Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

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Abd
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Re: Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

Post by Abd » Wed Apr 17, 2019 2:16 pm

The wiki structure, missing protective mechanisms which nobody knew to create, since the founders of WMF wikis were generally techies without large-scale human organizational experience, and even in that specialist circle, knowledge would be rare about what it would have taken to create reliable process to realize the goals and ideas of Wikipedia (some of which were mutually contradictory), would inevitably create, barring some miracle, what many have seen. Endless, vast realms of stupid, larded through an even larger, unmanageable corpus of unstable structure, doomed to decay and the community doomed to devolve into the Lord of the Flies.

(That is, Wikipedia is unmanageable without sane structure, though useful in places. Rarely is it very good, it gravitates toward mediocre).

Graaf, let me ask you something. If you have nothing better to do -- and that's up to you -- you could spend the rest of your life chronicling how stupid they were, there is an endless well of material. But does this serve you? How?

I'm not saying it doesn't, but I'm suggesting that you look carefully at that question.

For myself, what I know about myself is that whenever I review those records, it puts me back into the same appalled obsessions. I need cause and purpose, or it is a formula for strangling myself.

Meanwhile, it looks like I may need someone in Los Angeles to serve process. Any volunteers? Contact me privately.

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Re: Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

Post by Graaf Statler » Wed Apr 17, 2019 6:44 pm

Abd wrote:The wiki structure, missing protective mechanisms which nobody knew to create, since the founders of WMF wikis were generally techies without large-scale human organizational experience, and even in that specialist circle, knowledge would be rare about what it would have taken to create reliable process to realize the goals and ideas of Wikipedia (some of which were mutually contradictory), would inevitably create, barring some miracle, what many have seen. Endless, vast realms of stupid, larded through an even larger, unmanageable corpus of unstable structure, doomed to decay and the community doomed to devolve into the Lord of the Flies.

(That is, Wikipedia is unmanageable without sane structure, though useful in places. Rarely is it very good, it gravitates toward mediocre).

I think the founders did what they thought was the best at that moment. And, in the beginning it seems to work, the internet was new, so everybody was very optimistic.
But slowly the system errors appeared. The decline, what I called often " Statlers first law", and the money streams what went complete in the wrong direction.
Because not the creators where rewarded with the power and the money, but others, often outsiders, what ended up in all kind of perverse situations. For instance both our very toxic Global Ban, because the internet never forget. I have a little lovely nice and other young family members with the same rare name and they can be hurt by this smear campaign of WMF long after I have gone. Nobody can remove this info anymore. I complete agree with you here.
Abd wrote:That publication is a libel. The primitive argument of Etherman is that it is "true." I.e. there is a ban, so they are merely announcing the truth. But the rarity of such bans and the context creates a ready interpretation that the banned user must have done something Really Bad, and that, in fact, is how the ban has been used, in my case. If they really investigated, they would know that there were complainants intent on that. But what they know, I don't know, I don't know how carefully they investigated. The lack of any review or appeal process was designed to save them money, not to protect users.

Legally they have the right to ban, but not necessarily to publish it. This is not a news organization publishing fact that the news organization did not create and does not control.

I have never denied WMF had every right to ban me Global, even without any reason. I have always respect there Global Ban, personal I never entered the WFM structure anymore, and I have never asked if I may return. The only thing I have asked is the reason, a explanation. I have given them the evidences who I was, I have given them, altough there is not any obligation to do so a medical rapport I am medical fine by a qualified doctor, there is not any reason to doubt my sexual preference is for nice, intelligent lady's of 35+ years older. All privet matters, but they have all that information. But I had never any reaction of them.
My edits where fine, so there is not any reason to put my username on that name and shame list of WMF what leads very easy to my real identity.

Graaf, let me ask you something. If you have nothing better to do -- and that's up to you -- you could spend the rest of your life chronicling how stupid they were, there is an endless well of material. But does this serve you? How?

I'm not saying it doesn't, but I'm suggesting that you look carefully at that question.

For myself, what I know about myself is that whenever I review those records, it puts me back into the same appalled obsessions. I need cause and purpose, or it is a formula for strangling myself.

Meanwhile, it looks like I may need someone in Los Angeles to serve process. Any volunteers? Contact me privately.

