The WP article that has created a little bit of controversy lately, Santorum (neologism), comes with a bit of a puzzler - why is Cirt putting so much work into this topic?

Jayen466 has shown that Cirt has created articles about pro- and less pro-Scientology candidates in elections, but Rick Santorum seems to be a hardcore fundementalist Christian. There doesn't seem to be any clear connection between Santorum and the CoS (at least none that was apparent from a few minutes with Google). So why is Cirt so gung-ho about this article?

You will be surprised to learn that it has something to do with Scientology. It seems that Dan Savage, who coined the term santorum, got the Scientologists kicked out of a flea market where they were posing as booksellers. Savage's piece was posted on 5 May 2008. On 7 May 2011, Cirt returned from their long WP vacation. On 9 May, Cirt began editing santorum and other Dan Savage-related topics.

[edit: I somehow missed the fact that the post was from 3 years ago!]

Well, if that don't flip mah e-meter.

I can see why Will Beback likes this guy.

Another clue that Cirt is being paid by Savage or his PR people: n:Dan Savage wins Webby Award for It Gets Better Project (T-H-L-K-D).

I can see why Will Beback likes this guy.


Ever read Dan Savage's column? It's not for the kiddies.

Expect more kerfluffle over this article now.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/...date/?hpt=hp_t2

The Daily Show segment that set off the flap was very well done, I thought.

It seems to me that we automatically assume that Cirt is single-mindedly orienting all his edits to attacks on Scientology. But does he have some other preoccupations, like, you know, the sex thing? He seems to be really big on Dan Savage.

Hm, and he did write that article about Corbin Fisher (T-H-L-K-D), too. Perhaps he has pretty high-up connections in the gay community.

Interesting, also, that Cirt manages to dodge SlimVirgin's questions on his talk page and then uses the "good faith" DYK removals to change the topic of the discussion. Dravecky can't possibly be an innocent party here ...

I wouldn't be surprised if Benjiboy is socking around the topic somewhere, too.

I have no liking for Santorum's politics, but I think its pretty vile that a manufactured neologism is being perpetuated with a full article treatment. If Glenn Beck coined the term "Obamalama" as "the frothy mix of cocaine and semen you get from blowing your dealer in the back of limo while doing lines", let's take bets on how long that article would last.

Good one, Cla68. Georgewilliamherbert, who really, really deserves one of those DICK awards, is in a state of high excitement over comparing a bad congressman to anal lube and fecal matter, and he will BLOCK anyone who interferes with this holy quest. Cla68 offers some words of wisdom.

And now it's 71k bytes and 125 references. (At one point, Cirt had it up to 78,390 bytes.)

Yes, GWH was on his high horse today. He and Cirt deserve some kind of special award.
Mental Illness In Defense Of A Minority Viewpoint, perhaps.

GWH never seems to grasp the big picture.

It would be interesting to know who this is. It's clearly a sock of someone who is probably a major player in the subsequent controversy and debate. Are there any of our resident detectives who would care to take a crack at it?

Cirt? Georgewilliamherbert? Will Beback?

I was wondering whether there was some intersection point between the anti-Scientology cabal and the pro-Gay cabal at Wikipedia, so I did a little reading on Scientology's policy toward gays. It's a mixed bag. Wikipedia has an article called "LGBT topics and Scientology." Why such an article is appropriate for an alleged encyclopedia is another question. But according to this L.Ron Hubbard was initially anti-Homosexuality. According to this he had a gay son who committed suicide in 1976. But then there seems to have been some accommodation between Scientologists and gays in recent years.

And between Scientologists and Jews. And between Scientologists and Hollywood. If you want to succeed politically in America, there are some accomodations you just eventually have to make. Otherwise you get more and more marginalized, and pretty soon you're a conservative Republican-- as useless as tits on a boar. Or in Rush Limbaugh's case, tits on a bore.

Ms. Palin, if you keep opening your mouth, I'm gunna extend this to you!

Of course. Gays have money, and the Scientologists want it. Scientology is fairly willing to compromise basically any of its principles in order to attract people with money.

They do? This is not true of all of those friends of mine who are gay, but perhaps I mix in a lower social class of people than you do?

I do acknowledge that there is this perception that gay people have a greater deal of disposable income in the assumption they do not need to maintain offspring or even long term commitments such as home buying since they are all living a hedonistic life style of casual sex with (very) short term relationships. Which is bollocks. From my friends it appears that wealth itself is the prime reason why people can afford to live such a hedonistic lifestyle, and that the protection that money provides (at least in these more enlightened times) allows some to be more open about their sexual adventures - and, yes, many of them are gay. However, quite a few of my friends are depressed and worried about their lifestyles - but because of their financial situation and not their sexual orientation. Of course, if you cannot afford to go out or simply choose to spend your free time at home with your long term same sex partner then you become invisible.

Some people have money, and some don't. Among both groups there are people who are gay. That is all.

