Well, this is a good example of how reflexive and fascistic pro-censorship thinking leads to more problems, isn't it?

Many of the links to Wikipedia Review that were removed over the past 12 hours by Wikipedia's User:DennyColt were links we actually wanted removed, because they clearly portrayed us in a negative fashion. So, instead of Wikipedia's caustic mentions of "hate sites" and "troll boards" that link to us, there are now mentions of "(removing link and/or promotion of hate/attack site per [[WP:BADSITES]])" that don't link anywhere at all. So, YIPPEE! No more bad, negative publicity from the real hate site, indeed the biggest hate site on the whole internet: The English Wikipedia! Thanks, WP!

What's more, in several cases, Denny's actions have only made things worse for his victims "fellow" Wikipedians. For example, instead of this page saying: "Hi Werdna. I am glad that you registered an account on Wikipedia Review," the page now says: "Hi Werdna. I am glad that you registered an account on (removing link and/or promotion of hate/attack site per [[WP:BADSITES]])." Read that again, folks! Goshers, how do you think poor Werdna feels about that?

And now, instead of this page saying: "I have to give a reason of some sort for doing a delete, in case I'm hauled up in front of a ... a kangaroo court" (with the words "kangaroo court" linking to Wikipedia Review), the page now says "I have to give a reason of some sort for doing a delete, in case I'm hauled up in front of a ... (removing link and/or promotion of hate/attack site per [[WP:BADSITES]].)" Was there some risk of her being hauled up in front of such a site? The mind reels.

Now we're seeing the value of experience, aren't we? Now we're seeing why "Do Not Feed the Trolls" is a more established policy than WP:BADSITES. Now we're seeing why Wikipedia shouldn't be run by people who just happened to show up a few weeks ago and "thought it might be fun." And now we're seeing just how utterly weak their system is, and how easily manipulated. Should a website like this really be running unauthorized biographies on nearly 150,000 people? I think not! But hey, all's well that ends well, right?

Well, not quite. Y'see, there's just this one little thing they forgot, isn't there? What was it...? Oooh, wait! I remember now!

Wikipedia Review does NOT allow reproduction of its content under the GFDL or any other free-content license!

By removing citations to reposted Wikipedia Review content, Wikipedia is now in violation of international copyright laws. The now-plagiarized content must now either be removed, or the working links restored, for Wikipedia to return to a state of compliance with US Intellectual Property laws!

Wikipedia may accuse us of "stalking" or "hate speech," but actually proving these allegations will be difficult, whereas these copyright violations are exceptionally simple to prove, using evidence supplied by Wikipedia itself.

For example, DennyColt removes a citation to quoted material by member JohnA, leaving the quoted material in place:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=120855593

And here, the Dennybot removes a citation to reposted material originally written by member Blissyu2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=120854803

So in order to exact revenge against their critics for supposed "stalking," accusations of which are probably libelous and actionable in and of themselves, Wikipedia has now crossed the line into outright lawbreaking!

Naturally, we expect Wikipedia to deal with these violations, in good faith, as soon as possible. Don't make us sue y'all, OK? Nobody wants that.

Thanks again!

I want it. Wikipedia is a publisher who needs to be sued.

Wikipedia is circling the wagons. The end is beginning for wikipedia.

Just to follow up on this, the edits that removed citations to WR-copyright material on WP have all since been reverted, mostly by someone named User:Mangoe, who now vaults ahead of Doc glasgow to #2 on my List of Favorite Wikipedians - but still well behind the non pareil User:Sbharris. In fact, Doc may have slipped a few additional notches today. (I should keep a running tally somewhere...)

Anyway, thanks and a big Shout Out™ to Mangoe, whom I had never even heard of before today! And also to The Man WR Loves to Hate, Mr. Dan Tobias, who also helped bring the situation to their attention, though he still couldn't quite restrain himself from a slight distortion or two on WikiEN-L...

To wit, there's this one last issue to deal with, and it's mostly one of semantics. Since when does this:
..become this?

