Drmies

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Drmies

Post by CrowsNest » Thu Mar 01, 2018 3:04 pm

Events of this early morning, more of which at the bottom, seem like a fitting trigger to begin a thread here on the notorious Wikipedia user, Adminsitrator and former Arbitrator, Drmies, who is in real life the Dutch-expat Michel Aaij, now of the University of Auburn at Montgomery, Alabama.

Everything you need to know about Drmies can be summed up in the revelation that he actually achieved academic tenure in part by pointing the university board to his Wikipedia activities, as if somehow they constitute academic research. He knows they don't, not by a long chalk, but of course he wasn't about to tell them.

Like all Wikipedians, he operates on the principle that knowledge is power, specifically knowledge of how Wikipedia really works, how practice and convention differ from policy and common sense, can be used for personal advantage. As can social bonds and patronage. Basically all those things from feudal times that civilised society dropped as bad ideas, for their inherent capacity to corrupt.

Adherence to policy comes a distant fifth for Drmies, somewhere behind the plaudits to be obtained by playing the race card and abusing Nazis. Because what use a position of power and trust, if you can't give Nazis a kicking from time to time? You can't even punch a Nazi in real life, no matter how much you want to, so Drmies relishes every opportunity to do things on Wikipedia that he cannot do in real life.

He's just that kind of guy, someone who would be an embarrassment to real Wikipedians, if they themselves had the sense to realise their rules and policies governing their behaviour and expected moral standards exist for a reason, one of which is so they don't come across as mindless hypocrites or corrupt sycophants.

For example, in real life, there's no way in hell Drmies would be allowed to sign off on the neutrality of an encyclopedic biography of the Intel CEO, much less use his Administrator tools to silence objections. On Wikipedia, he gets to do that, because he's all powerful, and people know it doesn't pay to point out the elephant in that room - namely that he didn't do anything but a cursory check of the page, and so it is as biased as the disclosed paid editor who wrote the draft Drmies legitimised, intended it to be.

For his crimes, Drmies has of course been slated in venues across the internet. He really doesn't like it. He hates it so much, he does bizarre things likes this incident, previously reported in Wikipediocracy, that so called critic site.....
The other day he indef blocked a user who had made 1 edit, not vandalism just unsourced but sourceable, and he justified it as NOTHERE. The reason? He obviously suspected that "RedditUser9" was one of the people who had been giving him shit on Reddit. There was nothing else to it but the name, the edit itself was innocuous, and if he was using CU data he certainly didn't mention it. That's next level corruption there, since he basically knows nobody will call him out for it, because who does that? Step to the snarky douche Arb for basic and obvious corruption, against a user you don't even know? Either of you feel like you have enough wikistatus to be stepping to your bro to engage in a bit of ADMINACCT?
Unsurprisingly, the dudes defending Drmies on that so called critic site, declined the offer to hold him to account.

He also writes nasty messages on his user talk page, for consumption by his fans. Because of course, that's what a Wikipedia user talk page is for.....again, not one person on Wikipedia calls him out for that pathetic, policy violating behaviour.

You'll never see him come out of the protective bubble of Wikipedia and prove all his detractors wrong. He exemplifies the cowardice needed to consider oneself a "Wikipedian". It's basically because if he tried, he'd only prove they are right, and he's got nothing to lose by keeping his head down and pretending like it really could ever be the case that if the Wikipedians themselves aren't calling you out, then there mustn't be anything wrong with you.

Not that they don't try, once in a while. One Wikipedian, a five year veteran iirc, recently tried to call Drmies out on Wikipedia, to the Founder no less. By pointing out his disgraceful standards of conduct, specifically in how he communicates with others, he hoped to avoid another embarassing BWilkins/DangerousPanda saga. For his trouble, he was of course rounded on and subjected to threats and intimidation.

The shock troops (some might say blackshirts) weren't interested in the evidence, except of course to use their Admin powers to delete the page documenting it as an "attack page". This is corruption at its highest. It all passes by uncommented on, with the Wikipedians either agreeing with it, or too shit scared to do anything to stop it.

