Cullen328, the Wikipedia consultant with "limited mental energy".

[ChaosMeRee]

Here's Cullen328 interacting recently with a Wikipedia volunteer....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1183174852

That wastes my limited time, and my even more, my limited mental energy, which is my most precious resource. Cullen328 (talk) 05:12, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

It's naturally a little rude and self centred, but that is to be expected from volunteer Wikipedia Administrators. After all, who sets the standards but shitheels like Beeblebrox?

It's noteworthy however because Cullen328 recently admitted he has for quite a while been operating a secret side hustle as a Wikipedia consultant. He charges gullible fools $60 an hour to advise them "every step of the way" in their editing of Wikipedia, advice given in complete secrecy. Advice that is readily available for free through the multiple avenues already provided by Wikipedia.

This comment regarding his capabilities is therefore is perhaps a sign that this old man lacks the mental and indeed physical capacity to both adequately perform the role of a volunteer Wikipedia Administrator and a Wikipedia consultant charging serious money for that which is free.

As he gets older, surely one of them has to give, and it seems likely that would be the volunteer activity.

However, what should trouble Wikipedians more is that since Cullen clearly places great value In his hobby, like most Administrators, allowing it to become a huge part of their sense of self worth in their otherwise boring retirement, a means to exercise power and attain respect perhaps to compensate for a lack of it in their real lives, he could quite easily decide it is the consulting that suffers.

He won't give it up, he was quite adamant he needs the money in his twilight years, but since his activities are completely secret and his clients have zero protection, he can safely start phoning it in. He surely knows this, and perhaps has even told himself he would never do such a thing. He has too much integrity. Sure. Nobody sets out to be a screw up.

If he had any decency, and and if he truly believed that being both a volunteer Administrator and a paid consultant was ethical and does have value to Wikipedia as well as his pocket, now that he is clearly seeing the effects of ageing on his mental and physical capacity, he would step aside and allow this function to be performed by people at the top of their game. People who can deliver a consistently high standard in both realms.

Someone who can interact with an editor as a volunteer without becoming a pompous ass, and can deliver high quality consultancy where he is awake, alert and indeed focussed for every single second he is on the clock.

In reality of course, he can do whatever the fuck he likes. Wikipedia supposedly has strong controls over the behaviour and standards of its Administrators, but they still somehow lead to people like Cullen and Bishonen and Drmies attaining exceptional levels of raw power.

And as we now know thanks to Cullen's indignant rage at having his integrity questioned by his subordinates, Wikipedia has zero control over what a Wikipedia business consultant does. Even though in this case, the ability to make money from Wikipedia in this fashion rests entirely on Cullen having attained the role of Administrator. It apparently reassures them he knows what he is talking about.

Presumably he doesn't tell his clients for example that he was one of the many Wikipedia Administrators who were fooled by Lourdes (a previously banned Administrator who somehow attained that role again) and were also fooled by Eostrix (a Globally Banned editor who was hours away from becoming an Administrator).....

Regarding Lourdes/Wifione.....

Support I am impressed at how positively this editor responded to the criticism given at her previous RfA one year ago. She has improved her behavior significantly and I am now convinced that she will be a good administrator. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 03:59, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Regarding Eostrix/Icewhiz....

Support The first thing I did was to click on their GA 2020 Hpakant jade mine disaster, and immediately noticed that it was already on my watchlist. I read a bit further and remembered reading it last year but did not remember exactly why, but was pleased that I did. It is an excellent article about a heartbreaking industrial accident last year in an area of the world that English Wikipedia needs to cover better, and I discovered that the nominee is responsible for a large percentage of the content. Kudos. Then, I read their answers to various questions, and they gave an excellent answer about the relationship between the GNG and the SNGs, and correctly identified WP:NACADEMIC as an exception to the usual rule, and explained why in a clear and logical way. My next point is less germane to administratorship but relevant to my assessment of them as an editor, and a candidate for administrator should first and foremost be a good editor: I have nothing but respect for subject matter experts in areas like owls who set out to improve this encyclopedia in their topic area, and then branch out to other topics. Please continue with that. I am very pleased to support this candidate. For those opposing on the basis of inadequate content contribution, please take a look at Cécile Mourer-Chauviré, where this editor is responsible for most of the content. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:23, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me that perhaps one of the first ways that a declining mental and physical capacity affected the performance of Cullen, was to make him susceptible to confirmation bias.

