Er... I do?

I really cannot believe how ridiculously silly that RfA discussion has become. When brain-limited characters like EVula, J.delanoy, AllStarEcho and Giants27 flare their nostrils and flex their muscles in outrage, it is impossible not to break out in giggles. I did like Xeno throwing in a reference to Nietzsche -- though Pastor Theo referring to Pinky and the Brain might be closer to the mark in regard to the gist of the discussion. Giants27 gets an extra star for trying to dig up dirt on Peter, and Wehwalt seems to have taken the Wiki title for being a lawyer who knows how to write cogently and comically (sorry, Brad, you're all washed up!).

Nonetheless, this whole thing has been very entertaining. Kudo, Peter, for giving me a good horse laugh!

The wiki software allows for a structure with clear leadership and editorial control. Wikipedia is not using that, but Wikisage is.

Any by "publish" you mean simply "make available to the public"?

Maybe I can buy that. But really, Mediawiki is easily adapted to not fall under that category. Set up stable versions, give the "editors" the power to mark a version as stable, and don't let the general public see the non-stable versions.

Indeed, stable versions with the proper configuration would remediate many of the most severe problems presented by Wikipedia.

A stable version? Ah, there would still be plenty of horse shit to shovel.

Well here's the scoop:


August 26–28 btw. Has anyone asked Brion yet what's the hold-up?

How, exactly, is that "extremely embarrassing" to Wikipedia? What it shows is that an information collection and dissemination medium that isn't run by a "good ol' boys' club" like the mainstream media (and thus not as easy to get to conform to "gentleman's agreements" to withhold information) is harder to keep censored; the "God King" Jimbo just barely managed to keep a lid on it, but that might eventually become impossible as he declines in community power. While in this particular case it might have been objectively the better thing for everybody that the information did manage to be kept contained, the more general case is that censorship is a bad thing and openness a good thing, and the presence of ways of getting out information that can't be controlled by the censors of the world (look at China and Iran for examples) is a net positive.

In a general sense, perhaps. However, I'd still like to ask you, as I asked Hipocrite in
that other thread: are you willing to let people die as a result of Wikipedia information?
And are you willing to speak to the family when it does happen?

This clash comes about because of that whole demented "information wants to be free"
concept that Web 2.0 and "digerati" types are always pushing, as if it were a law of
physics or something.

Information doesn't want anything, PEOPLE want something.

The only reason websites are killing newspapers and magazines, and Wikipedia is killing
encyclopedias, is because PEOPLE WANT FREE INFORMATION. And if you have total
la-la freedom on your information site, the result is very often defamation, personal
attacks, misinformation and propaganda, etc.

(In fact, allowing free editing of an information source would seem to INVITE
misinformation and propaganda.) And if someone dies as a result of said "free"
information, who is responsible? A teenager in his Florida bedroom, editing
Wikipedia while watching net-porn he scored at no cost, with his free hand shoved
down his boxer shorts? Is HE willing to apologize to the family of the deceased?

Those are damn difficult questions. What gets me, is that Jimbo did something
responsible in the case of Rohde. But his "encyclopedia" is being assembled by
random people, who may or may not be "responsible".

I still think that Times article is an embarrassment--because it shows Jimbo, being
a hypocrite and ignoring the "info wants to be free" cant that he pushed, and that
so many of his Wiki-gnomes take very seriously.

Jimbo helped create that atmosphere, and now he's making exceptions to the exception-less "rule".
And of course, his oft-deranged editor pool is playing Super Mario with people's lives.

Wikipedia appears to have done the right thing here, but it's unlikely that they'll generalize from the experience. Jimbo did this because someone schmoozed him into it; it wasn't a case of them realizing ab initio that it was the right thing to do. Not everyone with a BLP can successfully schmooze Jimbo into doing the right thing, and in any case schmoozing the God-King doesn't scale.

That's probably a genie that will never be placed back into its bottle; even if Wikipedia itself were to be successfully bottled, the Internet as a whole wouldn't be. Freedom occasionally kills, and censorship occasionally saves lives, but that doesn't mean I'm supportive of a regime of centralized control of information (somehow trusting this control to always remain in "good hands") that would be needed to prevent "bad" information from getting out and possibly killing people.

Yes, and just how much should Wikipedia censor to prevent potential harm?

The correct amount, obviously. Or, if you're Wikipedia, some obviously wrong amount, but close enough that not enough people want you shut down.

Oh, it's that easy then?

Can you tell me on which side of this clear line the Rorschach images lie?

Squarely on top of it. Or something. I dunno, my crystal ball is malfunctioning.

Of course it's not easy. And determining the correct course of action in any given situation is not helped by absolutists lobbing squibs from the peanut gallery.