And no dear Adb, I have no intention to spend the rest of my life chronicling how stupid they were, and yes, it is an endless well, a black hole filled up with missed changes and stupidity's. But I needed my time on the American critical fora to get the right view and insight what was really going on. And I had to learn to write English and this was the best way.
And i think I have that insight view now.
Wikipedia is lost for many reasons, to many to mention in brief here, so let's see how it ends up. And I think a contact person in LA should be very useful, I will send you a PM too, Adb.

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Re: Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

Post by Abd » Sat Apr 20, 2019 4:21 pm

Abd wrote:Meanwhile, it looks like I may need someone in Los Angeles to serve process. Any volunteers? Contact me privately.

Well, that is not needed, because today I received the waiver of service. You guys are the first to know.

The WMF has retained Jones Day for this, one of the top legal firms in the U.S. This will become public record, so I think there is no harm publishing this here. The attorney is Christopher M. Morrison, office in Boston, 617-960-3939.

My, my, not some junior partner! The only better news than this would have been a contact from the Office -- or a proposal for informal mediation -- but I understand why they would avoid that.

They now have until 60 days from 3/19/2019 to file an answer or motion under Rule 12.

And I now have an actual human being to talk with. Or at least an attorney, and they are usually human. Sometimes quite smart! Seriously, this one looks very good.

I have not started fund-raising. I assume (1) negotiations will go splendidly, and we will reach a settlement satisfactory to these two parties, or (2) they will file a Motion to Dismiss (or their intention will be clear) and I will start fundraising and seeking counsel. While I'm not afraid of facing a Jones Day attorney in court -- I watched a whole team of them in Miami in Rossi v. Darden -- and they make mistakes (in hindsight, my opinion, but none of them were fatal errors, some might have been expensive) -- and I trust reality and the court -- discretion is also the better part of valor.

As far as I know, none of the John Does have retained an attorney. :-) Of course, they have not been served or invited to waive. It is being claimed on the internet that I have libelled them. That's fun.

There are even sock puppets that have appeared on WMF wikis to pretend they are me or a friend, threatening real people that they have been sued. And this has actually revealed, in one case, what might be called "guilty knowledge." (Some people are not terribly smart, even though they have long beards.) But I'm not going there yet, not legally.

One step at a time. The big banana first, then we worry about the flies. Or files. Or whatever.

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Re: Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

Post by Graaf Statler » Sat Apr 20, 2019 8:04 pm

Abd wrote:
My, my, not some junior partner! The only better news than this would have been a contact from the Office -- or a proposal for informal mediation -- but I understand why they would avoid that.

No, this is absolute not a junior partner and for me this is a indication there is something terrible wrong there, but I am simple not familiar with the American legal system.
In Europe this should be different, slander and defamation is a crime. The prosecutor should decide if it was slander and deformation and he should start a trail. And in that proces the judge can decide toe give you a compensation. This is general info, and not about any specific cause.

Beside this, and I think it is fair to tell I have been approached by investors of the police of Den Haag and I am not suspected of any crime myself is told to me. They asked for my personal data what I have given of course.

This are the only thing I say in public about it because the rest is confidential and I write this here because De Kolonel wrote a topic in his well know style about it on the Eerbeek blog. (In Dutch, link is down under here)

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Re: Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

Post by Abd » Sun Apr 21, 2019 1:11 am

Graaf Statler wrote:
Abd wrote:
My, my, not some junior partner! The only better news than this would have been a contact from the Office -- or a proposal for informal mediation -- but I understand why they would avoid that.

No, this is absolute not a junior partner and for me this is a indication there is something terrible wrong there, but I am simple not familiar with the American legal system.
In Europe this should be different, slander and defamation is a crime. The prosecutor should decide if it was slander and deformation and he should start a trail. And in that proces the judge can decide toe give you a compensation. This is general info, and not about any specific cause.


In the U.S. defamation is a tort, a civil offense, not a crime, so there is no state prosecutor involved. I am the plaintiff, "prosecuting" the case. They have retained Jones Day for the defense. The American system is adversarial, the judge does not investigate, that is our job as the parties. I did not ask for a jury trial, so the judge will not only rule on motions, etc., but will, after the evidence has been presented, decide on issues of fact as well as issues of law.

