Catfish Jim blocks a pedophile. Or did they?

[Boink Boink]

It's a mark of how irresponsible Wikipedia is with child protection, that it's actually pretty hard to figure out if what Catfish Jim has recently done, is following policy, against policy, or a valid invocation of "Ignore All Rules".

Like many of his peers, Wikipedia Administrator "Catfish Jim and the soapbox" also posts on the den of scum that is Wikipediocracy. As he explains here, he has blocked Wikipedia user Pokelova for being a "scumbag".

That's all we will ever really know, because for some bizarre reason, the people charged with preventing paedophilia advocacy on Wikipedia (the most logical reason for the block), aren't accountable to anyone but themselves. Emails asking what exactly happened, will be ignored.

Most definitely Jim seems to think he at least did something unusual, both by invoking IAR (Ignore All Rules) and openly stating he "didn't exactly follow protocol to the letter" (Wikipediocracy thread)

It's worth noting that Jim has an entirely incorrect view of what IAR is for. As the rule says, it is explicitly for situations where a rule prevents a beneficial action. If a rule is just vague, you just explain your actions like any other Administrator action.

The secrecy does Wikipedia no favours, for two reasons.

One, Pokelova didn't land on Wikipedia yesterday. They have actively edited for eight years, making near!y ten thousand edits, 84% of which were to actual article content. So if they really are a paedophilia advocate, something is seriously broken with Wikipedia's defence mechanisms.

Two. There are actually concrete signs to believe Jim is either an incompetent or a witch hunter, so he really could be quite capable of making a very big mistake in applying a very serious policy when he doesn't actually believe he has the literal letter of the policy in his side.

Wikipedia Administrator Jim has.....

* Endangered the safety of a Wikipedia editor. Quite unbelievably, Jim publicly linked the allegations contained on Wikipediocracy from Wikipedia. And it was quite deliberate too. Jim has said to the Wikipedia Administrator (Tamzin) who rightly suppressed the link (albeit via the Wikipediocracy thread?), "don't do that" , calling it censorship. This is a serious breach of policy. But Jim is "not overly worried about that".

* Harassed the editor he has just blocked. Again, quite unbelievably, as he explains on Wikipediocracy, once Jim had blocked Pokelova, he went and intervened on an image inclusion debate, where Pokelova had made perfectly reasonable points to counter some random nut's assertion that a widely available movie poster was "pedo bait". Incredibly, Jim readily admits he removed the image more because of who was involved (Pokelova) rather than the merits of the content. It has since been re-added, and on Wikipedia, Jim admits "Fair enough. I'm not invested enough to disagree". He had no chance of success but tried anyway, meaning he either didn't know or didn't care about the Virgin Killer precedent (surely required reading for anyone who wants to take on the task of CHILDPROTECT).

* Used entirely emotional and prejudicial language on Wikipediocracy while discussing a situation he was acting in an Administrative capacity over on Wikipedia. For obvious reasons, ArbCom has reminded Wikipedia Administrators that their conduct is important everywhere, not just Wikipedia.

* Explained their Administrative actions in far more detail on Wikipediocracy than they ever did on Wikipedia. ArbCom has been quite clear the this is frankly unacceptable, since it not only shows rank disrespect to your colleagues, it creates a situation where Administrators are forced to engage with Wikipediocracy to get full picture of what is going on. Rather obviously, in this case, Jim reveals less of his reasoning on Wikipedia than on Wikipedipcracy probably precisely because the full context brings his motives and judgement into question (and ironically in doing so he benefits from the rule that says you can't publicly discuss their off wiki posts on Wikipedia).

[wexter]

So in 2020 Netflix created two versions of a poster for a show called "cuties" one more provocative than the other

Netflix apologises for poster 'not representing' the film​​ “We're deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Mignonnes/Cuties,” ...

Wikipedia includes the more provocative poster in its article
The Wikipedia article revolves around "the scandal" of Netflix airing a provocative show with a provocative poster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuties

an administrator ironically named "Catfish" Jim (who is catfishing) does whatever he wants - banning an editor, lambasting them, Jim calls out the editor he does not like as scumbag off site, and making judgement calls regarding what is "child pornography" (what is and what isn't) {even though that was covered in supporting discussions}

If you are here to suggest removing the Netflix poster: Wikipedia is not censored. Although the image is graphic, its existence is solely to be encyclopedic and educational (i.e. letting readers know that this is the Netflix poster that gained criticism initially). No pedophilic intentions or ramifications were made. In accordance with Wikipedia's child protection policy, pedophilic editors will be blocked or banned indefinitely.

