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> The WP World According to Grawp, A very nasty sockfarm raises various metaquestions
Milton Roe
post Tue 20th May 2008, 2:24am
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Checking up on a bit of vandalism to a physics article got me to a really big sockfarm, already dealt with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=212936641

The vandal's edit summary note says: "Moved Centrifugal force to HAGGÆR?: for great justice and epic lulz; also, go to htp://GrawpsGiantCockForc.on.nimp.org [a must-see]"

It's not a must see: you don't want to click on the link (which I've disabbled by misspelling "force"), due to what it will do to your computer: you get porn which is hard to remove. However, going past the sock's account to user:Grawp, the sockmaster (see the address of the website), gets you the epic Grawp sockfarm uncovered by admins, including über-Admin Alison (is this OUR Alison??):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...user/Case/Grawp

Here you can see the damage done to WP by one person or small group intent on creating what they call "epic lulz". In this case, the vandal may be referred to as Grawp. One of Grawp's socks is Qwerty and it may be inferred that a lot of the sockfarm here is active on Encyclopedia Dramatica, and before that, on LiveJournal (where they were kicked out for creating drama).

So, we have various problems with 4 types of vandals.

1) There exist damaged people who seek to vandalize to get attention, since they've been somehow neglected or ostracized when children. An element of comedy is often included in such vandalism, since comedy is probably a mechanism to get attention (standup comedians typically have notably horrendous childhoods-- comparing these is actually a standing joke among Standups). Class clowns are never firstborn kids who have two loving parents. They are generally later-born neglected kids who have other problems at home, or socially.

2) Some vandalism is of the comic type, to tweak the nose of authority. If you can pour jellybeans into the machinery, like Harlequin does to get at the master Timekeeper in the Harlan Ellison story (Repent, Harlequin, said the Ticktockman), then you can send a message. Think of Groucho and the many wars of Freedonia in Duck Soup, or Chaplain playing The Great Dictator. And the fascistic Wikipedia is a natural target for that.

3) Some vandalism is merely guerilla warfare against a system which has systemic problems and refuses to listen to constructive criticism.

4) Or it is done as revenge for unfair practices of the system on a particular person.

Real vandals are not pure type 1, 2, 3, or 4. Most are a mix of two or more types.

Now, administrators of WP really cannot see the problems in their own system, and many refuse to believe that anyone is a righteous type #3 or #4 and has any reason for honest retaliation for anything, since they believe everyone gets a fair shake. The few who are forced to see differently believe that even if somebody was mistreated, the importance of Wikipedia is so large as to override little problems with hurting individual people. This reason also prevents WP admins for having much sympathy for practical jokers of type #2. And lastly, there really are people who are type #1, who will damage a system for no good reason, for personal problems of their own. They would do this, even if Wikipedia is perfect. They exist to provide Wikipedia administrators with a perfect excuse to treat all vandals as type #1's who are attacking a system which has no reason to be attacked.

Take a look at this Grawp sockfarm again. If you were a WP admin, what would YOU think you were dealing with?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...user/Case/Grawp

And given the existence of Grawps, how are any pokes at WP from WR likely to be treated by honest administrators? If such there still be?

And given that the admins have sprotected every page under attack by this group, what then is still their rationale for why ALL pages on Wikipedia should not be sprotected? It seems to be happening piecemeal, without anybody admitting that it needs doing. How typical. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ohmy.gif)

Milt

This post has been edited by Milton Roe: Tue 20th May 2008, 3:05am
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Posts in this topic
Milton Roe   The WP World According to Grawp   Tue 20th May 2008, 2:24am
Somey   This should be on the blog. Very nice! And yes...   Tue 20th May 2008, 3:44am
Milton Roe   This should be on the blog. Very nice! And ye...   Tue 20th May 2008, 4:17am
Emperor   Grawp hit my encyclopedia too. Took me over a hal...   Tue 20th May 2008, 3:51am
ThurstonHowell3rd   The motivation of the vandals is easier to underst...   Tue 20th May 2008, 7:54am
cyofee   It should be noted that any subdomain of .on.nimp....   Tue 20th May 2008, 10:02am
Milton Roe   It should be noted that any subdomain of .on.nimp...   Wed 21st May 2008, 3:17am
ByAppointmentTo   Ah yes, Grawp. He's actually a contributor to ...   Tue 20th May 2008, 10:11pm
Milton Roe   Ah yes, Grawp. He's actually a contributor to...   Tue 20th May 2008, 11:45pm
tarantino   Wow. Some "read between the lines" evi...   Wed 21st May 2008, 1:06am
JohnA   Wow. Some "read between the lines" ev...   Wed 21st May 2008, 3:12am
ByAppointmentTo   Wow. Some "read between the lines" ev...   Tue 10th June 2008, 4:05pm
Giggy   [quote name='tarantino' post='103300' date='Wed 2...   Sat 14th June 2008, 1:36am
ByAppointmentTo   [quote name='tarantino' post='103300' date='Wed ...   Sat 14th June 2008, 7:58pm
Milton Roe   Also, what are you guys thinking of Grawp's u...   Sat 14th June 2008, 8:24pm
LamontStormstar   Grawp hit my encyclopedia too. Took me over a ha...   Fri 13th June 2008, 10:05pm
Viridae   That link isnt disabled. Anything before .on.nimp....   Sat 14th June 2008, 8:31am
Milton Roe   That link isnt disabled. Anything before .on.nimp...   Sat 14th June 2008, 6:17pm
LamontStormstar   I saw Alison made a post where she seemed to find ...   Sat 14th June 2008, 8:27pm
Jon Awbrey   So, we have various problems with 4 types of vand...   Tue 10th March 2009, 5:23pm
A Man In Black   This was a did not read the thread post before, le...   Sun 15th March 2009, 8:20am


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