The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
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Graaf Statler
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Re: The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
I should say, Arthur, why don't you come over for a coffee, a cold beer?
Re: The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
Eric Corbett
https://thewikicabal.com/2018/08/20/eric-corbett/
A nice introduction to this famous Wikipedian.
Everyone understandably focuses on his incivility, but he is so much more than that. One glaring omission is not mentioning his record of sock-puppetry, or his long running feud with Jimmy Wales and many prominent Wikipedians who consider themselves to be more representative of its core values.
I'm confused at the labelling of him as a cabalist. He is about as close to an anti-establishment folk hero as Wikipedia has ever had. And in true antihero style, he has never relished that elevation and veneration by the common folk, unlike Queen Bishonen.
The reason he was never kicked out is sadly not so simple as this idea he does good work (and many dispute the basic quality of his work, which is the source of many of his feuds). His supporters liked to peddle that myth, in their hope people would view the Wikipedia community as being neatly divisible into plain speaking content contributors and busy body janitors. A classic class war.
It is of course nonsense, easily disproven, the unabashedly rude high-quality content creator being quite a tiny minority, all told. But on Wikipedia, it really is easy to keep peddling such myths, year after year after year. One simple and obvious fact is that being a good little worker bee has never protected other editors who have his sort of record of recidivism and hard faced defiance in the face of having issues in adhering to other aspects of wikilaw. They have all eventually been expelled as acting contrary to the mission and being unreformable.
Eric was ultimately feted and protected because he exposed a rift in the community around defining and reacting to incivility. By being unapologetically rude, and unabashedly hostile, he did what so many editors on his side of the divide, were simply too afraid to emulate, or could only manage to a lesser extent.
People rallied to him largely for the symbolism of the sort of open rebellion against the civility expectation, and crucially it's universal applicability, that has eventually resulted in the policy existing in name only, or applied only to n00bs or as a proxy in internal warfare, since nobody is prepared to admit Eric won in his ultimate desire to have it depreciated in of itself, as unworkable.
And Lord knows, Eric has shown many times that if you did rally to him looking for some kind of quid pro quo, which the nature of Wikipedia means most editors operate under when proferring support, you were mistaken. In that regard and in other ways, he is a man of principle. He just refused to accept for a ridiculously long time, that his principles meant he was incompatible with Wikipedia. In so many other ways though, he was just a hypocrite and a bully.
https://thewikicabal.com/2018/08/20/eric-corbett/
A nice introduction to this famous Wikipedian.
Everyone understandably focuses on his incivility, but he is so much more than that. One glaring omission is not mentioning his record of sock-puppetry, or his long running feud with Jimmy Wales and many prominent Wikipedians who consider themselves to be more representative of its core values.
I'm confused at the labelling of him as a cabalist. He is about as close to an anti-establishment folk hero as Wikipedia has ever had. And in true antihero style, he has never relished that elevation and veneration by the common folk, unlike Queen Bishonen.
The reason he was never kicked out is sadly not so simple as this idea he does good work (and many dispute the basic quality of his work, which is the source of many of his feuds). His supporters liked to peddle that myth, in their hope people would view the Wikipedia community as being neatly divisible into plain speaking content contributors and busy body janitors. A classic class war.
It is of course nonsense, easily disproven, the unabashedly rude high-quality content creator being quite a tiny minority, all told. But on Wikipedia, it really is easy to keep peddling such myths, year after year after year. One simple and obvious fact is that being a good little worker bee has never protected other editors who have his sort of record of recidivism and hard faced defiance in the face of having issues in adhering to other aspects of wikilaw. They have all eventually been expelled as acting contrary to the mission and being unreformable.
Eric was ultimately feted and protected because he exposed a rift in the community around defining and reacting to incivility. By being unapologetically rude, and unabashedly hostile, he did what so many editors on his side of the divide, were simply too afraid to emulate, or could only manage to a lesser extent.
People rallied to him largely for the symbolism of the sort of open rebellion against the civility expectation, and crucially it's universal applicability, that has eventually resulted in the policy existing in name only, or applied only to n00bs or as a proxy in internal warfare, since nobody is prepared to admit Eric won in his ultimate desire to have it depreciated in of itself, as unworkable.
