Jimbo must not like living in a trailer park. Seems he has a lot of pent up anger. I wonder what the specific crime was, to call for this today? It's gotta be the trailer park, right?

How about that. I didn't know that Wales still presumed to have the authority to declare someone banned permanently throughout the projects.

I'm sure you're utterly devastated, Greg.

Interesting. This reminds me of King Henry crying, "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

I must say, this ban is utterly unfair ... I have put in just as much effort and energy and yet am only able to elicit a non-committal "indef ban" out of them.

I demand to be globally banned immediately and without having to establish a Yahoo Questions account.

Awesome. Only the solar system and galactic bans are more awesome, Ms. Universe. Gotta be the trailer park. What else?

He did the same to me a year and a half ago. That was when he first threatened to shut down Wikiversity, declaring study materials there on "The Ethical Management of the English Wikipedia" to be "beyond the scope" of WMF-sponsored projects.

So this newest occasion would be the third time in a year and a half when Jimbo has invoked the same dictat to silence people who have investigated ethical lapses in his projects.

Didn't he declare that two months ago? I guess this is now just followup.

Here is the fellow who shopped around my banning from Wikimedia project to Wikimedia project.

Jeff Guinzburg of Elmwood Park, New Jersey, you are DA MAN!

Honor is due, Greg.

I think Jimbo is inside the trailer, because Killerchihuahua is guarding access.

Small dog. Big bite.

Huzzah!

So I take it the idea here was for Mr. Guinzburg & Co. to get rid of the Rachel Marsden sex-chat quote from Jimbo's Wikiquote page, which they'd only just noticed?

I hate to say this, but Ms. Marsden's log of the sex chat probably wouldn't meet whatever sourcing guidelines are analagous to (and hopefully more stringent than) "WP:RS" for a professionally-produced encyclopedia, putting aside the question of whether or not Jimbo has admitted to their being substantially correct... That's not to say the quote is inaccurate, or that Jimbo wouldn't have typed the line(s) in question; in fact, I'd say the quote's likelihood-of-accuracy is at least 90 percent. But sex-chat logs can be easily falsified, as my own experiences with at least two members of The Shaggs will attest.

I tawt I taw a Putty Tat ... I did! I did! ... Tweety Pie Jeff.

Does not seem to be on Hive Mind yet.

Phew, I can see why they'd want to ban me from Wikimedia Commons! Look at that line-up of contributions -- practically all of them fixated on tormenting Jimbo Wales.

I can hardly wait for King Jimbo's Wiki-Penance …


   

Jon

I don't know... it was sourced to The Globe & Mail. Is that a disreputable source?

Anyway, you're right that this was a little mission of Jimbo's today -- what else could "per request" mean?

Jimbo loves the Truth, except when the subject is Jimbo.

Oooh, now this is interesting. It would appear that a few members of the English Wikisource community retain a spine of their own. They even have the presence of mind to discover that maybe this all has to do with Jimbo's idiotic behavior on Wikiversity.

Alas, I have a feeling they will be beaten into submission by the drone bees.

I'm afraid that consensus is forming against me, even on Wikisource.

Quite obversely, you are your own versed enmity …

Jon

Reshokeht?

TheKohser is back(wards) at it again?

I would like to congratulate Kohser on this achievement. He has managed to piss off Wales so much that he was banned from Wikimedia completely, per Wales' decree. Isn't Kohs now only like the second person to ever be banned across every project?

I don't know who to feel sorry for more: Kohs, who seems to live and breathe Wikipedia and Jimmy Wales, or Wales, who acts so completely clueless in pretty much everything he does.

Randroids don't do "penance." That's for people who feel guilt.

Milton is correct. But while there is good evidence that Wales doesn't feel remorse, there is some evidence that he does feel bruised or wounded by negative characterizations, insults, and similar expressions of disrespect.

If that analysis is correct, then one possible gambit that (as far as I know) hasn't been tried in these pages is to sincerely pray for Jimmy -- pray that he finds his remorse.

Sometimes penance is imposed by a Higher Power …


Jon

It's unremarkable that Jimbo wants Kohs banned. What really disgusts me is the way some people are stepping up to justify and enforce Jimbo's edict, knowing perfectly well that it represents nothing more than a petty personality feud. Actually, Kohs has contributed far more Wikipedia content than Jimbo. Jimbo offers the project nothing more than tired platitudes on a good day and tiresome threats on a bad one.

Remarkable that you'd continue to embrace a community and project that disgusts you so.

