http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...m_as_.22spam.22




Quite simply Guy is a nuisance and a menace and as an Admin serves no useful purpose. He needs to be de-sysoped, God knows how with that attitude he was ever promoted in the first instance. The problem is, is there anyone around with the guts to do it? - I doubt it. Giano (talk) 23:18, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Guy deals with more than his share of nut cases and wackos, he shoulders a pretty big load. Admins who do this for too long get twisted. He needs to take a break and go write some articles for six months or a year, otherwise he's doomed. Let someone else carry the ring for a while. I've only intersected with him twice as an admin and found his decisions and reasoning sound in both cases.

The only reason guy deals with more than his share of nut cases and wackos is because he tends to label many people as nut cases and wackos. He, like Mongo, is a tool. They are lapdogs for people who don't want to get their hands dirty. In exchange, they get petted and feel loved.

Maybe one day JzG will stop and wonder why "some people have asked me to help in some specific cases" when he is quite clearly the worst person to handle any difficult situation. He probably thinks of himself as a problem solver who is willing to tackle a tough situation; the reality of it is much more pathetic and sad.

Aloft, I don't completely disagree with you here. I can say from personal experience that once an admin drifts away from creating content they start to go down hill fast - the goggles start changing colour. Fortunately, I figured this out quickly. Nevertheless, there are lots of nutcases and wackos that need to be dealt with, and an administrator who doesn't take on a tough case every once in a while has no providence criticizing those who do. Likewise, administrators that don't primarily edit and create content have no providence to perform any administrative actions.

I believe one of the biggest problems with the project is admins who've lost their way, forgotten why they should be there, think of themselves as rulers instead of writers. You can tell these people a mile off by their temperament and tone.

Why would anybody want to pet a dog that bites?

I don't think JzG is really being "used" by anyone. Remember, he's in the club of people who are allowed to swear at anyone they dislike, and he owns the second sooper sekrit mailing list.

He's a loose cannon and wields some power to be sure, but there's always a bigger fish.

Well, yes. If I were to name one person I wanted banned, it wouldn't be him. But I don't think he's being used; his actions just happen to further other people's goals.

Oh, that ring, not this one.

It appears that someone has changed the archive and removed Giano's comments?

Word!

Ok - Guy's behaviour is disruptive, uncivil, hypocritical, and damaging to the communtiy and the Wikipedia generally. The failure of other admins to attempt to engage Guy in discussion with a view to helping him contribute more positively undermines confidence in all admins, and the way in which discussion of the issue is curtailed by premature archiving of threads (this is NOT the first time, as I am sure you are aware) creates more stress and drama than it prevents. I am reluctant to start an RfC, both because I do have better things to do with my time than track down diffs of Guy's behaviour and the effects it has, and because when I have seen Guy's actions, a few predictable admins seem to leap to his defence by a) criticising or mischaracterising those raising the issue, or sideling discussions into tangential issues. DuncanHill (talk) 00:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)


Now there is a real crisis of confidence building.........against JzG!

Everything is being archived "instanter." (From my law days.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Adm...m_as_.22spam.22

The names of Microsoft programs make good expletives.

it got refactored to a super sekret mailing list, just like they like it. must keep all the unpleasantness away!! WP talk pages are only for slandering Bagley, Brandt, Ivy League Professors, Awbrey (who might be a subset of Ivy League Professors, I'm not sure what goes for Ivy League these days), Richard Gere, Skywalker Byrne, Mark Devlin, etc.

Giano - Italiano for "Balls of Fury"? my eye-talian ain't so great these days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MrW...l_about_the_RfC

Not looking so good for Guy.

Jehochman wrote,

Mr. Which's post…

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=178969841

…doesn't look like trolling at all.

The most telling word in Jehochman's message is "administrator's". Once again, instead of *better* behaviour being expected of administrators, we're instructed to expect and accept *worse*…whereas if an administrator has a problem with a regular user's actions and he or she blanks the thread, the user is a disruptive troll who must be blocked immediately, and his/her talk page protected.

