Anyone notice this ongoing mess.?

As a side note, this is just amusing.

Ottava links to AN/I where they decide to ban a long-time user with a clean block log and no warnings, then dance on the grave and seek out and find anything with his scent on it to toss in the bonfire. Ah, such fond memories!
That's a link to my permanent custodianship vote. A month I've been a probationary custodian, extremely active, no problems, no unresolved complaints in spite of many vandalism or spam blocks and page deletions. I was astonished, in fact. Hey, where is all the opposition?

Waiting, apparently. Not concerned about Wikiversity, just about Preventing Abd from ... Doing Something Awful!

Indeed. Ottava finally got himself indeffed on meta. What's been happening on WV, the last few days, is that a Wikipedian pursued a WP editor to Wikiversity, and I acted to interdict possible disruption. No use of tools, I just pointed out the obvious.

An editor had registered a new WP account (S Larctia), dove immediately into highly complex work, and then started an AN/I discussion that resulted in a ban of a long-time editor, who had never even been warned for anything, AFAIK. So the editor, facing blocks, comes to Wikiversity, to work on what was actually inappropriate for Wikipedia, original research, but which can be fine on Wikiversity. And was pursued by that "returning user," and now Ottava tosses in his turds, having been almost completely absent from Wikiversity, thinking we won't notice.

It's documented in the custodian vote, in collapsed responses to Ottava and S Larctia.

Since last year, all of Ottava's work (on Wikiversity and meta and Commons as well) has been attacking other users, trying to sanction them, and raging against them as pedophiles, or whatever. And attacking Wikiversity as a sanctuary for editors banned elsewhere, which we are, because building educational resources is much more easily a cooperative project than building an encyclopedia.

I've actively been recruiting editors who have run into trouble, for often they are subject matter experts who ran into the Usual Usual at Wikipedia. In any case, it gives them hope, and they can actually build something useful. A few take me up on it. Frankly, I love Wikiversity, I see it as about the only hope for a WMF turnabout. If there is any hope.

Ottava has claimed copyright violation. He always claims something. No specific violations on Wikiversity have been alleged, but the mob on Wikipedia went on a rampage, deleting an enormous number of pages (see that AN/I report), on the theory that it was too much work to review them. Apparently they are still excited. The Drama! The Emergency! Copyvio! Delete! Ban!

They are obviously having enormous fun.

And then they try to ding this editor for creating pages on WV, as supposedly creating a Dire Risk for the WMF, but they don't point to actual pages. And there is zero risk to the WMF, even if these pages were actually serious copyvio. We'd just delete the violations, if any are found, or, if we don't find them, the owner would request takedown and they'd be deleted per the Office.

It's like they don't have any brains, just gonads.

Ack! I actually looked at AN/I! I need to go wash my face.

"because building educational resources is much more easily a cooperative project than building an encyclopedia."

This is exactly why Wikiversity should only be edited by real educators and academics. Your understanding of education is wrong. "Education" does not involve copyvios and spreading nonsense POVs because the mainstream academics think your ideas are laughable.

Yup, it's The Battle of the Banned, live and in slow-motion!

Something was said of Marshallsumter's articles that, to me, could almost apply to all of Wikipedia:

Ottava is like that cartoon character that runs off the cliff and keeps on running, not noticing that he's unsupported.

He may or may not be an "academic" (he's been a student), but he's definitely not a "real educator." He has no idea how people work, and education is about people.

Wikiversity is being used by real educators for real classes, and it's being used for many kinds of non-standard education. My work there is to bring order and structure to it all, so that resources are accessible. Most of the work as a custodian, though, isn't about that, it's much more mundane: vandalism and spam patrol, welcoming users, and assisting them.

I do make inclusion decisions, like any administrator. I've been deleting spam. I'd delete copyvio if it's brought to my attention, but I haven't been taking pages and googling snippets looking for plagiarism or copyvio. I see no improvement coming from that, and the time it takes is time taken away from improving the project, and there is plenty to do. But anyone is welcome to do it, and I'll fully cooperate and assist, consulting the community if I have any doubt.

I avoid deleting any content that might reasonably be of use for any educational purpose. What's marginal, I'll userfy. A result: the requests for deletion page has gone almost entirely empty. Stuff is still being deleted, but without controversy. In the last month I deleted 180 pages. But there has been no controversy about this, none. Spammers and vandals don't complain. There is now one user who has been repeatedly creating pages on his Favorite Topic, which is probably himself. He hasn't actually complained, he just keeps ignoring requests to stop. For a while, I moved all these pages into a user space for an account of his. No response. He just kept creating more variations and then created a new account. So maybe eventually there will be some sort of conflict. But this isn't really controversial; I've been bending over backwards to try to accommodate this guy, Ottava would have deleted everything and blocked him long ago, and I saw Ottava do that with real students, and real academics, because he didn't understand what they were doing. That's part of why Ottava had to go as a custodian.

An analogical comparison between Wikiversity and Wikipedia, once both are mature, would be a large university, including broad "free university" projects and traditional education with tighter standards, combined with a massive university library, ongoing classes and seminars and educational events, including discussions, as compared with an encyclopedia. Which is more important, in the end? Which one do you go to to get an education, as distinct from an article on a topic?