The point is, what is the policy? Who decides? Jimbo? Is he going to be the proper
God-King that people constantly joke about, and pass down diktats about how
Wikipedia should run? He hasn't done much of that before, and when he has,
the result was often ugly chaos. (cough BLP cough.)

Do the Wiki users decide? Look at how they are arguing over user page indexing.
Look at certain of them stabbing Greg Kohs in the back.
I would not vote for these people, even for dogcatcher.

The owner of the servers decides the policy. In the case of Wikipedia, that means the board.

And yet the server owners (i.e. the WMF Board) who decide the site policy can't be sued when some idiot libels someone Wikipedia.

Jimbo really walks a fine line though on the Section 230 rules, doesn't he? As a WMF Board representative, he's not suppose to interfere on the "publishing" aspect of Wikipedia.

Here is a list of all articles on Wikisage:

1. Main Page ‎(2,314 views)
2. Myalgic encephalomyelitis ‎(347 views)
3. Dutch units of measurement ‎(233 views)
4. Byron Hyde ‎(155 views)
5. Post-viral fatigue syndrome ‎(151 views)
6. Basic income ‎(131 views)
7. ME/CVS Vereniging ‎(114 views)
8. Tram ‎(110 views)
9. Light Rail ‎(108 views)
10. Basic Income Earth Network ‎(107 views)
11. Chronic fatigue syndrome ‎(105 views)
12. Wish You Were Here ‎(90 views)
13. Siemens-Düwag U2 ‎(85 views)
14. Wikipedia ‎(80 views)
15. Fibromyalgia ‎(76 views)
16. Pink Floyd ‎(75 views)
17. Myalgic encephalomyelitis nomenclature ‎(75 views)
18. Karel Joseph van de Poele ‎(74 views)
19. Tramway systems in the Netherlands ‎(61 views)
20. Vereniging Basisinkomen ‎(59 views)
21. Invest in ME ‎(56 views)
22. David Bell ‎(55 views)
23. Systems of measurement ‎(52 views)
24. Group 1850 ‎(51 views)
25. ME Association ‎(50 views)
26. History of Trams ‎(49 views)
27. Morgen ‎(47 views)
28. Tonne ‎(46 views)
29. List of Tramway systems ‎(46 views)
30. Daniel Peterson ‎(34 views)
31. Da Costa's syndrome ‎(27 views)

I guess there must be two or three editors at most and one of them is a hypochondriac.

And none of them should be writing encyclopedia articles.

Thanks for the multiple insults, but you're looking at en:Wikisage which is still in its testing phase.

nl:Wikisage is slightly larger.

So long as the policy didn't cause the libel, they shouldn't be. Of course, in the case of the WMF, the lack of policy arguably does cause the libel, but I thought we were talking about what should be, not what is.



No, he doesn't. The popular notions of "the Section 230 rules" don't correspond to what the law actually says.

That's true. And even more importantly it has the Jimboesque need for self-promotion: http://nl.wikisage.org/wiki/Guido_den_Broeder

At least it explains why there are so many articles in the English site about the same malaise.

By the way, I was diagnosed as having ME in the mid 1980s when it was barely described in the literature. It turned out to be a sleep center disorder induced by a viral infection.

It doesn't make me an expert on ME either.



That's true. The Internet is a gold mine of misinformation, lies and the ramblings of mentally disturbed people. I don't advocate shutting down Wikipedia as it would be like the magician's apprentice trying to stop the broom by cutting it into pieces with an axe - we know how that ended.

The way to beat Wikipedia is to produce a better encyclopedia that is free to use and quote, but not free to edit. And wikis are not the way to produce authoritative encyclopedias.

Has anyone found open source software that produces Wikipedia-like formatted result while using traditional editorial control and approval? I know that EB uses their own in-house software (which must be a study in itself). Is there something similar out there?

What features are lacking in Mediawiki?

Looks like I've been indef blocked, anyway.

I did not write or even edit that article, thanks. There used to be a fairly decent page at nl:Wikipedia.


Ah, now we get to see where your disdain is coming from. You think that because you didn't have ME, others can't have it either, and that because you aren't an expert, others can't be. And there was a fair amount of literature on ME in de mid 1980's, btw. You must have missed it.

But you're just attempting to sidetrack because you were caught mispresenting the facts with regard to Wikisage.

That's the common way of making discussion on Wikipedia, but here we don't fall for it.



"Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! It appears that you are attempting to destroy Wikipedia."

They caught up fast.

How can one expect them to make good articles if they are checking WR all day long?

And now we'll see the familiar process of a man "getting even" with those who blocked him, by generating an army of rotating-IP sockpuppets, whose discovery will only harden the Wikipediot resolve -- "He's an indefinitely blocked troll who is compounding his block by socking. Let us have a community ban vote, now!" Then he'll be community banned. Then maybe an appeal to ArbCom will be in order. We all know the drill.

