Jayjg opines on Thekohser's hometown, it's about the Jews, of course Options

[Jon Awbrey]

The thing I keep seeing here is the way that Wikipedia pulls even it's "professional" critics down, down, down into the very wiki-pixelism that they once sought to criticize.

OK, Jon, you're right, but let's try to find the teachable moment. As Somey cogently notes, it's not about synagogues or even Judaism, it is about personal point of view and persistent bias.

As it happens, I already know where that is.

Life is rife with teachable moments. The question is — what lesson should we take away from this one?

If people are still buying the premiss that anyone in control of the situation does now or ever will care about making an honest encyclopedia out of Wikipedia — after all they've seen for the last 9 years — then they may not be teachable at all. Not in this domain. Piling up one more pixel of the same ole same ole data is just not going to get the picture through any of the channels they have on their sets.

Jon

[Sarcasticidealist]

Frequent Jayjg adversary ChrisO steps in and attempts to prove that eventualism works.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Some wikipedia editors do mushrooms, some do WWII, Jayjg does Jewish topics. I don't see a problem with that edit. The religion section just needs a little expanding to cover other historical churches.

I'm thinking that Jimbo probably does mushrooms.

[gomi]

Frequent Jayjg adversary ChrisO steps in and attempts to prove that eventualism works.

Right. And eventually someone will create a page for every single Lutheran, Baptist, Seventh-Day Adventist, Unitarian, and Hutterite church in continental North America, to match the list of synagogues.

Actually, does this prove eventualism, or Review-ism? Surely nothing would have happened if Greg hadn't mentioned it here.

[thekohser]

Apparently, Jayjg is a graduate of the Wikipedia School of Geography, too.

[Proabivouac]

Hey, Greg, I've advised Jayjg not to block any of your harmless sockpuppets in the future, especially with inaccurate summaries such as block "evasion"…

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...:Log&user=Jayjg

…hopefully, he will heed my advice, and no more threads of the grasping-at-straws-struggling-to-find-wrongdoing variety will be necessary.

[Milton Roe]

I grew up in Jackson, Michigan. I lived there until I was 12, and I've returned to visit perhaps 15 times in the nearly three decades since.

Jackson is not a major hub of Judaism the way you might think of a place like Cherry Hill, New Jersey, or North Miami Beach, Florida, or Rockville Centre, New York might be. Rather, most of the religious residents of Jackson are either Catholic or Lutheran (if you're white), or any of a set of other Protestant churches (if you're African-American).

But, Jayjg has swooped in to add what he apparently knows about to the Wikipedia article about Jackson:

==Religion==
Jackson is home to [[Temple Beth Israel (Jackson, Michigan)|Temple Beth Israel]], a [[Reform Judaism|Reform]] [[synagogue]] founded in 1862 by [[History of the Jews in Germany|German Jews]].

That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want to understand religion in Jackson, Michigan, Wikipedia will have you believing that it's pretty much a Jewish town, top to bottom.

Now, is this the way Wikipedia gets built? Is Jayjg doing the "proper thing" by adding this one fact, with the absence of any other facts about other religions in Jackson? Might I expect that other editors will be along shortly to describe the various other faith traditions that reside in Jackson?

(Point of fact... the Temple Beth Israel in Jackson is located on the SW corner of Michigan & West Avenues. My first piano lessons were conducted on the NW corner of the same intersection.)

Some wikipedia editors do mushrooms, some do WWII, Jayjg does Jewish topics. I don't see a problem with that edit. The religion section just needs a little expanding to cover other historical churches.

Since there are very few things in life which have more than 3-degrees of separation from mushrooms, it's possible that our zealous metaphorical mycologist might be able to insert spores and hyphae into nearly every Wikipedia article , much to the dismay and eyerolling of people who later had to go and remove the stuff or stick it in some mushroom-trivia section. Which would not be so bad, if such an editor were not an administrator with the habit of indef-blocking those whose edits he disagrees with, and the habit of traveling in a little kabbal of tag-teaming mycelium-pushers who are making sure that this is not just a polite and reversible offering of moldy connections into WP-- but rather a regular forest of toadstools which bespeaks a serious fungal infestation.

[Cla68]

Frequent Jayjg adversary ChrisO steps in and attempts to prove that eventualism works.

ChrisO reads the Revue! Or are one of you actually ChrisO?

Anyway, it looks like Jayjg may be an SPA. That might should be noted in the current ArbCom case he's a party to. Actually, I don't think being an SPA is wrong if the account follows the rules and edits in good faith, which I think is evident that Jayjg does not when it comes to certain subjects.

Back to Greg's original post in this thread...what you're seeing is incrementalism. Adding random facts to various articles, which I do also, usually about military subjects, is supposedly helping build the 'pedia. I remember, however, hearing in a graduate class about government policy administration that incrementalism equals mediocrity. Thus, most Wikipedia articles are mediocre and probably will remain so as long as all that happens to them is that random editors pass by and add random details.

[Milton Roe]

Frequent Jayjg adversary ChrisO steps in and attempts to prove that eventualism works.

