Dr. Blofeld blows off Wikipedia Options

[A Horse With No Name]

The latest retirement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dr._Blofeld

[Nerd]

The latest retirement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dr._Blofeld

This is the guy that edits thousands of times every day and has created the most articles ever (though they are mostly stubs). I'm uncertain how he could go from massive wikiaddict, editing every minute of every day, to complete cold turkey.

[Mike R]

The latest retirement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dr._Blofeld

This is Cool Cat / White Cat, right? What other usernames am I forgetting? Hasn't he "quit" several times already? I reckon he'll be back in plenty of time to run for arbcom again.

[Eva Destruction]

The latest retirement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dr._Blofeld

This is Cool Cat / White Cat, right? What other usernames am I forgetting? Hasn't he "quit" several times already? I reckon he'll be back in plenty of time to run for arbcom again.

No, this is the former Blofeld of SPECTRE (T-C-L-K-R-D) – that "white cat" bit is just a coincidence (because Blofeld in the Bond films had a white cat yadda yadda).

This post has been edited by Eva Destruction: Tue 2nd June 2009, 3:55pm

[Mike R]

The latest retirement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dr._Blofeld

This is Cool Cat / White Cat, right? What other usernames am I forgetting? Hasn't he "quit" several times already? I reckon he'll be back in plenty of time to run for arbcom again.

No, this is the former Blofeld of SPECTRE (T-C-L-K-R-D) – that "white cat" bit is just a coincidence (because Blofeld in the Bond films had a white cat yadda yadda).

OK, sorry, my mistake, thanks for the info.

[Milton Roe]

The latest retirement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dr._Blofeld

This is the guy that edits thousands of times every day and has created the most articles ever (though they are mostly stubs). I'm uncertain how he could go from massive wikiaddict, editing every minute of every day, to complete cold turkey.

Pussy Galore is now properly ensconced in an official WP Bond Woman infobox; my work here is done.

[EricBarbour]

That's really sad. Blofeld was one of their top contributors.
Now he's gone.......as it turns out, because some Wiki-whores treated him like shit.

There are now few fellow editors who make this an enjoyable experience for me and I thank those for always being there for me and the good times we shared but I now often feel like I'm more of nuisance than a respected and liked contributor to this site. Some people seem to regard me as a pain for creating stubs and believe I do nothing but contaminate this site with new articles and even some people who I thought respected my editing and me as a person no longer seem to care about me. Real friends on here seem few and far between and I see the project is developing increasingly quickly so maybe its time I retired from editing and devote more time to my talents elsewhere.

Not to mention the serious issues this site has with "policy" and double standards which plague the site and an overall community outlook that has driven hundreds of our best editors away because it has become intolerable. Nobody has to bother to edit this site and I hope the general attitude towards content contributors and general environment of the site will improve in future as I never felt particularly welcome here by the general community except by those people I mentioned and also those who awarded me barnstars in their appreciation. A lot of people seemed to share a cynical view on what I do here whether its creating stubs or trying to work on core articles and being reverted within minutes. It often feels unpleasant to have this sort of cynicism on here, even at a recent AFD one editor took a swipe at me out of the blue on a completely unrelated topic and used that as his justification. Some snide comment like "arne't you the guy who created sub stubs on a bunch of non notable Greek museums. What would you know about what it notable? (the AFD being about a list of children's characters which the community voted to snowball keep) I sincerely hope that content contributors will be better treated on here in the future, I would like to edit a site which is fun and a site where fellow editors respect each other's work and have a good time together. Just glancing at a few of the wikipedia space pages today reveals a far distant story I'm sad to say. Life is too short to not have fun and wikipedia is no longer a fun site to spend my time editing on with little reward.

His decision might relate to this. It's the only recent AN traffic I can find that he was involved with.
Also got into a fight with Everyking.....

Hmmm, turns out someone outed him on AN/I in March.
He used to edit under his real name.

He was an actual productive editor--a scarce commodity in Wikiland.
Whomever chased him off should be ashamed.

[Nerd]

That's really sad. Blofeld was one of their top contributors.
Now he's gone.......as it turns out, because some Wiki-whores treated him like shit.

