JzG up to his old tricks on the Spam Blacklist Options

[Kato]

It turns out that JzG is up to his old tricks in the quieter environment of the Spam Blacklist.

Apparently, last month, he unilaterally placed a couple of legitimate links on the "Spam blacklist" to enforce some content dispute he was involved in over Cold Fusion.

Funnily enough, he did this shortly after I theorized here:

JzG has always been paranoid/obsessed/fixated with arbitrary bits of information which he alone judges to be "spam".

This "spam" notion is so riddled with discrepancies, anomalies and hypocrisies that only JzG has been able to fathom it.

Anything he comes across at any given time can potentially be removed by him as "spam". And the editor who added the removed material can quickly be denounced as someone "not cut out to be a Wikipedian" and may be added to his enemy list.

Some well respected spam supervisor bod picked him up on it (He actually wrote several scathing posts to JzG):

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...energytimes.com

Blocking and banning people who hold a minority position and advocate it is highly unlikely to improve the encyclopedia; it's more likely to make it dull and less useful. When I'm researching a topic, I want to know about the minority positions, in an NPOV but relatively complete manner, not just majority views.

....

[JzG]'s been asked to revert the blacklisting on the grounds of conflict of interest, if nothing else, and he's refused. So ... we will now see if it is legitimate to make "fringe" arguments and RS arguments in blacklisting, if mission creep has overcome the restraints on the blacklists, and if an administrator can protect his own edits to an article by blacklisting. If that's happened, broader community attention will be necessary, I'm afraid. This part of this affair could end quickly, right here. --Abd (talk) 22:45, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

and sums up

[this is] not the mission of the blacklist; instead, it was here used outside its mission by an administrator with clear involvement, in promotion of his "anti-fringe" POV, not in pursuit of true NPOV and balance, on the face of it, but of a "side."

JzG responds in the way only he knows how:

Perhaps we can think again if we ever get rid of the ring of POV-pushers, but the fringe types are too much of a problem right now, they got far too embedded and lots of folks are having to work very hard to pick apart all their nonsense and move back towards policy compliance on several articles. Guy (Help!) 21:05, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

So JzG is doing this all over again. Abd's assessment of JzG here could be applied to a dozen conflicts initiated by JzG in the past, word-for-word. Surely this berserker should be banned by now?

[Abd]

So JzG is doing this all over again. Abd's assessment of JzG here could be applied to a dozen conflicts initiated by JzG in the past, word-for-word. Surely this berserker should be banned by now?

(I'm not an admin or "supervisor," just an editor with some clarity and persistence. I've said many times I don't need admin tools and if I had them I'd be tempted to use them, the only thing that would be useful in my "meta" work -- i.e., on process -- would be the ability to see deleted contributions.)

After trying unsuccessfully to resolve this through lesser means (I'm a firm believer in WP:DR, which actually works if used with care and caution), after JzG MfD'd the evidence page I'd presented in an RfAr he'd filed, and it was practically demanded I file an RfC, though I'd have continued efforts short of that, I did it. And there is, as some have noticed, an outcry to ban me. WP:DGAF. If I can't follow WP procedure and policy, as it was intended and written, because some admin has a following dedicated to protecting him from the consequences of his actions, please, block me or ban me, I will be grateful. But I don't think it's going to happen. See, this case appears to be right on track to go to ArbComm, it made the required stop at RfC, and the principles are so clear that response has been limited to the lame "He didn't do anything wrong," as if violating fundamental admin policy isn't wrong, or, "he did the wrong thing but it was for a good cause," (when, in fact, there has never been a determination that these actions were good, rather, some haven't been challenged yet, more than the first step in WP:DR, precisely to avoid disruption), and "Abd is a [fill in the incivility and irrelevancy]," which is a well-known argument practically guaranteed to fail outside of the riots at AN and AN/I. I could be blocked and banned immediately, and this train would still make it to ArbComm. All the work has been done.

There is no need for pile-on or supportive comments, and, indeed, please do not go to the RfC and add irrelevancies there. It is only about failure to recuse when involved. That's why it will succeed. Let his side bring up all the irrelevancies they want, they will only hasten the day of reckoning. (But if someone has new evidence to present on that specific issue, not already presented, sure, but please keep the focus, and, I'd suggest, any examples of failure to recuse should be recent, not before January of this year, when it should have become clear to him that there was a problem.) There is only one response that might protect JzG's admin bit, I've been begging for it for months: someone he trusts points out to him that admission of error is a sign of maturity, it endears the one admitting to the community, the first time it's done, it completely defuses the issue, because, remember, Wikipedia does not punish (it appears that he has broken that principle as well, but never mind), and, so, would he please write "My bad. Admins should not use tools where they are involved. I won't do that again." It would all go away. Unless he does it again.