In other words, I don't see how "Don't make us sue y'all, OK? Nobody wants that" becomes "they're threatening to sue us," and certainly not "they're planning to sue us." I'll admit, I probably shouldn't have used the word "sue" at all, since I know very, very well the kind of mentality I'm - we're - dealing with here, one that sees even the slightest hint of speculation about the legal ramifications of their actions as a "legal threat." That mentality is inherently preposterous, of course, but I knew about it, and I wrote it anyway. (Of course, that's only because I personally find it amusing. )

It's really high time Wikipedia took a more realistic attitude towards the legal ramifications of what they're doing, because if they don't, pretty soon it's going to bite them in the arses in a Very Big Way. Let's face it, nobody representing Wikipedia Review is going to sue them, as much as their ridiculous claims of us being "stalkers" are probably actionable. For one thing, there just isn't enough money to be made. (And for another, how do you "stalk" a screen name, exactly? I've yet to figure that one out!) And as far as us being an "external source of personal attacks," well, I'm afraid that if something doesn't change, and if things like a BLP opt-out policy and a realistic means of keeping 8-week-old n00bz and corrupt stockbrokers from practically taking over and dictating key WP editorial standards aren't implemented pronto, then we're just going to be the tip of a very large and formidable iceberg.

Have a nice day, Wikipedia!

I'm actually pleased that someone on Wikipedia noticed my "If I ran Wikipedia..." posting and copied it for more discussion. The link to the original was restored anyway.

Who cares about Denny Colt? He/she is being a dick.

I agree. Some cite the law improperly on Wikipedia. Many are anonymous users who make awkward claims. It's rather distressing.

Wikipedia when presented with serious lawsuits tends to fold quickly as they don't have the resources to fight real cases. For each real lawsuit filed there are probably a couple dozen threatened that never progress past mere (and often poorly reasoned) threats.

Well, thanks folks... I was worried it was just me!

But just to follow up on this once again, Mr. Tobias's efforts, ehhh, sort of on our behalf were, predictably, met with the kind of accusations of treason and betrayal of the faith that we've come to expect from the Taliban, or from DennyColt, assuming anyone can still tell the difference.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ril/068085.html

Obviously Dan Tobias is not a "regular" here, and does not "hang out" with us. (I was just down at the bowling alley to check, and apparently he'd already left.) Nor does he "endorse" us, by any stretch of the imagination. What this does illustrate, though, is that most of what we've assumed about User:DennyColt from Day One has been completely justified. Who he is, and why he's doing what he's doing, is still a complete mystery, but the idea that he's actually being honest about his background, motivations, and intentions at this point is simply laughable. At the same time, I wouldn't blame Wikipedia for censoring mentions (linked or otherwise) to Wikipedia Review, fascistic though it might be. They're under a lot of heavy fire from the outside world these days. That can't be fun!

To some extent it's actually sort of satisfying to see Dan get a taste of his own medicine, i.e., gross distortions, exaggerations, and strawmen, but at least Dan is on the side of greater freedoms, not less. (I guess that counts for something!)

It is also true that we restricted, but did not completely ban, Mr. Tobias from WR for about a week or so. I might add here that if MediaWiki were capable of a simple thing like blocking editing access to specific namespaces or categories for specific users, there would be a lot fewer people getting pissed off about being banned. But they can't be bothered, apparently! Luckily, this website runs on far more sophisticated software, written by people who are apparently far less sadistic.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ril/068173.html

Indeed, Dan has become something of a cause celebre here, with many of our members wanting to ban him outright, others wanting to avoid the appearance of censorship, and others simply not caring one way or the other. It's true that we judge people on what they say elsewhere, not just here, but it should be remembered that Dan went out of his way to insult us as a group. (I know, whine, whine, whine. Jeez Louise.) But the real problem is that few of us here really think he makes legitimate argument points, as he has an exceptionally annoying tendency to "cherry-pick" statements from other members, often out of context, presumably in order to distort their meanings and intent. He also refuses to see grey areas where they clearly exist, and in general, acts in a superior and dismissive manner towards those he disagrees with. Other pro-Wikipedia members here somehow manage to avoid doing that, though that could also just be my imagination.

But all in all, Dan is the very model of the modern Wikipedian!