I hope that Peter Damian is intelligent enough to think through this very carefully, in a systematic and mature way, such that his revenge will have actual, credible impact -- by working outside the Wikipedia gulag and influencing larger forces beyond those culminating at 39 Stillman Street.

Indeed. If you think about it all again after gaining some distance, it becomes apparent that the thought patterns and actions of the reigning regime are rather predictable. That makes the task considerably easier.

It was to be expected. I'm surprised it took so long. I don't understand why you insist on taking them on, head on? As SunZi wrote,

Publicly stating a list of ways of (allegedly) "destroying" Wikipedia and linking to it when taking actions that relate to one of the ways on your list is not the best move to make if you don't want to be banned from there; after all, to justify a ban all they need to do is take you at your word and state that keeping somebody around who openly wants to see the site destroyed is a bad idea. I'm well known for defending critics and gadflies against clique gangups, but it's hard even for me to defend this sort of thing.

Perhaps it could be interpreted as a "cry for help"?

Geogre (T-C-L-K-R-D) has unblocked you. Alas, his unblock has caused more sound and fury...

I guess he should have screamed for help instead...

As we know from a recent movie, the mere announcement that Wikipedia will be destroyed, without ever taking a deliberate action towards it, could well be enough to make it happen.

All that is missing is a date. Shall we pick July 4, 2010 as the day of days?

Does the Supreme Court approve of yelling "Help!" in a crowded Wikipedia?

Thats nonsense. As Ive pointed out recently Greg has stated that he wants to damage wikipeida yet they unblocked him.

People say all sorts of things. My preference though is to judge them by what they do, not what they say. A radical idea to some, I know.


It will cause a great deal more "sound and fury" if any other administrator is unwise enough to reverse it.

If you apply that principle to Jimmy Wales then he really doesn't fare too well.

Do you want the short version or the slightly shorter version?

I'll give you the short version anyway. Jimmy Wales, and Larry of course, deserve credit for what their fledgling idea has become. You will no doubt interpret that simple comment negatively, but I mean it positively nevertheless. It is however true that his supreme powers are becoming a serious impediment to the project's further development and credibility.

Jimmy isn't my best buddy at the moment, he finds it very difficult to answer a direct question, he prefers to hide behind false arguments built on artifice.

No argument from me there.

Lots. It would be great for a more conventional collaborative effort, such as a
corporate software or DB project, where you have control over the userbase.

But for writing an "encyclopedia", one that is wide-open to any random
net-loon for editing/disediting, it's crap.

I'd like to see a better, more sophisticated article editor--one that generates
article formatting automatically wizard-style, with titles, sidebars, and references
autoplaced.

Plus more sophisticated control of editor rights, if they're gonna leave
it wide-open. Think of all the insane vandalism and gaming they could reduce
if MediaWiki allowed certain restrictions on what new users and IP addresses
can do--perhaps they could be limited to working only on certain specially
tagged articles that need more work, or restricted in reversions or making
many small drive-by edits.

That would be far better than letting a gang of nutcase admins ban whole IP
address ranges, or be forced to use crude scripts like Huggle to trash/untrash
articles wholesale.......

Yep, the issues that ought to be addressed are rather plain to see for anyone who takes off their blinkers.

Man, I have to hand it to Peter. His Wiki-must-be-destroyed bit has brought out
all kinds of insane twitching Wiki-scum. And they're duking it out here.

He isn't doing any of the destruction. He doesn't have to.
They're doing it for him.

As usual, these little shits are OPPOSED TO FREE SPEECH. Say something offwiki
they don't like, and they disrupt their OWN WIKI to "punish" you. Barking mad indeed.

Do these people have any idea how pathetic they look?

I wonder how much hard-drive space (that could be holding useful articles)
is being taken up by this endless posturing and blubbering. I wonder how many
articles, that these assholes could be improving, are going unimproved? While they
squabble over "teaching that bastard a lesson"?

I think Peter's action are having an effect!

This has to go down as one of the most idiotic comments ever:



When you're dealing with idiots of this magnitude what chance has the reasonable man?

I definitely did have ME. I still have a problem with my sleep centre which I have to manage otherwise my energy levels drop precipitously.

You miss my point. People who have medical conditions do not make them authoritative sources of information about the condition- especially if they believe that the medical establishment is disdaining their belief system.

I'm not misrepresenting facts at all. I'm not writing a wiki justifying my own beliefs about medical conditions I have.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that's not ME.


Nobody ever claimed it did, on both points.


You have chosen WR to do that. Obviously, on a wiki (other than WP) we wouldn't let you.

This is of course the Timmeh currently presenting himself at RfA. If Peter Damien really wanted to destroy wikipedia he could do no better than support this candidate.

No shit.


Nope. Not clue one among the whole lot. I love it.

Hasten The Day!™

Timmeh!