These !votes show that unlike most who turn up at RfA to support, Cullen did actually try to do a deep dive into the candidate's edit history. It is worth nothing that these candidacies came at a time when Wikipedia was panicking at the thought there were too few new candidates to replace the Administrators who were leaving, either because they found another hobby, got burned out by the demands of the role, got banned, or simply died.

I suspect Cullen just saw what he wanted to see. He wants to see subject experts, he wants to see policy knowledge, he wants to see people capable of change. Everything he is not, but thinks he is.

And he clearly lacked the mental and physical capacity to pull at the threads that we now know already existed. Lourdes did have a history of alarming policy ignorance and a disturbing need to please. Eostrix did have a troubling record of personal interactions.

Both had character flaws and curious deviations from the norm in their visible Wikipedia trajectories from supposed newcomer to guardian of the gates. Candidates are not required to be perfect, but the true purpose of RfA is to satisfy the community that where these oddities exist, they can be adequately explained. Where flaws exist, they can be rectified or even simply managed.

That was how it worked before the crisis in recruitment meant RfA became more of a coronation of anyone who looked reasonably OK. Where being nominated by someone like Cullen was effectively a guaranteed pass. Such is the folly of allowing trust to become such a huge aspect of Wikipedia governance.

What he didn't realise is that to the stone cold killers out there, the people so badly burned by the corruption and now greed of the cult dynamic that governs Wikipedia, it is easy to fake the qualities Wikipedia desires in an Administrator.

As one supporter of Lourdes put it....

Knowledge + Wisdom + Temperament = yes.

It can be faked. Not perfectly, but well enough that in a climate of Admin shortages, warning signs are overlooked by both the proletariat and their betters, the should know betters, the existing Administrators. Eostrix was only caught at the last minute, and only using the special powers of ArbCom (which amusingly, if they had also been deployed against Lourdes, would have caught her too).

Where's the downside, you might ask? Well, in Lourdes' case it let someone who is clearly two peanuts short of a bushell, have real power over volunteers. And boy did she go to town with it, effectively demonstrating how much harm can be done once you have that power, before anyone can effectively stop you. And Eostrix, he was a well known warrior in the Israel-Palestine area, to the point many claim he is a real world threat to people's safety. So having him be an Administrator would be insane.

No doubt if Cullen does have to explain these things to a potential client, he would probably just try to fob them off with some garbage about how Lourdes and Eostrix fooled everyone. Well, on a point of fact, they did not. Thanks to the culture the has arisen in Wikipedia, especially in the days since people actually worthy of respect for their integrity when it comes to Wikipedia (such as the great Jimmy Wales) were supplanted by usurpers like Cullen and Floquenbeam, it has become the norm to crush minority opinion, regardless of merit.

Once Wales was purged, the already flawed concept of Wikipedia transformed from an evidence based meritocracy to a haven for bullies and gaslighters. A place where Administrators are routinely allowed to get away with the sort of deplorable behaviour that ordinary users cannot. Bishonen famously called an editor a little shit, as she exercised her power over them to protect a friend.

Jimmy Wales was outraged that such a person could be an Administrator. It was a matter of simple ethics for him. The public image of Wikipedia was stake. The Cullens of this world? Not so much. Not long after the takeover, it was hardly a surprise to see a study reveal that contrary to internal mythology, the vast majority of rank personal abuse occurring on Wikipedia, was being performed by a tiny minority of users. Not outsiders or newcomers, but people who were either Administrators themselves or clearly had the protection of them. In a word, corruption.