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Re: Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

Post by Graaf Statler » Sun Apr 21, 2019 1:51 am

Abd wrote:
Graaf Statler wrote:
Abd wrote:
My, my, not some junior partner! The only better news than this would have been a contact from the Office -- or a proposal for informal mediation -- but I understand why they would avoid that.

No, this is absolute not a junior partner and for me this is a indication there is something terrible wrong there, but I am simple not familiar with the American legal system.
In Europe this should be different, slander and defamation is a crime. The prosecutor should decide if it was slander and deformation and he should start a trail. And in that proces the judge can decide toe give you a compensation. This is general info, and not about any specific cause.


In the U.S. defamation is a tort, a civil offense, not a crime, so there is no state prosecutor involved. I am the plaintiff, "prosecuting" the case. They have retained Jones Day for the defense. The American system is adversarial, the judge does not investigate, that is our job as the parties. I did not ask for a jury trial, so the judge will not only rule on motions, etc., but will, after the evidence has been presented, decide on issues of fact as well as issues of law.

Yes, that was clear to me. I only explained the difference. In Holland can the civil part be a part of a crime trail. Everything is in that case been done by the prosecutor, also the investigation together with the police. Even the compensation is paid by the state if it is not paid in eight mounts. The state pays you the money, and they will get it back later from the other party. Such a trail is complete for free here, It starts with the police what investigate, and they handel a cause to the prosecutor. And the prosecutor take it to court. Defamation is a pretty heavy crime here, you can end up in jail for it.

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Re: Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

Post by Guido den Broeder » Sun Apr 21, 2019 2:07 am

Abd wrote:(…) Meanwhile, it looks like I may need someone in Los Angeles to serve process. Any volunteers? Contact me privately.

Obviously, I know people in LA, but I have no intention of helping you. Nor do I think that the reason for your ban needs spelling out. Even so, I wish you good luck.

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Re: Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

Post by Graaf Statler » Sun Apr 21, 2019 8:48 am

Guido den Broeder wrote:
Abd wrote:(…) Meanwhile, it looks like I may need someone in Los Angeles to serve process. Any volunteers? Contact me privately.

Obviously, I know people in LA, but I have no intention of helping you. Nor do I think that the reason for your ban needs spelling out. Even so, I wish you good luck.

Ik heb werkelijk geen idee wat er zich daar allemaal heeft afgespeeld Guido, we zullen het wel zien. Maar Abd heeft dat al opgelost heb ik begrepen met die proces server in LA.
In elk geval volg ik het allemaal met belangstelling en ben ik bang dat er door dat idiote gedrag van WMF tussen jouw en mij ook een enorm misverstand ooit ontstaan is. Want feitelijk ben ik je heel dankbaar achteraf, ik had anders nooit die essay over Griekenland en de overige artikelen kunnen schrijven zonder jouw Wikisage.
Die Lidewij, je moderator, was achteraf gezien door al die gekkigheid en al dat getroll van die Wikipedia figuren en dat beschadigen van mijn persoon door WMF met die ban totaal op het verkeerde been terecht gekomen namelijk. Alleen begreep ik dat op dat moment niet dus sorry als ik lelijke dingen tegen je in het verleden heb gezegd.

Fijne pasen!

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Re: Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

Post by Abd » Thu Apr 25, 2019 4:24 pm

Guido den Broeder wrote:
Abd wrote:(…) Meanwhile, it looks like I may need someone in Los Angeles to serve process. Any volunteers? Contact me privately.

Obviously, I know people in LA, but I have no intention of helping you. Nor do I think that the reason for your ban needs spelling out. Even so, I wish you good luck.
Thanks, Guido. As it happened, I did not need this help, because the attorney for the WMF waived service. You never understood what I was doing on Wikiversity, which any user could have done. The lack of understanding as to how the community could support administration was widespread, and the community never fully realized how unsafe the "administrative cabal" was without protective structure allowing efficient community review.
(That's what Jimbo called it, and later the cabal and supporters ridiculed the term, a form of denial.)