[Milton Roe]

So JzG is doing this all over again. Abd's assessment of JzG here could be applied to a dozen conflicts initiated by JzG in the past, word-for-word. Surely this berserker should be banned by now?

(I'm not an admin or "supervisor," just an editor with some clarity and persistence. I've said many times I don't need admin tools and if I had them I'd be tempted to use them, the only thing that would be useful in my "meta" work -- i.e., on process -- would be the ability to see deleted contributions.)

After trying unsuccessfully to resolve this through lesser means (I'm a firm believer in WP:DR, which actually works if used with care and caution), after JzG MfD'd the evidence page I'd presented in an RfAr he'd filed, and it was practically demanded I file an RfC, though I'd have continued efforts short of that, I did it. And there is, as some have noticed, an outcry to ban me. WP:DGAF. If I can't follow WP procedure and policy, as it was intended and written, because some admin has a following dedicated to protecting him from the consequences of his actions, please, block me or ban me, I will be grateful. But I don't think it's going to happen. See, this case appears to be right on track to go to ArbComm, it made the required stop at RfC, and the principles are so clear that response has been limited to the lame "He didn't do anything wrong," as if violating fundamental admin policy isn't wrong, or, "he did the wrong thing but it was for a good cause," (when, in fact, there has never been a determination that these actions were good, rather, some haven't been challenged yet, more than the first step in WP:DR, precisely to avoid disruption), and "Abd is a [fill in the incivility and irrelevancy]," which is a well-known argument practically guaranteed to fail outside of the riots at AN and AN/I. I could be blocked and banned immediately, and this train would still make it to ArbComm. All the work has been done.

There is no need for pile-on or supportive comments, and, indeed, please do not go to the RfC and add irrelevancies there. It is only about failure to recuse when involved. That's why it will succeed. Let his side bring up all the irrelevancies they want, they will only hasten the day of reckoning. (But if someone has new evidence to present on that specific issue, not already presented, sure, but please keep the focus, and, I'd suggest, any examples of failure to recuse should be recent, not before January of this year, when it should have become clear to him that there was a problem.) There is only one response that might protect JzG's admin bit, I've been begging for it for months: someone he trusts points out to him that admission of error is a sign of maturity, it endears the one admitting to the community, the first time it's done, it completely defuses the issue, because, remember, Wikipedia does not punish (it appears that he has broken that principle as well, but never mind), and, so, would he please write "My bad. Admins should not use tools where they are involved. I won't do that again." It would all go away. Unless he does it again.

Abd, in the nicest possible way, a suggestion: It's quite possible your writing is not "tl", but rather "tdtr" (to difficult to read). The reason being the cramming of several trains-of-thought into a single paragraph (see above), AND sometimes doing the same in single sentences.

I do this all the time myself, which is the reason I have to continually try to keep out of that trap.

Try splitting the above into double the number of natural paragraphs, and do the same for the couple of monster-sentences, and see what you have left. I think you'll get far fewer complaints about people falling asleep while reading your writing.

IOW, it's not that you don't have anything to say. It's that people take one broad overlook at the way you're saying it, and don't dare go into the swamp.

[Fritz]

So JzG is doing this all over again. Abd's assessment of JzG here could be applied to a dozen conflicts initiated by JzG in the past, word-for-word. Surely this berserker should be banned by now?

(I'm not an admin or "supervisor," just an editor with some clarity and persistence. I've said many times I don't need admin tools and if I had them I'd be tempted to use them, the only thing that would be useful in my "meta" work -- i.e., on process -- would be the ability to see deleted contributions.)

After trying unsuccessfully to resolve this through lesser means (I'm a firm believer in WP:DR, which actually works if used with care and caution), after JzG MfD'd the evidence page I'd presented in an RfAr he'd filed, and it was practically demanded I file an RfC, though I'd have continued efforts short of that, I did it. And there is, as some have noticed, an outcry to ban me. WP:DGAF. If I can't follow WP procedure and policy, as it was intended and written, because some admin has a following dedicated to protecting him from the consequences of his actions, please, block me or ban me, I will be grateful. But I don't think it's going to happen. See, this case appears to be right on track to go to ArbComm, it made the required stop at RfC, and the principles are so clear that response has been limited to the lame "He didn't do anything wrong," as if violating fundamental admin policy isn't wrong, or, "he did the wrong thing but it was for a good cause," (when, in fact, there has never been a determination that these actions were good, rather, some haven't been challenged yet, more than the first step in WP:DR, precisely to avoid disruption), and "Abd is a [fill in the incivility and irrelevancy]," which is a well-known argument practically guaranteed to fail outside of the riots at AN and AN/I. I could be blocked and banned immediately, and this train would still make it to ArbComm. All the work has been done.