Anyway, after the aforementioned WikiEN-L posting (why do we read that list? I've forgotten), Matthew User:Morven Brown replied thusly:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ril/068181.html

I'm glad he finds us entertaining - thanks! - but the truth is that we almost never ban anyone at all. Since last July, when the site was forked, we've restricted just three people to posting outside the main forum only, and we've eliminated one member completely for some extremely nasty spamming and offsite defamation. (Less said the better!)

One of the three people on those restrictions was, indeed, Dan Tobias - but regardless, two things have to be cleared up. I, personally, don't believe that we "constantly" criticize Wikipedia for censoring things. I'd say that's only an occasional criticism, and in fact, many of us would like to see more things "censored," though I'm not sure I'd call it "censorship" as much as I'd call it "exercising a little human kindness." And I believe we've always freely admitted that banning and blocking people is sometimes necessary to keep a site like this together. It's just that since our software is so much better than Wikipedia's in that regard, we usually don't have to.

The last thing Morven says is, "many contributors use pseudonyms yet believe Wikipedia editors should be known." As one might expect, I see this as an intellectually dishonest argument. The only reasons any Wikipedia editors' identities should be known is if their POV pushing is so blatant that exposing their identities is the only way to explain it, or if their persecution of private individuals is so excessive that their identities should be found out in order that they may be brought to justice, and yes, I do mean brought to justice. True, we might make exceptions for people who have lied about their academic credentials or who are working as journalists and have a clear conflict of interest, but overall, the vast majority of anonymous editors don't do those things and therefore have absolutely nothing to worry about. We're not trying to be Diabolically Evil Supervillains™ here, at least not the last time I checked. What's more, if Wikipedia were to give the people they expose, in the form of objected-to BLP articles, a way to opt out of their website, I believe we can drum up enough support for doing the same thing here - even for those who are clearly notable enough on WP to deserve that kind of exposure. No doubt I'll be accused of "blackmail" for that, but I don't intend to lose any sleep over it.

I'm only speaking for myself here, but what I'd like to see from Wikipedia is a little more humanity, a little more responsibility, and a little more heart. As for what I'd like to see less of, they can read that in most of the other threads.

Oh, Somey, it tears me up watching you politely correct the stupid ads on TV, er, WP. I just scream at them like a normal person would. Either way, they can't hear you — it's no more in their nature to check the accuracy of what they assert in their editorials than it is to check the accuracy of what they recite in those long-ruining soap operas they call "articles".

Jonny

Denny asks:

Are you now, or have you ever been a regular at Wikipedia Review??

They did fail on their attempt to spam blacklist us from all Wikis everywhere:
meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_blacklist#wikipedia_review

Some good points in this thread, but this one disturbs me. How many, and which Admins has WR publicly 'outed' and how is a decision reached as to who gets 'outed'? Vote? Consensus? A personal grudge from one highly biased editor like Nobs, Joe1000 or - yes - ME? If outing editors and Admins on Wiki who wish to be anonymous is a stated goal of WR, and done often, and capriciousely, I won't be staying.

Are you now, or have you ever been irregular on MetaMucil ???

With epologies to Joe & Linda Mc ...

Jonny

That's a good question. I'd say most of the so-called "outing" hasn't really been initiated here, but rather reported on here after the fact. In other words, we don't solicit identification of these people except in extremely rare cases. Jayjg is probably one of those cases, though, and there were plenty of people here who were more than willing to help figure out who SlimVirgin is. Unfortunately, those are also high-profile cases...

But each case is different, really, and I still maintain that we stop short of allowing peoples' addresses, phone numbers, private e-mail addresses, or specific places of business to be posted. (One of us might not catch such postings until a few hours after the fact, though.)

When I say "brought to justice," I'm talking about people on WP who use it to deliberately persecute private individuals. A good example is User:Groggy_Dice, the person who's been persecuting William Bradford (professor). Whether or not maintenance and ownership of a WP article can be considered "persecution" is up to the courts to decide, just as the question of whether or not those people really are guilty of libel and/or harassment is up to the courts to decide. But in cases where it's clearly just one or two people doing it, I see no reason why the Foundation should have to be dragged into such legal entanglements... OTOH, if they're not going to give up what they know about the accused person, and they refuse to impose an opt-out policy, then what other choice does the victim have? Just lie down and take it? I really hope that's not what society has come to.

