The idiocy and the irony, banning nonsense goes full circle Options

[Kato]

A few months ago, I was arguing here with Slim about how, back in the old days, she and others were targeting just about anyone as being a LaRouchie, and I described the chaos that witchhunt had caused. I especially noted an incident when herself and long time user (and another anti-LaRouche figure) 172 (T-C-L-K-R-D) discussed banning a totally innocent guy as a "New LaRouche editor" back in 2007.

Here is my post, Slim simply batted this incident off by not addressing it specifically - claiming that people weren't banned as LaRouchies without good reason.

Not necessarily so. The whole LaRouche vs anti-LaRouche thing was a farce that had spilled out all over Wikipedia. Wholly unrelated people were getting threatened by Wikipedia powerplayers as "LaRouchies" on a regular basis. People saw it with their own eyes and have not been swayed by Hersch at this site. It was outrageous, and one of my first posts at this site was to highlight one such offense.

In April, 2007, an editor went to SlimVirgin and Willbeback and wrote this about Mbhiii (T-C-L-K-R-D) :

New LaRouche editor

This looks quite familar now. [10] Like the last HK sockpuppet blocked by SlimVirgin, HonourableSchoolboy, this account has been editing articles that appear in my recent contributions history or are linked to my userpage. Sigh. 172 | Talk 19:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Sadly, by now I can spot LaRouche propaganda from a mile away. 172 | Talk 20:23, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The message to SlimVirgin has since been deleted. But the spirit of the message is typical. The accused had nothing to do with LaRouche, and his edits had nothing to do with LaRouche. Yet he was immediately attacked as a "New LaRouche" editor.

A group of editors, led by SlimVirgin, and accompanied by anti-LaRouche campaigners Chip Berlet and Dennis King (whose Conflicts Of Interest were never questioned) were allowed to treat Wikipedia like an anti-LaRouche version of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Thus creating massive bad feelings and subverting the whole culture of the place.

Well here comes the most ridiculous development yet. Having spent years orchestrating witch-hunts with Slim and Will against LaRouchies, former admin User:172 has himself been indefinitely banned by some lunatic administrator - on the declaration that he is the pro-LaRouche renegade Cognition (T-C-L-K-R-D) based on "checkuser evidence".

So either User:172 was the most brilliant stooge account ever (going back to 2002), or WP's checkuser facitilities are so incompetent, it has convicted the Witchfinder General of being a witch!

And to cap it off. Slim was right in the mix during these latest banning discussions which nailed 172!

[Krimpet]

Assuming some folks at a meetup brought their laptops, found a Wi-Fi hotspot and started fiddling on Wikipedia, hijacking their accounts while sitting nearby would be so incredibly easy that I'm surprised there hasn't been several high-profile incidents already. (Word for the wise: use HTTPS. )

And as for database corruption, MediaWiki's architecture clearly adheres to the "New Jersey" ideal of software design. There's minimal checking for sanity and data integrity going on, no atomicity, logic and display code intertwined all over the place. The software's origin as a PHP script written by a college student certainly shines through; it tries to get its job done most of the time, but isn't too concerned about all the details and corner cases.

For example, you'll occasionally come across a user that's been blocked, but with no entries at all in the block log. This happens because the Apache server crashed halfway through the block - after blocking the user, but before recording the data in the log. (Transactions? We don't need no stinkin' transactions.)

[MBisanz]

Assuming some folks at a meetup brought their laptops, found a Wi-Fi hotspot and started fiddling on Wikipedia, hijacking their accounts while sitting nearby would be so incredibly easy that I'm surprised there hasn't been several high-profile incidents already. (Word for the wise: use HTTPS. )

And as for database corruption, MediaWiki's architecture clearly adheres to the "New Jersey" ideal of software design. There's minimal checking for sanity and data integrity going on, no atomicity, logic and display code intertwined all over the place. The software's origin as a PHP script written by a college student certainly shines through; it tries to get its job done most of the time, but isn't too concerned about all the details and corner cases.

For example, you'll occasionally come across a user that's been blocked, but with no entries at all in the block log. This happens because the Apache server crashed halfway through the block - after blocking the user, but before recording the data in the log. (Transactions? We don't need no stinkin' transactions.)

I've managed to delete an image so well that it cannot be recovered, I also break about half a dozen images whenever I run a category deletion, all of which are documented errors that cannot be easily fixed apparently.