From "Yet another ageism thread": http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...r_ageism_thread



Of course, nobody listened. All anyone wanted to talk about was ageism, not whether it's okay to oppose someone based on a false statement.

Well then, Majorly, don't you think Iridescent's oppose on me was based on false information? Why didn't you protest then? Why did the whole admin community not protest then? Why did everyone smile and nod as Iridescent slandered me -- and continued to do so later by falsely alleging on her talk page that I had engaged in "campaigns of harassment" against "real life" individuals?

It's been so long now I've totally forgotten what Iridescent said, so forgive my bad memory.

I'm curious, what did Iridescent's voice sound like?










Or, was it libel, then?

Oh come on, I should have written "defamed" but I forgot the distinction between libel and slander. I am referring to written statements on Wikipedia. Thankfully the RFA is courtesy blanked and the talkpage archives are out of common view.

I enumerated the lies Iridescent told at my RFA on her talk page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Iri..._Yechiel_thread It's an extremely long read, but if you're not convinced that she told some blatant untruths about me in public view of other Wikipedians, then you're not paying attention. The kicker, though, was this reply to my rude goodbye: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Iri...risy_forever.21



I never harassed any real life individuals. To allege otherwise is defamatory. Iridescent, you should be ashamed of what you said about me. "Personal attack" and "incivil" are not strong enough words of condemnation.

Indeed they're not. Hardly words of condemnation at all really, more like mindless mantras trotted out by the wikifaithful. Oh, and I think you missed out "assume good faith". Was that a convenient lapse of memory on your part because you didn't?

Remember all "discussions" on Wikipedia are virtual, not real. This permits people who would incapable of engaging in a serious collaborative learning project, such as writing an encyclopedia, to experience a simulation of what this would be like. WP concepts (typically identified as "WP:XXX") are not actual protocols of a learning project. They are actually tokens standing in for the same in simulated game environment.

Sure is, Shal. To be honest, I can't be arsed wading through all that depressing, meaningless, turgid shite. Life's too short. You couldn't see your way clear to briefly outlining all the funny bits in one easy-to-read piece by any chance, could you? You sound to me like you could be one of those whiney, humourless guys who are inadvertently hilarious. I'd be damned grateful; honest. Cheers, mate!

I think that's about right. I really find it very difficult to believe that anyone who's spent any time at all in an academic environment would turn a hair at what laughably passes for "personal attacks" on wikipedia.

I find it very difficult to believe that anyone who's spent any time at all in a job would turn a hair at what laughably passes for "personal attacks" on wikipedia.

Good point. I remember being rather puzzled by that "personal attacks" policy, and to a large extent I still am, as must be obvious to any wikiafficionado. I mean, calling someone who is behaving like an idiot an idiot is just making an observation. It's a personal remark, sure, but an "attack"? If it was in my mind to attack someone I could do an awful lot better than that. Trust me.

I don't know what you guys are relating to, but call someone an "idiot" in a professional environment and you're in trouble.

Depends on the job of course. At my last job, we were always picking at each other and taking the piss, but I never once felt upset or even close, not nearly as much as I have done when people have viciously attacked me in all sorts of ways on here and WP. Today, for example, an anonymous person by the name of "Bottled Spider" decided they knew me enough to make a judgment on my character, having never ever spoken to me, knowing nothing about me, or in fact anything at all. The difference in a job is that it is done in person, and in a less vicious manner. What happens on Wikipedia are personal remarks (or attacks, it's all the same really), made by an anonymous person who knows nothing whatsoever about you, and it's essentially hiding behind a screen name to make those remarks. It's cowardly to do so. The comments aren't light, they're serious, made by a very bitter individual.



Perhaps they are referring to what the public might call them? It doesn't surprise me though tbh.

You've obviously never been an academic. Or in the services.


So you really believe that personal remark is synonymous with personal attack do you?

"I think you were a wonderful administrator, and I was gutted when you were forced to step down from your position by a few vindictive souls."

"I think you were a crap administrator, and I cheered the day you were forced to resign from your position."

Both are personal remarks, but you only object to the personal remark that you don't like. Is that altogether honest? Ever heard of Rudyard Kipling?

So I take it you're not going to defend your allegation that I harassed "real life individuals"? Good for you. It's indefensible.

