Australian mailing list split

[HRIP7]

Recent disagreements on the wikimediaau-l mailing list seem to have led to a permanent split. As far as I can make out, all three wikimediaau-l list admins (Steven Zhang, Charles Gregory and John Vandenberg) have now resigned, to be replaced by David Gerard.

The March archive of wikimediaau-l is here; the relevant thread is "Apparently corrupt administration of this list".

At the same time, a new mailing list, wikimedia-au-members, has been set up by Steven Zhang, the current President of Wikimedia Australia. The March archive of that list is here.

The flashpoint was Steven Zhang's attempted banning of longstanding Wikipedia Signpost contributor Tony Souter (Tony1 (T-C-L)), who Steven felt was asking too many questions (sorry, let me translate that into newspeak: Steven called it "disrupting the list", "repeated personal attacks", etc.).

John Vandenberg immediately said he did not want to have anything to do with the new list. Steven Zhang on the other hand said he did not want to have anything to do with the old list, and encouraged everyone else to consider unsubscribing from it too.

[EricBarbour]

This looks like really petty nonsense. But not atypical for Wikimedia AU, which is a remarkably petty operation.

Far as I can tell, this was Souter's last post to the list before Zhang "disappeared" him. Apparently Mr. Zhang doesn't believe in open records or open meetings? Or are all of them full of shit? (I vote for the latter, obviously.) Do I have to write up his history on Wikipedia?

[Silent Editor]

Well, I certainly hope Tony1 joins the new list.

[HRIP7]

Well, I certainly hope Tony1 joins the new list.

I think the whole point of creating that list was so that they could keep him out.

[EricBarbour]

If you're looking for a subject for a blog post, a thumbnail history of Wikimedia Australia might be "amusing".

[Silent Editor]

Well, I certainly hope Tony1 joins the new list.

I think the whole point of creating that list was so that they could keep him out.

Ah right... I was lost in the 'whether Tony is a member or not' question in the earlier list. Which is bizarre in itself: he resigned, but then claimed he couldn't have resigned despite his wish to do so.

I read on the old list that WMAU is probably not going to apply for FDC funds this year, but they haven't really made up their minds yet. Of course, it's likely that time to apply will run out before they make up their minds, anyway.

But of course, Steven Zhang posted the note saying they probably wouldn't apply for funds to the old list several days after he'd posted saying he was unsubscribing from that list...

Great illustration of Sayre's Law.

[PartikleZoo]

Tony's problem with WMAU go back a fair way, but involve some very heated comments prior to his resignation. With the previous committee (under John Vandenberg), there was a major reshuffle, with JV quitting as President and becoming Treasurer, and everyone else moving around. Committee members in WMAU are elected to posts, so the reshuffle was unusual. Tony1 argued that it wasn't constitutional unless they completed it in the correct order. Something like "Person x quits, leaving vacancy p, allowing y to become p, but leaving a vacancy at q, so z becomes q...". The sequence was specific.

There were other internal issues, but eventually Tony1 resigned. However, as he argued that the secretary wasn't really the secretary, that meant a) he couldn't resign, as there was no secretary to resign to, and b) the entire current committee was unconstitutional, as there was no secretary to call the last election.

[Kelly Martin]

Tony's problem with WMAU go back a fair way, but involve some very heated comments prior to his resignation. With the previous committee (under John Vandenberg), there was a major reshuffle, with JV quitting as President and becoming Treasurer, and everyone else moving around. Committee members in WMAU are elected to posts, so the reshuffle was unusual. Tony1 argued that it wasn't constitutional unless they completed it in the correct order. Something like "Person x quits, leaving vacancy p, allowing y to become p, but leaving a vacancy at q, so z becomes q...". The sequence was specific.

There were other internal issues, but eventually Tony1 resigned. However, as he argued that the secretary wasn't really the secretary, that meant a) he couldn't resign, as there was no secretary to resign to, and b) the entire current committee was unconstitutional, as there was no secretary to call the last election.

Bickering over whether a reshuffling of posts in a social club is "constitutional" is a sign either of strong pre-existing disagreement with the leadership, or of obsessive-compulsive disorder. And arguments over whether "the secretary really isn't the secretary" are obstructionist. Perhaps Tony1 would be happier playing Nomic.

I only have vague recollections of Zhang and Vandenberg, but generally thought that Vandenberg seemed less nuts than average for a Wikipedian. Zhang, on the other hand, is a froot loop; I remember him quite well when he was Steve Crossin. I'd say that I don't understand how someone like him got to any level of authority, but this is Wikipedia we're talking about....