Like most bad actors on Wikipedia, while they're often cute and try to obfuscate and misdirect, they don't really try to hide what they do, his behavioural violations and abuse of trust/tools hide in plain sight, him being quite confident he is untouchable given his status. Anyone vaguely experienced with Wikipedia will spot the patterns if they just follow him for a while.

He certainly doesn't hide his main area of interest, editing wise - he roams the 'pedia hacking articles to bits, no matter who wrote them or what they contain. He does this because he sees himself as some kind of guardian of Wikipedia's integrity as an encyclopedia (don't laugh). He has been challenged on this, but it's not a pleasant experience, given how difficult it is to get any third party to accept Drmies isn't above lying, let alone all the other tricks, to get his way. So he usually does.

In true Wikipedia corruption fashion, he only really backs down if he is opposed by someone he respects and doesn't really want to run off Wikipedia, as happened at the Goodwood Festival of Speed page. Patronage, see. In these sort of climbdowns, Drmies shows he even lacks the redeeming quality of remaining consistent in his beliefs, regardless of who disagrees.

All of which in a roundabout way brings me to what happened this morning. See, the Wikipedia called Everymorning has for a while taken an interest in glorifying Wikipedians by granting them the honour of a Wikipedia biography. He's not a critic looking to expose misdeeds, he is genuinely doing this because he loves Wikipedia and Wikipedians.

As is his way, evidently he wrote a draft for a biography of Drmies in his sandbox, then posted it to main space, and only then dropped a note to Drmies informing him he was now so honoured. Drmies of course didn't like that much. People knowing who he is, only makes it more likely his Wikipedia corruption will have real world consequences.

So he did what comes naturally. He used his own tools, his own powers granted to him on condition he can be trusted to use them wisely, in his own self-serving interest.

Here are the logs.....

Hiding the FYI note placed on his talk page
05:03, 1 March 2018 Drmies (talk | contribs) changed visibility of a revision on page User talk:Drmies: content hidden (Disclosure of non-public identifying or personal information)
The corresponding talk page history.....
(cur | prev) 04:01, 1 March 2018‎ Everymorning (talk | contribs)‎ . . (61,898 bytes) (+296)‎ . . (→‎FYI: new section)

(cur | prev) 05:02, 1 March 2018‎ Drmies (talk | contribs)‎ . . (61,602 bytes) (-296)‎ . . (Undid revision 828202438 by Everymorning (talk) I appreciate it but I wish you hadn't done that) (Tag: Undo)
Scrubbing all record of the draft....
05:10, 1 March 2018 Drmies (talk | contribs) changed visibility of 4 revisions on page User:Everymorning/sandbox: content hidden (Disclosure of non-public identifying or personal information)
And finally deleting the as published biography...
05:02, 1 March 2018 Drmies (talk | contribs) deleted page Michel Aaij (A7: No credible indication of importance (individuals, animals, organizations, web content, events): subject does not pass GNG or PROF)
That log reveals this isn't the first time he has done this.....
23:06, 4 December 2015 Drmies (talk | contribs) deleted page Michel Aaij (A7: Article about a real person, which does not credibly indicate the importance or significance of the subject)
A little digging of course revealed Drmies' practicing self interest in that case too....
05:46, 10 December 2015 Drmies (talk | contribs) changed block settings for KIC 8462852 (talk | contribs) with an expiration time of indefinite (account creation blocked, cannot edit own talk page) (Revoking talk page access: inappropriate use of user talk page while blocked: DENY)

23:07, 4 December 2015 Drmies (talk | contribs) blocked KIC 8462852 (talk | contribs) with an expiration time of indefinite (account creation blocked) (sock of Coat of Many Colours)
If Drmies doesn't want people to know who he is, he shouldn't include his real name in a personal sandbox, which he presumably uses to monitor for people who need blocking......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Drmies/sandbox5