To Bottled_Spider: I did pick apart Iridescent's lies in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Shalom Yechiel (now blanked, but you can read the page history). I wrote as concisely as possible. The problem in such situations is that making a false statement may take only one sentence, but refuting the falsehood may require a whole paragraph or more.

Both a personal attack and a personal compliment could be personal remarks. You can object to whatever one you like, they're remarks all the same.

But you only object to one of them, the one you don't like. Me, I shrug them both off. That's why I asked you about Kipling.

I could ignore them both, but it's unlikely both would be presented like that. As it is, most personal comments, good and bad, come out of the blue. A negative one isn't a very pleasant surprise, even if you do think the person making it is a twit, and talking out of their arse.

I've seen slanging matches held in many academic conferences, and I was nearly thumped by a member of an audience who took exception to an argument I was advancing that undercut some cherished ideas he had about post-modernism and psychological research. We all just took incidents like that in our stride, and although it was of passing interest, it was nothing to scream about or to even throw the person concerned out of the room for. It might sometimes be better if it didn't happen like that, but no one ever seemed to have the idea that there should be sanctions against anyone who took or seemed to be about to take such "direct action". In the above case, indeed, as I remarked, if he had thumped me, it would have been a completely acceptable response to my argument and in keeping with his position which was opposed to mine: indeed, a reasoned argument as a response would have been self-defeating for his position.

Wikipedia seems often to be just a parody of academic debate and joint working, a bit like a cargo cult, involving magical thinking and rituals that are indulged in as an attempt to copy the same processes and yield the same results as would happen in real encyclopaedia writing. However, they very often merely end up looking pathetic and ridiculous. It isn't all like that, but the pressures which make it become like that are considerable, and seem almost always able to prevail.

You don't seem to be following. Do I need to type slower so that you can understand?

I am busy right now, so it's likely I'm distracted doing more important things. Let's just say you win this one.

I like the cargo cult analogy.


Let's say instead that you were talking out of your arse, you were found out, and you are now running away.

Oh, what a shame. I did think our grownup conversation was going well, but I think that spoiled it. We'll try another time eh, when I'm not so busy doing more important things than chitchatting on a silly webforum.

I don't. The peer review process, which is an integral aspect of formal academic writing, shows up only in GA or FA nominations or by unofficial request. The large majority even of the high quality articles don't use these processes.

You obviously do not understand the implications that I am drawing out, because, for your criticism to have any force, the peer review process used on wikipedia would need to be the same as that used in academic work, and I have considerable experience of both: they are not the same because of issues concerning expertise and substantive experience in given fields are not guaranteed and may even be unlikely (given other biases) in the wikipedia cases. In the cases where wikipedia does not make use of peer review, that is just an instance where the copying inherent in cargo cults is imperfect and based on ignorance about what should really be happening. Hence the cargo cult analogy still holds. I must thank you for allowing me to elaborate this aspect of the magical thinking and ritual involved.

If I may just add to what gadfly has said, the whole idea of "peer review" at wikipedia is a misnomer. Who are my peers? Who are your peers? What qualifications do they have to pass judgement on my article? What qualifications do I have to pass judgement on yours? Peer review on wikipedia is more like a jury chosen because it has no knowledge or preconceptions of the case it has been assembled to consider. That's a long way from an academic peer review, which your worst enemy may well be invited to comment on, and often is.

This approach in academic peer review is the kind of thing that Karl Popper was writing about when he suggests that in science, the best test of something which helps us discard weak claims, results, or theories is when one makes the hardest attempts to prove them wrong, and yet they still survive those tests. In wikipedia, either the tests are weak, because they are either paltry or misdirected. So the end results may well result in substandard material being retained. Any attempt at qualitry control is dogged by similar weakly applied or misdirected processes.

I can? That's very nice of you, Shals, but no thanks. Page histories just aren't my "bag", if you catch my drift.

You've got to watch out for those false statements, Shal. I sense that you took your failed RfA very badly indeed. You see it as a knife in your guts, and you think everyone hates you and laughs at you behind your back. Just let it go, Shal!

I took my failed RFA very badly indeed because it was not merely a rejection of my request for special access, but a rejection of the very premise on which I was working on Wikipedia. I was working for the readership, to be sure, but I was also working for the community to help other people do their volunteering, and many of those people, by supporting false statements about me and explicitly suspecting that I was up to no good, showed me that they wanted me to leave. So I left. I have no regrets about reacting angrily to the false statements. My only regret is that I didn't do it more effectively. If I knew how to handle such situations I could possibly have gotten Iridescent blocked or at least censured for blatant false statements, which are the worst kind of incivility. Not having been familiar with conflict situations because I edited quiet topics, I didn't know how to game the system to screw her over, but she richly deserved it.