Wikiversity is just a baby project, it's barely begun. Like many babies, it can make a mess. But I've had seven real babies, and there are now six grandbabies. Babies grow up. Wikiversity has practically unlimited possibilities, Wikipedia has few. Maybe it can become a better encyclopedia, but where is the help for that going to come from?

I won't explain this here, in depth, I'll just say it. From Wikiversity. From academics and experts and enthusiasts who develop deep resources on Wikiversity, and then, as a side-project, perhaps student projects, create better Wikipedia articles, drafts, fully satisfying Wikipedia sourcing and content guidelines, as well as being well-written and interesting, which are then proposed on Wikipedia as replacements for the train wrecks that WP articles often become, farragos of detritus from generations of revert wars and incoherent piecemeal editing. The old Wikipedia articles will vanish, whenever this happens. People will recognize quality, it won't take massive disruption.

If there are different points of view, they may create alternate articles, and those good at facilitating consensus will create "consensus articles." May the best article win!

Academics, real academics, will be an important part of that. Wikiversity truly respects academics, far more than Wikipedia. We protect them. Banned on Wikipedia or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...ies_Act_of_1992

I stumbled upon a hoax article today. It was created on September 9, 2009. An anon noted the problem in August (I forgot which year). I used "possible hoax" in a edit summary, and Hipocrite tagged it for deletion soon after.

They're also proposing Template:Hoax for deletion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tem...9#Template:Hoax

"Rarely used" is stated as a reason. "Rarely used" isn't a problem for the template; it's a problem with Wikipedia. If the template is "rarely used," then it means that hoaxes are rarely spotted. Hoaxes generally aren't spotted until the media points them out in an embarrassing article or until someone (Seigenthaler) is victimized.

In a sense. What Marshall is doing, in some of his work, is collecting the usage of the term "Dominant group" and related language. It's a research project, and one doesn't know in a real research project what result will be obtained. As I see it, he's doing this for his own study and interest, but I've found some of his material quite interesting. Some is boring, perhaps. Real research is like that! You don't know what you are going to find.

It's not a collection of "random material." That was simply a reflection of the fact that the writer did not understand the purpose. He was looking at raw research data about language. Absolutely, this stuff did not belong on Wikipedia. That's not true, by the way, of all of Marshall's work. Complicated issue. We will sort it in the end. I've found Marshall to be cooperative. Wikipedia's loss is Wikiversity's gain.

Marshall consented to organizing his research material under a single Wikiversity page, Dominant group. He's learning to use Wikiversity subpage structure, which can really help keep things organized. He was very active on Wikipedia in astronomical subjects, and he's created a few pages in his user space that might become astronomical resources on WV. His friends in WikiProject Astronomy should be invited to come to WV!

The deleted Wikipedia article on Coronal cloud.

Notice that if you go to that page, there is a nice display that invites you to search on Wikiversity for material on "Coronal cloud." Click on the link and you will find some pages in Marshall's user space.

The reason for the deletion on WP is not directly stated by the Bold Administrator Timotheus Canens. But it was fear of possible copyvio. Now, is there copyvio in what Marshall has put on Wikiversity? Ottava is invited to do something useful: find the copyvio. Yoo-hoo, copyvio, where are you?

If a lot of copyvio is actually found, in pages being created on Wikiversity, we'll have to have a little talk with Marshall. But he won't be blocked unless he's actually uncooperative and disruptive. You know, Wikipedia used to be like that. If you made a mistake, but you agreed to stop, they didn't punish. At least not in theory! Carcharoth in the AN/I report, was wondering how all this could happen. Where has Carcharoth been?

According to ANI, his pages on Wikipedia were fraudulent and were filled with major inaccuracies.

I can't see a difference between this guy and Abd - they see it as their obligation to put forth bad science. That is probably why Abd is so desperate to help this guy.




I've probably had more courses on how to be an educator than you've had in college and I have taught and lectured in many classes on various subjects from literature to theology to politics. I also started out as a math teacher with an emphasis on geometry. I was brought into Wikiversity and recruited because of my background in education and academia.




That is a hallucination. I didn't block students or delete their pages. All actions I took are very easy to find.

And the probative value of that claim is exactly zero, as the human refuse that inhabits the Wikipedia community noticeboards are not competent enough to accurately determine the time of day by listening to a WWV broadcast.

This is beyond stupid, as usual with AN/I "disputes".

If Marshallsumter is "disruptive" for posting these utterly unimportant articles, then why isn't anyone doing anything about the scores of blatantly crap/hoax articles I've run across? Oh, right, because some twit hasn't "discovered" them yet.

And they won't. Because I won't list them here. Some of them are in the seekrit area, and there they will stay until I use them in "The Book".

I will have ample ammunition to make Wikipedia look incompetent. Which it is, of course.

Oh, and btw, Binksternet, who made the following comment:

Is guilty of COI on a biography. And I won't tell you which one.