It is fair to say therefore the Cullen is no smarter than the average Wikipedian, and certainly no more ethical. He is certainly not exceptional in terms of his insight or his integrity. And things will only get worse as he declines.

In many ways of course, it is perfectly logical that the person now fleecing gullible fools by leveraging the trust placed in them by a bunch of internet randoms who rarely if ever do things out of simple integrity themselves, isn't some evil genius or master criminal, but rather just a bog standard example of the sort of unethical, corruptible, foolish, arrogant, not exactly blessed with intelligence individual, that Cullen has always seemed to be. To me anyway.

But then again, I am smart.

I do not charge people for this excellent analysis of the root causes of Wikipedia's evil stain on this world.

That would be unethical.

And if one day I am caught making money from my deep and extensive knowledge of Wikipedia, if perhaps I have leveraged how easy it is to fool them into granting Admin rights into a secret side hustle, that too would not be unethical.

A man has to eat, after all.

One day there will be a scandal so disgusting, it will consume Wikipedia in a fire storm.

It is helpful to know that as it stands today, Cullen becoming a secret consultant is not it, and Lourdes being unmaksed is not it. Such things are now the everyday of Wikipedia's roiling cauldron of filth. My how they have grown from the days where Bishonen being a punching down power abusing cunt counted as a controversy.

She still is, by the way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1182430109

Endorse WP:TBAN on music genres per Cullen328. I considered adding also a short sitewide block for the nasty edit summaries, but many of the ones linked above are years old, so I'm letting it pass with Drmies' recent warning. For now. No prejudice to another admin placing such a block. Bishonen | tålk 08:26, 29 October 2023 (UTC).

That's Bishonen and Drmies making big noises about how unacceptable it is to use grossly offensive language and generally being an odious editor simply because you are convinced you are right and protecting Wikipedia. You can't make this shit up. They see the irony, they just know that nobody else will ever dare hold them to the same standards. Their target is of course a nobody. Evil people. Born Wikipedians.

And Cullen was of course right in the thick of that incident. Pompously declaring that the offending editor should just go and write a blog or something. Drmies is fond of that turn phrase too, although he naturally delivers it in a far more offensive way - "fuck off back to Facebook" being one such widely quoted occurence.

This river of hypocrisy and rank corruption all occurs under the noses of Cullen and Floquenbeam and Beeblebrox and NewYorkBrad and anyone else you care to categorise as the great moral leaders of Wikipedia. No correction ever occurs, no improvement is ever discernable, so you can rule out the possibility that these supposed great men of the Wiki are offering quiet words of advice in private. As we all know, the stench was such that the great women, all two/three/foure of them, left long ago.

The everyday irony of Wikipedia. I bet you don't get told that by Cullen as he is fleecing you.

How ironic that it was Lourdes who was the only one to even spot that when not being an offensive asshole, the editor in question is bringing value to Wikipedia and that is undoubtedly the source of their misguided passion. But since the editor in question was not Eric Corbett or any of the other established editors under the protection of Administrators, that will not matter.

They will not be entitled to the policy that says that ye shall not be punished until you have demonstrated you are unrepentant. And as he has done so many times, Drmies has ensured that by needling and harassing and bullying their victim, they very much do not come across as unrepentant.

As they put It themselves.....

I've never experienced anything like this in my 10 years of being on the site. Initially in the middle of this I wasn't aware this guy was a admin since I've never seen an admin engage in such petty matters/vindictive behavilor like this before, but seeing as he is I'm not even sure what to do or where to begin. I'm really just tired of this nonsense. I'm considering on just making a new account to be left alone before he does find his reason to give me a block. Second Skin (talk) 20:45, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

And who would really deny that one reason Drmies does what he does is to first have the thrill of being able to eject someone from Wikipedia by force (oh God, the power!), and then obtain further deviant pleasure by detecting the inevitable sock-puppetry that such malevolent acts invariably produce.

