In the context of the ongoing discussion on German Wikipedia about national socialist and other Hilter era graphics, Jimbo has been named "Führer" of the German Wikipedia.

Well, this is hardly surprising here, but it's good that somebody finally made it official....

Oh, look who's commenting! Our pal Durova! Fancy that!

I have no idea what's going on, but I like the meerkat reading WP and having a horrified look on his face.

The German Wikipedians tell it like it is!

After calling Jimbo "unser Führer" he was blocked in the german wikipedia for one year.

Der Jimbo's Face

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...56#Guten_Tag.21

No, not for calling Jimbo "unser Führer". The Germans are hysteric but not that hysteric. They said I asked for it and banned me even form my talk page. You can read the story on my user page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mms

Did I just miss it or is my question to Jimbo Wales regarding the exclusion of groups not yet discussed here?

Welcome to WR MMS! We're happy to hear your side of the story and maybe also get some background into what's going on at German WP.

I guess there are no direct links to these events on your English talk-page because it was all done in German? Too bad! Anyways, when you said:



You called the emperor naked, and That's Not Allowed. Actually to suggest there is an emperor is pretty bad on its own. Jimbo will ignore you -- but don't feel too bad, as he ignores all serious questions put to him. And, just in case you are making a really good point, one that is in direct contradiction to the wikiality handed down by the leader, there are even protective bootlickers available to tell you to shut the fuck up.

Your experience and final question deals directly to authority at Wikipedia. The people in charge prefer to think of themselves as not really being in charge, just a group of happy, benevolent types who are reluctantly changing the wikidiaper day in and day out. And for no pay, and little gratitude. They get quite angry when the usual structures of social dominance mysteriously appear -- this was not the intended result. They certainly don't like it when a lowly editor points out the inconvenient truth. I suspect that all anarchist-like experiments ultimately fail when the cognitive dissonance just becomes too great (WP isn't there yet though).

In essence, Wikipedia's authority model is an exercise of plausible deniability. No one is in charge, but people still manage to get blocked and banned anyways.

Regarding excluding groups and such: WP already went through such an episode earlier in the year under the name "BADSITES". The problem was the usual one: the proposed rules were too explicit for a ruling class that prefers vague, ill-defined, categories. (So you can allow friends who are in the class, and exclude enemies who are not in the class.) Many of the upper-class rulers were almost frank in saying this too.

All the rest is mere interminable commentary.

Some people are concerned "Wikipedia" could get sued for offending German laws by providing images of Nazi symbols and flags. Furthermore they are concerned to support Neo-Nazis. So they proposed to delete all SVG and high resolution images on this topic on Commons. Because this plan may need some time to get accomplished they proposed on the German speaking Wikipedia to block those images—as if Germans were more endangered by them.

Additionally someone already appended disclaimers to all captions of Nazi images on de.WP. If this would not have been performed in the mission against fascism it would be regarded as vandalism.

I hoped Jimbo would speak out against these plans. He should know that there would not be much left if WP would censor everything anyone asked for.

On the German speaking Wikipedia I made statements, on the English speaking Wikipedia I asked Jimbo if he agrees with me. He stated in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wa...t_of_principles WP is an open community, newcomers are always to be welcomed and "You can edit this page right now" is a sacred principle. If basically no one should be excluded—not merely because of membership to a group—this means every single group one can imagine is welcomed at Wikipedia. The rights to use the content of Wikipedia is granted through the GNU FDL. Every contributer who accedes to apply this license, accedes that his work could be used by Neo-Nazis and every other group legally.


Well this statement was made at de.WP. During my audience with Jimbo I didn't go into detail. I guess revealing I was blocked did not raise the probability to get an answer.

Jimbo himself calls himself leader:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/found...ber/036069.html

"Spiritual leader", huh? Well, to be fair, Jimbo has of late been reminding me of a certain other "spiritual leader":

After a few month I pressed a charge at the highest court in the German speaking Wikipedia (abbr.: de.WP). The proceedings were perturbed from the beginning. But after being blocked indefinitely “it doesn’t matter” anyway. Yes, the Arbitration Committee of de.WP showed itself unworthy for decisions of this importance. Ignoring all rules I appealed the judgement. The committee didn’t check if the blockage against me was in accordance with our rules, but instead it assessed my contributions and came to the conclusion that they don’t want to have a junkie in Wikipedia. The accusations are grotesque: It is said I would refuse to discuss the issues but I’m blocked since 20. Dec. 2007. The fact that I accused ten admins allegedly shows that my charge is unjust. That I don’t show any sign of humility because of my penalties—maybe imposed by a 12 year old—allegedly shows that I am a troll. I have to take action to kick these judges out of court. The next election of the Arbitration Committee in de.WP is in May 2008.

Instead of being blocked for 1 year, you are now blocked indefinitely. Hehe. Btw, interesting statements from the two involved admins. "I got something better to do than bother with crap like this." and "Block the ip and all offspring and end this nonsense."

The election of the Schiedsgericht (SG) is now. I tried to get myself elected but I got unmasked. I used a quite convincing statement to call for supporters which rose suspicion I would really make a change. My first supporter was an admin though. Some folks objected that my qualification (measured in edit counts) was just met. I wonder what a threshold value is good for, if it is not sufficient. Before the tag team discovered Lehrer Lämpel was mms they reverted my recent edits to reduce my count from 404 to 393 – downward tendency. Now at last my edits get systematicly reviewed and reverted. Edit summaries as Revert (POV edit of a blocked user), rubbish and Revert (Edit(war) of a blocked user) let surmise how they judge. Actually the edit war was run by an IP and I defended the old version written by another user.

All traces of my candidacy are removed. The simulation of an election should not be disturbed.

Two members of the SG run again for SG. Two other candidates can be regarded to be outside the recent power structure and have a mindset which distinguishes them.

You know, a bizarre story, my mother and a couple of her friends were invited to look around some rich guys house back in the 60s- years later a friend told her who it was that lived there..