Instead, the community processes were badly gummed up and easily disrupted, which is what the process that led to my Wikiversity block and then the global ban demonstrated. With community process disrupted, it all falls back on individual administrators. But wait, what if they are the problem?

Guido, you are blocked on four WMF wikis, which took some doing. However, as far as I have seen, you would not be eligible for a global ban, because it appears that only one of these bans was the result of a community discussion, and it is not even clear that the enwiki discussion qualified (I'd need to review the policy.) As is common on Wikipedia, the documentation is fucked. Your block log shows reference to a broken URL. The actual URL is this. . No comment on whether or not the re-ban was appropriate.

However, as to Wikiversity, where we interacted, you never seem to have realized the possibilities there. You could have created educational resources and studies on your favorite topic, and I demonstrated how to do that in the presence of high possible conflict and while maintaining site neutrality. Impossible on Wikipedia! Instead, your first edit was about a difficult issue, the unblock of Thekohser, which I more or less engineered, because Thekohser was not disruptive on Wikiversity, and allowing people considered disruptive elsewhere to work on Wikiversity actually reduced overall disruption, but the Wikipedians never recognized that, this was all part of "Wikipedia disease" as the founder of Wikiversity called it. Conflict of interest editing on Wikiversity was allowed if disclosed, for example, allowing experts and people with personal experience to create content. Personal testimony mattered on Wikiversity -- as it does in academia and journalism.

Instead of working on resources involving your primary interests, where you could have balanced problems on Wikipedia, or at least presented alternate points of view -- all part of what is possible in an academic, university-like environment, as distinct from an encyclopedia -- you dove into central process, proposing deletions, very much not community-supported on Wikiversity. It would be like a custodian throwing away student papers. Rather, for the most part, on Wikiversity, if something was not appropriate for mainspace, we would move it to user space, which is far, far less disruptive and offensive. Or we would create structure, moving allegedly non-neutral pages to attributed pages in subspace.

We were able to avoid what would have created bitter revert warring on Wikipedia, actually turning it into cooperation in creating deeper resources.

And the Wikipedians hated it.

In any case, your first proposed deletion did not require a deletion discussion, at least not as you filed it. Rather, Wikiversity developed a much more efficient deletion procedure, with speedy deletion templates for very obvious deletions and proposed (delayed) deletion to test opposition. Almost all deletion discussions became unnecessary, reserved for actual controversy. So if you emptied a category by accepted editing, you could then speedy or prod the category. Only if this were contested would a discussion be appropriate. You did accept the obvious, and implemented it. So the discussion was a learning opportunity for you, and learning by doing is part of the Wikiversity mission.

But wikignomes often did not do well on Wikiversity. They are there to work out the demands of an autistic, often very rule-bound, personality. So they would come in, as an example, and find every possible non-free image, for example, and argue endlessly for deletion, citing everything except for the mission of Wikiversity. It was not necessarily that they were wrong, but that there are hierarchies of operating principles, and prohibition of non-free images, which individual communities explicitly could bypass, was, to some extent, in conflict with the mission. And this created conflict, conflict that did not contribute to the mission. Indeed, the entire WMF policy on non-free images (not at all obvious for the goal of a "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit") came from a faction that dominated Wikipedia in the early days, some of whom may have had a conflict of interest.

It is not about copyright, but about making it easier for commercial users to re-use images as-is. The compromise (which made sense) was to require all non-free images to have a machine-readable fair use rationale, and it was easy to create these. But the wikignomes wanted to win, through arguments and discussions that can become highly contentious.

One of the unique features of Wikiversity was mentored custodianship, called "probationary." You voted to gut it. Why? That was proposed by Ottava Rima, one of the most disruptive of Wikimedians, and if you look at the history, it was pure resentment and revenge. Were you aware of the history, and that relatively minor fixes would have handled the actual issues? Later, there was local consensus (unanimity!) for the fix, and I went to the appropriate page to have the developers fix it, and the *developers* decided that the Wikiversity practice, in place for years, and very functional and highly useful for training sysops, was *illegal*. Which was complete nonsense, but . . . the global Wikipedians dominate. One step at a time, local autonomy was dismantled.

Again, you had obvious and strong interests on Wikipedia and, while blocked, there, you could have created highly useful educational resources on Wikiversity, but instead you bailed, giving me as the reason.