This would be a good time to remind people that before Wikipedia was usurped and Jimmy Wales had power, It was considered wise and ethical to ensure that even the worst offenders, people who are totally irredeemable and must be ejected, should treated with respect and dignity, lest they want to return to Wikipedia for the sole purposes of revenge. And before reaching that point, you should try your absolute hardest to educate and reform in a human, empathetic way, in the sure fire knowledge you have nothing to lose and perhaps a lot to gain.

This lesson is lost on the likes of Cullen, who always thought of himself as a better man than Jimmy. Drmies proactively ignores It for his own warped pleasure. I guarantee that scumbag would be a wife beater or even a child abuser if he didn't have the outlet that is Wikipedia.

But with money now a factor, It might be fun to see if Cullen is willing to at least try to sell such a thing......advice for how to get fair and equitable treatment when one of your steps in wikiland will inevitably see you cross paths with the wicked witch of Wikipedia and her poisonous husband.

Something tells me his ego will overiee his frailty, and he will try to earn that particular piece of corn.

And hopefully it is what kills him in the end.

Now, these are all just words. Nobody should embark on any experiments that might result in the death of Wikipedians, no matter how curious you are.

The would be unethical.

[ericbarbour]

It's noteworthy however because Cullen328 recently admitted he has for quite a while been operating a secret side hustle as a Wikipedia consultant. He charges gullible fools $60 an hour to advise them "every step of the way" in their editing of Wikipedia, advice given in complete secrecy. Advice that is readily available for free through the multiple avenues already provided by Wikipedia.

Not unusual, and nowadays it is openly tolerated. Even for admins. If someone like Sarah Stierch or Jonathan Hochman showed up today as new admin candidates, their COIs would likely be ignored.

He won't give it up, he was quite adamant he needs the money in his twilight years, but since his activities are completely secret and his clients have zero protection, he can safely start phoning it in. He surely knows this, and perhaps has even told himself he would never do such a thing. He has too much integrity. Sure. Nobody sets out to be a screw up.

"Business consultants" can frequently get away with outright abuses for many years. Depends on how desperate the clients are. Long ago I worked for a company that made chemical-analysis instruments. Their major R&D project had a consultant attached who was a former employee. He openly sat at a PC in the lab and played Windows solitaire and other dumb games, for hours every day--and billed the company for those hours.

I do not charge people for this excellent analysis of the root causes of Wikipedia's evil stain on this world.

That would be unethical.

Well, if you're being paid by the word, you would do very well.....

[ChaosMeRee]

"Business consultants" can frequently get away with outright abuses for many years. Depends on how desperate the clients are. Long ago I worked for a company that made chemical-analysis instruments. Their major R&D project had a consultant attached who was a former employee. He openly sat at a PC in the lab and played Windows solitaire and other dumb games, for hours every day--and billed the company for those hours.

You are missing the big picture here.

What that consultant was doing is categorically fraud. Clearly the company has a cultural problem, because for whatever reason their staff did not report this and the company had not taken sensible precautions against being fleeced. That didn't make it right, but in the eyes of loss adjusters it makes it so much harder for the company to say they are an innocent victim.

But if he had been reported or the company had detected him, at the very least, that consultant is facing bankruptcy as a result of the inevitable lawsuit. In certain circumstances, prison. Either way, he could never work as a consultant again, unless as you say, companies were desperate (and negligent). If he is the only person in the world who can offer what he was theoretically being paid to do, then clearly the company made a bad business decision. It is not standard practice to give consultants that much leverage over your stock price. Either the Board of the market should correct that. And typically they do.

So, here we are. How does any of that relate to Cullen Industries? It serves to highlight how criminally stupid the Wikioeidnas have been in not closing this loophole and stamping on his head until it is a bloody pulp for having exploited It for his personal gain.

