The general Sarah Stierch thread

[ericbarbour]

Today she was complaining on Twitter about the sheriff of Sonoma County refusing to enforce viral-control rules.

Screenshot_2020-05-29 Sarah Stierch on Twitter The Sheriff of Sonoma County is a joke Twitter.png (204.32 KiB) Viewed 7987 times

The jokes, they write themselves.....

Screenshot_2020-05-29 Sarah Stierch on Twitter The Sheriff of Sonoma County is a joke Twitter(1).png (35.18 KiB) Viewed 7987 times

And for completeness, let's not forget this 2019 thread.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1631

Sarah's Twitter can be "somewhat interesting" to serious Wikipedia followers. Partly because she is such an utterly clueless narcissist, and partly because you can have "fun" trying to figure out which of her Twitter followers are still anonymous Wikipedia editors or admins. Quite a few of them are. (if you feel like a bout of self-abuse, that is.)

[hyatt]

Stierch was an advisor to the Ada Initiative which was accused of running honey traps to falsely accuse leaders of the open source community of sexual assault.

[ericbarbour]

running honey traps

Heh, which links to this 2010 rant by Sarah's little (former?) buddy Valerie Aurora. And you probably remember Valerie's father Keith Henson, a hero to Wikipedia insiders because of his longtime opposition to the Church of Scientology. Because Wikipedia women were deeply involved in the Ada Initiative (Sue Gardner was one of their directors), you can't learn how it fell apart on Wikipedia. Most of the media reports and blog posts about the squabble from 2015 have quietly disappeared.

Note the comments, in which prominent coder Bruce Perens tries to put it all down to "autism". This was the open-source programming community at one of its lowest spots. The sexual abuse claimed by women usually did happen, but sometimes it was a revenge scheme--facilitated by the utterly toxic culture we live in. And I do think Valerie is nuts, sorry to say.

https://lwn.net/Articles/417952/

You need archive.org to see Valerie's 2007 rant accusing her father of molestation. And you can NOT read about this on Wikipedia.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080130145 ... keith.html

(Mind you, I also think the hacker world has a genuine sexism/abuse problem. Eric Raymond is no prize and Stallman, the untouchable GOD of open source, is history. But what Valerie and a few of her friends tried to pull was just as disgusting.) And we should probably start another thread for Valerie Aurora, perhaps....

[ericbarbour]

I bear news of Sarah's "rehabilitation":

Her Facebook now has more than 3300 followers. Most seem to be local people in Napa/Sonoma, some of them are clearly Wikipedians she remains "friendly" with. Doing a good job of making herself "prominent" in the Napa social scene. She's been splashing news of the wildfires on her page--actually doing a decent job of it. Damn; her posts often end up with scores of stupid memes appended by her fan following.
https://www.facebook.com/sarahstierch/p ... 6442124021

And there is NOTHING about her Wikipedia/WMF history on Facebook.

Her new vanity website is slightly more honest.

Maybe she should have become a journalist, and not a Wikipedia heeler?

[Eric Corbett]

Perhaps unlike many others here I've got no objection at all to paid editing, so long as the product is good. So I couldn't care less whether Stiertch gets paid or not.

My beef with Stiertch has always been her obsession with a supposed "gender gap", and her fuzzy thinking around that issue. On her "vanity website" linked to above, she states very clearly that 9% of Wikipedia editors are women, in which number I assume she also includes girls. But that's a misleadingly precise number, not "about 10%" for instance, no, exactly 9%.

And she goes on to say "... because they'd rather not deal with this [locker-room type of environment], many female contributors choose to hide their sex." So how can she or anyone else know how many female editors there are? It's just sloppy thinking by a sloppy thinker.

[Kumioko]

I still remember when she worked at the WMF and got fired for writing articles for profit. She should have been desysopped, but because she was an admin, the rules didn't apply to her.

[Eric Corbett]

I still remember when she worked at the WMF and got fired for writing articles for profit. She should have been desysopped, but because she was an admin, the rules didn't apply to her.

She should obviously have been dumped given the rules, but maybe the rules are wrong.

So many other of Wikipedia's rules are completely knuckle-headed after all.

[ericbarbour]

Perhaps unlike many others here I've got no objection at all to paid editing, so long as the product is good. So I couldn't care less whether Stiertch gets paid or not.

My beef with Stiertch has always been her obsession with a supposed "gender gap", and her fuzzy thinking around that issue. On her "vanity website" linked to above, she states very clearly that 9% of Wikipedia editors are women

No argument from me. Thing is, she was pulling repeated backstabs and suck-ups to insiders. He actual content editing wasn't all that bad (if you don't count her tendency to write glowing WP content about herself and her Ada Initiative friends). Chasing power/support and writing usable content tend to conflict.

Let me remind you of this joke of an AFD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ah_Stierch

[Eric Corbett]

I was very struck by this keep vote, from an administrator:

"I have met Sarah and like her."

[ericbarbour]

Checking in---what's she doing on Facebook? Posting obsessive items about every minor fire in the area.

It would be a good public service....IF SHE POSTED TO THE LOCAL FIRE-WATCH GROUPS ALSO. Then tens of thousands of local residents would see it, instead of merely her Wikipedia buddies (very few of whom live in the north bay area).

Sarah, dear, THIS is where you should be posting.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1749974271971225
https://www.facebook.com/groups/sonomac ... season2020
https://www.facebook.com/OnTheScannerLakeCounty
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1380751932017407
https://www.facebook.com/groups/772492909552412
https://www.facebook.com/groups/mendocinoactionnews/
https://www.facebook.com/Maskingfaf

Screenshot_2021-07-25 (20+) Sarah Stierch Facebook.png (83.2 KiB) Viewed 5883 times