Fairness and accuracy for all, remember?

Thanks for explaining. I'll read the Groggy case.

Outed...who have you guys outed, anyway? Now that I've actually read the threads in question, it's not nearly as bad as it first sounds.

Essjay was just idiotic - it's one thing to fake some things, but there is a huge difference between a tenured professor in his 30s-40s and a 24-year-old college dropout. And he was interviewed for The New Yorker, so it was just a matter of time before 2 and 2 were put together.

If I trust Brandt's word, Katefan0 posted her real name once (the Google caches he linked to have long since purged), and since she was working for a relatively well-known newspaper, that too was connected. Whether it was right or not to try to out her or not is not as clear-cut. It isn't as though WR broke into her house and found her Wikipedia logon or osmething. I originally thought that WR did something sinister like that in order to 'out' Katefan0 - that's what you'd think by just reading it on WP. I think of it as just picking up on breadcrumbs.

Are there any other situations?

Okay, but as a leftist, you'll probably come down on Groggy's side, at least initially. I guess I see myself as trying to look at the big picture - which is to say that even though Bradford is a Bush-supporting conservative, an objective view of his case shows clear evidence of persecution and disrespect for his privacy - which he desperately wants back, for the sake of his family and what's left of his career. I don't like Bradford's political leanings either, but it's not like he's running for office, and the use of those tactics is despicable regardless of who the target is.

I should also point out that Bradford is probably finished in academia, and maybe also as an attorney, which is why he's currently in an MBA program. He allowed himself to be used, or more accurately exploited, by the right-wing media at a time when they were heavily scrutinizing academics over the Ward Churchill brouhaha. It was a mistake on his part, but because of WP (and bearing in mind that the sources WP has used in his bio are becoming 404's one-by-one over time), it's a mistake he might have to pay for the rest of his life - unless they allow for an opt-out policy. An AfD might work in his case, but one has already failed, and as long as the persecutor is active, it seems rather unlikely.

Maybe if all the sources they've found become 404's, he might have a chance... but by then, it may be too late for him.


It's mostly just SlimVirgin and Mantanmoreland, basically. (And maybe Phaedriel too, though the original identification was made by Daniel and published on Encyclopedia Dramatica before it was posted here.) I doubt we'll ever really figure out who Jayjg is, and maybe we shouldn't try, but he's such a jerk... But anyway, many of us, including myself, actively helped Daniel Brandt expose SlimVirgin, and some of us sort of helped Wordbomb (who has since been "outed" himself) dig up WP-based evidence on both her and Mantanmoreland - who to many of us is a scandal potentially worse than Essjay, or should be. Then again, Wordbomb himself is something of a scandal...

Wikitruth has actually outed more people than us - WooHooKitty, FCYTravis, Kelly Martin, and Tony Sidaway, to name a few. And not very politely, either! But since we went after the Big Fish, we get the Big Nasty.

Oh well!

Interesting. Why is DennyColt not trying to get WikiTruth declared an attack site and trying to get their links removed as well? WikiTruth even has a big article at Wikipedia?

Also I should mention that SlimVirgin has an account on WikiTruth as explained by ta_bu_shi_da_yu on IRC:

"Support for what it's worth - any user on enWP who links this site will almost certainly be blocked or banned immediately, and there is no conceivable article for which wikipediareview could be considered a reliable source. Nothing to lose and everything to gain form blacklisting. Just zis Guy, you know? 20:45, 7 April 2007" (UTC) http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Spam_b...ikipedia_review

The above statment by WR favorite JIMBO JUICE Big gulp admins is indicative of the groupthink, thought crime mentality that makes Wikipedia a real life working example of a George Orwell novel.

God, the self-importance of this petty little Napoleon Bonaparte Bozo knows no bounds, constrained by no rules of God, or country.

thank you.

A picture is worth a thousand words!




This is actually true, though. Blacklisting is usually formed by people who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing it. It's still not quite syntactically correct, but this is Wikipedia we're talking about, after all...

Hm. And here I was, thinking that the spam blacklist should be used for fighting against spam...

