Clarice Phelps

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Clarice Phelps

Post by ericbarbour » Sun Apr 28, 2019 9:00 pm

One of the purest examples I've ever seen of Wikipedia's human failures. This is even meaner and pettier than the Katie Bouman squabble.

https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/wi ... ented.html
https://www.fastcompany.com/90339700/a- ... st-problem
The decision set off a heated debate. I copied the full discussion into a document; it fills 18 pages and runs more than 16,000 words. “Put up or shut up,” one contributor told multiple users in a bid to preserve the article. “Delete, as subject is not yet notable. … Wikipedia is not here to pursue social justice,” sniffed another contributor who wanted the page to come down. Although substantive points were raised by both sides, the tone of the debate was likely off-putting to all but the most dedicated Wikipedians.

Advocates scrambled to save the entry. Phelps’s page accumulated more than a dozen links to references documenting her scholarly contributions and work. But on February 11, little more than a week after it was first flagged, the page was removed.

The Phelps business was added to a Washington Post editorial decrying the Bouman squabble:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... d39369c46c

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... ice_Phelps
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... nomination)

Note the presence of our dear little pal Fae shitposting "this is what Wikipedia is" crap over and over. Note the "canvassing on Twitter" shrieking by Icewhiz, a habitual troublemaker in Israel related areas. Who was doing this "horrible canvassing"? Jess Wade, the original creator of the article.
https://twitter.com/jesswade/status/1092340411664867328

And which administrator ultimately facilitated this crap? Tony Baillioni, a guy we have rarely discussed before. Conservative Catholic and deletionist patroller who now has just about every "advanced user flag" possible. Tony has written VERY DAMN LITTLE CONTENT since he showed up in 2007--right from the beginning he was a pure patroller. Obviously he's been trashing his edit history because his oldest revision is a speedy-deletion threat posted on a user's talkpage. He has deletionist friends following him around to AFDs. Not satisfied with the destruction, he also called for the article to be "WP:SALT"ed, one of the most stupid/absurd "policies" they have ever dreamed up.

An attempt to recreate the article yesterday, under a slightly different name, was swiftly destroyed by an admin shrieking "WP:SALT".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_E._Phelps

Wikipedia was born twisted, Jimbo still has the most blame for it, and leftists and libertarians who kissed Jimboass were the first predominant "controllers" of the content during the first ten years. The second ten years have been a bureaucratic nightmare. I suspect the third decade will consist of further shrieking REEEEEEREEEEEE nerd warfare, mostly conducted by right-wing POV manipulators looking to destroy the "work of SJW snowflakes" or similar pettiness. Icewhiz would have been blocked by now, except for the unhinged internal culture "protecting" certain people like him, who know how to manipulate the politics. It remains a nut magnet.

(Side note: you can tell that Ellen "Orlady" Smith has given up on Wikipedia. She was a scientist at Oak Ridge and an Oak Ridge city councilperson. With a long dark history of protecting ORNL's interests on Wikipedia. Phelps is a fellow ORNL scientist, yet Orlady never showed up to speak in her favor. I've got a list of other ORNL people and socks who have edited Wikipedia--none of them showed up on the AFD or elsewhere. ORNL even posted a video about Phelps. Not that the Wiki-Shits would care.)

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Re: Clarice Phelps

Post by ericbarbour » Sun Apr 28, 2019 9:15 pm

Also: if you have the stomach, read the Article Rescue Squadron "discussion".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... in_science
Oh looky, it's Andrew "Colonel Warden" Davidson! Screaming, and being screamed at! Whoo hoo. (blah)

Your happy little Wikiworld has a serious problem, Andrew. And you're one of the reasons.

Further: Jess Wade has an article, and some little shite tried to AFD it in July 2018. And failed, because of an article in The Guardian. Jimbo's favorite British newspaper. Get yourself written about in The Guardian, and your Wikipedia article will be "safe forever". Some "reliable sources" being "more equal" than others.

Only two people showed up to vote "keep", one of them being Andrew Davidson....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... /Jess_Wade

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Re: Clarice Phelps

Post by ericbarbour » Mon Apr 29, 2019 4:44 am

Even funnier/suckier is the Metafilter thread about this item

https://www.metafilter.com/180622/Wikip ... ty-problem

This comment was hilarious:
Metafilter to the rescue! Jessamyn agreed it was "irritating as hell" there was no article and got a good enough start of a new page there that it's managed to stick. Partly because she used her super librarian powers to give the article lots of citations, partly because Gabriel by then had landed more roles.

Not a word about how Jessamyn got away with writing her own Wikipedia biography back in 2005.
http://wikipediocracy.com/2012/06/27/th ... -digerati/

This is part of how WP gets away with dirty tricks: so many other online groups are too busy farting at each other about minor details. And ignoring the bigger picture.

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Re: Clarice Phelps

Post by CrowsNest » Mon Apr 29, 2019 6:00 pm

Wade is the problem. She has absolutely no idea what she is doing, despite having made countless edits to Wikipedia and had countless chances to read and understand the relevant policies. She is so slow on the uptake, you have to question her own credentials as a scientist. If she is not just being stupid, then she is being an activist editor, and that is supposedly not permitted. Neither is being persistently stupid, but blocking her now would be a PR disaster. Proving someone is notable enough for a Wikipedia article, even accounting for the notoriously subjective and biased nature of it all, isn't exactly rocket science.

