Wikipediocracy

Cla68

By the way, the "science" editors in Wikipedia, especially in the medicine, health, and environmental (climate change/global warming) topic areas have always been really rude to each other, especially to new editors. Is WP really ready now, after 10+ years, to take that on? Why is "science" in quot...

Cla68

To be fair to Guy, many if not most of the "science" editors and admins in Wikipedia act like that. William Connolley was one of the most infamous, but Doc James, the ID Cab, JzG, and numerous others used bullying, hostility, and pejorative comments as a continual tactic to try to influence other ed...

Cla68

Where's Harry been for the last 6 months? Oppose, with no disrespect to your hard work and dedication but it seems you have a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way (to put it diplomatically). Essentially, I agree with Ritchie and Molly —there's too much potential drama from you being an admin, a...

Cla68

It's also not astonishing that having been instrumental in successfully bringing about some of the most important changes on Wikipedia, having spent lots of money and time attending Wikimanias and meet ups, and my thorough disillusionment with the way the WMF 'manages' its projects, that while I am...

Cla68

I should say, Mr. Buffs has every right to be proud of his military service, which I think all of us (at least those of us in the USA) greatly appreciate. I'm just getting tired of that. I'm not buying. It's a career path and one that offers a highly pensioned, medical-coverage-paid retirement afte...

Cla68

...and behavior during the case itself can all influence the final decision. In BHG's case she unfortunately only seemed to see the light after it became clear she was going to get her tools yanked. That's rather too late. That looks suspiciously like WP-speak for "some groveling is necessary." Tha...

Cla68

BrownHairedGirl says this in her retirement speech: So this leaves me no possible path to remove these unwarranted slurs on my character and conduct. They will remain as "facts" for as long I remain on Wikipedia. With my good name shredded through flawed process and false "findings of fact", it is n...

Cla68

And as for me personally, I'd much rather have the US government spend money on such reparations than almost anything the Trump Administration seemingly wants to prioritize, such as ecological destruction, war in the Middle East, personal aggrandizement, and so on. Hopefully I'm not alone in this r...

Cla68

The case page is funny. Several of the commentators not-so-subtly imply that Kudpung's behavior is motivated by misogyny and white supremacy. It makes ArbCom look like Maoist struggle session.

Cla68

Whether or not you agree with him/her (and I generally do), you have to admire K.e.coffman for the level of commitment alone, IMO. He/she has already gone through practically the entire collection of Nazi military biographies to remove just about anything sympathetic from them, but rather than rest...

Cla68

In years long past, Mr. Wales earned a reputation (justified or not) of being sexually active at Wikimania. In years long past, Bangkok earned a reputation for wide-spread sexual activity (for hire or not). I do not understand who and how the decision was made to hold Wikimania in Bangkok during th...

Cla68

Aren't many of the "anti-Israel" or "anti-Semitic" people on the Internet actually anti-Zionist followers of Reform Judaism? I've read that the current political battle is not really Jews against anti-Semites, but more of Zionist Jews against progressive Reformist Jews, although both sides have plen...

Cla68

Look, Miacek. You seem hell bent on having an argument with some figment of your imagination. Go right ahead (though really, that's not good for your mental health). But there's no reason why I should participate in your little fantasy. Just be careful man, you're gonna cause a world wide straw cri...

Cla68

...that's the rub with people like KEC in that they can't abide that kind of ambiguity. It makes me wonder if KEC's motivation is either 1) mental illness or 2) a political agenda. I suspect it's #2, because many political activists seem to get active on reinterpreting history and ramming it down e...

Cla68

Well, August in Thailand is at the tail-end of the monsoon season, so hotel fares and the like are often cheaper.

Cla68

I was reminded of this case because recently I was reading the memoir of Hans von Luck who was a German regimental commander during the war and was popular with ex-Allied military leaders and historians after the conflict because of his affable personality, his English ability, and likely because he...

Cla68

It looks to me that now that Drmies got his revenge (and I'm not saying it wasn't justified) he will probably not object again at Fram's next RfA attempt. Kiril Lokshin, however, may not let it go. The Wikimedia DC chapter makes it a major part of their platform to publicly promote diversity, inclus...

