Removed

I'm afraid you have the wrong Gwen Gale.

As should be obvious, I'm a big fan of Wikipedia Review. Most of its contributors either fall into the category of people with rational and philosophical objections to Wikipedia (either as a concept or as currently operated) or into the category of Wikipedia contributors who are nevertheless interested in criticisms of the project. Then there are people who have been personally mistreated on Wikipedia - most of these people respond reasonably, others respond, in my view, somewhat disproportionately. But I can at least recognize that even the ones who respond disproportionately are doing so in response to real and genuine provocation.

But there are other categories besides, and one of them is people with no well-founded philosophical objections to Wikipedia, no particular record of mistreatment, but only a sour taste in their mouth that their attempts to abuse Wikipedia for their own self-promotion were thwarted. These people thought Wikipedia was great until their own vanity articles failed to stick, or their attempts to manipulate processes through sockpuppetry failed, after which they decided that there must be something truly wrong with the project. I have somewhat less affection for these people than for the people I mention in my first paragraph. I hope that the people covered by the first paragraph don't band too closely with these people in the belief that the enemy of an enemy is a friend.

Edited to fix typos.

I don't think most of us do.

Wikipedia Review has been so effective that the word is out: if you want to be heard without Wikipedia administrators pushing you around, this is the place to do it. As you observe, this invites ridiculous complaints along with compelling ones. I'd be wary, though, of deciding which is which too quickly…what we're missing in this instance is a Wikipedia username and some relevant diffs.

Based on my experience, I agree. But there are a few who are so eager to poke cabalists in the eye that they're quite prepared to accept reasons for doing so that are not only silly, but sometimes contradictory.

Oh, it's pretty obvious who this person is, and I've seen the diffs (most of which are currently deleted). I won't out him in case he was intending for the link not to be obvious, but it's really pretty easy to figure out.

Quite.

I wonder about people who scream "I'm notable, I'm notable; and anybody who thinks not, is a half-witted egomaniac!" Irony.

I think nearly any sane person would be embarassed to have a wikipedia BIO, not matter how notable they were. It's too much like appearing in public, lying on a dining table in your underwear, along with with a lot of sauces and an invitational sign: Lick me or smear me.

Makes you wonder.

I think what did you in was having multiple accounts.

The little things like that seem to completely remove any legitimacy that you may have.

And yes, by "little things" I mean one of the most important things.

I went in unbiased and asked for some background information. It was provided. You didn't seem to have much of a case. The checkuser came back, and the ground fell out beneath you.


Sorry, but thats how the cookie crumbles. Next time, don't cry over spilled milk. Desert.

Yeah, this one isn't too hard to figure out. I disagree with you about Gwen Gale, at least based on what you're obviously referring to.

What was said about WR becoming a haven for people wanting to talk openly is absolutely true. It's getting to where you can watch ANI and see people get banned, then flip over to WR and catch their first posts here.

WR is becoming that Friday CBS morning show where they interview the Big Brother houseguest who got thrown out on Thursday night. We get the scoop.

Weren't we going to set up a special forum for this sort of thread? Maybe that was what the non-public "Support Group" forum was originally for, but that sort of got re-purposed into something more like, well, a support group.

Anyway, if the article Mr. Wikigods wrote was about himself, then it's not fair for him to say Gwen Gale is "filthy," no matter how she handled the situation, unless he knows her personally and can honestly attest that she's physically covered with dirt, mud, or some other form of offal. (Is she...? )

Frankly, nobody should ever write a Wikipedia article about him- or herself. That's just common sense - I mean, why not just hit yourself on the head with a sledgehammer instead? It's quicker, and fewer people are usually required to deal with the resulting mess.

I hope that it is apparent that the staff and mods here are keenly aware that we wind up providing a platform for a broad spectrum of complaints, from the insightful to the petulantly trivial. We are in constant discussion to try to make this board as useful to the public as possible, and to discourage petty and bogus griping. We are periodically accused, as a result, of over-moderating.

Cough.

And under moderating as well.

If it's running roughly 50/50 you've got the mix about right.

A welcome to Ottava! You might want to try the support group 'down under' which isn't visible to non-registered posters, for shoulders to cry on. Otherwise, dive right in!

I know that this is a supportive statement and I appreciate it. I'm sure that all the mods/staff appreciate it. Problem is is you're running 50/50 you're spending all of your time and energy attending to complaints and dramas. A more healthy mix would require a substantial percentage that is more or less satisfied, or even better a significant number who don't care one way or the other and just appreciate that they are provided a forum in which they can discuss relevant concerns.