And Lord knows, Eric has shown many times that if you did rally to him looking for some kind of quid pro quo, which the nature of Wikipedia means most editors operate under when proferring support, you were mistaken. In that regard and in other ways, he is a man of principle. He just refused to accept for a ridiculously long time, that his principles meant he was incompatible with Wikipedia. In so many other ways though, he was just a hypocrite and a bully.
Re: The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
The end of Wikipedia’s picture of the day?
https://thewikicabal.com/2018/08/21/the ... f-the-day/
A nice write-up of a classic Wikipedia dramah.
It could do with pointing out these sort of things are not uncommon - lots of their processes have the critical fault of being supported by just one person. So if they are not happy, things tend to go to shit fast.
It could also put context on TRM's involvement. This will undoubtedly be yet another bid in his endless task of trolling the shit out of everybody, specifically in and around Main Page processes, angry as he is that he alone is the best and most committed Editor (defrocked Admin
), and nobody else matches up to his exacting standards or absolute devotion to the reader.
The post also seems to unwisely fall for the English Wikipedia propaganda line that Commons is a cesspit of pornographers, while they are paragons of virtue. It is actually pretty damn easy to find examples where the virtuous Wikipedians have used their so called encyclopedia's Main Page to intentionally shock or offend readers, on the vacuous basis that Wikipedia doesn't officially have an age rating, and is officially NOTCENSORED.
Indeed, the narrative is rather undercut by the fact Crisco 1492 has himself uploaded 8,000+ images to Commons, and made 22,000+ edits there. The Wikipedia proponents of the Commoners are pedos theory tend to stick to locally uploading, and the odd trolling edit.
Serious critics should not so easily fall into being recruited by one Wikipedia faction in their desire to kill another. In my experience, the Wikipedia community is no more or less virtuous than Commons, they just have very different ways they can impact, and thus potentially harm, the wider world. And due to their profile in the public consciousness, outside of say mass copyright infringement, and maybe not even then, you have to multiply the harm potential of Wikipedia compared to Commons.
https://thewikicabal.com/2018/08/21/the ... f-the-day/
A nice write-up of a classic Wikipedia dramah.
It could do with pointing out these sort of things are not uncommon - lots of their processes have the critical fault of being supported by just one person. So if they are not happy, things tend to go to shit fast.
It could also put context on TRM's involvement. This will undoubtedly be yet another bid in his endless task of trolling the shit out of everybody, specifically in and around Main Page processes, angry as he is that he alone is the best and most committed Editor (defrocked Admin
), and nobody else matches up to his exacting standards or absolute devotion to the reader.The post also seems to unwisely fall for the English Wikipedia propaganda line that Commons is a cesspit of pornographers, while they are paragons of virtue. It is actually pretty damn easy to find examples where the virtuous Wikipedians have used their so called encyclopedia's Main Page to intentionally shock or offend readers, on the vacuous basis that Wikipedia doesn't officially have an age rating, and is officially NOTCENSORED.
Indeed, the narrative is rather undercut by the fact Crisco 1492 has himself uploaded 8,000+ images to Commons, and made 22,000+ edits there. The Wikipedia proponents of the Commoners are pedos theory tend to stick to locally uploading, and the odd trolling edit.
Serious critics should not so easily fall into being recruited by one Wikipedia faction in their desire to kill another. In my experience, the Wikipedia community is no more or less virtuous than Commons, they just have very different ways they can impact, and thus potentially harm, the wider world. And due to their profile in the public consciousness, outside of say mass copyright infringement, and maybe not even then, you have to multiply the harm potential of Wikipedia compared to Commons.
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Dysklyver
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Re: The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
Hey thanks for this thread. 
The only reason I didn't post about it here was because it could technically be seen as spammy to plug my own site, even though I don't make any money out of it.
Yes, that's pretty much exactly what I realised. I think there's enough material to keep this up for a while, I initially considered doing one a week, but then decided otherwise. I generally write quite a lot anyway. etc.
I just collected all the ones that I could think of at that moment, if there are more I will certainly add them.
Well all this stuff about the WMF's latest wordpress site made me think about what can be done with wordpress if you don't have 300 overpaid plonkers each adding a little bit of unnecessary crap until it looks like a rough draft of a photographer's portfolio site from 2010.
It "may" be followed, probably by accident. Wikipedians tend to look for editorial guidelines when deciding if something is a reliable source, so including it will totally freak them out.
Again, the more reliable and responsible it looks, the more uncomfortable the wikipedians will be when reading it. Plus you never know, some actual journalists do occasionally read these things. And as we have recently found, wikipedians hate negative media coverage.