But, thanks for stating what should be the obvious.

I commented in the Wikisource discussion. Fools rush in....

I don't think the project is defined by the dishonesty of its worst members. It's important to differentiate between the patient and the illness.

When it comes to social diseases, they are in fact defined by the condition of their worst member.

Jon

Calling Jimbo a "member" is correct in regard to medical terminology, but rather opaque in regard to genital-related epithets.

I know it's only been a couple of hours, but you seem to have stunned them into silence, Abd. Well done. Now what? Can a bunch of sheep be transformed into mighty lions, merely by reading your prose?

Yes, I never understood that part of human behavior.

Going back to the discussion of Wikipedia and social entropy, at what stage is the Wales relationship? Is he giving in or taking out more? How does it break down financially?

I always thought that it is was wrong to take all those five figure speaking fees and corporate endorsements as a personal benefit. Especially wrong if does not pay, or even chuck a $20 tip at, one of his unpaid serfs for doing the dirty on someone like TheKohser.

It is abuse of the system which is meant to be a 501 c registered trust.

What other leaders of a world renown "charity" uses charitable volunteers to go around stuffing and obstructing his personal critics ... especially where the criticism has some validity?

... and public interest value.

That's actually pretty common. Look up David Miscavige, Sun Myung Moon, and that guy that Jossi used to shill for, for starters.

Doesn't seem terribly likely, does it?

A couple of thoughts. I've done something there that, if I valued my account, I'd never do. I told the community that if there are problems, they are the community's fault. It's not Jimbo's fault, it's not Kohs' fault, it's a collective fault. It's our fault. Most people will do almost anything rather than accept responsibility. It is much easier to blame others, and then imagine that if just these others can be excluded, desysopped, forced to stop exerting authority, or just shamed into silence, all will be well.

Once in a while, though, a community will recognize and accept a message like that, and act on it. More commonly, if they can reach the whistle-blower, they will tear him to shreds.

The wiki system that developed, with an administrative cabal, Jimbo called it, that was advised by the general community, depends on a coherent community, but the community is rarely coherent. It does tend to develop a general consensus, that slowly improves -- sometimes -- over time. When elements in the community slavishly follow the cabal, a loop is set up, the restraint that the community would exert over the cabal disappears.

When a group of people are volunteers, when their activity cannot be coerced, and when they are the largest contributor of value, collectively, to some project, they have the real power, unless their contributions are replaceable. However, typically, large volunteer groups working in an organization aren't organized, they depend on the organization for that.

If the editorial community were to self-organize, there would be no power that could prevent it from finding, on the one hand, internal consensus and thus coherence, an ability to act with one mind, or, on the other hand, to identify coherent subgroups that cannot agree, or which are not ready to agree, and which could therefore fission, partially or fully, both becoming, through this, freer and more efficient. When there is no critical property involved, fission can enhance the overall function of an organization. There are then two organizations which can sometimes cooperate and sometimes compete, and the sum of this can be greater.

There is no critical property involved in Wikipedia. If half the editors went one way and half the other, both halves could survive quite well. Well, there is one piece of critical property, I lied. The name, which then means the nameservers.

In the end, this must be faced, as a Foundation issue. Should there be one repository of "the sum of all human knowledge," or should there be many, each operating independently, developing different systems? All evolution teaches us that a single centralized asset is highly vulnerable and will ultimately be corrupted.

Fission, though, isn't possible without coherence, we've seen again and again that spin-off projects started by no more than a handful of editors discontented with Wikipedia dysfunction, don't have the support, generally, to survive.

If the community became coherent, it might not need to fission! There is no way to know in advance.

The mission of Wikipedia requires methods of finding consensus, but finding consensus is notoriously difficult, and facilitating consensus is a special skill, a profession. Wiki process for consensus-building was never created in a way that would allow efficient and reliable operation.

And those who understand how precarious the whole project is becoming, and who are attached to its success, are terrified at losing valuable administrators, whom they imagine are crucial to continued operation. When the cabal is looking at a dispute between an admin with 100,000 edits, considered crucial for the operation of certain areas of activity, and an editor, perhaps an SPA, with maybe a thousand edits, whom will they avoid offending?

The problem, of course, is that by becoming dependent upon that admin, the cabal has sacrificed neutrality, which was mission-critical. There would be ways to far more widely distribute the tasks that maintain the wiki, to make its operation far more efficient and sustainable, but ... trying to implement these typically runs into fierce resistance, most of all from the cabal, for its value to the project is dependent upon project inefficiency, and they believe that distributing power more widely would wreck the place.