Meanwhile, Corvus cornix runs cover for Guy by stating that criticism of Guy's behaviour is disallowed as a personal attack:

They'll all be banned by Christmas, unfortunately.

I've seen too many of these kinds of uprisings only for the Cabal to say "AGF! CIVIL!" and then "TROLL!" followed finally by "BANNED!"

But when there's wiki-life, there surely is wiki-hope. Right?

The most obvious fallacy in the Guy deals with more than his fair share of trolls is that his behaviour creates the responses. His immediate assumption of bad faith, caused by the presumption that all Wikipedia editors who are not admins are trolls, and he is not too sure about some of the admins, means that any aggressive behaviour is justified. Any defence is talking back and can be used to spiral out of control. Anyone who supports the attacked person then gets the meat puppet tag, which after the original user is banned gets you on the watch list. Guy more or less admits to this in ANI comments where he recalls similar patterns of behaviour from the user.

There are three main types of nuisances on Wikipedia that need intervention:

* Mindless vandals, typically the "Friends of Gays"
* Fixated POV vandals (there is a God therefore Darwin is the spawn of the Devil).
* Those seeking personal revenge on people, typically admins

99% fall into the first category
0.9% fall into the second
and 0.1% fall into the third.

Note that there is a fourth sort of issue that does not need any intervention: editing of wrong information into articles that should get corrected by the due process of the Wiki.

However, from an admin perspective, they see it more like 33%/33%/33% they are convinced that they are under siege, and they then get to 133% by lumping in the fourth set.

This mindset can be corrected, but with "well respected" admins like Slim pushing the agenda with the strong support of Jimbo, then the likes of Guy will not be convinced of the errors of his ways - and why would he? He sees his methods as effective, when nobody else has got the guts or determination to take action, he is Oliver North.

So until it dawns on Jimbo that he is part of the feedback loop which is actually generating the valid questioning of admin behaviour, which in turn generates the presumption of attack which leads to the banhammer which leads to...

The best way to fix a feedback loop is to disconnect it somewhere. The easiest point to disconnect it is at Jimbo. He recently accelerated the loop with his pronouncements of support. He needs to understand that he could cut it off. It would be as simple as saying "No investigations without clear unambiguous evidence of wrongdoing. Criticism of Wikipedia or the actions of its admins should be assumed to be Good Faith Feedback". When the admins stomp off saying he is not supporting them, he has to tough it out for the long term good of the project.

Well said.

In a dysfunctional system, one of the classic problems is installing an iatrogrenic feedback loop that acts to exacerbate, amplify, and prolong the departure from the desired goal state.

The inner Cabal is apparently operating with an iatrogenic function in the feedback loop.

I think that is a very good definition (now I've looked it up!) as I think that the vast majority of the cabal really do believe they are doing the right thing. I think that is what makes it so hard to deal with them, as they reinforce each others' belief of this. I'm not aware of anything that makes me think that Guy is doing it simply because that is what he likes doing: he has a "higher" purpose. I suspect his main issue is that he has nothing of interest outside of Wikipedia, he is addicted to being a big fish, but that does not make him inherently evil. I'm sure we all come back to the thought that, if life as a Wikipedian is this bad and this hard, why would a rational person continue to do this for no apparent reward?

I'm not so sure about Jimmy himself - he doesn't give a hoot, he just needs to keep it together until he can get some value out of it (except his expenses). I think he sees it important to support the cabal as they are the unpaid lackies keeping his dream going. He believes his own propaganda about an inner circle of useful people and does not actually trust the community to do the right thing.

Many thanks to Dogbiscuit for inspiring my new Signature.

This particular misconception runs very deep in our culture, and dates back at least 3750 years. It's been written about extensively, but long-held deep-seated myths are notoriously hard to overthrow.

There would be no problem here if "bring it to RfC" were actually a reasonable thing to do. But when people bring complaints about admins to RfC, someone usually says "this is not CERTIFIED properly, so your concerns are irrelevant". And if that fails, there's always the option of telling everyone they are trolls for escalating to RfC.

I remember writing up an RFC once. It was a complete waste of time and solved nothing.