Hopefully it wont be an issue, no one has commented there yet...
Ah yes, I don't know if you can see the hidden threads on that other board that I won't name, that's a fairly good start. I will have to outline some more later.
That's true, although I have an advantageous personal position making it hard for anyone to leverage me.
Everything is backed up on an offline storage in the event that wordpress cancels me. If for some reason that happens I will host it myself (which is more expensive and more difficult).
It's fully hosted by the wordpress service provider because "cheap" "easy" etc.
I will definitely do something along these lines. The tl;dr of my view is basically wikipedia is unfixable, the community is evil, and the admins generally bad (literally 2 or 3 exceptions out of over a thousand, hardly a ringing endorsement), but just maybe the "wiki ethos" can be salvaged.... but not by the WMF. I also think Wikipedia is outdated and guaranteed to fail either sooner or later because of its fundamental flaws. Oh I am such a ray of sunshine...
That said, I am not "hasten the day", I literally can't be bothered to speed up their demise, they are doing perfectly well on their own.
----
some more specific points:
Stewards of the Wikis
* I am saving the "right to vanish" stuff for another post, since I don't yet know the WMFs position on GDPR.
* About the trust thing, I think the trouble is that most admins are anonymous fucks who certainly can't be trusted at all. I don't believe RFA vets them, it's a giant game of point scoring popularity politics.
Kudpung loses his marbles
* annoyingly it seems the "potential" for a cloud is not enough for the crats to not resysop (see the Ymblanter case), I am quite sure he would get it back without any major issues. And he probably will, and then I will have to explain how much of a travesty it is.
* GW is former Arb, and all arbs are automatically part of the Arbcom hit list cabal.
The Duke of Nonsense
* He is not my sock, but his career trajectory reminds me of someone and I am reasonably sure he will be relevant later.
* Plus the username thing just seemed a laugh.
Fuckity fucking fuck
* an admin once told me. "fuck off" is acceptable, but "fuck off and die" is not.
Legal action against Wikipedia: Basics 101
* There will be one of these each week, based on all those topics in the list in the first one. Jurisdiction is tricky because I am intending to detail how to bring cases against editors in addition to the WMF. I have been corresponding with the EFF and some other people and should be able to do some stuff.
* Really I don't think it will be a very usable set of stuff until it's complete, but there is literally mountains of stuff to deal with. I spent the entire first post just dealing with the difference between the WMF and editors, but not very satisfactorily so.
* Really I think it's best to treat the whole legal series as a bit of fun rather than anything completely serious.
Eric Corbett
* I must admit to not really following Eric before, I just got pissed off at his comment on the other forum and thought, well there's a real bastard, lets write about him.
The end of Wikipedia’s picture of the day?
* yes, my bad. I have spent too long trying to get rid of the images on commons that I overlooked the ones on Wikipedia itself....
* TRM is such a whirlwind of disaster that he will have to be another topic.
Not sure why he didn't announce it here
The only reason I didn't post about it here was because it could technically be seen as spammy to plug my own site, even though I don't make any money out of it.
So far, he's posted a piece a day, from 14 August. That definitely seems ambitious, although sadly I probably do the same on this here forum.
Yes, that's pretty much exactly what I realised. I think there's enough material to keep this up for a while, I initially considered doing one a week, but then decided otherwise. I generally write quite a lot anyway. etc.
He also nicely links to us, and sadly also to the crap bag over the road. Also to those by Graf, GenderDesk and Lightbreather. Seems like he might be missing a few there......(maybe we need an index thread ? )
I just collected all the ones that I could think of at that moment, if there are more I will certainly add them.
Software wise, it's pretty good.
Well all this stuff about the WMF's latest wordpress site made me think about what can be done with wordpress if you don't have 300 overpaid plonkers each adding a little bit of unnecessary crap until it looks like a rough draft of a photographer's portfolio site from 2010.
He rather ambitiously links to the BBC's editorial guidance.
It "may" be followed, probably by accident. Wikipedians tend to look for editorial guidelines when deciding if something is a reliable source, so including it will totally freak them out.
That is his real name, or it is according to the profile he used at Wikipediocracy and various linkages on WMF sites between the two. [...] So it seems like he wants full transparency, and to be seen as a responsible publisher. He has a contact page, basically a feedback form and email address.
