - I just wish she would use her powers for goodness, instead of badness. sad.gif

OK (hey let's not criticize Alzheimers vicitms; I'd probably vote for Reagan over any alternative the oppostion fielded over the past twenty years, even in his advanced debilitated condition).

So SlimVirgin = Linda Mack is the theory. Must confess, Brandts's evidence is "strong and convincing but remains circumstancial" (cut and pasted from compromise language we just agreed to for Alger Hiss = ALES controversy when I return). For the record I would like to insert some comments regarding my interaction with Slim (and yes, the Brandt bio was created at a particular point when several users were accussed of "acting in concert" by adding critical material to the Chip Berlet article).

Slim and I worked together on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mutaween/Archive_1#Definition.2FNaming, an article I created to solve a dispute elsewhere, if I recall. It was a productive relationship, and I was very impressed with her attention to detail. At the time I thought she was moreless stalking myself and/or another user named Yuber. But Brandt's information now sheds more light on her interest in an obscure Islamic subject of this nature.

The other interaction with her was more lengthy, and I felt her use of the alleged policy, "extraordinay claims require extraordinary sources" was abusive, particularly since my sources were the Washington Post, an H.L Mencken winner (just like Berlet), and DoD publication. But none of this is reason to cease AGF with her when I return. And I believe she respects me as I respect her. Problem is, I've been encouraged to forget the details that led to my banning. Nonetheless, I was intimately (if that's the word to use) involved with her precisely at the time this dispute with Brandt erupted.

P.S. Arbitration was filed against me (and the cooked up conspiracy of users "acting in concert", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/Workshop#Motion_2_by_Nobs01_on_.22acting_in_concert.22) after SlimVirgin had exhausted and failed all efforts to argue Wikipedia policy against inclusion with me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Chip_Berlet&oldid=28992316#Proposal