ChrisO reads the Revue! Or are one of you actually ChrisO?

Anyway, it looks like Jayjg may be an SPA. That might should be noted in the current ArbCom case he's a party to. Actually, I don't think being an SPA is wrong if the account follows the rules and edits in good faith, which I think is evident that Jayjg does not when it comes to certain subjects.

Back to Greg's original post in this thread...what you're seeing is incrementalism. Adding random facts to various articles, which I do also, usually about military subjects, is supposedly helping build the 'pedia. I remember, however, hearing in a graduate class about government policy administration that incrementalism equals mediocrity. Thus, most Wikipedia articles are mediocre and probably will remain so as long as all that happens to them is that random editors pass by and add random details.

Cla68, if you added military factoids to every article on any subject you ran across, and then edit warred over it, I'd think you were doing some harm. SPAs make very, very, very poor administrators.

[thekohser]

Well, well, well... The plot sort of thickens.

It seems that someone in Jackson named Lane Montgomery with connections to the Temple Beth Israel website (a 25-year-old convert to the Jewish faith) wanted to get more information into Wikipedia about the synagogue. In fact, the editor reveals that he's acting at the request of his rabbi (conflict of interest by proxy?).

Meanwhile, Jayjg salivates (like a chewing worker bee we recently learned about) at the thought of wholesale conversion of copyrighted content over to the GFDL.

[Cla68]

Frequent Jayjg adversary ChrisO steps in and attempts to prove that eventualism works.

ChrisO reads the Revue! Or are one of you actually ChrisO?

Anyway, it looks like Jayjg may be an SPA. That might should be noted in the current ArbCom case he's a party to. Actually, I don't think being an SPA is wrong if the account follows the rules and edits in good faith, which I think is evident that Jayjg does not when it comes to certain subjects.

Back to Greg's original post in this thread...what you're seeing is incrementalism. Adding random facts to various articles, which I do also, usually about military subjects, is supposedly helping build the 'pedia. I remember, however, hearing in a graduate class about government policy administration that incrementalism equals mediocrity. Thus, most Wikipedia articles are mediocre and probably will remain so as long as all that happens to them is that random editors pass by and add random details.

Cla68, if you added military factoids to every article on any subject you ran across, and then edit warred over it, I'd think you were doing some harm. SPAs make very, very, very poor administrators.

I completely agree with you, SPA's should not be administrators, especially a checkuser or oversight. If it is discovered that an administrator is an SPA, he/she should be stripped of those privileges immediately.

[EricBarbour]

Cla68, if you added military factoids to every article on any subject you ran across, and then edit warred over it, I'd think you were doing some harm. SPAs make very, very, very poor administrators.

I completely agree with you, SPA's should not be administrators, especially a checkuser or oversight. If it is discovered that an administrator is an SPA, he/she should be stripped of those privileges immediately.

Please stop tiptoeing around it.

Jayjg should be desysopped immediately. He's playing games with Greg. He added that
bit about the synagogue, probably knowing it would get Greg's goat, Greg being from
Jackson originally. Jay's done penny-ante shit like this before. And worse.

But of course, Jay won't be challenged, because Jay is as pure as the driven matzoh.

[Proabivouac]

Jayjg should be desysopped immediately. He's playing games with Greg. He added that
bit about the synagogue, probably knowing it would get Greg's goat, Greg being from
Jackson originally.

I just asked Jayjg about this. Here is what he wrote:

How would I know it was his hometown? I was cleaning up the article on the synagogue - someone added a huge copyvio to it. I noticed it had been tagged by the bot as not being linked from other articles, so I linked it from a couple other articles.

Seems consistent with his edit summaries, at least:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=history

Now whether he created this article to begin with in order to get Greg's goat, who knows? Although since Greg doesn't have a reputation for antisemitic comments, I don't see why anyone would conclude that this was an effective way to bother him, even if Jayjg did know that Greg was from Jackson (I didn't.)

[TungstenCarbide]

Jayjg should be desysopped immediately. He's playing games with Greg. He added that
bit about the synagogue, probably knowing it would get Greg's goat, Greg being from
Jackson originally...

Nah, I looked through his edits after reading another thread. He's been doing historical american synagogues for a long time. Nothing devious about that edit.

[Somey]

I'd have to agree with the part about Jayjg not knowing where Greg is from originally - I myself thought he was from a small town in Pennsylvania. There's no reason to think that Jayjg was aware of Greg's connection with Jackson, MI...

Nevertheless, Jayjg should be desysopped immediately. That pretty much goes without saying.

[Proabivouac]

Nevertheless, Jayjg should be desysopped immediately. That pretty much goes without saying.

That's the official opinion of the Review, no question. It may be that some people have legitimate grievances wth Jayjg. But taking a look at WR staff, of the time I've been here, at least three of five have had sockpuppets legitimately and accurately busted by Jayjg at one point or another. Not that I'd judge all these socks to be alike and equal in wrongdoing, and socking per se is no sin - for example, Greg's socks do nothing unethical - but isn't that a massive undisclosed conflict of interest?