Again, the more reliable and responsible it looks, the more uncomfortable the wikipedians will be when reading it. Plus you never know, some actual journalists do occasionally read these things. And as we have recently found, wikipedians hate negative media coverage.
He also seems to be allowing comments on posts, although as we know, there are lots of ways this can be managed.
Hopefully it wont be an issue, no one has commented there yet...
D., I only know of your en.wiki history, so it might be nice if you filled us in on your other activities out in the weeds.....
Ah yes, I don't know if you can see the hidden threads on that other board that I won't name, that's a fairly good start. I will have to outline some more later.
The principles of our little group here might have something to say on doing this sort of thing on a commercial platform with your real identity out there......I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it may ultimately restrict what can be said, thus how effective the criticism.
That's true, although I have an advantageous personal position making it hard for anyone to leverage me.
Also, D., are you aware that on at least two occasions, Wikipedia criticism sites hosted on a commercial platform (ProBoards) were taken offline by the host simply due to spurious legal threats? With the subsequent loss of a shit-ton of valuable material. And the good people of Wikipediocracy basically laughed......
Everything is backed up on an offline storage in the event that wordpress cancels me. If for some reason that happens I will host it myself (which is more expensive and more difficult).
Even if you are only using WordPress as a Software tool not a service provider (and it seems like the latter to me), I assume you still have a commercial host?
It's fully hosted by the wordpress service provider because "cheap" "easy" etc.
P.S. In the context of the ongoing factional warfare between the splintered networks of Wikipedia criticism, it would probably be best if you make your guiding philosophy clear.
A simple position statement will do, outlining what you think of Wikipedia as a concept, as a reality, and what you believe the purpose of your criticism is. Put simply, do you believe Wikipedia can be fixed, or that it must be destroyed (either just because it should, or because destruction is necessary for something that adheres to their principles of an ad free community built encyclopedia can be acheived).
I will definitely do something along these lines. The tl;dr of my view is basically wikipedia is unfixable, the community is evil, and the admins generally bad (literally 2 or 3 exceptions out of over a thousand, hardly a ringing endorsement), but just maybe the "wiki ethos" can be salvaged.... but not by the WMF. I also think Wikipedia is outdated and guaranteed to fail either sooner or later because of its fundamental flaws. Oh I am such a ray of sunshine...
That said, I am not "hasten the day", I literally can't be bothered to speed up their demise, they are doing perfectly well on their own.
----
some more specific points:
Stewards of the Wikis
* I am saving the "right to vanish" stuff for another post, since I don't yet know the WMFs position on GDPR.
* About the trust thing, I think the trouble is that most admins are anonymous fucks who certainly can't be trusted at all. I don't believe RFA vets them, it's a giant game of point scoring popularity politics.
Kudpung loses his marbles
* annoyingly it seems the "potential" for a cloud is not enough for the crats to not resysop (see the Ymblanter case), I am quite sure he would get it back without any major issues. And he probably will, and then I will have to explain how much of a travesty it is.
* GW is former Arb, and all arbs are automatically part of the Arbcom hit list cabal.
The Duke of Nonsense
* He is not my sock, but his career trajectory reminds me of someone and I am reasonably sure he will be relevant later.
* Plus the username thing just seemed a laugh.
Fuckity fucking fuck
* an admin once told me. "fuck off" is acceptable, but "fuck off and die" is not.
Legal action against Wikipedia: Basics 101
* There will be one of these each week, based on all those topics in the list in the first one. Jurisdiction is tricky because I am intending to detail how to bring cases against editors in addition to the WMF. I have been corresponding with the EFF and some other people and should be able to do some stuff.
* Really I don't think it will be a very usable set of stuff until it's complete, but there is literally mountains of stuff to deal with. I spent the entire first post just dealing with the difference between the WMF and editors, but not very satisfactorily so.
* Really I think it's best to treat the whole legal series as a bit of fun rather than anything completely serious.
Eric Corbett
* I must admit to not really following Eric before, I just got pissed off at his comment on the other forum and thought, well there's a real bastard, lets write about him.
The end of Wikipedia’s picture of the day?
* yes, my bad. I have spent too long trying to get rid of the images on commons that I overlooked the ones on Wikipedia itself....
* TRM is such a whirlwind of disaster that he will have to be another topic.