(for all his attempts to downplay the significance of the monetary reward, It is still quite evident that being paid to do this is a significant motivation for him doing it, otherwise he could have by now figured out that a significant number of his doubters could be satisfied by him simply saying he would donate his supposedly insignificant to him earnings to charity, given he is only interested in serving the market, protecting Wikipedia from scammers and learning more about how scammers work).

It is a stone cold fact that Cullen could sit at home playing Solitaire and charge Acme Inc. his standard rate of $75 an hour for doing so, and nobody can do a damn thing about it. Acme Inc. cannot sue him. He is not in breach of any contract between them, most likely because there isn't one, or if there is, It is unenforceable.

In the eyes of the law, the relationship here is between a man in a bar and another man in a bar, where the first man has given the second man some money, and that is literally that. Paying a random stranger to watch your bags while you go pee, has more of a chance of being seen as a transaction for the purposes of suing to recover losses should the other man lose of even steal your stuff. And your chances there are already effectively nil, because in the eyes of the law, you were a fucking moron.

Whereas your consultant can be sued, Cullen can get paid for playing Solitaire for as long as he thinks the mug punters will pay for it. And as he has said repeatedly, the market is there. People are apparently lining up for a personalised in depth service, willing to pay exorbitant rates. Naturally, those people are exactly the kind of dumb bastards who would never even know if their supposedly detailed personalized service was simply Cullen trotting out a few stock lines you can obtain in any FAQ or policy nutshell.

Would he ever even do so such a thing? Well, as the man says, his time is precious and his mental energy is limited. Is he going to prioritise keeping his son afloat or making sure Acme Inc. are getting personalised in depth coaching in the impossible mission that is achieving fairness and respect at the hands of Wikipedia editors and indeed its wholly corrupt system of governance? I can see it. The man isn't half the Jesus he claims to be, and that is just obvious from how he speaks to people when things aren't going his way.

Obviously if that is what he is doing, charging to play Solitaire, then regardless of the law, It is deeply unethical. But what does that matter? Unlike your scenario, there is no way anyone can check whether Cullen is being unethcial, except, ironically, doing an unethical thing like posing as a client and seeing what you actually get for your money from this shyster (that's not racist, Cullen apparently has Jewish relatives).

Acme Inc. has no legal right to monitor what Cullen does, not even during the hours he is billing them. The Wikimedia Foundation would actually be breaking the law if they took active steps to ascertain whether Cullen was being unethical in how he provides his ethical Wikipedia consultancy.

He is effectively trading on their brand name (an ethical Wikipedia consultant has no business model if Wikipedia wasn't a recognised brand), but due to the rather stupid way Wikipedia is incorporated, they have zero come back (unless Cullen is quite literally trading on their name, but since that would be very easy to prove and thus sue him for it, we can assume he isn't doing that).

Cullen is undoubtedly fraudulently presenting a proposition to clients where his status as an Administrator carries far more significance than it actually does, legally or otherwise. His advice, his experience, for the purposes of the law that governs transactional relationships, is worthless. And that is all he is selling, his advice based on his experience. If he is to be believed, and nobody has any way of checking that claim.

This is the hilarious thing about the way Cullen has sought to justify how he thinks ethical Wikipedia consulting should work. To him, It makes perfect sense that him sitting at his desk firing up Solitaire, should be quite literally the only time a Wikipedia Administrator can claim he is giving advice, and refuse to disclose what that was when asked by his peers or superiors, and in most cases, any editor in good standing.

Only in very narrow circumstances is that allowed on Wikipedia, and even then, at any one time, any editor in good standing can at least say, well, I still think something shady is going on, but since the entire Arbitration Committee must be involved, and all of them have legal liability to the Foundation if they have broken any rules, I might as well leave it there.

No longer. Now consultants have this power, and each one is an untouchable island. No wonder Barkeep is deeply, deeply concerned.