According to that same AN/I, you are less than worthless to wikipedia, commons, meta and wikiversity.

Having welcomed the user to Wikiversity, I saw him begin creating his pages there. When Sj, Do-Gooder Supreme. sometimes Loose Cannon, on the WMF Board, complained (with Ottava Rima), not noticing that I'd already cautioned the user, about copyvio, I proposed to the user that he blank certain files pending resolution, to address the complaints, and he promptly did that.

And he's starting the cleanup process.

Basically, Wikipedia blocked a highly cooperative editor, one who would have cooperated, one who would have cleaned up his own mess. They blocked him and banned him for something where he had no record of ignored warnings, no previous blocks. And then worked themselves into a tizzy because of the volume of his contributions, deleting with a meat-axe.

It's called Copyright paranoia at meta.

What I'm discovering is that there is no clear policy on this. (single-sentence quotations from sources which are cited.) Just a habit of beating up users for violations that have never clearly been defined.

This is not normally considered copyvio, legally.

Marshall had articles that were not appropriate for Wikipedia. Like, so? Some or most of these have some utility at Wikiversity.

But intellectual pygmies have some difficulty understanding something like his project. Look, if he's like Sokal, so?


Sokal did something profound and deeply useful. He exposed serious flaws in certain journals. Of course they hated him for it!

But I don't think he's Sokal. I think he's just doing some research into a linguistic phenomenon. It's true research, which means that one doesn't know the outcome in advance. Encyclopedists will have no concept of anything like this, it's to be expected.

But he also wrote articles about X-ray astronomy, seems it's his specialty. We'll see what comes of this, at WV.

Interestingly, WV bureaucrat (and WR regular) SB Johnny is urging this S Larctia to become an admin on WV. If SBJ doesn't know who this is, I'd call that rather irresponsible. If he does know who this is, will he tell us please?

Knows his way around, anti-pseudoscience, probably a very experienced editor. No real need to know exactly who he is... just about anybody would be an improvement at this point.

If anyone is interested in starting Wikiversity anew, away from the WMF, let me know.

I'm not interested in joining, but I want to learn more. Can you please elaborate?

My take, reading between the lines, is that M.S. was doing some sort of experiment seeing if he could post up and retain "sourced" gibberish on esoteric topics on WP without anyone noticing. I'm guessing random fragments from academic papers, each line relevant to some topic, but in sum complete gibberish.

If that's the case: they noticed.


t

Let me help you with that.

In what respect, SBJ? Over you? Yes. You are quite inactive. You are a 'crat, but you dismiss the backlog on Changing username because you don't wanna. On the other hand, you just blocked Ottava Rima, for disruption, perhaps because he was Disruptive As Hell. I hadn't complained, but that was pure forbearance.

As to S Larctia, the editor did an almost total 'bout face. What Larctia wrote in response to my questions bears reading.Totally blew me away. Like I started thinking, my God, is this GoRight or Sarsaparilla or whatever? Running a straw puppet for effect? Not that they ever did this!

What a great idea for Guido!

Basically, when Wikiversity is demonstrating that it is able to maintain independence within the WMF, this is when Guido "retires," and when SBJ grumbles that, if Wikiversity tolerates the likes of me, he'll vote to shut it down. All that was as the result of a very uneventful month as a probationary custodian, where nobody said "boo!" to anything I'd done, even though I ran perhaps thousands of edits with hundreds of administrative actions. The place has been hummin'. Recent Changes is about 900 actions per day. There were a couple of cross-wiki personal attacks in that period. All from outside users coming to Wikiversity to attack Wikiversitans. Shut down immediately. In one case that outside interference was matched by a personal attack though a user name outing of a French 'crat. Caught and shut down very quickly.

We know how to work within the WMF, and we are getting substantial support from global sysops and rollbackers, with there being no controversy over that. The only complaints? Really, people like Ottava Rima and Guido, and the only real Wikiversitan who is opposed to my work is SBJ, and he's been very inactive for reasons that have nothing to do with me, unless he's been lying, which I very much don't suspect. I think SBJ is straightforward, he believes what he says and says what he believes, whether it's smart or stupid.

I like that. I also liked William M. Connolley for the same reason. You know what happened there, right?

It's easy to think that, but I've spent some time, now, with his work, and that's not what it is. He's mostly doing what might be called research notes. However, I don't really care. He didn't place, as far as I've seen, any gibberish in Wikiversity mainspace. If he does, well, Jabberwocky is nonsense, but it's also something that could be written and studied in an academic environment.

There is no doubt that MS's work, or at least much of it, was inappropriate for Wikipedia. I haven't seen anything on Wikiversity, yet, from him, that is seriously inappropriate. He's doing original research, which I read as linguistic research, how words are used. That's okay. Original research is allowed at Wikiversity, unlike Wikipedia, and if his original research is some kind of parody, that's allowed, too. And if anyone disagrees, well, there is RfD. But that's not really necessary. If he wants to put research parodies in his user space on WV, for example, that's quite acceptable, by precedent.

But it's not okay to attack users.

Holy crap.

Holier crappier.