It appears that wont be necessary.

I'm mostly here to respond to criticism lodged against me.

Yes, I agree... I wasn't including the silent majority in there, I was just referring to the complaints.

You tend to get 10 complaints for every attaboy, it seems. But for every attaboy there usually are 100 people happy who choose to say nothing... Or something like that.

Me, I think it's about right, and I chose not to say so, till now.

(edit: changed "Ne" -> "Me" to fix a typo, last line... also, test whether I can edit my old posts)

Back on topic. Gwen Gale is unbearable. Based on her edit history, she seems to be an extreme conservative who loves Sarah Palin and Michelle Malkin, and she's been watching me like a hawk as I contribute to different articles. I've seen multiple conservative editors run to her when they have a problem that needs enforcing. She told me to stay away from a conservative, and a conservative to stay away from me, but when the other dude posted on my talk page, she did nothing, and when I posted on the other dude's talk page that same day, she said if I ever posted on that guy's talk page again, she'd ban me for a week. This is politically-motivated assassination.

One more reason why we need to discontinue BLP on WP. Who in the world could write an NPOV on Palin?

I can just see a Somey or Lar attempting it:

I've long recommended that, failing ability to get rid of political candidate bios entirely, we have two bios of political candidates-- one written by supporters and the other by detractors, with a summary of each contained in the other, and links to each other. Sarah Palin (Supporter Bio) and Sarah Palin (Oppenent Bio). That's the only way to separate warring factions, which otherwise leads to OWNing and BANing and the usual knockdown dragout by the powerholders on WP, and whatever it is that fits their own politically correct views, as being the "official NPOV" bio, which is silly beyond imagining. But WP is forced to go through the charade, because to do otherwise would be to admit that there's something fundamentally wrong with their worldview, and they refuse to do that. Since it would be the same as admitting error.

But this isn't going to happen. So enjoy your wars, WP.

I suppose the thing is to get someone from say Sri Lanka, who couldn't care less, to write the article. (And for symmetry, I doubt that she could care less about Sri Lanka.)

I agree with Milton.


I poked and prodded on Sarah Palin's page until I could get her religious motivations for attempting to ban books into the bio page.

This is what the page said before I had any say in the matter:

"According to city librarian Mary Ellen Emmons, Palin twice inquired in October 1996 as to whether Emmons would object to library [[censorship]]."

What a total non-statement. No reason or motivation given.

This is what I tried to change it to:

"According to city librarian Mary Ellen Emmons, Palin twice inquired in October 1996 as to whether Emmons would object to religiously-motivated library [[censorship]].<ref>http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837918,00.html</ref>"

Oh, but we can't POSSIBLY admit that Palin has religious motives to do anything! Conservatives edit warred with me and even got me blocked until i talked my way out of it. Three conservatives were alternately claiming that the TIME article didn't say what it said, then saying TIME's not a reliable source, then admitting TIME's reliable but that THIS article was not. They got their way for a while even though they were outnumbered on the talk page.

This is the final result: "According to Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Emmons, Palin inquired two or three times in October 1996 as to how Emmons would handle any request to remove books from the library.[40][41][42][43] In 2008, former Wasilla mayor John Stein, whom Palin defeated in 1996, attributed Palin's library inquiries to her religious beliefs, and also said that Palin was concerned about voters who felt there was inappropriate language in the books."

(The last clause about language concerns was added by a conservative without consensus). This is the huge damned discussion we had to go through just for that small change: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sarah_Palin#Book_Banning

Big waste of time. I should stick to writing Supreme Court articles. Few users have the education or time to contest me, though the one time they have, yeah, Gwen Gale blocked me.

I just restored the version we agreed to yesterday: "John Stein, the former mayor of Wasilla and Palin's 1996 political opponent, said in September 2008 that Palin's "religious beliefs" motivated her inquiries.<ref>http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1837918,00.html</ref>" But I'm sure someone will revert it anyway. Meanwhile, pages and pages of talk on the subject have been added by just three people since yesterday, on just those two sentences. Ugh.

Well, I've been blocked again for edits to the Clarence Thomas article. Look at all the material I added today, on the left in yellow: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=245501650 . The user against me spent hours trying to refactor everything I added, and hasn't ever added any new material. Then he ran crying to admins. Pitiful.