The only thing stopping Cullen charging a client for playing Solitaire, is his own personal morality. Even his solemn promise to the Wikipedia community that he would never break or even try to skirt any Wikipedia policy or Foundation rule is entirely irrelevant here, because such an activity is entirely outside of those rules and popicies, and as I already outlined, It breaks no laws either.

This is the loophole he identified and is now exploiting for monetary gain. Correction, has been exploiting for a year already, while Barkeep et al mused on what to do about it. He says he has paused while some errors are made to get the genie back in the bottle, errors that are doomed to fail, but like everything, we only have his word for that. Bizarrely, he even claims to have helped one person during the pause, but for free. So we know now that he isn't even keeping this activity secret because the exchange of money creates an implied contractual and confidential arrangement. He is doing it because he can. The root of all Wikipedia corruption.

The Wikipedia community can of course ask Cullen to prove in some way that he is not charging clients to play Solitaire. But as we have seen already, his only response to that will be righteous indignation that they would dare to even question his integrity.

This is an effective tactic. Witness Doug Weller rolling over like a little bitch despite having only witnessed Cullen doing more of the same tedious self-certification with a generous side of emotional blackmail bullshit......

I'm very sorry you've had to go through this. Your explanation above is very clear and convincing. ..... Doug Weller talk 09:40, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Maybe Doug is just a patsy. Or maybe Cullen paid him to make that comment and intimidate the person who was causing him difficulties by simply brining a healthy dose of reality to his fantasy world. We will never know. And in that scenario, It is only Doug Weller who has broken any rules, but crucially, even he has broken no laws. Cullen is free and clear, getting other to take the risks or falls while he coins it in. This is how a good scammer works.

Even if Cullen playing Solitaire did break any rules or laws, which It doesn't, there is no way of knowing if Cullen is doing this, unless you go down the route of the mystery shopper. And if Cullen is the sort of dirty greedy money grabbing filthy bastard I think he is, he will of course find it very easy to screen his potential clients and determine who is a genuine mark and who is trying to catch him with his hand in the cookie jar.

There is no trade body or regulator overseeing the practices of ethical business consuting. And as far as anyone knows, Cullen is the only dirty thieving bastard who has even dared to monetize this loophole for their personal benefit. There is no requirement to even disclose you are an ethical Wikipedia consultant, and as we have seen, doing so offers zero reassurance or indeed protection to clients, editors or the Foundation. So it is a mark of the inherently deceptive nature of Cullen, the scam potential in his very bones, that he has been gobbing off on Wikipedia as if it was somehow significant or evidence of his ethical nature. It is the exact opposite.

He naturally objects to people suggesting he is corrupt or corruptible. And in a way, he is entitled to do so. Because unless someone gets a grip on this shit and implements the sort of rules and bodies and independent oversight that exists in professional consulting, Cullen charging people to play Solitaire is not corruption.

Which brings us to us most hilarious part. As we all know, Wikipedia is entirely unaffected by market forces. The quality of the product does not affect their bottom line in any way. The widespread immorality of their volunteers, even Administrators, is similarly far removed from anything that might reasonably be construed as the Wikipedia equivalent of a stock price.

Did Wikipedia's brand value or reputation move an inch when it as discovered Bbb23 was in flagrant breach of Californian privacy laws? No. Bbb23 is still an Administrator, and his most recent act as an Administrator was to block someone who was asking Cullen perfectly reasonable questions in the public forum of his talk page. His reason? That activity does not improve Wikipedia.

Rather than feeling embarrassment or even guilt, the involved parties, Bbb23, Bishonen, Deepfriedochra, and yes, or course, Cullen himself, all had a good old laugh about it after the event. Cullen counts these people as friends, we can only presume. Honest, incorruptible, ethical Cullen. It seems pretty obvious that Wikipedia's first line of defence against corruption, Administrators themselves ensuring they are all in compliance with the rules, such as the rule that says alternative accounts are permissible in certain circumstances, or that people must be treated with respect and shown good faith, or even that blocks must be clearly explained and properly justified.

