Examples Of Edits Where Administrators Lower The Quality Of Articles Out Of Personal Spite

The Wiki-Wretched-Wrefuseniks more lately arrived on our shores and the occasional lurker in the shadows of this Agonistic Agora may be forgiven for being a little confused about some of the assertions that many of us old castaways, marooned here by morons out Wikipedia Way, take for granted as a routine matter.

By way of documenting one class of castigations, I will start collecting examples of edits where Wikipedia administrators, and those who follow their bee-knighted leaderslip, lower the quality of an article out of sheer spite toward anyone whom they find it convenient to accuse of being the agent of a previously banned user.

We had once before collected many cases of this sordid sort of abuse back in the days of the ebortive WikAbuse.Com project, so I will dig up what I can find of that old data and add documentation on the more recent, and ever increasingly egregious examples.

Jonny

Dynamic Sorting Shelf —

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Sounds like a good idea. Lists can be very enlightening.

Why not list administrators damaging articles by following their personal agendas for whatever reason? Or would that be too long?

In order to avoid the fog of war and steer clear of all the fuss that comes with making controversial judgment calls, I will try to stick to fairly clearcut examples of spite-based abuse, or what is commonly called «Cutting Off One's Nose To Spite One's Face». Especially cut-&-dried examples of this brand of mission-subverting conduct are those that satisfy the following two criteria:

• Moderately reasonable observers would probably agree that the revision decreased the quality of the article.
• The administrator or familiar in question justified the deletion or reversion by charging that a banned user was involved somehow in adding the material deleted or in making the modification reverted.

Jonny

Make sure you capture the Thomas J. J. Altizer and Liz Cohen articles that JzG went nuts on, around January 23 and March 29, 2007, respectively. When he discovered Jimmy Wales had unblocked me in March, and I had returned to making decent, upstanding entries into Wikipedia, Guy Chapman couldn't handle it. So, he went on a deletion rampage on articles edited by my previous socks -- which were overturned (by Grace Note and Viridae, yay!). He even didn't want me editing about the location and history of a Michigan state road south of Bad Axe.

This was the day I finally realized that Guy Chapman cares little about Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. Only his prickish games are what really matter to him.

Greg

Yes, the Befumbling Case of Dude Manchap will figure heavily in the sequel …

Needles to say, everyone here should feel free to anthologize their own favorite horror stories for the e-musement of posteriority, on a compact dynamic page or otherwise.

Jonny

The Case of Collateral Dumbage

I thought I was just having one of those deja re*vu moments, and then I remembered that I had already sketched the essential details of that outrageous Picaroonescapade that spun off from the Robert Black affair. So let me just copy that documentary here and add further comment as necessary.


Case. Flawed And Irresponsible Research Tool
FAIRT reverts censorship-vandalism on Robert Black (professor)
FAIRT carries out series of 5 copyedits on Robert Black (professor)
Picaroon bans FAIRT
Raul654 tags FAIRT as sock of Jon Awbrey
ElinorD reverts all good faith edits and improvements by FAIRT
Picaroon searches WP for instances of the string "Jon Awbrey" and deletes a reference co-authored by Awbrey from the article on Interdisciplinarity
Altacc restores the content deleted by Picaroon from Interdisciplinarity
Deskana bans Altacc
Deskana deletes User:Altacc
Deskana reverts edit by Altacc to Robert Black (professor)
Deskana re-iterates Picaroon's vandalism on Interdisciplinarity
Result. Four mind-numbingly vicious Wikipedia administrators vandalize two wholly independent articles and ban two editors who acted in good faith to correct acts of censorship and vandalism.

I want to say that the conduct of Picaroon, Raul654, ElinorD, and Deskana on the Robert Black and Interdisciplinary articles amounts to one of the worse cases of coordinated Administrative attack on good faith editors and the quality of articles that I have ever seen occur on any wiki ever.

If anyone dares in future to wonder why anyone with more than half a brain points to the Cabal as the single most destructive force that is bringing Wikipedia down — If anyone dares in future to wonder why many people of good will have the utmost contempt for the members of this Cabal — then I have only to refer them to this page in Wikipedia history.

Jon Awbrey

If only Newton were alive today and had ticked off certain administrators.

I'm working on it.

The Case of the Shabbiest Version Valiantly Defended

Case. Patchcock
Ryulong bans Patchcock
Ryulong deletes User:Patchcock
Ryulong reverts improvements by Patchcock
Ryulong's preferred version of Winning Colors
Result. A mind-boggingly badly written article is preserved in that condition to this very day.

You might think that the Valiant Defender of the Shabbiest Version might take a moment to Stoop Down from his Fell Sw-Oops! of RoboConkwest, ¬2mention his Ocean'o'grabass studies, to correct a grammo, a puncto, or a typo or two — but Nooooo, so little time, so many peons to bash, ban, and burn.

Jon Awbrey

Bumpity Bump

Jon