wexter wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 1:48 am
Nobody in the press has figured out the same problem has been active and allowed to continue and fester for fourteen years.
Some crazy happened right from the beginning. Tim Shell posted a pile of copyrighted Ayn Rand crap in February 2001, Cunctator showed up in July, legendary Israel-first maniac
RK started in September (and ended up triggering an "
arbitration" before Arbcom even existed), and Erik Moeller appeared in December. Moeller and Cunctator were major architects behind the forcing-out of Larry Sanger in early 2002. Still....crazy-train was more an exception than the rule.
The really deep insanity picked up circa 2003-2004, around the time David Gerard and his many enablers showed up and started convincing Jimbo to do bad things. Weirdly enough, these freaks were almost always Brits or Australians. Gerard had a LOT of power and support in the early days.
So you could make a case for TWENTY YEARS of real hardcore dysfunction.
All these other things happened in 2003-04:
- the setup of "special functions" in MediaWiki software that led to checkuser and oversight in 2005
- the beginnings of arbitration
- the beginnings of mediation, which failed hard, because power-mongering abuse was "more fun"
- Angela Beesley arrived in February 2003 (far as I can tell, as the records are full of holes)
- the formation of the WMF, first announcement in June 2003
- the setup of the bureaucrat system in February 2004. Guess who the first bureaucrats were. Among others....Erik Moeller, Angela Beesley, and of course, Gerard supporter Caroline "Secretlondon" Ford! Silly question!
- the arrival of the first bonkers patrollers, like Theresa Knott and Guy Chapman
- I will probably remember some others later--there was a LOT of insane crap.