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Re: Clarice Phelps

Post by ericbarbour » Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:11 pm

CrowsNest wrote:Wade is the problem. She has absolutely no idea what she is doing, despite having made countless edits to Wikipedia and had countless chances to read and understand the relevant policies. She is so slow on the uptake, you have to question her own credentials as a scientist. If she is not just being stupid, then she is being an activist editor, and that is supposedly not permitted. Neither is being persistently stupid, but blocking her now would be a PR disaster. Proving someone is notable enough for a Wikipedia article, even accounting for the notoriously subjective and biased nature of it all, isn't exactly rocket science.

Ah ha ha. NONE of them has any clue. This is why we get news media coverage of rotten deals plus Metafilter threads full of hypocrisy and cluelessness. The people who run Wikipedia aren't merely incompetent: their incompetence is contagious. Either you suck up to them, ignore them, or take an adversarial approach. Wade evidently decided that she was "right" and the Wikinerds were "wrong". The first two ways will probably protect you while editing WP. Take the third way and the nerds turn against you.

Wikipedia is like a huge pile of smallpox-infected blankets being passed out on the internet. It keeps you warm but kills you later.....

Wade's article is currently 26k bytes. A litany of notorious WP insiders (Victuallers, Pigsonthewing, Graeme Bartlett etc.) have edited it. Anyone wanna place bets it will start to shrink now? It was created only last year by Ben Britton, who has his own article (which was also AFDed unsuccessfully). Idiocy.

Plus: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =877755184

Good luck, Ben and Jess, you'll need it!

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Re: Clarice Phelps

Post by CrowsNest » Thu May 02, 2019 10:01 am

Only now is it coming to light what a massive fraud Wade came within a hair's breadth of committing in this Phelps debacle. Plenty of others have played their part to varying levels of stupidity, but it all had its genesis in Wade's frankly undeserved status as a role model for the new generation of Wikipedia editors the site needed it is to survive.

https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/vie ... 9365#p9365

There is no hope. Wikipedia will die, and it will probably be in the firestorm of a controversy fuelled by the very people arrogantly claiming to be its saviours. We could gloat by telling them we told you so, but they wouldn't be listening, so fuck them.

HTD.

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Re: Clarice Phelps

Post by CrowsNest » Wed May 15, 2019 8:31 am

A timely reminder that the management of Wikipediocracy, despite not appreciating they have not one clue what actually happened or why, are desperate to be seen as being on the right side of this controversy.

https://www.wikipediasucks.co/forum/vie ... 9549#p9549

It is presumably this sort of cotton wool headed analysis and the need to be woke first and correct second, that has endeared them to their former enemy, Gender Desk.

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Re: Clarice Phelps

Post by CrowsNest » Wed May 15, 2019 8:40 am

Let's see the media report the facts, for once......

(a couple of Wikipedians commenting on the ongoing efforts to rescue something that might be acceptable to Wikipedia out of the ashes of the many times deleted biography)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Clarice_E._Phelps

Compacted
I did a bunch of edits mostly focused on trimming out tangential and trivial material, and removing redundant or low-relevance sources. This takes it down to 11 total sources (from 30+ previously), all of which explicitly mention Phelps. I hope this gives the draft a better foundation onto which can be added any new sources that help establish notability, and it should help reduce concerns about WP:REFBOMBing. Unfortunately notability isn't strongly supported by the remaining sources because the ones with the most depth aren't independent, and the ones with the most independence don't have much depth. But a draft doesn't need to have well-established notability from the start. If the attention she's already attracted leads to a focused profile or two in reliable sources, then that could easily push things over the line. --RL0919 (talk) 23:44, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. You have done a good job. My continuing assessment is that she is close to, but below, the Wikipedia-notability line. My reading, noting all the ORNL stuff, is that ORNL and Phelps have made an effort to promote her as a human face for the work they do. ORNL need to try harder, to get independent and reputable others, such as newspapers or magazines, to pick up the stories and run with them independently. In other words, ORNL promotion is working but has failed to gain traction. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:23, 8 May 2019 (UTC)
It's all very well unquestionably reporting the self-serving lies of Jess Wade and her Twitter followers, but people aren't stupid. Those that care enough to find out what really happened, it is easy for them to find it out.

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Re: Clarice Phelps

Post by ericbarbour » Sun May 19, 2019 3:49 am

CrowsNest wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Clarice_E._Phelps

The twits will fight this for years to come. Doesn't matter if Phelps is "notable enough" or not, or what Jess Wade did wrong or right or who else supports it--the subject is toxic and deletionist shitboys will keep shooting it down.

There is no "encyclopedia", there is only the Game of Shitboys.

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Re: Clarice Phelps

Post by Carrite » Tue May 21, 2019 2:41 am

ericbarbour wrote:The twits will fight this for years to come. Doesn't matter if Phelps is "notable enough" or not, or what Jess Wade did wrong or right or who else supports it--the subject is toxic and deletionist shitboys will keep shooting it down.


No, Eric, Articles for Deletion is rules-based — the one rare area of Wikipedia where "crowdsourcing" actually works...

Eventually, some Big Publication will publish about Clarice Phelps and her travails with Wikipedia, and she will thereby become undeniably "notable," and the war ends with a Keep.

I voted Keep in the original debate on this one. And I'm totally OK with the consensus saying that this is a Delete. It's a close call.

Delete triumphs in the short term, the Keep fans ultimately win in the end.

RfB

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