WP administrator quits again

Lots of weeping, wailing & hand-wringing:

Agreed. I am deeply saddened at the loss of Guy. He's been a sane voice and a great member of the project, especially when dealing with trolls who others were willing to give a slap on the wrist. I am tired of people interpreting AGF to mean, "beat us, and the project, with a stick and we'll keep smiling about it because, really, lots of people with personality disorders straighten up and become productive contributors if you let them get away with acting like monsters for long enough." I will miss Guy a great deal, and hope he comes back. *shakes head sadly* - Kathryn NicDhàna ♫♦♫ 03:11, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

... another:

There are hundreds of admins and experienced users who have put their careers, their reputations and good names, in some cases their personal safety and privacy on the line fighting for and defending this Project. When has this Project ever defended us? The arbcom is out of touch, the board is a joke, the foundation, toothless and inept. This is endemic of much larger issues, mainly that the hippie peace and love bullshit Jimbo espouses DOES NOT WORK, that AGF is broken, and that maybe, just maybe, letting anons edit, and putting so many restrictions on administrative discretion is not a good thing. This project treats us like shit, yet we fight for it tooth and nail. We are lucky we haven't lost more like Guy, and unless something is done, we will lose more. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:38, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Let me tell you this-JzG was a wonderful man, that had some strange ideas about helmets, but wonderful nonetheless. If the trolls, stalkers, sexual humiliators and helmet partisans are given weight before our very best editors, then where is this project leading? On a road straight to hell. Some are not openly expressing their sympathy for Guy, fearing the repercussions (stalking, harassment, robbery, rape, prank phone calls, toilet papered trees, you name it--It's happened to me). They are the silent majority. The foundation does not give a rats tooty about us. Where do they think this will lead? A thriving encyclopedia, fulll of the sum of all knowledge? The project is in danger of being taken over by nothing more than "cyberterrorists" and we need to stop this. All of this "but Guy used bad language to trolls!" sounds an awful lot like "if she didn't want to be raped, then why is she dressed like that?" Having a rapists mentality is as bad as being a rapist. 217.169.44.14 16:27, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Families threatened???!!! Egads! I say; time to pull the plug on this so-called "project"

This is a no-brainer: If it caused Chapman so many problems & stress as he alleges in his essay, taking a break would have been the most prudent action & in fact, it was long overdue.

Anyone else notice the ArmedBlowfish vibes there? I've seen this guy around a lot recently, from various open proxies making the same kind of melodramatic talk on hot button issues on WP at the moment (I recall one on one of the Attack Sites Arb talk pages). Hmm.

Anyway yes this drama is way over the top and completely absurd. People expect me to believe that they value some stupid website over their family and themselves? To be honest, I don't believe half the stories about being 'stalked' that get used as excuses on WP (See 'Dihydrogen Monoxide', aka 'Giggy' who left for all of two weeks due to being 'stalked in real life' - bitch please). If this stalking problem is so widespread, with people being hunted down and attacked or whatever, why haven't we heard about it? You'd think the people who hate them would have been more keen to make it known what terrible people they think their victims are.

If JzG really is all that stressed out from wikipolitics, it's in his best interests to leave anyway. I certainly don't want him using Wikipedia as his punchbag. Why are all these people getting so worked up over Wikipedia? I really don't get it. It strikes me as incredibly unhealthy - I know a lot of people here hate WP, but I myself just feel really sorry for them. They get caught up in this bizarre mindfuck and waste months and months of their lives arguing over whether the full stop should come inside or outside a quote or whatever. What the hell is this? People like SlimVirgin who spend all day editing Wikipedia need to be removed for their own sake. Aside from physical health issues (your wrists, eyes, etc are going to suffer from all that computer usage), your mind is going to be totally messed up after years of obsessing over tiny little shit on some website. I wonder how it's going to feel when they get old and frail and realise they literally wasted years of their life on trivial crap. I feel bad for them, I really do.

I sent Guy an e-mail, asking how much $$ he'd take in exchange for his admin account, but his e-mail is set to block anything from my e-mail address.

Greg

Addictions are very difficult, if not impossible for most of us to deal with. His essay is very clear. He ended up risking family, friends, and his career..............all for what? Working for hours and hours at something that will always default to the mean and mediocre. By definition, the consensus and mass editing is a losing proposition.

A real life addiction that made his life unmanageable and that is that. A wise decision, he made.

They're addicted.

The (perception of) power - of being a Big Fish in a Small Wikipond - is obviously extremely addictive, and it takes extreme measures to get away from it.

I don't believe for a moment that JzG is gone, either. It's an attempt to go cold turkey, and from what I've read, cold turkey withdrawals don't work well.