Yes, it's stupid. It burns out the cabal admins and editors. But mostly they don't realize that until it's too late. When they burn out, they blame, on the one hand, the "trolls" and "vandals" and "pov-pushers" who, they think, made their work hell. And, on the other, they blame the rest of the community for not seeing things their way, for not always crushing these enemies of the wiki, i.e., whomever they are upset with at the moment.

WMC, having dominated for years, is now bitter and contemptuous of the powers-that-be on Wikipedia. He's far from the only one to go through this cycle.

Speaking of sheep …

I just checked. My edit of 18:21, 4 May 2010, is still the latest revision of the Wikisource Administrators' Noticeboard. It is now 01:37, 5 May 2010. This page had been quite active.

History

Out of curiosity, this is a list of editors of that section (issue) and their status during that period of silence.

Contributions/Jeff_G. no edits.
(bug report here. Period in URL is not presented to browser).
Contributions/Sherurcij no edits.
Contributions/Cygnis_insignis very active. Blocked Reshokeht (Blocked Thekohser earlier).
Contributions/Billinghurst not active.
Contributions/ResidentScholar not active.
Contributions/Bookofjude not active.
Contributions/JeepdaySock not active.
Contributions/Spangineer edits
Contributions/Prosfilaes not active
Contributions/Darkoneko not active. Steward.
Contributions/Charles_Matthews many edits
Contributions/Reshokeht blocked, of course.

Reading over this, I'm getting a sense of Thekohser's biggest offense: he obviously doesn't take this matter SERIOUSLY. Here they are, discussing blocking him, and he comes in with this blatant sock, hilarious. Muggles, my conclusion. How dare he show such contempt of our Serious Process? Who does he think he is? Somebody special? I bet he thinks he's smart!

There are, in fact, serious issues here, and maybe someone will pick up on that. But meanwhile, a peer community which cannot tolerate jesters and clowns is on its way down, it's dying and it's just a matter of time. Sure, if a jester interrupts every process, it should stop, and usually it's enough to ask, politely. If not, okay, then some action is called for. But this is Thekohser himself, surely he has some rights on this page, he didn't start this mess. He'd behaved on Wikisource.


Glad to be of service. Any time.

Rather than use simple nuclear fission as an analogy ... I think a biosphere model is more applicable.

The Wikipedia as a Serengeti national park with various species adapting different survival methods from out and out big toothed carnivores, to plodding immovables (with big tusks), to herds of non-confrontational herbivores, to tiny poisonous blood sucking insects.

What exactly is WR in relationship to that ... poachers turned gamekeepers?

Is there something about the shear size of the elephant graveyard that will be needed to build Sanger's Ivory Tower?

The Latitude of the Platitude is Inversely Proportional to the Incisiveness of the Attitude.

And Dat … sometimes … generally … Is Dat, Eh, Dude —

Jon

Most of these people are English Wikisource admins, where we have yearly reconfirmations. JeepdaySock is admin Jeepday.
Jeff G and Darkoneko are the only people who are not regular contributors to Wikisource.
The "silence" that you encountered is quite typical for Wikisource.

This Just In — Pathetic Child blocks Thekohser on Beta Wikiversity —

¡ Viva el Cinco de Mayo !

Jon

&oldid

Current status seems to be "Block removed. The global ban has been lifted by stewards, so consequently I have undone my actions locally."

Interesting exchange off of Jimbo's EN talkpage :

Stimulus



After the obligatory reference to "WR Trolls"...which includes people like NYBrad, CHL, and Alison, we then get :

Response :



So, that would seem to suggest that not only did Jimbo actually get one of his minions to go around all WMF wikis and do this "burn the witch" schtick, but that he was completely unaware that there was a global ban button on his own servers...

...words fail....

On meta, the global block has been lifted :



....which remains "clear as mud"...but what else is new?

Some people have no sense of humor.

Heh heh. Why am I not surprised? Jimbo is no different than any number of abusive, shallow corporate minions that I have seen over the years. He doesn't know what he's doing, and flaunts his ignorance at every opportunity, yet enjoys the trappings of whatever miserable little power he has over other people.

Every time he posts something on his talkpage or on AN, he looks more and more like a Dilbert character.

Wikipedia is like World of Warcraft, with one major difference: in Warcraft, it's routine to recommend that people quit a guild "if the leader is an idiot". That phrase is so commonplace in Warcraft group websites, it's almost an official rule. But Wikipedia's leader has been proven to be an idiot, time and time again.......and yet they continue to follow him!

