Gerard blocks Giano for sockpuppetry, invokes good/bad hand accounts policy - wrongly Options

[privatemusings]

hee hee

impressively dumb!

(sorry DG, you're a pussycat, I know... but that was spectacularly useless!)

[Kato]

I may be missing something, but can anyone explain to me what Giano actually does to deserve this Cult Status?

Sure, he writes a few nice articles, but so did fellow sock-puppeteers Poetguy and SlimVirgin. And writing a decent article for WP isn't particularly taxing.

I just take a look at Giano's endless drama-fueled stunts and wonder why he hasn't been given the boot long ago? His relentless, hyperactive, jack-in-the-box rabble-rousing lacks any credibility to me.

This kind of thing is clearly bad for Wikipedia -- which is good for everyone else, of course. If Giano was doing this stuff as some kind of anti-Wikipedia activist, I'd be applauding him at every turn, but he and a whole load of followers seem to think these antics represent some kind of credible anti-corruption drive to improve the place.

When the red mist clears, Team Giano are generally found to be as indoctrinated, and as blind to the genuine problems of WP as the most hardline Wikipedo. Meaning that these interpersonal dramas actually obstruct reform by sapping time and energy.

[Peter Damian]

I may be missing something, but can anyone explain to me what Giano actually does to deserve this Cult Status?

Sure, he writes a few nice articles, but so did fellow sock-puppeteers Poetguy and SlimVirgin. And writing a decent article for WP isn't particularly taxing.

I just take a look at Giano's endless drama-fueled stunts and wonder why he hasn't been given the boot long ago? His relentless, hyperactive, jack-in-the-box rabble-rousing lacks any credibility to me.

This kind of thing is clearly bad for Wikipedia -- which is good for everyone else, of course. If Giano was doing this stuff as some kind of anti-Wikipedia activist, I'd be applauding him at every turn, but he and a whole load of followers seem to think these antics represent some kind of credible anti-corruption drive to improve the place.

When the red mist clears, Team Giano are generally found to be as indoctrinated, and as blind to the genuine problems of WP as the most hardline Wikipedo. Meaning that these interpersonal dramas actually obstruct reform by sapping time and energy.

That remark makes me think seriously of leaving WR. Perhaps I wouldn't be missed. Giano may not lack drama but he stands for all the maligned and abused and despised content contributors that are still there. And he sticks up for them too.

That was an appalling remark Kato. I had a very high opinion of you until I saw this.

[Obesity]

That remark makes me think seriously of leaving WR. Perhaps I wouldn't be missed. Giano may not lack drama but he stands for all the maligned and abused and despised content contributors that are still there. And he sticks up for them too.

That was an appalling remark Kato. I had a very high opinion of you until I saw this.

Please, Peter. This is vintage Kato. Anyone who doesn't subscribe to old-school-WR's well-worn hard line approach--namely, that WP is a complete failure that needs to be wholly demolished--is part of the problem, or, at best, a distraction from those "real issues". You're either with WR, or you're with the terrorists. Choose a side.

Wikipediots like myself celebrate Giano's talent for casting sharply worded tomatoes on the faces of the feeble, misguided, self-important, scheming schoolmarms who currently run the assylum.

Giano can be smug, shrill and, at his worst, an attention glutton and bully (which is especially ironic, given his underdog pretensions), but we forgive--and perhaps even encourage--these foibles because his efforts to expose the incompetence/impotence of the Arbitration Committee and other key figures are so often right on the money.

Not all of his antics are effective or well reasoned, but he remains a worthy martyr for highly skilled content editors who been made to feel unwelcome by WP's absurd police system.

We also enjoy his writing style; his best articles are a joy to read, and his essays are hilarious.

[groody]

Please, Peter. This is vintage Kato. Anyone who doesn't subscribe to old-school-WR's well-worn hard line approach--namely, that WP is a complete failure that needs to be wholly demolished--is part of the problem, or, at best, a distraction from those "real issues". You're either with WR, or you're with the terrorists. Choose a side.

Can't speak for Kato, but I can speak for myself. As far as I'm concerned, Wikipedia *is* a complete failure, it just hasn't realised it yet. Despite some shining lights who do appear to be trying to actually make an encyclopaedia, of whom Giano is one, it simply cannot succeed in being anything more than a drama generator, an MMORPG, a playground for school bullies of the worst kind. It has much good content, but, unless there is a very major change in governance, that will inevitably be watered down, sanitised and vandalised out of existence as time goes on. It is futile to edit wikipedia when a ten-year-old admin can, and will, decide that it's in violation of either WP:NOR or WP:NPOV or - well - you get the WP:POINT.

Until something radical happens, Wikipedia can WP:FUCKOFFYOUCUNT as far as I'm concerned, and so can anyone still trying to edit there in any sort of non-subversive manner. The time for Giano-esque wordplay has been and gone. It's time for pitchforks and torches.

f.