Saving it for posterity, in case he wants to delete it
Roy Fletcher
Emily Thornbury
Valerie Heuchan
Shannon Godlove
John-Henry Clay
Thomas F. X. Noble
Lutz von Padberg
Ian Wood (scholar)
Joanna Story
Barbara Yorke
Petra Kehl
Michel Aaij
Yitzhak Hen
Pauline Head
Rolf Bremmer
Rudolf Schieffer
Alain Stoclet
Daibhi O Croinin
Mary Garrison
Jonathan Herold
Achim Thomas Hack
James Palmer (scholar)
Michael Elliot (scholar)
Andy Orchard
Christopher Landon (scholar)
Wilhelm Friesen
Michael Glatthaar
Heinrich Wagner (scholar)
Rob Meens
Michael Herren

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Re: Drmies

Post by Graaf Statler » Thu Mar 01, 2018 5:00 pm

CrowsNest wrote:Events of this early morning, more of which at the bottom, seem like a fitting trigger to begin a thread here on the notorious Wikipedia user, Adminsitrator and former Arbitrator, Drmies, who is in real life the Dutch-expat Michel Aaij, now of the University of Auburn at Montgomery, Alabama.

Interesting person this Michel. Because, you can be sure our Michel is also involved with the Dutch Wikipedia, the Dutch stewards, and the many Dutch international active users. Very interesting, a high rank user who for sure writes Dutch and American English on a native level. It's noticed by me.

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Re: Drmies

Post by CrowsNest » Thu Mar 01, 2018 7:21 pm

You'd obviously have better luck finding him there than me.

The cached version of his now deleted Wikipedia biography begins like this....
Michel Aaij is a Dutch-born American scholar of Old English language and literature, who specializes in the study of medieval poetry. He is an associate professor in the Department of English & Philosophy at Auburn ...
Here's a self-promting 2011 WMF blog post about him gaining tenure.

https://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/04/06/t ... ributions/

Scarily, it claims he's been indoctrinating students....
He’s also a Campus Ambassador, helping students become contributors through the Public Policy Initiative
It worries me that there are students out there who may have been officially taught, under WMF programs, that the way he goes about things is an acceptable way of being a Wikipedian. I've never personally seen him doing it, so either he does it on the sly, or is perhaps now too ashamed to use himself as an example to others.

It helpfully explains he's been engaged in conflict of interest editing, which by rights should see him banned under the WMF's current Terms of Use, if he's unwilling to have his real life identity acknowledged on Wikipedia.....
he contributed to articles particularly useful to Auburn University Montgomery, including the article on the school and a biography of a colleague, who told Michel that was really cool.
He was still at it on his Uni page as late as Jan 2017, no COI declaration in sight anywhere.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =762248793

It gives a good window into the sheer arrogance of the guy.....
Let’s face it: Guillaume de Dole, now a Good Article, there’s no database entry or encyclopedic article anywhere that compares to the Wikipedia article on that poem (and I realize that that says as much about Wikipedia as about the anywhere else).”
That reveals the basic lack of respect Drmies has for what Wikipedia is, and thus how that is enshrined in relevant policy. By definition, Wikipedia cannot be the most comprehensive source on any topic, it isn't people's personal platform to show off their academic prowess, it exists nominally to properly summarize and contextualize other people's academic studies of various topics. It is an encyclopedia, not a textbook.

It's stuff like this which reveals the lies he must have told his University pay masters to gain tenure.

Disturbingly, the blog actually goes into a lot of detail about what he likely told them. Boosting his claims of academic influence, it appears he has used the fact that because he managed to convince his colleagues Wikipedia is a good thing, using his own edits as proof of course, he has somehow advanced knowledge of his topic in the world.

Worse, he somehow got away with using the fact he's put some of his work through the Featured Article, Good Article and Did You Know processes, means his work has been through something analogous to peer review in academia. Anyone who knows Wikipedia, would instantly see that as an outrageous deception. His bosses obviously didn't know any better, since it seems the only source they ever had about how Wikipedia works, was Drmies.

Here's his university page.

http://www.cas.aum.edu/profile?email=maaij1@aum.edu

Doesn't exactly project an air of expertise or authority. Looks exactly like what he probably is - an ugly bum of a failed professor who has turned to Wikipedia to find power and influence he likely doesn't have in the real world, specifically his own academic field.