There is no need for pile-on or supportive comments, and, indeed, please do not go to the RfC and add irrelevancies there. It is only about failure to recuse when involved. That's why it will succeed. Let his side bring up all the irrelevancies they want, they will only hasten the day of reckoning. (But if someone has new evidence to present on that specific issue, not already presented, sure, but please keep the focus, and, I'd suggest, any examples of failure to recuse should be recent, not before January of this year, when it should have become clear to him that there was a problem.) There is only one response that might protect JzG's admin bit, I've been begging for it for months: someone he trusts points out to him that admission of error is a sign of maturity, it endears the one admitting to the community, the first time it's done, it completely defuses the issue, because, remember, Wikipedia does not punish (it appears that he has broken that principle as well, but never mind), and, so, would he please write "My bad. Admins should not use tools where they are involved. I won't do that again." It would all go away. Unless he does it again.

Abd, in the nicest possible way, a suggestion: It's quite possible your writing is not "tl", but rather "tdtr" (to difficult to read). The reason being the cramming of several trains-of-thought into a single paragraph (see above), AND sometimes doing the same in single sentences.

I do this all the time myself, which is the reason I have to continually try to keep out of that trap.

Try splitting the above into double the number of natural paragraphs, and do the same for the couple of monster-sentences, and see what you have left. I think you'll get far fewer complaints about people falling asleep while reading your writing.

IOW, it's not that you don't have anything to say. It's that people take one broad overlook at the way you're saying it, and don't dare go into the swamp.

You've said this many times in many places, but I must ask, Abd: if one ignores something you've written because it is too long, how can I continue discussion? It may save you time to write in this manner, but (whilst probably not your intent) your verbosity appears to be intended to disenfranchise people from debating with you. This is especially true when you follow up with "you don't have to read this if you don't want to".

It isn't that people aren't interested in what you have to say, it's just that you write so much that it is intimidating.

[gadfly]

It isn't that people aren't interested in what you have to say, it's just that you write so much that it is intimidating.

Various people are attributed as having said something very like the following. Whoever it was, it illustrates the problem well, I suspect:

"My apologies for the length of this message. I did not have the time to make it shorter."

[Abd]

It isn't that people aren't interested in what you have to say, it's just that you write so much that it is intimidating.

Various people are attributed as having said something very like the following. Whoever it was, it illustrates the problem well, I suspect:

"My apologies for the length of this message. I did not have the time to make it shorter."

Mark Twain. Ah! I see that Fritz already wrote that....

Look, if what I write is too long, don't read it! This is not just me writing here, there are others, and nobody has any obligation to read every post. It takes me much longer to write what I write than it would take for a normal reader to read it. And if I don't have time to cut it down, which can take a lot of time, what's the harm? There will be no quiz tomorrow. A long post does not inhibit discussion, except maybe of that particular post, and it creates no presumption of being right if it is ignored. Wikipedia needs to learn this lesson, in fact, for editors with a lot to say, who are even cogent, are not infrequently blocked, banned, or their comments are removed on this phony tl;dr argument. Nothing wrong with tl;dr itself, so why is there something wrong with tl? If it's bad, delete it. If it clutters up a talk page, collapse it and see what happens. Just don't edit war over trivialities, or even over something important!

This post has been edited by Abd: Thu 16th April 2009, 4:07pm

[Milton Roe]

It isn't that people aren't interested in what you have to say, it's just that you write so much that it is intimidating.

Various people are attributed as having said something very like the following. Whoever it was, it illustrates the problem well, I suspect:

"My apologies for the length of this message. I did not have the time to make it shorter."

Mark Twain. Ah! I see that Fritz already wrote that....

B. Pascal gets historical precidence!

[dtobias]

B. Pascal gets historical precidence!

I used to program in Pascal, but I prefer Perl now.

[Milton Roe]

B. Pascal gets historical precidence!

I used to program in Pascal, but I prefer Perl now.

For a while the people who programmed in Perl went on to program in Wolfowitz, a much harder language.

Say, what do you think of this new Ubamatu operating system? It's supposed to do everything for everybody and be free for 95% of them.