In a sense, they've locked themselves into a trap of their own making, and I don't get the sense they know how to break the trap.

If they weren't so harmful, you could almost pity them... and, man, wouldn't THAT piss 'em off?

Indeed. It is THE TRAP of wikipedia.

The addictive task of Sisyphus.

When JzG lashes out at another editor, what he's really saying is...

JB196 has vanished, too. If He came back, so would JzG.

I just looked at the WP:ANI thread and an IP makes a tiny post and it inflames all the admins to post many pages of crap... and that's how to troll wikipedia!

So, if you got it, would you try to accurately mimic the JzG style: "fuck the trolls" rants, that kind of thing? Could be tough to fake his level of arrogance and vitriol, but if you behaved sanely, people would surely realize that there was an imposter in their midst.

In the cases of Slim and Guy, as in so many others like them, I feel far and away worse for all of the other people whose effort, energy, expertise, good faith, good will, and time they wasted. Wikipedia did not have to be a waste of time and effort — there was something that it could have become that would have been worth the work, but Power Mongers like Slim and Guy did wonders to mutate it into the waste that it became.

Jonny

I doubt an admin account would go for more than $1000.

Though, the richest person here is Patrick Byrne and he could afford to buy lots. However, historically reach people have bought off the administrators themselves like how SlimVirgin, Jayjg, etc. are bought off.

I don't think anyone "bought off" SlimVirgin and Jayjg, or at least there isn't a scrap of evidence to suggest that they have been bought off. But I think we've had this conversation about 50 times already here. Why on earth does this keep coming up?

As for buying an admin account - completely worthless. What would someone do with it? Trawl the new edits page and ban a few vandals? Again, I think we've had that conversation about 50 times already here.

I was the one who posted the ANI notice

Yeah....I have been noticing that, when I engage, in my now customary vandalism.

It's comical.

If Wikipedia offered an admin account, they'd have to pay ME to use it. A lot of money.

What would be the point? Trying to deal with hundreds of thousands of idiots with no filter on who gets to edit seems to me to be a good working definition of shovelling shit against a very strong tide. And if you didn't get some trolls trying to screw you over, you'd spend the rest of your time watching your back lest your fellow admins stabbed you ruthlessly there in the name of consensus and community.

Like Lincoln's dictum that three may keep a secret as long as two are dead, open-collaboration projects work only when they're not actually open except to a very select few.

1. I have not circumvented my ban from editing WP. This is my way of keeping the
   moral high ground - if I don't circumvent it, they have absolutely no excuse for
   outing and attacking me. Of course, they do that anyway, but at least I am fully
   within my rights to be upset about it.
2. second rape != rape
3. I don't like the word 'troll'. When you call someone a troll, you are basically
   accusing them of enjoying being yelled at. Assuming the person does not enjoy
   being yelled at, this is dehumanising.
4. I like JzG, but not as one of 'our very best editors'. I like him as a human
   being and a sort of distant friend. Not being a Wikipaedian, I wouldn't 'our' wouldn't
   work for me, and besides, I really don't care about 'the encyclopaedia', being
   banned, so if JzG is a good editor, that is irrelevant to me.
5. I think WP is already in hell.
6. What's a cyber-terrorist?
7. Like I said, I do not care about the encyclopaedia, and even if I did, I wouldn't
   want it to be the sum of all knowledge. When I did care, I thought it was about
   helping people, which is a very different thing.
8. User uses American spelling.
9. User misspelled 'full' as 'fulll'. My browser's spellcheck highlights this in red.
   (I need spellcheck because I am mildly dyslexic.)
10. User does not know how to make words possessive, and leaves out the
    apostrophes.

So you're saying that wasn't you?

Yes, I am saying that was not me.

I suspect I will be writing this each time JzG has another meltdown and tries to "quit." His medicine must give him enough of an ego based high; false sense of reality to truly believe he is going to get somewhere with his time on WP, despite his loss of vocation and family life.

Sad, albeit most addicts end up the same way if not forced by some life threatening event into a treatment program. In A.A. we say he will do the same bad things over and over, expecting a different result. Ergo, he is facing insanity every time he looks in the mirror...ad infinitum.

He writes new essays on WP, I believe, truly thinking that he is going to get his own article, as someone that is now notable enough and emo enough for WP! The irony! Self published JzG looking for a real job as a writer or staff person at WP? He will be famous? Nicht Vahr?
NOT!
LOL!

There are worse things to be addicted to than websites. Like drugs, whether of the
legal or illegal variety. And drugs, at least the legal kind, are better than self-injury.
And self-injury is better than suicide attempts.