None of that happened during the simple matter of someone wanting to question Cullen about the implications of his consulting on how others might choose to volunteer their time.

So the chances of It happening when someone has reason to suspect Cullen has broken one of his promises but cannot know for sure without the chance to question Cullen in a public forum, ARE ABSOLUTELY FUCKING ZERO.

My standard professional advice therefore seems apt. If Wikipedia cannot stop bad things happening through their internal proceses, and the law is no help either, your only option is to take the law into your own hands.

And while they've often interceded in other cases, I am willing to bet that if Cullen doesn't change his interpretation of what a professional ethical WIKIPEDIA consulting business looks like and how that might ethically fit into the very well known principles of the movement that is the bedrock of their brand value, well, they will surely step aside and let Cullen reap what he has sewn.

And In America at least, that is your right as a citizen. Protect the innocent, punish the guilty.

The rest of the civilised world can just ignore it, because we are lucky enough to have functioning educational systems and healthy democracies, so we care not what Wikipedia has to say about Acme Inc. or whether their Wikipedia article is a product of not so ethical consulting. We can rely on our laws and our trade bodies to protect us if Acme Inc's main business is to sell radioactive lead painted toothing rings to trailer trash teen mothers, with a side interest in selling cluster bombs to elementary school police forces (I'm imagining that is a thing in America, land of the free and second home of the Jew), but for some curious reason, their Wikipedia article says differently.

I do not mean to suggest Cullen might actually help Acme Inc. whitewash their article (although it has to be said, It is hard to imagine what other kind of client Cullen will be able to attract, and he is certainly not saying). But this whole thing will really take off when the CEO of Acme realises that securing priority access to a Wikipedia consultant who will give you all the tools to do so, for a mere $75 an hour, is one heck of a good way to redress the inherent imbalance in Wikipedia when it comes to subjects trying to edit their own pages.

Cullen says he will report Acme the very second he sees them breaking a Wikipedia policy. Yet another of his promises that he is free to bend or break whenever it is convenient for him, such as when his son is being sued and needs a legal defence fund fast.

Nobody but Cullen will even know Acme Inc. have a current and ongoing interest in Wikipedia. And naturally, out of concern for his own wallet, he will have a far higher threshold for seeing actual report worthy abuse than he would as a volunteer. He will deny it, but he might as well be denying he is a human being for all that will be worth to a sensible person with a healthy level of cynicism (i.e., not soon to be dead from cancer so why would he even care Doug Weller).

If his clients don't learn how to whitewash an article while sticking within the rules, the spirit and the letter, they most assuredly aren't getting $75 an hour's worth of advice from a Wikipedia Administrator, whether they are merely an arrogant fool or a fellow shyster.

And if they do, you have even more reason to take the law into your own hands.

Protect the innocent. Punish the guilty.

Such is current state of corruption at Wikipedia, the guilty hide in plain sight....

Are you using a sock because your main account is blocked? If it's not, I don't understand how it would compromise your privacy to ask those aggressive questions of Cullen from your main account rather than from a throwaway sock. But then of course I don't know if there's history between the two of you. The reason I don't know is that you have gone out of your way to conceal your own Wikipedia history. Has Cullen disobliged you in some way, that you need to hide in the shadows to 'engage him in discussion' (=imply that he might disregard a "mere" [sic] personal promise, and accuse him of an elastic commitment to honesty)? Bishonen | tålk 12:37, 5 November 2023 (UTC).

I certainly won't charge you a cent to tell you that one single Administrator comment contains multiple blatant breaches of policy, driving a truck through the heart of Wikipedia's principles. And yet nothing was done.

It happened right in front of Cullen, and directly benefits his families financial situation. And he did nothing. Well, not nothing. He joined in with the post-block merriment.