There are now few fellow editors who make this an enjoyable experience for me and I thank those for always being there for me and the good times we shared but I now often feel like I'm more of nuisance than a respected and liked contributor to this site. Some people seem to regard me as a pain for creating stubs and believe I do nothing but contaminate this site with new articles and even some people who I thought respected my editing and me as a person no longer seem to care about me. Real friends on here seem few and far between and I see the project is developing increasingly quickly so maybe its time I retired from editing and devote more time to my talents elsewhere.

Not to mention the serious issues this site has with "policy" and double standards which plague the site and an overall community outlook that has driven hundreds of our best editors away because it has become intolerable. Nobody has to bother to edit this site and I hope the general attitude towards content contributors and general environment of the site will improve in future as I never felt particularly welcome here by the general community except by those people I mentioned and also those who awarded me barnstars in their appreciation. A lot of people seemed to share a cynical view on what I do here whether its creating stubs or trying to work on core articles and being reverted within minutes. It often feels unpleasant to have this sort of cynicism on here, even at a recent AFD one editor took a swipe at me out of the blue on a completely unrelated topic and used that as his justification. Some snide comment like "arne't you the guy who created sub stubs on a bunch of non notable Greek museums. What would you know about what it notable? (the AFD being about a list of children's characters which the community voted to snowball keep) I sincerely hope that content contributors will be better treated on here in the future, I would like to edit a site which is fun and a site where fellow editors respect each other's work and have a good time together. Just glancing at a few of the wikipedia space pages today reveals a far distant story I'm sad to say. Life is too short to not have fun and wikipedia is no longer a fun site to spend my time editing on with little reward.

His decision might relate to this. It's the only recent AN traffic I can find that he was involved with.
Also got into a fight with Everyking.....

Hmmm, turns out someone outed him on AN/I in March.
He used to edit under his real name.

He was an actual productive editor--a scarce commodity in Wikiland.
Whomever chased him off should be ashamed.

I think it had quite a bit to do with this. He could do with a break though.

[Somey]

He was an actual productive editor--a scarce commodity in Wikiland.
Whomever chased him off should be ashamed.

Well, that depends on your perspective...

If he really does stay away, then this could be a significant turning point in the shift from Maintenance Phase to whatever comes next, be it Attrition, Dissolution, Lockdown, or some combination thereof.

IMO the terminal phase(s) are going to be much more difficult to predict than what we've seen so far... if mass-stub-creators like Blofeld start leaving, that could change "community chemistry" in significant ways. There may be an upsurge in territorialism and general nitpicking, reduced inclusion standards for new articles, and above all, an increased sense of futility among the old-timers.

Or, maybe not. Who can say, really?

[EricBarbour]

If he really does stay away, then this could be a significant turning point in the shift from Maintenance Phase to whatever comes next, be it Attrition, Dissolution, Lockdown, or some combination thereof.

Better name for what's going to happen to the mighty wiki: POOF. As in, gone.

I think it had quite a bit to do with this. He could do with a break though.

That's charming. Fuchs wasn't such a prick before. Why is he doing that?

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Wed 3rd June 2009, 3:59am

[Hipocrite]

Sorry, I must have forgotten - we don't care much about people who add content-free sub-stubs about living people to be grist for the greatest engine of personal defamation that ever existed. Wait, if they quit wikipedia, they are true heroes.

The number of dangerous, unhelpful articles created by Dr. Blofeld is massive. Here's one from just before he left:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yklymberdi_Paromov

Yes, that's exactly what's going to solve the BLP problems - articles about every politician in Turkmenistan! Watched by only it's author, who is the single most prolific creater of BLP stubs in ALL TIME!

Oh, and from his failed FAC, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kareena_Kapoor#Personal_life

This post has been edited by Hipocrite: Wed 3rd June 2009, 4:10pm

[Nerd]

Sorry, I must have forgotten - we don't care much about people who add content-free sub-stubs about living people to be grist for the greatest engine of personal defamation that ever existed. Wait, if they quit wikipedia, they are true heroes.

The number of dangerous, unhelpful articles created by Dr. Blofeld is massive. Here's one from just before he left:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yklymberdi_Paromov

Yes, that's exactly what's going to solve the BLP problems - articles about every politician in Turkmenistan! Watched by only it's author, who is the single most prolific creater of BLP stubs in ALL TIME!