Here's a page suggesting he's probably seeing better career success as a Wikipedian than an academic.....

https://www.hastac.org/opportunities/fr ... -wikipedia

Keynote speaker eh? Fame at last!

Christ knows what Everymorning used as sources, but given his inclusionist bent, I suspect it was some combination of the smattering of coverage that the WMF blog generated, and this bizarre little snippet of information from.....

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/sto ... 530729001/

....which tells us he was born in 1969, nearly died from Type 1 diabetes age 12, and moved to Montgomery in 2006.

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Re: Drmies

Post by CrowsNest » Thu Mar 01, 2018 7:36 pm

Hopefully Everymorning will use his creation.....

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

....to properly honour Drmies. He did after all create it for just this purpose, celebrating Wikipedians who he fails to mange to create a full biography for.

Given the alphabetical by surname layout, he would get prime spot too. Forever.

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Re: Drmies

Post by Graaf Statler » Thu Mar 01, 2018 10:23 pm

THE PROBLEM is, Wikipedia is a new phenomenon, it's not good examined, research is fragmented.
There have never been a research of complete Wikipedia, how the mechanism works.
Wikipedia is not good described, because if it was it should be complete clear Wikipedia is not suitable for education.
Yes, a few users like you and me did some (hobby) research, but there have never been a university what said, yes, we investigate complete wikipedia. How it functions, the psychological processes, the money streams, the management qualities of WMF, the forum management, the quality of the articles, the legal side. With a team. Because that is the only way to get a clear view what Wikipedia is.
I mean, research from the sketch, That is the way I should do it. But, who am I? I am only a old simple subcontractor........

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Re: Drmies

Post by Mutineer » Sat Mar 03, 2018 5:01 am

This is not a warning, but I encourage our members to avoid anything other than identifying this person and examining this person's behavior.

EDIT: If personal addresses (or telephone numbers, etc.) are disclosed, I will talk to board management.
I am "Modsquad" here, and participate, but I don't want you to think we can't have an angry argument.

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Re: Drmies

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Mar 19, 2018 1:54 am

Oh, look who popped up at the Catherine Lynch AfD.....
Keep, obviously. at this stage, no less than TEN editors had registered delete !votes Impeccable writing on an important topic, irrelevant to AfD - as he should know even if that topic isn't recognized by some of our editors who are either uninterested in the poor violation of WP:CIV, if not a straight up personal attack or simply follow the old idea of history as the enumeration of the biographies of famous dead men. strawman - on Wikipedia, notability is not a measurement of how famous someone was "no reason is given for Catherine Lynch's notability" is of course nonsense--what, we always need a "x is notable because"? The article explains it well enough he literally just said it doesn't need to explain it: the subject is notable for having been held up as an example of "her class" by a coroner, not a historian , and these are the kinds of things historians have been doing for the last few decades. perhaps, but it is clear this hasn't happened in this case - it is the Wikipediot who wrote the article who wants to assign some historical significance to this contemporaneous comment of a public official There's a plethora of newspaper articles; these are sources that need to be written up with care, of course, because they themselves are biased and not always factually correct this is why interpretation of hundred year old news reporting is a job for actual historians, not Wikipedians, but the fact that they exist is evidence of passing the GNG. the mere existence of newspapers as sources is categorically not evidence GNG is met - it needs to be shown they are not primary source material, that they are the right kind of newspaper, and that they have covered the topic in a sufficient and indeed significant manner - all of which has been disputed by the delete side - and of course simply meeting the GNG is not enough, it has to be shown there are no other violations, and such an over-reliance on newspapers from a hundred years ago implies a violation of several elements of WP:NOT As for the book, I can't see it, unfortunately, but not every non-academically published book is automatically excluded Drmies's favourite hobby is of course lecturing editors on the high value placed on academic publishing and mass deleting text not supported by any such sourcing, so some reason why he has suddenly dropped this standard now for this particular article might be in order here, and since the creator is--as far as I know--a decent human being and a valued long-time editor, I will accept that they made the judgment to include it carefully. needless to say, this sort of half-assed reasoning is never accepted by Drmies himself when it is being relayed to him as a reason why a source he has not seen should be presumed acceptable Now, if we start deleting shit because there's only a few newspaper sources, that's fine and I'm all for it, ....as evidenced by his long history of aggressive deletionism but that's hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles, and this wouldn't be first on the list. so what? Again, needless to say, Drmies never accepts this sort of half-assed reasoning as an argument to keep any article he wants deleted Hey, all this sounds familiar. Drmies (talk) 02:15, 13 March 2018 this cryptic comment is presumably meant to alert people to the fact Drmies has simply copied and pasted his !vote from the first AfD, which was procedurally closed. But if he didn't intend to say anything different, he could have either just said 'per previous', or said nothing at all since the closer is unlikely to ignore the first AfD. But no, as is normal for the manchild that is Drmies, when he is being inconvenienced or when he doesn't get his way, he just has to play the drama queen and make snarky comments, like a whiny little bitch
You can tell Drmies thinks he's on shaky ground here - when he thinks he's simply straight up right, his arrogant streak tends to ensure he just gives a minimal explanation, perhaps just a link to a policy page.