This post has been edited by groody: Sun 23rd November 2008, 5:26pm

[Milton Roe]

Can't speak for Kato, but I can speak for myself. As far as I'm concerned, Wikipedia *is* a complete failure, it just hasn't realised it yet. Despite some shining lights who do appear to be trying to actually make an encyclopaedia, of whom Giano is one, it simply cannot succeed in being anything more than a drama generator, an MMORPG, a playground for school bullies of the worst kind. It has much good content, but, unless there is a very major change in governance, that will inevitably be watered down, sanitised and vandalised out of existence as time goes on. It is futile to edit wikipedia when a ten-year-old admin can, and will, decide that it's in violation of either WP:NOR or WP:NPOV or - well - you get the WP:POINT.

Until something radical happens, Wikipedia can WP:FUCKOFFYOUCUNT as far as I'm concerned, and so can anyone still trying to edit there in any sort of non-subversive manner. The time for Giano-esque wordplay has been and gone. It's time for pitchforks and torches.

f.

If you'll allow me a side riff on this, I once thought the same, but have changed my mind. You see, it's not true that

It has much good content, but, unless there is a very major change in governance, that will inevitably be watered down, sanitised and vandalised out of existence as time goes on.

For the simple reason that vandalized stuff does NOT go "out of existence." It merely retires to the museum basement, until it can be used for restoration (or if you prefer, it never left the museum basement-- the vandalized Mona Lisa up there on the wall, is a copy). WP doesn't oversight those old best "stable" versions (whether they've been marked "stable" or not), and in any case, even if WP tried to kill them, most have been scraped by mirror sites that do NOT allow "anybody to edit" and thus vandalize. So WP, despite all the 3-steps-forward-2-back nonsense, is a rachett which creeps slowly forward. Most of us are pissed off at the slow RATE it improves, and the damage it does to BLP on the side, but we don't disagree that the content gets getting and more inclusive. A few people, like Kato of the "WP-delenda-est" repetitions. But the rest of us here on WR I think disagree.

Meanwhile, it's frustrating. WP with its present (non)governance is a Michelangelo Pietà with the head knocked off (thanks, Lazlo Toth-- you're no Don Novello). It's a gold inlaid Kuwaiti palace with Iraqi shit on the floor. As Mr. Spock once said about logic, it's a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad.

So what to do? I've already taken an oath not to help WP with any of its fundamental problems until it does something about its "culture" of Goths. And I mean that in all senses of the word. And though I also work on individual science and history articles I'm interested in (I contribute more lasting content than just about anybody dramatizing on Jimbo's TALK page), I only revert vandalism on articles where it is interfering with my personal work. The rest of it I leave alone to the Huggle users who only have work because Jimbo and the community cannot allow Huggies for the un-potty-trained. The non-housetrained.

And I'm going to suggest something else, which I heard the other day and am happy to spread as a meme. I suggest that editors of content on WP, as a protest until sprotection (or its equivalent) arrives, refrain from reverting ANY IP-vandalism on their favorite weekend day. Simply pick your religious day of rest, and do no IP-vandal reversion on that day, letting it pile up like the garbage in a city sanitation engineer's strike. But not all the time. Just one day a weekend. I do not urge anybody to vandalize wikipedia; I suggest you merely refrain from cleaning up gratuitous IP-vandalism on the weekly day of IP-vandal-protest, and thus send a message to the others of the "community" at WP, that if they insist on letting "anybody" edit, then for this day, THEY get to clean up the shit from it.

Enjoy, you lackies!

(I think I'm going to re-post some of the above in its own thread)

Milton

[Lar]

As Mr. Spock once said about logic, it's a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad.

Wasn't he high at the time? (I, Mudd)

[Milton Roe]

As Mr. Spock once said about logic, it's a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad.

Wasn't he high at the time? (I, Mudd)

As an actor, or as the character? As the character, no. That shit-eating grin you remember was probably from This Side of Paradise. Though it seemed that about every other episode they had to devise a new way for Spock (and everybody else) to become emotional.

I think David Carradine was on LSD in every single episode of Kung Fu, though. He's since claimed, that, anyway.

[Lar]

As Mr. Spock once said about logic, it's a wreath of pretty flowers that smell bad.

Wasn't he high at the time? (I, Mudd)

As an actor, or as the character? As the character, no. That shit-eating grin you remember was probably from This Side of Paradise. Though it seemed that about every other episode they had to devise a new way for Spock (and everybody else) to become emotional.

OK, maybe he was just acting goofy to confuse the 'bots... kinda like some vandals WP gets.

I think David Carradine was on LSD in every single episode of Kung Fu, though. He's since claimed, that, anyway.

Would not surprise me, that show was trippy even if played straight.