Re: The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
I'm quite sure we wouldn't have called you a spammer. You are thinking of those mean spirited idiots over the road, who wouldn't know how to do Wikipedia criticism of you gave them a manual.
There's definitely plenty to write about, I can easily write something of length at least once a day, either on a historical theme or some current event, or usually the former triggered by the latter. I get where you are coming from on the desire to create series, tackling stuff in bite sizes chunks. I was doing a similar thing on ProBoards. But be wary of leaving out obviously pertinent information, if only to note you aware of it and will cover it in due course.
Your philosophy is perfect, it matches mine totally. You are HTD by virtue of writing this blog. I'm loving your desire to freak the Wikipediots out. The movement needs more of that. Those idiots over the road will do their level best to pour cold water on your natural desire to fuck with them. They're weird like that. Not really critics at all, truth be told.
Here's hoping you get journalists interested, but for that to succeed, you need to be providing 100% accurate information. You can't make even small mistakes, since the first, indeed sometimes the only thing Wikipedians do in reaction to published criticism, is to highlight the errors in it, in the hope it discredits the whole post, if not your entire body of work. You certainly shouldn't be writing about legal stuff without proper care for accuracy, not least because there are people out there wanting to know how they can fight back.
I'm guessing there's nothing about your wiki history that you want hidden from the internets, so I would not bother playing along with those idiots over the road with their odd desire to keep stuff hidden. If they don't want to unseal it, feel free to post it here. There are plenty of serious critics who don't bother with registering with that forum just for the ability to read their silly sekrit place. Too lame. Anything genuinely sensitive, you can guarantee is being hidden from the likes of you.
I'm not sure what you mean by leverage, but it is hard to see how it might prevent spurious complaints to WordPress taking you down. It really only depends on the willingness of WordPress to tell such people to eff off. I imagine their willingness is no different to ProBoards, who charmingly didn't even bother telling anyone the specifics, not the basis of the complaint or the composer's details. Just stonewalled. It is basically why this place was set up.
There's definitely plenty to write about, I can easily write something of length at least once a day, either on a historical theme or some current event, or usually the former triggered by the latter. I get where you are coming from on the desire to create series, tackling stuff in bite sizes chunks. I was doing a similar thing on ProBoards. But be wary of leaving out obviously pertinent information, if only to note you aware of it and will cover it in due course.
Your philosophy is perfect, it matches mine totally. You are HTD by virtue of writing this blog. I'm loving your desire to freak the Wikipediots out. The movement needs more of that. Those idiots over the road will do their level best to pour cold water on your natural desire to fuck with them. They're weird like that. Not really critics at all, truth be told.
Here's hoping you get journalists interested, but for that to succeed, you need to be providing 100% accurate information. You can't make even small mistakes, since the first, indeed sometimes the only thing Wikipedians do in reaction to published criticism, is to highlight the errors in it, in the hope it discredits the whole post, if not your entire body of work. You certainly shouldn't be writing about legal stuff without proper care for accuracy, not least because there are people out there wanting to know how they can fight back.
I'm guessing there's nothing about your wiki history that you want hidden from the internets, so I would not bother playing along with those idiots over the road with their odd desire to keep stuff hidden. If they don't want to unseal it, feel free to post it here. There are plenty of serious critics who don't bother with registering with that forum just for the ability to read their silly sekrit place. Too lame. Anything genuinely sensitive, you can guarantee is being hidden from the likes of you.
I'm not sure what you mean by leverage, but it is hard to see how it might prevent spurious complaints to WordPress taking you down. It really only depends on the willingness of WordPress to tell such people to eff off. I imagine their willingness is no different to ProBoards, who charmingly didn't even bother telling anyone the specifics, not the basis of the complaint or the composer's details. Just stonewalled. It is basically why this place was set up.
Re: The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
As above, try to give people a heads up about what is to come. Don't be afraid to outline why you are writing about what you are writing about, and what you will be writing about later.Dysklyver wrote:Stewards of the Wikis
* I am saving the "right to vanish" stuff for another post, since I don't yet know the WMFs position on GDPR.
* About the trust thing, I think the trouble is that most admins are anonymous fucks who certainly can't be trusted at all. I don't believe RFA vets them, it's a giant game of point scoring popularity politics.
In my experience, and I think many here agree, there's no real correlation between trust and the ability to know who you are dealing with. Wiikipedians who identify, tend to either be utterly shameless, or completely dumb. But they will be just as untrustworthy as those who identify, because mechanisms like RfA don't really exist to reward genuinely principled people, as you say.
