Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Because no one else is doing it--not even the media.
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Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Post by ericbarbour » Sun Apr 01, 2018 10:58 pm

He's been mentioned on WP fora in the past. Well, the NY Times outed him today. (The Washington Post did it 2 years ago, but hey.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/28/nyre ... thing.html

The photos in this article tell volumes about the sort of people generating WP content (and bureaucracy).

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Re: Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Post by Kumioko » Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:40 am

When will these losers learn that letting people find out your real identity is a very bad idea. A positive editor today is an enemy tomorrow and if they know who you are the WMF and the site admins can and will do anything including violate their own policies to get at you. That includes outing you, contacting your employer to try and get you fired, stalking (it's really happened), etc.
#BbbGate

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Re: Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:47 am

A sad tale of how Wikipedia gets a lot of its editors hooked, which is unsurprisingly given a free pass by the NYT just because it's Wikipedia.

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Re: Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Post by singora » Mon Apr 02, 2018 8:38 am

ericbarbour wrote:The photos in this article tell volumes about the sort of people generating WP content (and bureaucracy).

Interesting. It's almost as if the photographer (who presumably was contracted by the NYT) has been told or asked to convey the message.

It's a very subtle way to discredit a brand.

Edit. Let me put this another way: if you want to criticize Wikipedia, do you write several paragraphs of analysis, or do you simply show a few photos of Wikipedians?

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Re: Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Apr 02, 2018 1:02 pm

There's a few reasons to think this piece was a subtle jab at the movement. The photographer was surely having an inward chuckle at how bad the subjects look, and this seems like it was deliberate. The headline sure reads like mockery, highlighting the fact Wikipediots are literally just writing what they see, rather than being encyclopedists.

I can recall very few Wikipedia related articles in the NYT, so it's an odd choice in of itself for them to profile these "supercontributors" as a piece. The way they write it all up, is quite meticulous in how it doesn't approve of let alone celebrate anything as an editorial stance - all positive material is cast as either something the Wikipediots say, do or believe.

I particularly like the way they liken the community to a bunch of boy scouts, but unlike the boy scouts, who actually have a leadership structure, it is they themselves who award each other badges. Particularly damning is the parallel between needing adult supervision when practicing their hobby in the real world.

I also love how they make it clear that these are not normal people even by the standard of teenagers - explaining they shun social media because it distracts from their wiki time. The subtext being, you need to have a diverse circle of interests and fun and interesting friends to find value in having a social media presence.

It was a nice touch to write about his twin too - the subtext there being this isn't a genetic problem, that families and wider society, can and probably should be vigilant and if necessary hold an intervention, so that every young person has a fighting chance of avoiding going down this sad path of a life impairing addiction.

It seemed almost cruel to point out that a guy who has spent the last five years Wikipedia scribbling about the subway, harbours genuine ambitions to become an urban planner.

The more I read this piece, the more I love it. My only quibble is how they present GA as a place where "impartial" revewiers reward "diligent" editors, although even that, when you look at the wider context, the information they are imparting near it, you can even read that as quite mocking.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. I hope I am not. It's always puzzled me as to why the professionals in the news media have so casually accepted, or at least unquestionably received, the Wikipediot's claims that they are historians working for the public good, that Wikipedia's features and structures are fit for that purpose, and indeed that the product itself fits that description.

The world seriously needs publications like the NYT to lift the lid on this clownshow. Throw that shade......

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Re: Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Apr 02, 2018 1:40 pm

singora wrote:Let me put this another way: if you want to criticize Wikipedia, do you write several paragraphs of analysis, or do you simply show a few photos of Wikipedians?
Either works. What doesn't work is posting a picture and simply making fun of their appearance. We should not be doing that, one because it's mean and makes us look like dicks with nothing insightful to say, and two, because Wikipediocracy has already cornered that market.

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Re: Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Post by ericbarbour » Wed Apr 04, 2018 1:34 am

CrowsNest wrote:A sad tale of how Wikipedia gets a lot of its editors hooked, which is unsurprisingly given a free pass by the NYT just because it's Wikipedia.

As I've said before, there chances are good that the Times gives the WMF a "free ride" partly because many Times employees use Wikipedia for "background research". Without bothering to check references.

IMO journalists tend to make nice about WP because they use the damn thing, and are afraid it might disappear....how unprofessional can you get?

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Re: Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Post by singora » Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:05 pm

Check out this dude:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pigsonthewing

Can't remember the last time I came across such a fine-looking man.

I'll contact him later to find out which model agency he's with.

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Re: Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Post by CrowsNest » Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:46 pm

singora wrote:Check out this dude:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pigsonthewing

Can't remember the last time I came across such a fine-looking man.

I'll contact him later to find out which model agency he's with.
Like I said, simply poking fun at people's appearance is not going to help our cause or make you look good......

Why not make a more relevant point? Such as the fact his quite lengthy and self a congratulatory user page doesn't tell the whole story, namely that he is hated by quite a few of his peers, and that he has had more than his fair share of brushes with the wikilaw? And while most of that is to do with internal bullshit nobody cares about, it does include an unsavoury episode involving a quite unwilling victim of the cult of 'free the data' freaks, where Andy was said to have played a lead role. Do you suppose he (or anyone in the movement) discloses this to all those fine institutions he has on his uerspage? Because they sure as shit don't know how to find it themselves.

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Re: Ever wondered about hapless nerd "Epicgenius"?

Post by singora » Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:19 am

CrowsNest wrote:
singora wrote:Check out this dude:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pigsonthewing

Can't remember the last time I came across such a fine-looking man.

I'll contact him later to find out which model agency he's with.
Like I said, simply poking fun at people's appearance is not going to help our cause or make you look good......

Why not make a more relevant point? Such as the fact his quite lengthy and self a congratulatory user page doesn't tell the whole story, namely that he is hated by quite a few of his peers, and that he has had more than his fair share of brushes with the wikilaw? And while most of that is to do with internal bullshit nobody cares about, it does include an unsavoury episode involving a quite unwilling victim of the cult of 'free the data' freaks, where Andy was said to have played a lead role. Do you suppose he (or anyone in the movement) discloses this to all those fine institutions he has on his uerspage? Because they sure as shit don't know how to find it themselves.

So, yes, his name is Andy Mabbett. I'd not come across him before, though, on Wikipedia.

I saw a post of yours about SagaciousPhil (who's distinctly lacking in sagacity) and followed your link. After checking her contributions I ended up on a page about an English witch who lived hundreds of years ago. The article is just a crappy stub, but a guy messing around with it was this Andy Mabbett.

His user page is a joke. He's a total fool and a nerd.

Amusingly, he claims to be a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), but a quick glance at his website tells you he has the artistic ability of a dog turd.

PS. SagaciousPhil was that little girl who used to post insults about me on WR. You can recognize her by the way she writes. She's part of the Cassianto-Blofeld tag team. Another girl with a giant chip on her shoulder (and also a member of the tag team) is WeHope. Neither of them have an ounce of talent.

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