I do not take kindly to being called "Shal". "Shalom" is my full name on this forum.

Seems to be in the wrong forum.

That's all you have to say? Aren't you the slightest bit disappointed one of your administrators would say such lies about me and get away with it?

Iridescent's words were fair comment--at least as fair as the words about me in my election.

By the nature of the voting system, smears can be very effective, that's true. However, I don't think ArbCom or anyone else should pillory admins for exaggeration. Or is there more to it? What's the single worst lie? These look like mere hyperbole to me.

The value of frank disclosure in RFA outweighs the harm of sorting through "defamation" about Wikipedia's volunteers.

I've never been in the services, but I've certainly been in academia.

Call someone an "idiot" in academia in a formal context - and you'll be taken aside. Certainly if a teacher called a student an "idiot". Those kinds of comments are completely off limits. No question about it.

Sure, it might go on, but it would be used against the name caller in a disciplinary, if a recipient pressed the matter. You would be condemned by all judging parties for the comment.

Now come on, Shalso. No-one "deserves" to be screwed over. Or under, for that matter. You need to sit down, turn things around, and look back (but not in anger). Go forward, and don't turn sideways. It's time to forgive and forget. I think you should settle things with Irrad Idires that other person and become friends. We're all in this together.

I hear you, Shallers. It's the height of bad manners doing that sort of thing. I've got to ask, though - would you settle for "Shamol"? It's got a nice ring to it.

Maybe we should start calling the bottled spider "botty" or "bot"?

I'm conflating two issues. Sorry for not being clear.

I don't use the word "defamation" for the lies at RFA. They were lies, and they damaged my reputation, but some of them can be attributed to confusion and sloppy memory rather than malice.

Among the more egregious lies were these:

"Also, on too many occasions his response to anyone disagreeing with him has been to post at great length on the matter to WR." Flat out lie. I never did that, certainly not "repeatedly."

"I'm well aware that a number of editors (including me) post occasionally at WR and don't get in any trouble for doing so. However, there's a qualitative difference between occasionally explaining policy and how particular decisions were reached... , and SY's posts, which include accusations of sockpuppetry against Arbcom members, repeated attacks on anyone who agrees with anyone he sees as part of "the cabal", and so on." The accusation of sockpuppetry against FT2 was probably a misunderstanding of a comment where I responded to someone else's allegation of same. The "repeated attacks on ..." was a flat out lie. I never did that, certainly not "repeatedly."

I should have raised these points in the RFA, but it all happened so quickly. The RFA ended in 12 hours (it got SNOWed, then I asked to reopen it so I could answer questions and close it on my own terms), and in those 12 hours I was editing SSP and articles and living life and eating and sleeping aside from watching the RFA. It's not possible to catch everything in that time frame.

The "defamation" was her comment that I engaged in "campaigns of harassment" against both Wikipedians and "real world individuals." I neither concede nor strenuously object to the Wikipedians half of that statement; [[Wikipedia:Harassment]] is very inclusive even of mildly annoying behavior, and I did some inappropriate things that fall under those broad definitions. However, I absolutely did not harass anyone in real life. You of all people should know about this by now; I sent an email to Arbcom-L complaining about the "campaigns of harassment against real world individuals" comment. I withdrew the complaint a few days later after I did an act of vigilante revenge while despairing that Arbcom would notice. If I were to say something similar about Iridescent, I would get blocked for it. That's what I call defamation. I'm sorry you don't think it is all that serious. I'm sorry for myself that I can't move on from it.

I see. Yeah, if that comment was seen by people who know your real name and are unfamiliar with the hyper-inflated concept of Wikipedia "harassment," I might agree. I'm not really sure what Iridescent was talking about.

I'm not talking about schools, or the discussions which take place between teacher and pupil. I'm talking about the discussions between academics -- university lecturers, researchers, professors and so on. "Idiot" would be very mild beer indeed.