Cla68

Laura Hale's account is still active on Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Laura-Hale-51 She likely is participating in the paid "Partner" program. Quora partner's questions won't show up in their profile feed but you can tell that she's active by looking at her " activity " feed, which shows that...

Cla68

Contributors might well ask whether they are paying to keep Wikipedia running or to allow employees to jet off to exotic places. As has often been said here, the proportion of WMF income that goes to maintain the infrastructure is quite low. Maybe money to pay Wikipedians in residence could legitim...

Cla68

I assume he wants access to the National Health System now that he's getting up there in years.

Cla68

As of 2018, the WMF was sitting on $74 million in cash , out of its $146 million in assets (vs $11 million in liabilities). One of the ways that an organization burns excess cash, which might cause them some problems if it sits around too long (why do you guys need so much money if you don't have an...

Cla68

Doesn't look like anyone has mentioned it yet, but allegedly some screenshots show that Quinn was not "kidnapped" or confined by Holowka during the time she was staying with him: https://www.thepostmillennial.com/exclusive-zoe-quinns-allegations-are-falling-apart/ A day after that political blog pos...

Cla68

Given how the WMUK was compromised by the likes of Ashely van Haeftan, Roger Bamkin, etc, and given the near coup attempt on WMAU by Laura Hale, Ross Mallet aka Hawkeye7 and others, and given what I'm seeing at WMES with Maria Sefidari Huici and Laura Hale, I have to wonder how many of the national...

Cla68

If someone here who has a WP account really wants to blow this thing up, what you do is swoop into the ArbCom workshop page and post a bunch of proposed findings and sanctions against Laura Hale. Make sure you include links, diffs, and the like in the various proposed findings. It's a sneaky way of...

Cla68

If someone here who has a WP account really wants to blow this thing up, what you do is swoop into the ArbCom workshop page and post a bunch of proposed findings and sanctions against Laura Hale. Make sure you include links, diffs, and the like in the various proposed findings. It's a sneaky way of ...

Cla68

If it turns out that Fram really was sexually harassing one or more women or transgender editors, it's going to make Wikipedia look dreadful for having defended him and will provide credibility to the claim that the site is a haven for misogyny and toxic masculinity. I guess the only way that would...

Cla68

Because of Sharyl Attkisson's fairly high profile, I suspect that she gets special attention from the Defenders of True Medical Science in Wikipedia. MastCell/Gorski hasn't personally touched the article since 2015, but I would expect that he's active in whatever offsite forum that group uses to org...

Cla68

If it turns out that Fram really was sexually harassing one or more women or transgender editors, it's going to make Wikipedia look dreadful for having defended him and will provide credibility to the claim that the site is a haven for misogyny and toxic masculinity. I guess the only way that would ...

Cla68

Do we have a list of the 20+ admins who have resigned over this? Just a hunch on my part, but I doubt if the 20 includes many, if any, of the more notorious POV-pushing, agenda-driven admins who we all know and love. Those admins wouldn't allow standing on principle to get in their way of using Wik...

Cla68

Do we have a list of the 20+ admins who have resigned over this? Just a hunch on my part, but I doubt if the 20 includes many, if any, of the more notorious POV-pushing, agenda-driven admins who we all know and love. Those admins wouldn't allow standing on principle to get in their way of using Wiki...

Cla68

This paragraph violates WP's SYN policy, and humorously, uses David Gorski's blog as a source. As everybody here likely knows, David Gorski is likely MastCell, a legacy WP editor and admin whose main motivation for his time-intensive participation on the site is to fight against ideas and theories ...

Cla68

You all may have discussed this earlier in the thread, but some other interesting, tangenital aspects of this episode is that Breitbart, of all sites scooped the rest of the Internet on this story (the Buzzefeed story was published the following day). And it appears the The Devils Advocate has been ...

Cla68

By the way, I guess the alternative to group identity and intersectionality privileges and hierarchies is a straight-up meritocracy, which ignores any group that a person claims to belong to and instead evaluates them completely on their competence . Now, how does Wikipedia handle this with its edit...