As tempting as it is to say stuff like that, if you want to be seen as serious, try to avoid generalisations like that. Coming from me I know that is odd advice, but it really has to be said based on the evidence, and this post proved it, GW is nothing like Kupdung. You think Eric is an ass, so did she. And she did something about it. We really should differentiate between the worst of the worst, and the merely misguided. Otherwise the latter might be tempted to defend the former against our criticisms.Dysklyver wrote:Kudpung loses his marbles
* annoyingly it seems the "potential" for a cloud is not enough for the crats to not resysop (see the Ymblanter case), I am quite sure he would get it back without any major issues. And he probably will, and then I will have to explain how much of a travesty it is.
* GW is former Arb, and all arbs are automatically part of the Arbcom hit list cabal.
Yeah, I got that vibe too. Definitely a returning customer. Maybe even someone who has stalked these halls before....Dysklyver wrote:The Duke of Nonsense
* He is not my sock, but his career trajectory reminds me of someone and I am reasonably sure he will be relevant later.
* Plus the username thing just seemed a laugh.
Wikipedian logic. You remember who it was? As I showed above, "fuck off" is not meant to be acceptable, it is just not supposed to be met with a block as a single incident.Dysklyver wrote:Fuckity fucking fuck
* an admin once told me. "fuck off" is acceptable, but "fuck off and die" is not.
As above, be careful not to leave the reader with the impression you don't know what you're talking about, or aren't taking serious stuff like this, seriously. We want, we need, people to think, y'know what, yes, I will see them in court. I think you see that. But mentioning jurisdiction is key, even for suing editors.Dysklyver wrote:Legal action against Wikipedia: Basics 101
* There will be one of these each week, based on all those topics in the list in the first one. Jurisdiction is tricky because I am intending to detail how to bring cases against editors in addition to the WMF. I have been corresponding with the EFF and some other people and should be able to do some stuff.
* Really I don't think it will be a very usable set of stuff until it's complete, but there is literally mountains of stuff to deal with. I spent the entire first post just dealing with the difference between the WMF and editors, but not very satisfactorily so.
* Really I think it's best to treat the whole legal series as a bit of fun rather than anything completely serious.
Your first impression of Corbett was entirely correct. If you tangle with him over at Wikipediocracy, you can expect him to pout, moan and generally try to fuck with you, and you can expect no help from their management or regular users. They will simply see it as entertainment. They're a bit fucked in the head like that.Dysklyver wrote:Eric Corbett
* I must admit to not really following Eric before, I just got pissed off at his comment on the other forum and thought, well there's a real bastard, lets write about him.
Oh, it's more than just pictures. As he recently admitted, Eric got "Gropecunt Lane" featured on the Main Page just as a giant fuck you to all the h8ters.Dysklyver wrote:The end of Wikipedia’s picture of the day?
* yes, my bad. I have spent too long trying to get rid of the images on commons that I overlooked the ones on Wikipedia itself....
* TRM is such a whirlwind of disaster that he will have to be another topic.
I've put plenty of material on TRM here. Feel free to use it all. He really is a perfect example of everything that is wrong about Wikipedia. I think he was still an admin while Eric was in his full pomp, otherwise I think they might have teamed up to make the entire site a really fucking miserable place to be.
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Dysklyver
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Re: The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
I will try and follow your advice there.
I cannot remember which admin it was, so I did some research.
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fuck of and die you disgusting little heap of shit. from Andythegimp, currently inhabiting WO...
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From Aaron Schulz:
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I think though that the one I am thinking of is this:
archive
Or it could be another one, I am just searching the ANI archives for "fuck" here. Its used a lot.
I cannot remember which admin it was, so I did some research.
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fuck of and die you disgusting little heap of shit. from Andythegimp, currently inhabiting WO...
