Ritchie Swann banned Cambridge mathematician

[boredbird]

On June 19 of this year, small-time musician Ritchie Swann a.k.a. User:Ritchie333 banned British mathematician Antony Wasserman of the University of Cambridge a.k.a. User:Mathsci from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/?diff=109386 ... uble_group
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1103071294

Mathsci's taken a ton of flak over the years from all these criticism sites but it doesn't sound so good the way I just put it, does it? "Sure, he's an expert and his content is great, but". It looks like another "civility ban".

Wasserman showed some serious balls there by "outing" himself. Good for him.

What is Swann doing even judging this situation which is completely outside his area of understanding? Oh yeah duh expert at Wikipedia.

[wexter]

What is Swann doing even judging this situation which is completely outside his area of understanding? Oh yeah duh expert at Wikipedia.

Great find because the banning speaks entirely to the person not the content.

By revealing himself as an expert Wasserman had enough "You pity the fool because you don't want to beat up a fool! .. they don't know no better."

Speaking to content

The content is about a very specific type of "molecular geometry"
The every-man would only be concerned with the word "molecule"

Thus Britannica talks about molecules, how to see them, and how they are shaped, with even a bit of math and a dollop of quantum mechanics thrown in.

https://www.britannica.com/science/molecule

Molecule, enough said; the religiously-important and gritty technical-scientific-details belong in an ivory tower locked behind closed doors.

Boardbird's epic find;

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/?diff=109386 ... uble_group

Which includes these gems (quotations) of Wikipedians arguing nonsense with each other (with a smattering of truth highlighted in bold);

"I had stroke while editing wikipedia"

and then

"I remember back in the naughties when we used to have a tolerant culture"

and then

"Wikipedia articles are supposed to be organized, not indiscriminate random walks through the universe of ideas"


and then

"Riemannian covariant derivative of do Carmo and Kobayashi & Nomizu"
"bullshit everyone knows about the Kobayashi Marui stupid" Wexter

and then

"Echigo mole socks was properly dealt with"

and then

"ten years of the same issues. Boing! said Zebedee"

and then

"You hounded me. You mocked me. You chased me. You bullied me"

and then

"they appear to be a grumpy, strange, cantankerous, argumentative individual. They fit right in here"

and then, and then, and then and then and then

WTF "Echigo mole socks"
https://www.twitch.tv/foxen/video/80936 ... &sort=time
http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7935

Statement by CIreland
Echigo mole is an extremely pernicious banned sockpuppeteer who has long pursued a vendetta against Mathsci; the very length of this behaviour must itself be disturbing for Mathsci. Additionally, Echigo mole has repeatedly attempted to intimidate Mathsci with "We know where you live" style edits, referencing Mathsci's place of residence.

One of the favorite tactics of Echigo mole is to seek out editors with whom MathSci is in dispute precisely to make it difficult for Mathsci to remove edits to their User talk pages without creating tension. This very amendment request, so far as it concerns Mathsci, enables and extends this abuse even if such was not the intent of the filer.

My Take;
"and I have here your answer from Echigo. What does Echigo say? He wishes to inform you that "vendetta," as he puts it, using the ancient tongue, the art of Kanly, is still alive. He does not wish to meet or speak with you. I've made my peace gesture. The forms of Kanly have been obeyed! " Wexter via Dune

Wikipedia is so incredibly stupid The arguing back and forth over nonsense, the nonsensical and verbose infighting, the nonsensical jargon; the bizarre content, I could not stop laughing.

Wikipedia is all "down-side" for its participants, stroke and all..

[ericbarbour]

Let's not forget the hellstorm Mathsci ran on Wikipedia previously, from around 2009 until he was permabanned in October 2013. WIth the full protection of admins like MastCell and Future Perfect, he abused EVERY review and arbitration system Wikipedia has. Including his outright, open abuse of arbitrators. And socking, and accusing others of running socks, and deleting comments posted by others, and lying to Arbcom, and lying to everyone else. And acting like a complete crazy bastard. Don't forget, I've got this long book-wiki article assembled by Captain Occam about Wasserman's WP edit history. It is unreadable AND unbelievable.

In 2012 he was lying in a hospital bed, recovering from coronary surgery, and CONTINUED TO squabble with people on Wikipedia.

The things he did on the "Double group" article recently are classic Mathsci. Fight with the others, lie to the admins. Get blocked, sock like crazy.

Somehow he talked Arbcom into reversing his ban in April 2016. He appears to have been reblocked in June 2018. And was unblocked again in June 2020, with continued grinding and fighting until June of this year. His block log is now one of the messiest I've ever seen; and that's saying a lot. The only explanation is that he's constantly sucking up to certain administrators, with the help of a few high-ranking supporters, and getting away with it. But since he can't help starting fistfights, he gets blocked again. Over and over.

Behold the "great scientist". He WOULD be a good content writer, except for his very narrow obsessions and his tendency to fling feces at his "opponents".

Admittedly Swann is still an idiot....but in battles like this, NO ONE WINS. The ultimate loser is the Wikipedia reader who doesn't know the arcane scientific article they're reading has been mucked over repeatedly.

[boredbird]

What's missing in the ban discussion is any attempt to determine who is correct and about what. That's deliberate because if Wikipedia worked that way most administrators would have no place in the discussion. That's probably the real reason there's no content arbitration.

The first ban vote for Wasserman a.k.a. Mathsci was D. Lazard, a mathematician and computer scientist too. He wrote his own biography (assuming it's really him) in 2011 with no references. Not really sneaky considering his username.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =468622835

Earlier this year Mathsci edited the article mostly pretty neutrally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1045539273

I guess this was a bit passive aggressive but he's right that there were no sources. Maybe this content had something to do with what they were arguing about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1075703109

[ericbarbour]

What's missing in the ban discussion is any attempt to determine who is correct and about what. That's deliberate because if Wikipedia worked that way most administrators would have no place in the discussion. That's probably the real reason there's no content arbitration.

You got it. One of the WORST things Wikipedians decided early in Arbcom's history was to make it about "behaviour only". They still do NOT decide actual content issues. Thus, anyone who can game Arbcom and the admin system can control specific content in whatever biased way they like. Just be "civil" and sneaky, and get a janitor to cover for you. Then Arbcom is useless.

The thing was set up deliberately to encourage sneaky abuse. They will deny it OF COURSE.