This all boils down to the same things

1) Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia
2) Wikipedia is rules-rich and processes-poor - which means that the site has no standards to quality and arbitrary and capricious governance
3) People on the inside accrue power and do whatever they want to do within a social network which is a cult of toxicity

In 2020 I came to "Wikipedia Sucks" with the perception that Wikipedia was cemented into the Internet as the nonsense which it is. In February of 2023 calling Wikipedia out for the "Intentional Distortion of the Holocaust (IDOTH)" seemed to me to be an existential threat to Wikipedia. IDOTH was a "nothing burger." An early "AI" or "Large Language model" was released In November of 2022 and as a result (and out of nowhere) Wikipedia is done (the writing is on the wall).

It is over for Wikipedia


The internal insanity of Wikipedia and its participants is of no concern and never was a real or actual concern. The craziness of the "Catfish Jim" case is just business as usual; it's the same story over and over again. Let the Wikipedia cult bounce off each other in their rubber room.

Rubber room definition, a room padded with foam rubber for the confinement of a violent mentally ill person.

There is a downside to trying to make sense out of nonsense.

https://livingstingy.blogspot.com/2023/ ... y-you.html

I really appreciate and thank the folks on this blog that have fought the fight for years by standing up to the power of institutional-ed stupidity, cult, social network, Google profit center, and/or Jimbo's get rich quick scheme. . .

In one day technology changed. it the same sort of change that Wikipedia came into existence.

[Catfish Jim & spd]

It's a mark of how irresponsible Wikipedia is with child protection, that it's actually pretty hard to figure out if what Catfish Jim has recently done, is following policy, against policy, or a valid invocation of "Ignore All Rules".

It was against policy. Off-wiki evidence should, strictly, be presented to arbcom and not enacted on by admins. The evidence is not published on Wikipedia or Wikipediocracy, but for anyone interested enough, the editor in question has since been San Fran Banned.

As to my own competences as an admin... I'm largely inactive these days and take little interest in most of the drama that goes on at Wikipedia. The model of providing knowledge for the general public that got me interested in the project years ago is very much broken and I don't really see how it can be fixed.

[Bbb23sucks]

It's a mark of how irresponsible Wikipedia is with child protection, that it's actually pretty hard to figure out if what Catfish Jim has recently done, is following policy, against policy, or a valid invocation of "Ignore All Rules".

It was against policy. Off-wiki evidence should, strictly, be presented to arbcom and not enacted on by admins. The evidence is not published on Wikipedia or Wikipediocracy, but for anyone interested enough, the editor in question has since been San Fran Banned.

To clarify, are you referring to yourself as the one who acted against policy?

As to my own competences as an admin... I'm largely inactive these days and take little interest in most of the drama that goes on at Wikipedia. The model of providing knowledge for the general public that got me interested in the project years ago is very much broken and I don't really see how it can be fixed.

I agree. Did you sign up here just to reply to this post or do you intend on being a contributor?

[Catfish Jim & spd]

It's a mark of how irresponsible Wikipedia is with child protection, that it's actually pretty hard to figure out if what Catfish Jim has recently done, is following policy, against policy, or a valid invocation of "Ignore All Rules".

It was against policy. Off-wiki evidence should, strictly, be presented to arbcom and not enacted on by admins. The evidence is not published on Wikipedia or Wikipediocracy, but for anyone interested enough, the editor in question has since been San Fran Banned.

To clarify, are you referring to yourself as the one who acted against policy?

Yes, I acted against policy. It led to a discussion where I was reminded of this.

As to my own competences as an admin... I'm largely inactive these days and take little interest in most of the drama that goes on at Wikipedia. The model of providing knowledge for the general public that got me interested in the project years ago is very much broken and I don't really see how it can be fixed.

I agree. Did you sign up here just to reply to this post or do you intend on being a contributor?