Oh yeah. I remember this one all too well. I was one of only two users who voted (excuse me, opined--voting is evil!) for deletion of this attack article on its second AfD. I'm doubt I am much more in sympathy with Bradford's political views than Somey or FNORD23, but I felt strongly (and still do) that this was an egregiously abusive BLP. Of course, I did not state my objection directly as I did here, as I knew it would do no good.

Maybe it would help if we offered to sell them some Viagra? Or maybe help them consolidate their debts into one convenient, low monthly payment?


Thanks, Cedric! I do believe Bradford would genuinely appreciate that, and I've been informed (via e-mail) that he does occasionally drop by here to read what's going on, WRT the opt-out situation.

At some point I'll probably start a thread on that article, but honestly, if there's any way we can gently "prod" what few sympathetic WP'ers are still around into taking action without everyone's having to make a further spectacle of this guy, I'd much rather exhaust those possibilities first.

HA! HA! PWNED!

Right now .V. says that WikiTruth isn't an attack site because they rely only on public information:
I can't see that we have done anything different. I believe all our research has been done via search engines and the like. The discussion continues:
Wikipedia_talk:Attack_sites#Question

Also I should mention that SlimVirgin has an account on WikiTruth as explained by ta_bu_shi_da_yu on IRC:

"Wikipedia

The definitions left it clear that wikipedia would be considered an attack site as to our letting anyone edit there are many attacks against wikipedia editors, stalking, harrassment etc, that daily appear on our site. So I have made it clear wikipedia is not to be considered an attack site, SqueakBox 18:07, 7 April 2007 (UTC)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...sites#Wikipedia

I love circular logic of squeakbox. The rules of [[WP:BADSITE]] could be applied to wikipedia, as regards it self as to defamation and attacks others outside a Wikipedia.

GOD I love it, the hypocrisy is so bad. It's like an Iowa pig farm in late August.

I don't buy it. SlimVirgin doesn't have a sense of humor, which means she cannot have an account on wikitruth. I checked my IRC search, and in the same minute we had this:

No way. ta_bu_shi_da_yu is simply trying to be funny.

It's true that I found this on your site via google cache now, but I remember reading it on an MSN-hosted blog months prior but it appears to have vanished. Also I went through D3str0y's edit history and at the time the edit summaries were in the same style as SlimVirgin's. When I went through D3str0y edits I didn't see anything particularly funny (check yourself), just a lot of animosity towards Tony Sidaway. But who knows...

[D3str0y user page quote removed, see WikiTruth User:D3str0y]

UPDATE: Actually, I may be wrong. I can't find any record of SlimVirgin showing great animosity towards Tony Sidaway, in fact only the opposite.

Ehh, they've probably accused just about everybody they don't like of being involved in Wikitruth by now, including me, indirectly. (Some of them thought I was Lir for a while, y'see... oops!) Heck, we've speculated on it too, though we haven't done much of that recently.

They're good folks, I suppose, though they really ought to remove that stuff about FCYTravis. I have my suspicions about who they are too, but as long as they continue to send me those Godiva chocolates every Valentine's Day, I'll just keep them to myself!

Well, the D3str0y user page you quoted (and then edited out) is not funny, but I think SlimVirgin is a better writer and philosophical thinker than this. I cannot see her using the phrase "communistic attitude," for example. And the "h" at the beginning of a sentence should be upper-case. You realize, I hope, that she was a grad student in philosophy at King's College in Cambridge in the late 1980s, and she can really cut through the crap when she needs to make a point. The problem is that while she may be brilliant, she's also sometimes just wrong or misguided. I have a friend who has a PhD and is brilliant, and he subscribes to The New Republic. He admires their articles because he's an English professor. I tell him, "Yes, it's all very excellent writing, but they're always wrong on the issues!" It might be a left-brain, right-brain sort of thing.

Please don't blur the distinction between a Wiki and Jimbo's empire! They can't ban us from Wikis beyond Jimbo's control.

A better analogy for a St. Petersburg-based company with weird, unjust policies would be that societies where blood must flow from altars down the steps of pyramids have seen better days. The gallions again float in the lake surrounding Mexico City in other words.