Because the issues are serious, it requires a jester to elevate them to general attention, in a way that (eventually) makes people stop and think.

There are serious absurdities in WikiCulture, and Greg is doing a fine job pointing them out.

Also, kudos to Milton Roe for his wonderful song parodies.

For those keeping score at home, Kohs has just hit a double for the Wikisource team, but there's one out, and Manager Jimbo is coming out to the mound. He may be making a pitching change.

P.S. I could see how Wikisource, if it is as it appears, to be a true and authentic effort to dutifully reproduce public domain works, without agenda or personality tainting the effort, could really be an addictive environment for someone like me. However, it being under the umbrella of a corrupt regime, I couldn't possibly bring myself to complete work on more than just perhaps the one work that I'm interested personally in completing. (In other words, even if I score a run in this inning, there's only a couple more innings left, and it will probably be my last game with this team.)

Oh, a baseball analogy. This must be a game between the Clubs and the Socks.

Yeah, we should draw and quarter them. (No, not take out the pastels or make up a bed for the guest. Or maybe we should. Some of these people seem to need some serious human company, i.e., smiling and laughing. That comment by Everyking was great. The global lock was lifted today. Well see if that holds.... I have now pointed out the obvious on Wikiquote. I have to be careful about this, I'm legitimately seen as an outsider on these wikis.

Anyway, I'm now an official Wikiquote editor, as of today. We'll see how long that lasts... See, I noticed that Koh's edits to the quotes for Jimmy Wales were all reverted, though almost all of them were fine, and he wasn't blocked when he made them. One edit was a tad, shall we say, provocative? If I get a mail from Mr. Wales saying that he'd like it quoted, fine. Frankly, those were mighty fine words, if he actually said them, my congratulations to him, but I wouldn't want to upset the muggles without a very good reason. I was tempted.

I did listen to his 2005 TED speech a bit. He said that he was trying to encourage more testing of Wikipedia quality. Apparently that message hasn't gotten out to the troops yet. Or was that then and this is now? I'm really not sure.

Wasn't it just bollocks?

Jimbo was responding there to Jeff G. (T-C-L-K-R-D) . I very much doubt that Jimbo instigated this. Jeff G. has been so outrageous that I have suspicions. Kohs, that isn't you, is it?

My sense is that Jimbo would just like the whole thing to quietly go away, and here comes Jeff G. stirring the pot. Using the global lock facility to block someone everywhere for reasons like this was probably not the intended use, and what then happens with local socks? Bad idea. If Jimbo wants a user blocked, he can do it himself, or ask a steward to do it, but he's not doing that because he knows how much damage it causes.

Notice: just let it be known and be taken care of as necessary. What is "necessary?" Pretty obvious, I'd say. That Kohs has an account does not create a necessity. If he uses it for disruption (which, by the way, would includes shouting "you are a bunch of stupid idiots" to a crowd of stupid idiots), that is when each account could be addressed, and the local community will take care of it, with Jimbo or stewards intervening when they see sufficient local support. If there is local consensus not to block, as there was at Wikisource and Wikiquote, no block. He's not stupid, or at least, tip o the hat to Greg, not that stupid.

Steward intervention will come when the wikigods see that a local community is divided and can't, in their view, find consensus.

What are the odds that Jeff G. is dinged soon? If he stops now, probably not, but if he keeps pushing this? I see that Kohs was also unblocked at de.wikipedia, where Jeff G had convinced them (or was that already there?) to block him based on this "global ban."

Kohs got away with a jab at Jimbo et al at Wikisource, I think he was counting on one free because of the whole flap there. That kind of pushing the edge is what got him banned. I can admire it at the same time as I see why he's banned. Ever see Hero (2002 film)? The Wikipedia article does it no justice at all. Amazing film.

On Wikiquote Kohs was gratuitously libeled. That's the community. It will ban Kohs for less uncivil but more cogent criticism, then tolerate unnecessary libel. Or will it? We'll see. However, Wikiquote refused to block Kohs, at least, so far.

No, it was a good speech. The reality that resulted is mixed.

His pronunciation of "Wikipedia" drives me nuts. I guess he has a right to establish the pronunciation, but I've always pronounced wiki as "wikee," but have made the i short in "Wikipedia," and that's what I've heard from many other people. Didn't realize that until I figured out what was irritating me about his pronunciation.