No one has ever said that homosexuality is confined to the middle classes. Though one might consider whether gay skinhead oiks living on some council estate or in bedstit land have more disposable income than those of their hetro skinhead neighbours. Of course Hubbardistas unlike the Jehovah Witnesses don't operate outside the Londis Store.

I suspect that the Hubbardistas target the lonely and angst ridden as being easy prey, and that sexuality has little to do with it.

Why spoil the fun by injecting reality into this? Next you'll be suggesting that the "pro-gay cabal" are just, well, gay.

I guess it's my fault for bringing it up, but I was really not interested in reality. I was speculating about what might motivate a Wikipedian to start the "Santorum (fake disclaimer)" article.

The set of all gay people includes people with money. I don't think Kelly was trying to imply that all gay people have money.

That is not all. Children, of which gay people have disproportionately fewer (even if the number isn't zero), are an endless sink of time and financial resources. I can only presume that if this prime fact about children is not first and foremost in your consciousness, that you must not have any.

This can be remedied. Go to some of your friends who do have children and ask. Or merely observe closely. Unless they are already rich enough to be able to afford housekeepers and cooks and nannies and drivers and other people as parental surrogates in order to remove some of this load-- you will find them being eaten alive.

There've been some people on the Internet saying Santorum is too close for comfort with the Moonies.

I think it mostly goes back to this.

Warning: LaRouche source. Do not attempt to use at Wikipedia.

[Modnote: Very close to tipping this whole thread into the Tar Pit.]

The recently created sexual slang template, which includes santorum, has now been protected because of edit-warring.

An unusual edit war, given that it involved three admins, one of them an arbitrator.

Excuse me? There's nothing "unusual" about that. Esp. when SV is involved.

You didn't see this? Or this?

You missed the Giffords editwar? It was nothing but admins.

Now at ArbCom via Coren. "will they, won't they, join the dance".

Coren has now started an arbitration request about "political activism" in regard to this article. Cirt, who craftily sidestepped the whole issue to let other people argue about the mess that they had created, will likely not be a party to this proceeding, citing personal reasons (family members having had surgery). While it is an issue that needs to be addressed in the general sense, leaving Cirt out of it is giving them a free pass to keep doing this kind of thing.

JoshuaZ demonstrates how to use WP:AGF in bad faith.

If they're all admins, what good will protecting it do?

That's a standard part of the "manipulate Wikipedia as you see fit" playbook.

Play the "oh, poor me, I'm sick, my life is falling apart, have pity" crap. People do it because IT WORKS.
Probably utter bullshit, guaranteed to be unprovable. Cirt keeps his/her identity secret, and the
whole case slowly falls apart.

If Arbcom doesn't address THAT, they will have failed. As usual.

Seeing as Cirt will be away dealing with sick family members, she wouldn't need to edit then, would she? She will be too busy. So, the solution is to block her account until she is ready to address the ArbCom on the Santorum matter.

There you go! Free advice! Now, who will block Cirt until she's ready for the trial?

Cirt has made more than 500 edits to Wikipedia in the last 96 hours, plus a few hundred at Commons and elsewhere. That's more than most people do in a month, and no different from any other week.

Noooooos!!! One of her family is having surgery, and she needs WP to keep her mind off it!





I am reminded of the recent case where a death row inmate sued about a lethal injection ingredient he said he might be allergic to. I kid you not.

The state spent quite a lot of your public defense tax money perfecting this argument, and also quite a lot more of it for the opposition, which was (in the end) adopted by the appeals judge, who said basically: Well, suppose it's the worst allergic reaction you can imagine. What would the result be? Pretty much the same: you get the same corpse, but maybe with hives....

Cirt, your appeal has been noted.

Theoretically at least, administrators are forbidden from editing a page that has been fully protected, unless the edit is noncontroversial and/or backed by substantial consensus. With emphasis on the theoretically.

I meant that if they're admins, they must have lots of friends who could unprotect. Maybe even one friend could unprotect it, one of the parties makes an edit, another friend protects it again.

Predictably, a gang of WP's most notorious activists are chiming in, saying that it's a content dispute and that the ArbCom ought to butt out. But one serendipitous effect is that in Will Beback's post, where he is McWhining that the ArbCom should not molest this lovely article, he mentions a different article that upsets him, The Gore Effect (T-H-L-K-D). That article is not nearly as defamatory or Google-bombish, and I sort of enjoyed it. Other than that, it might be construed as analogous.

Well, SlimVirgin is acting out of profile again. She has made a rather lucid and constructive statement for the ArbCom case, where she is apparently throwing Cirt under the bus. It is also worth noting that there are lots and lots of editors weighing in.

Much use it will do.



Wikipedians sucking at the body politics

At this point the ArbCom case has become an exercise in being clearly on the winning side of the fight; everyone is clambering over themselves to be on record as "anti-Cirt". See that all the time; it's fairly disgusting to watch.

Except that the vote is currently 5 Accept, 4 Decline, 2 Recuse, 1 on the fence. In other words, it cannot make the "net four vote" rule, and won't be accepted, if the rules are followed. So the whole thing is an exercise in futility.