I won't go into the conflict underneath that, but it was, again, all based on not understanding how wikis worked, when functional, and that got you into trouble everywhere. Where we disagreed, the community backed my position, which is what I expected. That is always what I was "pushing," what I expected would be an informed community consensus. And you made it all personal. Back in the day, you'd have supported the storm troopers hauling away your neighbor because he didn't like the color of your fence, or for any reason that dominated your thinking. You would burn down an entire community because you disliked a single member.

A brief response now that I would not have expressed then. Fascist Asshole!

So to block me on Wikiversity, they simply bypassed community process, and if nobody was watching, they got away with it, and to bypass this, I would have needed to create a large fuss or have someone else do it. By the time of my 2015 block, I saw that hardly anyone was watching, and so I saw little hope, and so I abandoned work on central process and even on building content, because I knew that at any time, Wikipedians could come piling in and create an appearance of local consensus. They still did not manage to pull that off, as the discussion showed, so a 'crat, who had been very inactive and never understood the possibilities of Wikiversity, short-circuited it all by creating a decision based on "avoiding disruption," paying no attention to the obvious cause of the disruption, apparent in the discussions -- "cold fusion" and the next --, and actually hiding review of it -- and ignoring the views of actual Wikiversitans, creating a new "policy" unlaterally in order to force the decision he wanted. That was Community Review material, but there was only one active WV user who had demonstrated skill in writing those. So of course he had to get rid of me, and he created an excuse.

Fascist assholes! On steroids!

Star chamber process, followed by the same at the Office level, and fueled by what? That becomes an interesting story. There is a hint of it in [url=VDARE.com/articles/lunatics-take-over-asylum-oliver-d-smith-rationalwiki-and-the-wikipedeans]a recent piece published by a right-wing blog of note, VDARE[/url]. That discussion blames it all on SJWs, predictable from the blog politics. But if we substitute for that, generic fascism, as Mussolini described it, which seeks to suppresses the freedom of others in the name of believed "truth" or "collective welfare," and which then includes left-wing and right-wing fascism, and even -- or especially! -- "anti-fascism," it's right on.

I was being inundated with trollsocks on reddit, in discussions which began with links to the lawsuit, and I did not notice a subreddit covering that article for two weeks, but then I did find it and commented, and immediately, a massive rain of trollsocks appeared, to the extent of becoming an obvious attempt, not merely to expose me as an allegedly famous troll, but to make the entire topic unreadable. Fascist suppression in action.

And a consistent pattern.

Guido, you have an opportunity to recognize something that could be quite important for your life. Good luck.

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Re: Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc. et al

Post by Graaf Statler » Thu Apr 25, 2019 4:44 pm

O Guido. I have a conflict with Guido about Wikisage. I wrote a few nice articles but Guido has a complete insane sysop close connected to the wiki cabal, and a Belgium Jehova witness as a sysop. And he has a foundation, a "stichting". And in the best wiki tradition he never answers any email.

What is the problem? Guido has to keep both that Jehova sysop and the complete crazy Lidewij troll happy and as a friend. Because, who else has to do the job? Mendelo, that Jehove sysop is absolute a good editor and not unfriendly, but that Lidewij troll can't stand me. Because it is the same weird construction you often see on Wikipedia, the Lidewij account is managed by some foolish autist, I think the same idiot who owns the Ymnes account.

So, if I appear on Wikisage, that "Lidewij" freaks complete out, so that Guido guy is far from clean. Last time "Lidewij trow all my accounts away and list of articles.
Because, Guido use a lot of my work, and blocks me constant. because of a wiki-political reasons. He even claimed he should go to the police if I should return to his wikisage, Why? Because he needs the work of those wiki idiots. So, guido is just a instrument of the complete wiki madness as the rest. But I gave him permission to use my work for the time being.

Eigenlijk, eigenlijk ben je gewoon een enorme lul, Guido, maar ik wil je net niet die streek leveren die ik je zou kunnen leveren. Een soort gedogen, snap je? Want het lijkt natuurlijk helemaal nergens op! Om een of andere wrakhout sysop in het zadel te houden en mijn werk gewoon in pikken. Andere woorden zijn er niet voor.

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