All happiness is addictive, really. And treatment programs don't work for a lot of
people. I mean, they get 'better', but then as soon as something traumatic happens
they crawl back into the bottle, or whatever their addiction is. Many addictions
you recover from simply by getting addicted to something else.

Anyway, not saying JzG is an addict, but even if he is, I don't care, I'm probably
much worse.

I would think it would matter how it effected your life more than the particulars of the addiction.

When life is pain, addiction can help distract a person from being completely miserable.

My understanding of addiction is that at some point it causes more pain than it ameliorates.

Well, which d'ye think sounds worse? A. Remaining completely and utterly miserable
24/7 and becoming more and more hopeless the more you get used to it. B.
Alternating between misery and happiness (or at least some sort of relief, if not outright
happiness), where the sharp contrast makes the misery seem that much worse.

I have had some bad things happen to me. My responses have not always been adaptive. Still, I can not envision anything like "24/7"s of misery for any prolonged period of time. I have no problem with people choosing the pleasures of drugs or other addictions. Being addicted to an encyclopedia, however, just seems silly. The Velvet Underground would never write songs about Wikipedia.

Prolly not, but in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, I am wont to write songs about Homo Ludens...

Funeral March of the Marionettes

Midi Accompaniment: http://ultra.musenet.org:8020/media/alhitch.mid

Homo Ludens is on the loose!
Homo Ludens escaped the noose!

He's on a spree!
What can this be?

Maybe he's cooked his goose.

Having survived the 60's — don't ask me how, dumb luck, I guess — and having watched not a few of my generational cohort fall prey to addictions and cults of all kinds, if nothing else I did at least learn to recognize the bad seed before it flowers and bears its full harvest.

Wikipedia is a BADSEED, one of the baddest I ever did see.

Jonny

Hey, it's better than being addicted to physical pain.



If a person were theoretically addicted to WP, I think it would be to the
community more than the encyclopaedia. Unfortunately, the WP community
only seems supportive until they betray you and sledgehammer your heart.

I probably got "addicted" to WP at one stage. But it wasn't the community or the drama, I hated all that. It was creating content for readers. I am addicted to the act of creating, polishing, tending and improving a body of work. I always have been. I'm really good at it. Unfortunately, a lot of people aren't and on WP there's only so many times you can keep a fixed grin before you think - sod this!

WP killed my previously healthy attitude towards creative collaboration.

(Deleted my own post. Too long, too personal, and too far off topic).

Just try to look for the positives if you can, and if you must use drugs, use them because you enjoy them, not because you are trying to forget.

Like a pod full of bad seeds, Wikipedia is becoming. Many of the good seeds have left, fully disgusted by an utter lack of intelligence and an atmosphere void of charachter and integrity.

I think... the younger the crowd, the more likely you are going to finally puke your guts out.

I mean, many kids today do not even know what or where Vietnam is? 30 second attention spans and virtually no ability to do anything that does not directly connect to a power chord.

How many terms did FDR serve and what was his greatest accomplishment?

Guitar hero is more of a challenge than learning to play a real instrument.

How do we spell bubble? Roaring 20's.

My comment was originally directed toward JzG, because I think he is a WP addict of the first order.

The internet, in general, can be highly addictive. That is why I try to have a pubicist and marketing teams do the MySpace and WP thing. LOLS. Remember, I was deleted and I have sock puppets of me when I was never there?

I have long been of the opinion that MySpace was strictly for pubicists.

Publicists?

I can never get my MySpace to work properly.

http://www.MySpace.com/LeeNysted

http://www.MySpace.com/Nysted

http://www.MySpace.com/NystedMusic

500,000 little pubics have been there.

It is pubicists, btw. The entire site is run by sexuality and flash/flash. I could not take it.

It is all advertising and all hype.

Oh well perhaps I am better off to stick with little old MSN Spaces, where I write in my little blog, nobody reads it, nobody writes any comments, and I can just write to my heart's content. It looks terrible but hey.

Everyone has MySpace though I think. Even politicians have them. And musicians. If you like someone who is famous, you can just add their MySpace to yours as a friend, and then you feel like you're talking to a famous person. Even though they often get someone else to write their replies for them.

HaHa, we made you say pubicist !

Jonny

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the bit-drenched streets at dawn looking for an angry hack,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry website in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of ... Wikipedia ..."

-- Jonny "Ginsberg" Cache

It's not about enjoying or forgetting. Enjoying... they don't really do that. Forgetting... well, I'd like to not be constantly thinking about these things all the time, but I already know the dangers of forgetting entire memories. It's more for numbing and distractability. I don't want to feel. Braindeadness is bliss. And if I can think about
something else, that's helpful. Being unconscious is even better.