Cla68

And what does "female" mean in this context? Nothing. It's a concept . If I understand correctly, one of the big problems with categorizing people according to a group identity, or humoring them in doing so, while at the same time conferring status, privilege, or virtue on people with regards to ho...

Cla68

When the demand for transphobia and/or homophobia exceeds the supply, manufactured drama like this can occur, another example being the recent Jussie Smolett fake hate crime incident. By publishing an essay like this in the Signpost, Wikipedia has given grievance warriors like Fae a huge shot of adr...

Cla68

The Homeopathy advocacy organization (whatever it's called) and the other groups advocating alternative medicine probably should be notified that they may have a better shot at making those articles in Wikipedia more neutral now that super-science advocate Jytdog is gone. I may let them know if I e...

Cla68

The Homeopathy advocacy organization (whatever it's called) and the other groups advocating alternative medicine probably should be notified that they may have a better shot at making those articles in Wikipedia more neutral now that super-science advocate Jytdog is gone. I may let them know if I ev...

Cla68

The Tyskerbarnas of Norway. Evidently, during WWII the Nazi's eugenics program decided that Norway was a prime place to breed blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans. So, there was an active program in Norway to pair-up German soldiers with Norwegian women. The program produced over 10,000 babies, one of who...

Cla68

Wikipedia hierarchy was such a tremendous cesspool for such a long time and has never really recovered from these early missteps. I agree with you and it's totally Jimbo Wales' fault. Some clearly obsessive individuals got involved with Wikipedia right as it was taking off around 2006-2008 and the ...

Cla68

Jytdog is in that trap that I've mentioned before. He has labored long and hard to make sure the alternative medicine articles are "on message." The problem is that someone like me with three good references and 15 minutes of time could go in and completely screw up the homeopathy article by making ...

Cla68

Jytdog probably does have a day job, and he sits at his day job desk and edits WP all day instead of doing his work, which likely means his career is going nowhere fast. Actually, being able to edit from his work computer makes it easier for him to control the alternative medicine topic in WP. If he...

Cla68

Gary Weiss is what ultimately soured me on WP. After my first year or so of merrily editing WP and drinking the kool-ade in large gulps, I started to think, "Wait a minute, this thing must be a little too good to be true." So, I googled "Wikipedia criticism" and started following links until I arriv...

Cla68

I think there's a lot more ambiguity in life than people are willing to admit. In my own chosen field of Wikipedia, military history, there is plenty of ambiguity, but people who are unable or unwilling to understand the "other side" of a historical event (usually the losing side) may not think ther...

Cla68

It doesn't take a genius to understand that pseudonymous Wikipedia volunteers are not, as a rule, going to be equipped to mediate content disputes between experts, amateurs, and trolls with a structured discussion over the internet. Resolving disputes over content has to be done by people who are k...

Cla68

My guess would be that images with no people in them are assumed (by Mr./Ms. Coffman and others) to be a form of precedent-establishment, to pave the way for the "humanizing" colorized images of various prominent Nazis to be uploaded later. I find this to be a dreadful perspective, and it's one tha...

Cla68

The MEDCOM could work if, at the end of a mediation session, the mediator was able to go to AN and say: I just finished a mediation effort. Of the involved editors, I think ScrappyCat, Scarecrow, and HumongousLizard are acting in good faith and adhering to WP's guidelines and policies, especially NP...

Cla68

Over the past 20-ish years a certain cultural and political narrative has been put in place in the United States that doesn't allow for civil dissent on a wide variety of topics. It started with the winning strategy pursued by the gay rights movement and has branched from there. It's enforced by an...

Cla68

I happened to come across a similar topic on Quora this morning. For those of you who don't have a Quora account, or don't want to go to the site, the question is: Did German soldiers during WWII realize that they were fighting for the wrong side of history? There are some interesting answers there,...

Cla68

This is the sort of topic that divided the political correctness warriors. Some love Iran because of its hostility to democracies, especially Israel. Others hate Iran because it is a theocracy and love this organisation for being allegedly socialist. Hot controversy is therefore bound to ensue. Fro...

Cla68

Iran-related topics are often very active and contentious in the English WP, but seem to fly under the radar as far as administrator intervention or outside commentary for the most part.

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