Oh, and from his failed FAC, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kareena_Kapoor#Personal_life

Yes, his "mission" to create an article on every building, every person, ever hamlet, every individual plant, every atom, every cell... is quite damaging to the encyclopedia. There may well be millions of articles, but how many of them are more than stub-class? It's plaguing it with useless pages. He should concentrate his efforts elsewhere, and use his apparently large amount of free time making existing articles better, particularly the BLPs he creates and works on.

[Somey]

Yes, his "mission" to create an article on every building, every person, ever hamlet, every individual plant, every atom, every cell... is quite damaging to the encyclopedia. There may well be millions of articles, but how many of them are more than stub-class? It's plaguing it with useless pages. He should concentrate his efforts elsewhere, and use his apparently large amount of free time making existing articles better, particularly the BLPs he creates and works on.

I agree completely, but IMO we also have to bear in mind that this is as much a "foolish consistency" problem as it is a "OMG I must create more WP articles than anyone else in the world to satisfy my ego or whatever" problem.

The process is basically this: WP has articles on all the politicians in the UK, so someone in Australia figures that to be fair, there should be articles on all the politicians in Australia. Then someone in India, knowing that lots of people in India speak/read English too, decides that there should be articles on all the politicians in India, and then someone from Pakistan figures that if all the Indian politicians are going to have articles, then all the Pakistani politicians should have them. At that point, you get people like Blofeld saying that "for consistency's sake," every politician in every country in the world should have an article.

The problem is that it's hard to argue against consistency, because no matter how foolish it is, it's still going to be the hobgoblin of little minds belonging to people who will argue in favor of it. Blofeld is definitely making the problem worse, but if people on WP don't make a principled stand against foolish consistency, this sort of thing will keep happening even after he's gone.

[A Horse With No Name]

Sorry, I must have forgotten - we don't care much about people who add content-free sub-stubs about living people to be grist for the greatest engine of personal defamation that ever existed. Wait, if they quit wikipedia, they are true heroes.

The number of dangerous, unhelpful articles created by Dr. Blofeld is massive. Here's one from just before he left:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yklymberdi_Paromov

Yes, that's exactly what's going to solve the BLP problems - articles about every politician in Turkmenistan! Watched by only it's author, who is the single most prolific creater of BLP stubs in ALL TIME!

Oh, and from his failed FAC, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kareena_Kapoor#Personal_life

Oh, I don't know. I supposed Mrs. Paromov would be happy to see Yklymberdi (or Ykly, for short) immortalized on Wikipedia. And maybe Mr. Paromov is showing the article around the office? And maybe Mr. Paromov has a gorgeous secretary named Gina who is very excited to see her boss noticed in the English language media? There are at least three people who Dr. Blofeld made happy.

As for BLP problems - heck, there's nothing there that a well-aimed blowtorch can't fix.

[Kato]

Blofeld hasn't really done anything wrong. If there are bios on the most minor American political figures, then why not bios on Asian politicians??

And when creating these articles, editors aren't expected to immediately understand that a Wikipedia bio is a minefield and disaster zone. On the surface, Wikipedia looks like a formal and legitimate compilation exercise, and someone like Blofield probably thinks they are just helping out. It takes a while before it becomes apparent how screwed up WP is.

[Friday]

I only know this guy from one incident. He was creating a bunch of stubs on Mexican highways or something. I pointed him to an article called something like "List of Mexican Federal highways" and suggested that it was better for the content to be there, together in one place, instead of scattered about many tiny, nearly identical articles.

Rather than responding with reasonable discussion, he just started whining about how evil admins are. At this point I wrote him off as a whiny fool who could not be reasoned with. He seems to be very into counting articles. I suspect his own ego got in the way and caused him to place more importance on his accomplishments than on doing what's best for the content.

Maybe this was an unusual case, but judging from the comments here, it doesn't sound like it. He stormed off after some disagreement about a featured article? He sounds like yet another kid trying to level up, and getting angry at whatever gets in the way of that. In short, he sounds exactly like the kind of editor we _don't_ need.

[Grep]

Rather than responding with reasonable discussion, he just started whining about how evil admins are. At this point I wrote him off as a whiny fool who could not be reasoned with. [...] In short, he sounds exactly like the kind of editor we _don't_ need.