Some Aztec religions believed the earth's rotation required blood's constant flow down the steps from volunteer "gods," human sacrifices. Like human sacrifice wastes lives for no good reason, Wikipedia's altar does the same to at least users' or editors' lives on the Internet, spilling truth, honesty, integrity, justice, and knowledge like human blood as a poor demonstration of the world turning, and it does so for at best as an example that makes vandalism at least border on morality, though apparently attempting to demonstrate its difficulty to the wrong class. I guess they think people still want to volunteer to be the "gods" for their neat, new, and giant pyramid.

Vincent

You mean, as said here?

GOD, I love it... What would Jimbo be, the stone knife wielding priest??? or Slim Virgin, the priestess of blood, The vestal virgin?

I love it... as blood pour down the pyramid, just over the next hill is a Spanish fellow by the name of Cortes with his buds looking for El Dorado.

So as it is with history, empires rise, decay within and fall when the Vandal hords knock at the gate.

I think so.... Wikipedia being a convoluted sidewalk turd, who knows what fly is generating policy there. From hour to hour day today.

I think is funny is the fact that by their own very definition they know wikipedia falls withing their definition of an attack site.

The world of wiki is rich with the logic of the absurd.

Am I the only one here who has noticed that DennyColt's grasp of the English mechanics, grammar, and orthography seems to be seriously lacking?

He's probably a 12-year-old kid who's just trying to get accepted. It's a bad idea, but there's really no need to shit all over him.

Or maybe English isn't his first language?

It's possible but Denny is of little consequence. Taking away cunning and ability to forge alliances, he reminds me of Cyde. Those two qualities are what have prevented Cyde from disgracing himself. It's just a matter of time til Denny monumentally messes up. Do you imagine him standing for RfA?

I don't think so...it's not really "broken" English--what he writes is clearly intelligible, but it's full of poor spelling and grammar. Furthermore, the substance of his arguments are about what you would expect from an early adolescent who can't yet grasp the essence of what he's talking about.

Perhaps. But I have observed that polemicists tend to be poor writers, even when they are gifted orators. At the risk of being "Godwined", I will note that Hitler is the classic example of this. His Mein Kampf is pretty much unreadable in English translation (I could never finish it), and I have read that it is even worse in the original German.

It's a hypothesis. It's always conceivable that just the right combination of dumb luck and natural talent would explain the impact that he-she has had in the first 2½ months of his-her WP:LIFE.

I'm just going by what I myself was doing in my first few months of n00bh00d in Wikipedia, when I actually wasted gobs of time writing lots of articles and actually imagined that anybody in WP gave a RA about that.

Now, I long ago got used to the idea that I would always be an incredibly slow learner, so I've tried to discount for that in my estimations of DC's ediot savvy, but the idea of going right to the top of what all of us know — Now — to be an Utterly Phoney Arbitration Scam (UPAS) is something that seems a bit too precocious for me to believe.

And when I look at the diffs of those early skits that gave him-her the excuse to contact the Great And Powerful Crustacean, what I see is something more like somebody pretending to be a kid.

Of couse, it could just be my slow learning thing again ...

Jonny

Probably not anymore, but that's only because he's shown his true colors. I'll also freely admit that I started this, and the accusations we're getting from them of the site not being "controlled" or "oversighted" sufficiently are accusations against me, mostly, since I'm the most active admin. But people like DennyColt just make me want to ignore those accusations, quite frankly.

And I'm not saying it's impossible that someone would just show up, practically out of the blue, and start managing extremely controversial AfD's, writing highly divisive censorship policies, and in general gaming the system like an Essjay-level master within his first 4 to 6 weeks. But there's a reason this guy wants to be an admin, so bad that he can't even wait until his RfA to start acting like one. It could be anything - he might want to ban someone, or delete something, or take control of some article or even an entire topic. I'd very much like to know what that reason is, but I don't really care who he is. The problem is that there may be no way to find out the one thing without some speculation as to the other.

But there's an even larger issue that we haven't mentioned so often, and that's this: If it weren't for us, people like DennyColt would provide, quite simply, textbook cases on how to take personal control of key aspects of Wikipedia in ridiculously short periods of time, with little or no editorial talent, simply by manipulating peoples' irrational hatred of critics, or wearing down those who disagree with their idea of how things should be run. At this point, no, DennyColt probably wouldn't survive an RfA - but that's not because they figured out that he was manipulating them, it's because we saw it almost immediately. We know what we're looking for, because some of us have actually tried it. (Some of us have even succeeded, though I'll never let on any more details than that.) We're also not under some silly-ass stricture that forces us to "AGF," as the Dennybot often whines to those who challenge him in just about any way whatsoever...