Theirs is manifestly not a peer to peer relationship. There is no public declaration to that effect and they will deny it if challenged. But here is the proof. You judge any man by his deeds not his words, but that is especially true of a man offering you something that sounds too good to be true.

Editing Wikipedia brings you into direct contact with Bishonen, and you are paying Cullen $75 an hour for advice on how to best to go about that. You have no recourse if that advice turns out to be horseshit, which it would be if he told you all about how Administrators are held to the highest standards and all you need do to ensure it is true in your case, is to report any breaches to a fellow Administrator. The more blatant and harmful, the more severe the consequences for the violator.

Yeahright.

You just got scammed.

That is the sort of stone cold straight to the heart of the matter Vigilant dreams he was this good piece of killer analysis that I am known for. This is why I do what I do, and I won't ever charge you dear reader a penny for it.

[ChaosMeRee]

The pathetic defences of Cullen Inc. continue....

https://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewto ... 63#p341963

If only Bishomen hadn't told Boing! who he can and cannot play out with, we might have been able to discuss what exactly is wrong with this comment (made on the Bishonen approved not remotely a threat to Wikipedia forum, Wikipediocracy).....

For years, we've heard about all the problems with organisations wanting to write on WIkipedia, but not having a clue about how to do it without violating COI criteria. And they're seen as the scum of the earth even if they only want to fix a genuine factual inaccuracy.

And then we have someone offering to put effort into advising organisations on how to comply with Wikipedia's COI policies (without doing any editing on their behalf), and wanting a modest recompense for his time and work (on top of the vast amount of direct work he's put in for free). And, he's one of the most experienced and knowledgeable Wikipedia people there are.

But he's evil scum for trying to help achieve what everyone actually wants orgnisations to do anyway.

But I'll fire the opening shots anyway. That's what I'm paid to do.

1. You're only taking Cullen's word that his advice is what he claims it is. He does it all in secret, we're not even allowed to know who he is advising.

2. If Cullen is your idea of experienced and knowledgeable, that only makes his outrageous and sustained attack on Martin Urbanac even more of a concern.

3. To describe $75 an hour for work where you are your own boss, nobody knows what you're doing, and for which you didn't undergo any formal training or have to obtain any formal qualifications for, and which isn't remotely regulated or part of any recognise trade body, and that you can perform in your basement in your underpants, as "modest recompense", is ever so slightly ridiculous. No wonder Cullen decided, to hell with running a real business into my twilight years, this will do nicely to feather my nest.

4. He is evil scum not for having found a way to monetize Wikipedia. He is evil scum for charging people for something they can already get for free. Such is the secrecy that surrounds this grift, you don't even know if he tells potential clients this is the case. You wouldn't even ask.

5. He is also evil scum for having found a way to monetize a Wikipedia status ("Administrator") he was only granted on the understanding that Wikipedia Administrators are unpaid volunteers whose time and knowledge are given freely, except in limited and well understood, transparent and regulated circumstances (WiR, Edu, etc).

6. He is evil scum for having only revealed he had embarked on this exploitation of an apparent loophole long after he had begun monetizing it.

7. He is evil scum for effectively having issued the community with an ultimatum in the ensuing policy debate, to either let him continue with this work on the understanding he is the sole arbiter of whether it is ethical, or see him stop it (a very strange thing to do for someone claiming to be only doing this for the betterment of Wikipedia, not the enrichment of his family finances).

8. He is evil scum for not having looked at the widespread concern and even expressions of a betrayal of trust in that debate, and then done what you would expect an experienced Administrator to do - disregard their personal certainty they have done nothing wrong, their hyper emotional (to the point of indignant rage) response, and give the community the chance to say, through a confirmation RfA, whether he still has the trust of the community now that we know he intends to be spending part of his days earning money from his status as an Administrator and we now know precisely how he intends to do that.