I signed up to reply, but may contribute. I don't have a huge amount of time to devote to that though.

[ChaosMeRee]

It's a mark of how irresponsible Wikipedia is with child protection, that it's actually pretty hard to figure out if what Catfish Jim has recently done, is following policy, against policy, or a valid invocation of "Ignore All Rules".

It was against policy. Off-wiki evidence should, strictly, be presented to arbcom and not enacted on by admins. The evidence is not published on Wikipedia or Wikipediocracy, but for anyone interested enough, the editor in question has since been San Fran Banned.

As to my own competences as an admin... I'm largely inactive these days and take little interest in most of the drama that goes on at Wikipedia. The model of providing knowledge for the general public that got me interested in the project years ago is very much broken and I don't really see how it can be fixed.

People can get SanFranBanned for "any reason", including "no reason at all", and that is a legal precedent that the Foundation spent obscene amounts of donor money to successfully defend before a Californian Judge. So no, it is not as interesting to our audience as you perhaps assumed. People come here to learn the things about Wikipedia that the cult defenders and enablers of Wikipediocracy would very much like to remain hidden, lest it displeases their membership.

[ericbarbour]

The model of providing knowledge for the general public that got me interested in the project years ago is very much broken and I don't really see how it can be fixed.

SHOCK HORROR! An admin came to the forum to speak some truth! Eeeekkkk.

[Catfish Jim & spd]

Well, before we initiate Catfish in the secret rituals, let us first ponder why he has made more edits in 2023 than he has in any year since 2012.

If you're looking at editing history, you can probably pinpoint the moment WP lost its shine for me... its biggest problem is the thing that is touted as a strength... "anyone can edit". It attracts a lot of lonely, broken people who are looking for therapy. In 2012 I was sent a suicide note from an editor and had to get the WMF involved to intervene. Thankfully the local authorities were able to find them in time to save them, but I pretty much lost any enthusiasm I had for the project at that point.

I have a lot of friends who are academics and it's surprising how often discussion turns towards how abysmal WP's coverage of their subject area is. I have, on occasion, tried to show them how to fix this (which may explain an increase in activity in 2023... a large number of those edits were using WP's map templates to map placename elements for a single image), but I have to admit, I barely touch my own subject area and completely understand why experts are so reluctant to edit WP.

[Ognistysztorm]

Well, before we initiate Catfish in the secret rituals, let us first ponder why he has made more edits in 2023 than he has in any year since 2012.

If you're looking at editing history, you can probably pinpoint the moment WP lost its shine for me... its biggest problem is the thing that is touted as a strength... "anyone can edit". It attracts a lot of lonely, broken people who are looking for therapy. In 2012 I was sent a suicide note from an editor and had to get the WMF involved to intervene. Thankfully the local authorities were able to find them in time to save them, but I pretty much lost any enthusiasm I had for the project at that point.

I have a lot of friends who are academics and it's surprising how often discussion turns towards how abysmal WP's coverage of their subject area is. I have, on occasion, tried to show them how to fix this (which may explain an increase in activity in 2023... a large number of those edits were using WP's map templates to map placename elements for a single image), but I have to admit, I barely touch my own subject area and completely understand why experts are so reluctant to edit WP.

I was binging "The Dropout" the other day and I wonder if anyone else noticed the parallels between Wikipedia and Theranos and perhaps FTX. The ideal of "democratizing the contribution of knowledge" is always ideal on its own, yet Wikipedia doesn't have sufficient safeguards to reduce or stop abuses and toxicities from festering, either by willful or by neglect. There are many cases where subject matter experts and contributors have been driven out of their topic area by broken people looking for lulz, drama or just for the powers, including the CCP suspected defilement incident on a hacker article which caused huge news in Taiwan a year back due to the ensuing Anonymous operations against a Chinese FEMA website. Polish nationalists have been successfully thwarting many attempts to correct the Holocaust articles even after the exposure by Shira Klein and Jan Grabowski.

The forum user "Jennsaurus" has uncovered a dozen of serious harassment scandals against women by many Wikipedia administrators and powerusers which could trigger a downfall if published next year. To figure out how it might look like, take a peek at what happened to the reputation of "Effective Altruism" movement after FTX or how Johnny Kitagawa is faring out in Japan nowadays.