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From Aaron Schulz:
Yeah, since when can one such comment warrant a block. I could see "FUCK YOU YOU GONNA DIE!", but a curse word by an angry editor would, and should, only warrant a warning. Interesting that an admin gets blocked for losing his cool(which I admit he shouldn't have), but vandals can't get blocked until after they put "FUCK BUSH" three or four times all over articles. And off course, I have seen people defend the vandals too. Personally I follow a 2 strike rule,...but thats another story...Anyway, lets try to respect admins/editors more than vandals/trolls. If vandals can't get blocked this easily, then admins/editors cant either.Voice of AllT|@|ESP 18:28, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
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I think though that the one I am thinking of is this:
archive
"Leave me alone" is substantially different from "**** off". Just because Wikipedia isn't censored doesn't mean swearing at someone is less offensive. -Amarkov blahedits 06:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
No, they aren't "substantially different". Guettarda 06:17, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
WP:CIV's "Serious examples" includes "Profanity directed at another contributor." --Masamage 06:49, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, which would be "fuck you", not "fuck off". Quit Wiki-Lawyering. This is nonsense. Guettarda 07:27, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Or it could be another one, I am just searching the ANI archives for "fuck" here. Its used a lot.
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AndrewForson
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Re: The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
Probably having a legal training is taking you in the direction of looking for rules or even principles deducible from precedents. All such attempts are futile. The question of whether something is or is not acceptable speech is determined entirely by the pseudo-identities of the players concerned, and their relative rankings in the game. The player with higher status can say things without comeback which the player of lower status cannot. Of course, one gains in status by winning status battles against rivals, rather like an Elo rating. But the words used and the results of using them are entirely an epiphenomenon of gameplay. There is no coherent body of principle or precedent to be found here, and the attempt is only and always self-defeating.
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Graaf Statler
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Re: The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
CrowsNest wrote:Legal action against Wikipedia: Basics 101
https://thewikicabal.com/2018/08/19/leg ... 01-basics/
I'm always wary of posts about legal issues which don't come from a recognised expert or someone with direct first hand experience. But I guess it doesn't hurt to give what seems to be mostly useful information, to my layperson's eyes.
A major issue with this post, is it doesn't make clear the issues surrounding jurisdiction. Being under the extremely lenient system of US law means Wikipedia gets away with so much, largely down to the increasingly shaky looking principles of the infamous Section 230.
As such, their legal counsel happily bats away any and all claims that don't come from a US judge, or concerns individual editor behaviour, and so volunteer editors flaunting this perceived immunity in an aggrieved person's faces is a common sight on Wikipedia. They're ethical like that.
It also doesn't explain that the route many have tried, suing WMF Chapters, never succeeds, even in cases where judgements can be secured, since these local entities are not in any position to influence Wikipedia content, not even on the local language version of Wikipedia.
That is not to say you can't sue the Foundation or editors in a foreign court, but you are unlikely to succeed against the Foundation, or any US based editors. Best you can hope for is screwing a foreign editor who has been daft enough to allow people to identify them. And there a more cases like that than you might think, there being no requirement to not be an idiot, in being able to edit Wikipedia.
The EU itself may yet fuck Wikipedia through non-US law, by virtue of having a pretty powerful way to sanction them in absentia (blocking their domain across the territory), but that is naturally out of reach of most people.
For anyone looking to write something on the legal aspects of Wikipedia, there has in fact been plenty of real cases with which to base your posts on. I also recommend speaking to forum members Abd and WHHP, just two who, AFAIK, have gone the legal route.
I should advice everybody to be careful, better be safe than sorry. I said it so often before, vor Gericht und auf hoher See ist man in Gottes Hand like the Germans say. Times can change, the Wiki history is a extreme dangers thing, and in the continental Code Napoleon system is nothing sure! Even not terms of use, independent chapters, nothing! And not to forget to mention that tricky laster en smaad. The American legal system gives you zero protection in continental Europe.
And that EU, we will see what happend. In a few weeks article 13 is passing in the European Parlement, and we will see how it ends up for the wiki products.
*Vor Gericht und auf hoher See ist man in Gottes Hand means For court and on a high sea is someone in god's hands.
*Laster en smaad is slander and defamation.
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Dysklyver
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Re: The Wiki Cabal, the newest Wikipedia criticism blog
And in my second legal blog, I explore how really the realm of copyright is much to big to deal with in a week, but for those who don't mind the incomplete rant against US copyright law, it's there...
Posts about named Wikipedians are much more popular than any other posts, I think that will end up being my main focus.
I have done Chris, Eric, and Adrian now.
(Kudpong, Eric Coldburp, and Ajr)
Posts about named Wikipedians are much more popular than any other posts, I think that will end up being my main focus.
I have done Chris, Eric, and Adrian now.
(Kudpong, Eric Coldburp, and Ajr)