Opabina Regalis

Editors, Admins and Bureaucrats blecch!
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CrowsNest
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Opabina Regalis

Post by CrowsNest » Thu May 02, 2019 5:59 pm

It is high time this incredibly stupid woman was put in a spot light. It was remiss of me to focus on the utter stupidity of Jess Wade, a relative Wikipedia nobody except for her media profile, when we did not have a thread on a perfect example of how far you can climb up the Wikipedia ladder if all you are is a woman in technology and you don't have a clue about how to Wikipedia.

OR has climbed so high because she's never been afraid of or embarrassed about how ignorant she is, rather she is proud of it. She flaunts it. Unsurprisingly, she also lies with impugnitity. Probably still wants people to think the Joefromranb case was about a single utterance of the f-word. Properly shameless is what she is.

Never afraid to open her mouth, she is also never afraid to let the facts inhibit her intended message. I've written about it extensively before, listing example after example, but there she is, still a Wikipedia Arbitrator. The stupid lower order mugs she lords it over, even the Administrators who she is theoretically the boss of, clearly don't mind having people like this in positions of power, shining beacons of what are meant to be the highest standards of conduct.

The latest, she said what, moment, is the following formal opinion on the Request for Arbitration in Rama vs. Everyone....
On one level, yes, this is a straightforward case and Rama shouldn't have used admin tools, but on another level that's a bit like saying protesters shouldn't have blocked traffic or yelled rude things at politicians. It's missing the point of the action. I think - I hope! - we all have some boundaries like this, where we'd be willing to stick our necks out if we genuinely believed that not doing so would bring the project into disrepute. We even have a rule about not always following rules, which is surprisingly under-cited on this page.
Want did Rama do? Used his Administrator tools to recreate the biography for Clarice Phelps. Why did he do it? Because he thought the Wikipedia community had made a mistake and wanted to avoid further embarrassing press coverage. The embarrassing press coverage should of course be coming from the fact Jess Wade unleashed a citogensis incident, which is arguably the root of the embarrassing press coverage, but we are a long way from the Wikipedia community or it's High Borne Arbitrators being that honest about their shitty Project's true capacity to damage even those they claim to be trying to help.

So, to get into the mind of this idiot with a gavel, what is this rule she refers to about not following the rules? It is the imaginatively titled, "Ignore All Rules" rule. It is perhaps the worst named Wikipedia rule ever, and perhaps because of that, the most misunderstood and misapplied rule on Wikipedia. At least in this instance, thankfully, most Wikipedians understand it does not apply.

Unsurprisingly, the never short of arrogance Ms. Opabina didn't let that fact get in the way of her opinion that it does or should apply. She always qualifies her views with faux uncertainty - be in no doubt she thinks she is right, and people who disagree are mistaken at best, or are being bad Wikipedians, or even bad humans, at worst.

Put simply, something that should be very basic knowledge for anyone genuinely committed to the Wikipedia Project (which by definition, all Arbitrators should be), IAR is merely a necessary legal fiction, a handy way to remind people to ignore a rule if it gets in the way of improving Wikipedia. Implicit in the rule, is that the benefit to Wikipedia of you ignoring a rule has to be clear and obvious to most Wikipedians, because you are, after all, theoretically all working toward the same goal. If you do something while invoking this rule, and World War III breaks out, and crucially, in doing so you had no real reason not to think that would not be the result, then you done fucked up, and you applied the rule where it had no business being applied.

It isn't surprising Opabina either doesn't know about or doesn't accept the idea that this rule cannot be used as a battering ram to clear away perfectly valid objections based on differing interpretations of what would benefit Wikipedia, because she is basically that kind of person. She thinks what she thinks, and if you disagree, well, you really can go fuck yourself, you stupid fuck. Naturally this isn't her everyday persona, she did manage to get elected to Wikipedia high office, but it it is there often enough that people can't in all seriousness claim to be unaware of it.

Just as she did with the Joefromrandb case, and many times also, it is no surprise to see her downplaying the seriousness of the conflict Rama unleashed, or the magnitude of his conduct violations. This is deliberate. She knows an Administrator who does what he did is looking at serious wiki-jail time when sent before the Court she is nominally a part of, but because she is trying to argue, as a "woman in science", that Wikipedia Administrators breaking the rules to benefit a woman in science and avoid negative press attention for Wikipedia for apparently not doing enough to help women in science, then she has to pretend like forgiving it is the Right Thing To Do.

Wade, the editor who started all this mess, is also, of course, a woman in science. Last we forget and presume there is a pattern here, it is actually possible to be a woman in science and not absolutely suck at Wikipedia too, we need look no further than Gorilla Warfare and Keilana, both of whom served on the Arbitration Committee with distinction, both in terms of upholding basic Wikipedia policy and trying to reform the site for the benefit of women and minorities.

It is no surprise to see OR sympathising with the idea one person can smash the system and override everyone else if they think they are Doing the Right Thing, because that is what she thinks she is doing all the time in her undeserved role as a Wikipedia Arbitrator. The trouble is, she acts on it. In the wider community, she would have no influence, but on a committee of twelve, it is surprising to see how often she manages to influence things.

Opabina is a perfect example of my theory that to succeed in establishing yourself on Wikipedia while being in possession of ovaries, you really have to actually be worse than what their worst male participants are capable of, or you have to be Whiter than White. And Lord knows the Bad Men of Wikipedia are hardly afraid to lie with impunity and tell you black is white and up is down.

OR is most definitely not whiter than white, as she freely admits. Braazenly lying to her colleagues and inferiors comes so easily to her, she probably has one of those Alpha Male Lust for Power type personality disorders, which is ironic.

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Re: Opabina Regalis

Post by CrowsNest » Thu Jun 06, 2019 8:51 pm

Sorry :( It is, unfortunately, not uncommon for drive-by trolls to show up during arb cases to needle the participants. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:27, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
Wot, like this you mean?
It certainly felt like the biographies I write suffer from more scrutiny than others, all of which comes from the same small group of editors who appeared to wait to watch what I post on Twitter and then delete sections, or entire pages, without trying to improving them. Whether it is the above discussion or the ongoing commentary over women academic's notability, Wikipedia doesn't come across like the welcome community of collaborative editors you'd hope to be democratising access to knowledge. In short, Rama acted in haste, partly to protect the public image of Wikipedia and part to protect me. Feel free to continue insulting me on whatever forum you find, but don't lose a well meaning Administrator over it. We should be working together to make Wikipedia better, not tearing each other apart. Jesswade88 (talk) 19:00, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
These "women in science" eh? You'd think they'd be just a little bit more aware of things like objective fact and basic reality, than these two have been.

Riddle me this. Wade writes an op-ed that says Wikipedia is wrong to delete Phelps. The media runs with it, of course not noticing obvious shit like Wade's fraudulent use of sources and the resulting feedback loop of citogenisis, and Rama goes one further and abuses his role as a Wikipedia Administrator to restore Wade's fraud. This Arbitrator then turns up waving her women in science immunity flag, ignores all that stuff which a Wikipedia higher up should spot easily, and says nothing to see here because Wikipedia are indeed just being mean to Wade and Rama is some kind of Ghandi and who cares about all these silly little minutia, they should be thinking of the big picture, the PR angle.

For someone who doesn't like to deal in WP:POLICY arguments, she sure does make it easy to be able to critique what she does in terms the media would understand. If only women in science team up to commit Wikipedia fraud and then play the victim and try to pull the wool over everyone's eyes was an in vogue subject right now.

Needs more cats, right?

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