Gary Weiss on the verge of a nervous breakdown Options

[WordBomb]

I'm told that all the recent tinkering with the article autobiography on Gary Weiss has put Weiss himself in a strange place, psychologically. He -- as Mantanmoreland -- has been begging many former allies for intervention and even asked ArbCom -- as Stetsonharry -- to be unbanned.

Of course, Stetsonharry was shown the door, but not before expressing his deep, DEEP, red-faced, vein-bulging, scowling disappointment.

Apparently it was Huldra's inspired addition of the Wikipuffery category that really set him off.

If had a devious side, it might suggest that just a little more improvement of the article (and it could certainly use more than a little improving) would yield some really interesting Weissian fireworks.

[Abd]

I was asked to provide the URL of the blog post that led me to the WordBomb slide show. Done. I had been asked to look at this by private email.

It only takes a few minutes to find duck droppings, looking around this. The last paragraph in the article at this moment is

In an article published in October 2009, Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi contended that Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were flooded with "counterfeit stock" that helped kill both companies. Taibbi said that the two firms got a "push" into extinction from naked short-selling.[99] However, this was disputed in an article in The Big Money, a financial news website operated by Slate.com, citing, inter alia, a study by finance researchers at the University of Oklahoma Price College of Business, which found "no evidence that stock price declines were caused by naked short selling."[100].

[99] Taibbi, Matt (October 2009). "Wall Street's Naked Swindle". Rolling Stone: pp. 50–59. . Retrieved 2009-10-15. Cf. p.53: "But the most damning thing the attack on Bear had in common with these earlier manipulations was the employment of a type of counterfeiting scheme called naked short-selling. From the moment the confidental meeting at the Fed ended on March 11th, Bear became the target of this ostensibly illegal practice -- and the companies widely rumored to be behind the assault were in that room."
[100] # "The Biggest Wall Street Conspiracies: A field guide to wild and woolly financial theories.", by Gary Weiss, 12 Nov 2009 hosted at thebigmoney.com

Cool! The text carefully wikilawyers the presumption of reliable source, i.e, it actually mentions Slate, but the actual source is Mantanmoreland Gary Weiss. Now, that's balance for you! Why not just say that the article was authored by Gary Weiss? And then fix the Gary Weiss article! (But it should probably be mentioned that Gary Weiss is not exactly a neutral reporter here...., and if there isn't reliable source on that.... weird.)

What does Mr. Weiss say?

Christopher Cox, chairman of the SEC, didn’t help this alternate history of the financial crisis when he said in July 2008 that there was no “unbridled naked short selling of financial issues.” It was completely debunked in a little-noticed academic study, conducted in May 2009 at the University of Oklahoma (PDF), which examined the same trading data cited by the conspiracy theorists. It found that there was "no evidence that stock price declines were caused by naked shorting." Any naked shorting, they found, took place after the two companies' stocks crashed.

So, the real source is the paper. Published? Not independently. The paper itself says only that the authors are "at" the University of Oklahoma. Students, I presume. The paper is not even hosted by the University of Oklahoma, but by cfri-cologne.de. Some reliable source, eh? "Little noticed?" For sure.

In any case, what does the paper actually say?

We find that, except for one instance in June 2008 of
possible stock price manipulation through naked shorting in relation to Lehman Brothers
Holdings Inc., most of the time, naked short selling was too low to reasonably “cause”
significant stock price distortions, and when naked shorting did become abnormally heavy, it
was after dramatic price declines, not before, indicating that naked short sellers were responding
to public domain information about the firms, rather than being responsible for triggering the
observed precipitous price decline.

Notice that the paper contradicts the SEC chairman's statement, but Weiss pushes the paper as having "completely debunked" the "conspiracy theorists." It's another source being distorted to make a point.

It's tempting to comment on the argument in the paper, which is logically shallow, but I won't. I'm not writing about naked short selling, per se.

Who made that edit? AmishPete. The Weiss story was dated November 12. Amish Pete pops the reference to the "University of Oklahoma" paper November 14. Reverted as non-RS by Cojoco, AmishPete comes back with the ref to Slate. No mention of Weiss, the author, in the note. Cojoco is apparently satisfied. The full reference mentioning Weiss was filled out by WJhonson on November 30. Nobody seems to have noticed.

AmishPete was indeffed on January 5, 2010, by Lar, citing strong correlation to JohnnyB256. The editor registered fifteen minutes before making his first edit, to Lehman Brothers, about naked short selling. The editor proceeded to edit highly related articles including the NSS article itself, Patrick Byrne, Overstock.com. But AmishPete made a remarkable disclosure:

I disclose as follows: I have in the past been a short-seller of Overstock.com. However, I have no current position in the stock, and have had no position in the stock for two years. I am a member of message boards and occasionally post on the Weiss-Overstock conflict. I am not acquainted with Mr. Weiss personally, but admire his journalism.

SPA, for sure. More than that? I can smell "experienced editor" here. Ikip thought so, too. The response was classic.

In spite of Lar's block log annotation, the checkuser finding was for Mantanmoreland, i.e., Gary Weiss.

What does this mean about the ability of the Wikipedia community to watch for POV-pushing in an article that is supposedly highly watched due to prior controversy? The reference is still there, without the explicit attribution (and explanation of relationship) that would be necessary to use it properly for balance. But writing by Patrick Byrne, whose opinions on naked short selling are very notable, is being kept out of the article. The Rolling Stone article was by an independent journalist ... being balanced by someone highly enmeshed in the controversy.

And the WMF can just wring its hands and say, "We can't micromanage the project, the community is responsible for that." And whenever the community begins to develop structures that might actually do this, it's mysteriously crushed. And when the community is defiant, Jimbo steps in, as with WikiVersity, and he delayed the day of reckoning for Mantanmoreland and dismissed the charges as rubbish. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's deliberate, which means that Wikipedia is, as many have said here many times, a positive harm as to the collection of "all human knowledge." It will be allowed to harmlessly collect trivia or even useful scientific fact, but nothing that offends the masters. And it will succeed as long as the larger community remains in naive trust, and is passive or in despair.

Again, I cannot remove that text because of my MYOB ban as it is being interpreted by ArbComm.

Pass me some wikiswill, whoever you are sitting next to me, I've had a hard day. I think I'm giving up. People interested in fixing this can come to me. And I'm not preparing for a flood of them. The ones who might actually be able to help don't believe anything is possible.

This post has been edited by Abd: Sat 3rd April 2010, 9:32pm