I genuinely hope his academic bosses are made aware of this shit - it is cast iron proof he obtained tenure on a fraudulent basis, since these are errors in reasoning and Wikipedia policy that an editor of his experience simply shouldn't be making. And so he is either pretty fucking stupid, in no position to be explaining to anyone how Wikipedia works, let alone arguing his use of it has been compliant with policy, or he is deliberately lying in this one instance to save an article he knows should not be saved, because he simply disagrees with the Wikipedia rules that say it is inadmissible.

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Re: Drmies

Post by CrowsNest » Wed Apr 11, 2018 6:56 pm

Drmies has been busy at work today (although I suppose we can assume this might be his lunch break).....he took this lame picture.......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coff ... e_logo.jpg

.......just so he could post this........

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =835941836

That guy should feel special, he's usually not that nice or even considerate to people whose work he is hacking to bits. I'm sure the fact it's an article relating to Alabama has nothing to do with it. :lol:

What tickled me was now he panicked when he realised how much was visible in the original pic, including his real life name. Three minutes later, voila, a very closely cropped new version was uploaded, and no sign of the original remained.

In much the same way as he didn't give two shits about the hassle so called joke user categories cause to Wikipedia's category system maintainers, I bet he hasn't considered how much hassle this self described "stupid picture" will give to Wikipedia's image people, who live a life of drudgery examining a shit-ton of images for a whole host of reasons, and this particular pic could cause a number of issues.

Some lazy fool might even transfer it to commons before realising its idiotic nature. An ever bigger fool might even lazily add it to the organisation's wiki page as their logo, assuming this bright idea doesn't occur to Drmies himself, instead of doing a proper job of it.

Even if he deleted it now, as he surely will, as I understand it, it will never actually physically be deleted from the WMF's servers. So come on you donors, cough up the cash already!

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Re: Drmies

Post by sashi » Wed Apr 11, 2018 8:31 pm

Yeah, this Drmies guy sure does seem inefficient. maybe someone'll start a UfD... ("in the current environment")

Drmies' edit summary wrote:(sorry, but this is not what we do. if there's secondary sources discussing the reports, they can be brought in)


source


In much less time than it took him to upload the photo I found a secondary source for the interest of the material he deleted.

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Re: Drmies

Post by CrowsNest » Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:09 pm

Not surprised. This is what he does. Multiple times a day. Don't worry though, his wiki-slave Yvangottidir sometimes does what you do, to save what she can. Despite being a hard nosed cold hearted bitch in other contexts, when she's doing this work, she's meek and mild, always careful to never raise her voice or scold Drmies in any way. Says please and thank you and everything. It's a sad state of affairs. Just another thing that undermines his claim to be a wiki feminist, and puts another dark twist on their fucked up "community".

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