Ah yes, the admin view of "reasoned with". Hitting them with a clue-stick until they give in. I wonder how many admins respond with reasonable discussion -- oh no, they don't need to, as disagreeing with them is just plain wrong. Still at least Friday gives fair warning on his user page, with the line about ''so many fools voting on things, and thinking their votes should count for something''.

[Friday]

Rather than responding with reasonable discussion, he just started whining about how evil admins are. At this point I wrote him off as a whiny fool who could not be reasoned with. [...] In short, he sounds exactly like the kind of editor we _don't_ need.

Ah yes, the admin view of "reasoned with". Hitting them with a clue-stick until they give in. I wonder how many admins respond with reasonable discussion -- oh no, they don't need to, as disagreeing with them is just plain wrong. Still at least Friday gives fair warning on his user page, with the line about ''so many fools voting on things, and thinking their votes should count for something''.

Err, maybe some people do it that way, but that's not at all how the incident I'm describing went down. There was no clue-stick, there was no "I'm an admin so you must do what I say."

My original note to him said "You're making a bunch of almost identical little stubs with no real info in them.. Would this be better all in one place? I see there's already a [[List of Mexican Federal Highways]] which contains the same info." You can see the following discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fri..._state_highways where he was the only one bringing up who is or isn't an admin. I don't see how that is relevant to the issue at hand. Maybe he was just having a bad day or something, but his response gave me no confidence that he was responsive to reason.

[Grep]

Rather than responding with reasonable discussion, he just started whining about how evil admins are. At this point I wrote him off as a whiny fool who could not be reasoned with. [...] In short, he sounds exactly like the kind of editor we _don't_ need.

Ah yes, the admin view of "reasoned with". Hitting them with a clue-stick until they give in. I wonder how many admins respond with reasonable discussion -- oh no, they don't need to, as disagreeing with them is just plain wrong. Still at least Friday gives fair warning on his user page, with the line about ''so many fools voting on things, and thinking their votes should count for something''.

Err, maybe some people do it that way, but that's not at all how the incident I'm describing went down. There was no clue-stick, there was no "I'm an admin so you must do what I say."

My original note to him said "You're making a bunch of almost identical little stubs with no real info in them.. Would this be better all in one place? I see there's already a [[List of Mexican Federal Highways]] which contains the same info." You can see the following discussion at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fri..._state_highways where he was the only one bringing up who is or isn't an admin. I don't see how that is relevant to the issue at hand. Maybe he was just having a bad day or something, but his response gave me no confidence that he was responsive to reason.

Well, what I see is you defining "responsive to reason" as "agreeing with me" and "whiny fool" as "disagreeing with me". You were as inflexible as he was, but the difference is that you could throw him off the project, and you both knew it.

This post has been edited by Grep: Wed 3rd June 2009, 7:16pm

[Milton Roe]

I only know this guy from one incident. He was creating a bunch of stubs on Mexican highways or something. I pointed him to an article called something like "List of Mexican Federal highways" and suggested that it was better for the content to be there, together in one place, instead of scattered about many tiny, nearly identical articles.

Rather than responding with reasonable discussion, he just started whining about how evil admins are. At this point I wrote him off as a whiny fool who could not be reasoned with. He seems to be very into counting articles. I suspect his own ego got in the way and caused him to place more importance on his accomplishments than on doing what's best for the content.

Maybe this was an unusual case, but judging from the comments here, it doesn't sound like it. He stormed off after some disagreement about a featured article? He sounds like yet another kid trying to level up, and getting angry at whatever gets in the way of that. In short, he sounds exactly like the kind of editor we _don't_ need.

On the other hand (not having read the above discussion) could it be that you also are being unreasonable? There's nothing wrong with a stub. It doesn't sit there and take up "room" and it's not an eye-sore (even less than the needed redlink). Yes, Mexican Federal Highways could go nicely in a stand-alone list, but lists and categories are not a "Versus" thing but a complimentary thing. Most types of information benefit by being indexed both ways (albeit sometimes in different formats). WP grows from stubs just as it does from redlinks. Most good articles (including almost all the good highway articles) grew from stubs.

This is how the article on Interstate 70 started out originally on Wikipedia, in 2002. Click on it now.

I'll tell you how to really be an asshole admin: go around an put RfD tags on all those Mexican highway stubs, with the suggestion that they are better LIST material. Then you'll really be into creating the fools' drama that is Wikipedia.