[Somey]

That's the official opinion of the Review, no question. It may be that some people have legitimate grievances wth Jayjg. But taking a look at WR staff, of the time I've been here, at least three of five have had sockpuppets legitimately and accurately busted by Jayjg at one point or another. Not that I'd judge all these socks to be alike and equal in wrongdoing, and socking per se is no sin - for example, Greg's socks do nothing unethical - but isn't that a massive undisclosed conflict of interest?

Maybe, but I'm afraid you've started with a false premise. That isn't the "official opinion" of the Review at all, as the Review doesn't actually have official opinions. (Prevailing opinions, maybe, but not "official.")

Also, with respect to the WR staff members who have been "busted," I wouldn't really call it a conflict of interest. What you're describing is more like "possible grudge-bearing," isn't it?

[EricBarbour]

Nah, I looked through his edits after reading another thread. He's been doing historical american synagogues for a long time. Nothing devious about that edit.

Even so, the coincidence is just amazing, especially after Jay's made a part time job out of
chasing real and suspected (and delusional) socks of Greg Kohs--for the last 2+ years, I believe?

Makes me wonder if Jay didn't go out and do heavy research on his "target".

I need to check if cities near Jackson with "historic" synagogues received
similar treatment from Jay or not.
If he's done it elsewhere, he's off the hook....maybe.

Yeah, he should still have his vile powers removed. I don't care if he writes about
every little synagogue in America and posts book-length screeds about the moral
superiority of Israel.....as long as he can't oversight things out of existence, and
harass people for socking (and he himself has been caught socking more than once!)

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Tue 31st March 2009, 8:44am

[CharlotteWebb]

Now whether he created this article to begin with in order to get Greg's goat, who knows?

Well, Jayjg writes a lot of articles about synagogues.

Congregation Beth Israel (New Orleans, Louisiana) • Beth Israel Congregation (Salisbury, Maryland) • Temple Beth Israel (Niagara Falls, New York) • Temple Beth Israel (Bergen County, New Jersey) • Congregation Beth Israel Abraham Voliner • Congregation Beth Israel (Onset, Massachusetts) • Congregation Beth Israel (Media, Pennsylvania) • Congregation Beth Israel (Honesdale, Pennsylvania) • Temple Beth Israel of Highland Park and Eagle Rock • Beth Israel Congregation (Uwchlan, Pennsylvania) • Congregation Beth Israel (Lebanon, Pennsylvania) • Beth Israel Congregation (Washington, Pennsylvania) • Beth Israel Synagogue (Asheville, North Carolina) • Beth Israel Synagogue (Hamilton, Ohio) • Temple Beth Israel (York, Pennsylvania) • Temple Beth Israel (Fresno, California) • Temple Beth Israel (Plattsburgh, New York) • Temple Beth Israel (Sharon, Pennsylvania) • Temple Beth Israel (Macon, Georgia) • Temple Beth Israel (Jackson, Michigan) • Beth Israel Congregation (Kingston, Ontario) • Congregation Beth Israel (Berkeley, California) • Congregation Beth Israel (Scottsdale, Arizona) • Congregation Beth Israel (Gadsden, Alabama) • Congregation Beth Israel (Charlottesville, Virginia) • Congregation Beth Israel (North Adams, Massachusetts) • Beth Israel Congregation (Jackson, Mississippi) • Congregation Beth Israel (Bellingham, Washington) • Congregation Beth Israel (Vancouver, British Columbia) • Beth Israel Congregation (Florence, South Carolina) • Beth Israel Synagogue (Halifax, Nova Scotia) • Beth Israel Synagogue (Edmonton, Alberta) • Temple Beth Israel (Port Washington, New York) • Beth Israel Synagogue (Roanoke, Virginia) • Beth Israel Congregation (Ann Arbor, Michigan) • Temple Beth Israel (Eugene, Oregon) • Congregation Beth Israel (San Diego, California) • Congregation Beth Israel (Malden, Massachusetts) • Congregation Beth Israel (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) • Congregation Beth Israel (Worcester, Massachusetts) • Congregation Beth Israel (Austin, Texas) • Temple Sinai (Oakland, California)

That's a lot of goats to get. I didn't know that many places allowed livestock within the city limits.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

But taking a look at WR staff, of the time I've been here, at least three of five have had sockpuppets legitimately and accurately busted by Jayjg at one point or another.

There you go with the impugning again. First of all, if you will consult our roster, WR only has 4 staff members. Somey says he has never edited WP, and I have no reason to doubt his word. Next, how on earth would you know whether Jayjg's sock busts were legitimate and/or accurate? The evidence is never made public (although presumably other CUs can see it.) As someone else pointed out, Jayjg seldom CUs nowadays except in cases which bear upon his POV, which raises questions about the "legitimacy" of any CUing that he does. And as someone else, possibly Thatcher, wrote somewhere (forgive my vagueness on this point,) CUing is not an exact science -- much of it is based on hunches, rough geolocating (the perp lives somewhere in a Very Similar Way,) and "exceptional well-honed linguistic analytic skills."