The decision has already been made behind the scenes; the ArbCom's imprimateur is neither required nor particularly wanted in this case, I imagine.

Then Cirt has escaped a public hanging, and the article will largely stand, regardless of Slim's grandstanding. Cirt has temporarily left the playing field. So who's the cannier game-player here? I say Cirt.

Cirt has managed to delay or avoid the public hanging, but their tactics are far to obvious to escape notice. More people now see them for what they are and they will be far less able to continue their activities without resorting to using sockpuppets or meatpuppets.

Someone should point out that while Cirt officially and publicly stopped editing the santorum article on 4 June, they keep pushing the issue right up until 12 June when the arbitration request was filed. After SlimVirgin removed the article from the Cirt-created Dan Savage template, Cirt made an edit which effectively restored it, since the linked article contains the santorum stuff as well.

I just love Will Beback! Here he is on Jimmy Wales' talk page, arguing that the Santorum (neologism) article is similar to the Wikipedia Review.

Yes. It is important to note that SV's comments are not all that out of profile. You see, she (and the rest of the WP coven) are faced with a rather nasty dilemma: the rules of their game do not really forbid documenting (with 150 citations) the spread of one group's attempts to use a living Senator's name as a neologisim for lubricated-shit-from-anal-sex, as punishment for his having made a right-to-privacy connection between bigamy, polygamy, incest, adultery, and gay marriage. Shame on him, for he didn't include pedophilia.

Rather than thank the man for furthering the philosophical debate about which kinds of private acts should deserve intrusion from the state, in law, his enemies instead decided to do the worst thing they could think of, which was to propose using Santorum's name for a rather specific unwanted byproduct of some of their own proclivities. Yes, there's a certain quality of self-loathing here. And incidently, leaving Wikipedia with the question of whether to illustrate this product with an illustration or perhaps eventual photo. All of this being perfectly within Wikipedia's editorial guidelines, you understand, for Wikipedia is NOTCENSORED. And this is not clearly a BLP violation.

And worse still, Cirt (who is responsible for most of the article's expansion and exquisite citation) is not acting against WP:POINT since (s)he, by everybody's consensus, has been acting in good faith. Damn. So even though the effect is the same as if (s)he were somebody from WR doing this (in which case they'd have no problem giving him the boot per WP:POINT), they can't really do anything.

So, SlimVirgin has a problem. She can't appear not to be politically incorrect. She must denounce senator Santorum (and does). But.... she hates shit.

And she naturally has noticed what all this does to mock WP's policies on BLP, media verification, human dignity (see ignoring of), and trying not to be a general nuisance in the community.

Her solution: don't blame WP or its policies. Instead FIND THE WITCH. Who, in this case, alas, would be Cirt. You see, if we can't blame Wikipedia or its polities or ourselves (which we cannot), we can at least blame SOMEBODY. So here she is, doing that:



That says it clearly, if you read between the lines, and even if you don't. Disruption and bad feeling and shit. In the communiteh. In River City.

The comments on Wales' TALK page are interesting only insofar as Wales' mentioning of human dignity (see paying lipservice to), and his usual flacid flailing at trying to think of a reason to fix this well-cited and totally WP:V verified river of shit, without changing policy on his beloved Wikipedia. He says:



Yes, it might be hard to come up with a new name by consensus. It might be hard to do anything by consensus . Especially not with a WP communiteh who is (ahem) pretty gay, and in any case is hue and cry after Santorum to punish him for his illiberal views. Although some of them do not like the method.

As for WR being a cyberbully site, ala Beback, the idea is precious. If WR were at the top of the Google page rank list, that might fly. And if we had a well-coordinated campaign to make up a neologism for blindness to all internet-mediated depravity regarding human dignity, except as it involves nubile women Jimbo would like to bed, and further to call this Walesification or perhaps Jimblindness, then it might fly. If the average person began to mutter: "The Wales trouser snake has only one eye and does not see well," then maybe. With all of this becoming an internet trope by virtue of being spread by one of the top web publishing resources, it might be cyberbullying, but not yet. Not even close.

The only cyberbullying so far is done by the website where Jimbo has more control than any single person. Go figure.

So what have we learned here? That WP will do nearly anything rather than to face their own institutional problems. And SlimVirgin will help. And no, she hasn't had an epiphany whereby she suddently "gets it." Instead, she is just looking for a way to justify eradification of something that disgusts her , and isn't thinking at any higher level than that. Nor are most of these yahoos.

There is karma. You do reap what you sew. What goes around does tend to come around. Look, WR is bullying you all at WP, by saying that!

Do you need an illustration?

I think Uncle Miltie has it spot on here. There's no way Wikipedia is going to back away from spreading Santorum; their house POV is far too liberal and far too pro-gay to contemplate that. At the same time, they must take clearly decisive action to "deal" with this issue. So they do what they do best: choose one of their own and crucify them, as an appeasement to the gods above.

It's as if four thousand years of cultural evolution have been rolled back before our very eyes.