All of these things occur because Wikipedia is set up to allow them to occur, but the stakes are too high now for them to allow it and still be a responsible and civilized organizational entity. They're too big, too popular, and too influential.

And as for their internal objections, well... I'm not saying that we're doing them a service by supposedly "harassing" people like DennyColt, but we're not exactly doing them much harm, either, in spite of all the irrational "OMFG OH NOES they're stalking me" hyperbole they spew forth.

Maybe somey you should write a guide to becoming a caballer or how to recognize someone who is on that path in a similar spirit to the essay I wrote on ideological cliques. One essay, that ages well, often will have a wider audience and more impact than 50 individual forum posts. I think that if we produced more essays, we could raise our reputation. I notice in the WP:Attack sites talk page, no one has removed the link to that essay of mine.

You shouldnt confuse what wikipedia knows with what wikipedia editors know, or to be more precise what they go figurre for themselves.

Hiya, Squeaky ...

Walk toward the light ...

Jonny

Welcome to the forum, Squeaky.
( tongue —> cheek )

another hello to squeakbox

I think the pyramid part applies well. Wikipedia's sort of a pyramid-power trip right now.

Getting into articles has seemed difficult, but it's the recent treatment that's made me think it needs change.

It kind of makes me want to talk about Latin-American studies more LOL!

Vincent

Well now, let's not just gloss over this. Squeakers makes a good point here, and it's one we should all strive to remember, difficult though it may be: The beliefs or ideologies of an entire web-based community should never be inferred from the words or actions of just one of its members, or even a substantial minority of its members. That happens all too often on the web, and while our doing it really makes us not different from every other such community, that doesn't make it right.

I will say that it's probably easier to do with Wikipedia, though, because every page has this dual-nature thing going between the talk page, which contains signatures (some of which are the names of real people), and the actual content page, which does not, and thereby attempts to give the illusion of objectivity, with varying degrees of success ranging from a total sham to, well, actual objectivity, in some cases.

For example, later on in the same WikiEN-L thread, Mr. Morven writes thusly, referring to us here at WR:

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ril/068227.html

In fact, most of us here don't have a serious problem with anonymity of WP editors at all, except for Daniel Brandt, whose real name is... wait for it... "Daniel Brandt"! And I also know that in my case, while I have lots of concerns of that nature, I'm really only seriously concerned about what WP editors write about other people under the pretense of that aforementioned illusion of objectivity. (Admittedly, that's almost everything...) Nothing we write here about WP editors, good or bad, pretends to be objective in that same way - it really can't, because all posts appear with the person's name on the left-hand side. (You can actually see it, just over there... see? That's it!)

Only someone who didn't know the difference between subjectivity and objectivity, or didn't care, would be unable to make that distinction. And, of course, they shouldn't be writing those biographies, either.

Anyway, Mr. Morven is welcome to point me at the libel, I'll remove it, unless of course it's clearly non-libelous.

Before I get started, could somebody downsize that pic to 8 x 10 (cm) glossy size. It's getting to be a pain in eyes.

Somey, once again you are too kind. We have been through this same pattern of discussion time and again, for instance, every time some Reviewer takes a notion to have a Yet Another Good Admin (YAGA) poll, or some editor behaves like a Nice Cop for 3 or 4 exchanges while the Mean Cops sneak up behind and put a choke hold on your account.

I'm just gonna ignore Wikipedians who make legal threats about "actionable libel" ... puhlease !!!

They hoist themselves by their own WikiPetards for even using such language ...

But the other aguemint that we hear from these FruitCakes to the point of barfing is this one about the One Bad Apple (OBA). Yes, Friends, a So-Called "Community" that allows One Bad Apple to invoke the Name Of That Community without promptly turning that One Bad Apple to Apple Squash has abandoned all rights to that Apeel.

Now get out of here ...

Jonny