I'm not really worried people will see it. Only two people who know me in real life are also Wikipedia editors (not including folks like Sj and Paul August whom I met at a meetup) and one of them already knows about the whole thing. I think I've done everything I can do to dissociate my RL identity from Wikipedia. I'm reasonably certain that I will not hear about the incidents again unless I were to run for president (which would not work for a whole bunch of other reasons).

She was talking about the fact that I laid a "Google bomb" for my university president using Wikipedia back in 2005 and early 2006. Some context is in order here: I was a very new editor and didn't know any policies or that this was wrong; and Googlebombing was still possible (witness the "miserable failure" prank). I never informed the university president about what I did, and to the best of my knowledge he is still not aware that anything happened. I disclosed the Googlebomb several months later by posting signs on campus, and although I don't have solid information on this, I believe that someone in the administration (not the president himself) contacted the IT folks to move the webpage so that the Googlebomb pointed to a 404 error. Was it a smart thing I did? No, but it's not harassment either. If it were, then I could harass you simply by writing on my computer "Cool Hand Luke is a moron" and never posting it online, or writing such a thing on my personal blog which almost nobody reads. If the "victim" of harassment was not ever aware, and was not at all adversely affected, then it's not harassment.

Have you ever attended a seminar, or a professional discussion among academics, where people openly call each other "idiots" - without incident?

I'll answer for you.

No.

You don't do it in a professional environment and it just doesn't happen.

Outside, in the pub, yes.

Inside, no. You wouldn't last five minutes.

Where do you buy your crystal balls? I'm only asking because I don't want to make the mistake of getting a rubbish one like yours. Why bother to ask a question if you think you already know the answer, even when you patently don't?

I'll take that as a no. And an admission that academics don't go around calling each other "idiots" in a professional environment without consequences.

The reason why this is important is that on initial contact, browsers may be fooled into thinking that Wikipedia operates under some sort of professional collegiate conventions. When in fact, at any moment, they may be called an "idiot" online, or find themselves embroiled in some juvenile shouting match with grossly uncivil morons.

Just one of the numerous negative aspects of that place.

You see, I told you that your crystal ball was faulty. Take it as a " yes they do, and much worse".

Going to have to side with Kato here. Like many students at my institution, I enjoy seeing papers presented before certain faculty who have a reputation for being harsh reviewers. Although I've heard panelists question the value of research, and outright state that certain premises are false, rendering the work worthless, I have never heard a "personal attack."

If they do it, it's not in front of an audience of their peers. I've no doubt that they complain in private like the rest of us, but it's strikingly unprofessional in public.

I've no doubt that Wikipedia's notion of "personal attack" is over broad. But considering that "stalking" is often just looking at one's contribution history, and "harassment" is often just voting in a deletion debate, it's far from the most absurd concept on Wikipedia.

I don't know of a single person who holds grudges as long as you do, and with you they're not even real grudges. They're silly Wikipedia nonsense grudges. How long ago did these things happen? I don't even know what you're talking about and I've followed the RfAs for months.

What sort of academic institutions have you been associated with, then? I could imagine the culture of various institutions being different, particularly in different countries. But in my experience, practically all professors and administrators - and the vast majority of graduate students, even - are considerably more "civil" to each other in open discussions, meetings, and correspondence than Wikipedians (generally speaking), and they don't even have to read WP:CIVIL (T-H-L-K-D) in advance.

That's not to say there isn't a certain amount of backroom sniping, backstabbing, rumor-mongering, whisper campaigning, and general snarkiness, but it's like they say about cannibalism in the British Navy: "All new ratings are warned that if they wake up in the morning and find any toothmarks at all anywhere on their bodies, they're to tell us immediately so that we can immediately take every measure to hush the whole thing up."

And, finally, necrophilia is right out...!

I will say, though, that on the surface at least, Wikipedia seems to do a better job of keeping things "civil" than one would expect under the circumstances - to the point where I'd say it isn't really that much of a problem. Most of the nastier instances of sniping, etc., seem to occur where you can't see them, at least not directly... so it probably is a bit like academia in that respect.

You are yet another person who spends more words shooting me down for complaining about Iridescent's behavior than shooting down Iridescent for her behavior. (Or "behaviour", since she's English. Or "behavior" because she grew up in New York.)

I will always hold this grudge. I tried to walk away several times and forget about it, and I locked out the password to my WR account in December. Then I had a bad day IRL and decided to come back here.

Welcome back!

And aren't you glad we have a password recovery feature...?