[HRIP7]

I only have vague recollections of Zhang and Vandenberg, but generally thought that Vandenberg seemed less nuts than average for a Wikipedian. Zhang, on the other hand, is a froot loop; I remember him quite well when he was Steve Crossin. I'd say that I don't understand how someone like him got to any level of authority, but this is Wikipedia we're talking about....

John Vandenberg is no longer on the Wikimedia Australia committee, having dropped out last November. According to wikimedia.org.au, the committee is presently composed of

Steven Zhang, President
Gideon Digby, Vice-President
Andrew Owens, Secretary
Michael Billington, Treasurer
Charles Gregory
Pru Mitchell
Robert Myers

[Poetlister]

I only have vague recollections of Zhang and Vandenberg, but generally thought that Vandenberg seemed less nuts than average for a Wikipedian. Zhang, on the other hand, is a froot loop; I remember him quite well when he was Steve Crossin. I'd say that I don't understand how someone like him got to any level of authority, but this is Wikipedia we're talking about....

John Vandenberg is no longer on the Wikimedia Australia committee, having dropped out last November. According to wikimedia.org.au, the committee is presently composed of

Steven Zhang, President
Gideon Digby, Vice-President
Andrew Owens, Secretary
Michael Billington, Treasurer
Charles Gregory
Pru Mitchell
Robert Myers

John, I am told, is still there behind the scenes as an eminence grise.

[EricBarbour]

Anyone want some amusement? Look at Crossin's Facebook top banner, and see how many "famous Wikipedians" you can spot.

[thekohser]

Anyone want some amusement? Look at Crossin's Facebook top banner, and see how many "famous Wikipedians" you can spot.

So, do I understand that Steven Zhang Crossin is president of Wikimedia Australia, but also a sales consultant with Telstra (an Australian telecommunications giant)? And, do I understand that the #1 contributor to the Wikipedia article about Telstra (T-H-L) is Wikipedia's user Bidgee (T-C-L), whose only userbox says "This user is proud to be a financial member of Wikimedia Australia"?

That doesn't look suspicious at all!

[Jim]

Anyone want some amusement? Look at Crossin's Facebook top banner, and see how many "famous Wikipedians" you can spot.

So, do I understand that Steven Zhang Crossin is president of Wikimedia Australia, but also a sales consultant with Telstra (an Australian telecommunications giant)? And, do I understand that the #1 contributor to the Wikipedia article about Telstra (T-H-L) is Wikipedia's user Bidgee (T-C-L), whose only userbox says "This user is proud to be a financial member of Wikimedia Australia"?

That doesn't look suspicious at all!

Uhh?

Greg - Telstra has 38,000 employees, and is in the top few Australian companies. It's enormous - being descended from the previously publicly owned Telecom which used to do all telecom in Australia (like the General Post Office (T-H-L) (GPO) in Britain).

Every family in Australia pretty much has had to deal with Telstra at some point, and Telstra still provide nearly all of the physical infrastructure for the whole country. They own the cursed copper wire. I'm not Aussie, but live here. My father-in-law worked his whole career for Telecom/Telstra - I've had several contracts for them in my business.

I think the best word to describe Telstra is 'ubiquitous'. (From experience, I have other words to describe their service and practices, but you get that with near monopolies, and transitioning ex-monopolies...)

A "sales consultant" could just as easily be a guy who works for them selling mobile phone plans in a shopping-centre, or cold calling people asking them to change home phone plans. It might be something a little grander, but it doesn't sound like much.

I don't think the fact that one Australian works for them in a quite possibly minor role, and another (prolific) Australian, who seems to love to write a lot about all Australian places, companies and people, has also written a lot about a huge, iconic Australian company, and they both belong to the Wikipedia organisation for editors in Australia looks at all suspicious, no, quite honestly.

Unless I've entirely missed your point. I do that, sometimes...

[eagle]

This is the second WMAU schism. The first was when John Vandenberg's protégé Laura Hale (Laurahale (T-C-L)) decided to run a slate of officers against his slate in the 2012 WMAU elections. Hale and Steven Zhang formally nominated the renegade slate. Vandenberg won and Hale lost on November 25link with 34 total votes cast.link In the wake of defeat, Hale, Hawkeye7 (T-C-L) and Robert Myers (aka Bidgee (T-C-L)) then travelled from Australia to a ski competition in Colorado. Prior to the election, they applied for a $4,635 grant from WMAU so that they could visit WMF headquarters and also photograph the competition. They left for the trip with the grant application pending and tried to negotiate the grant en route, which was ultimately denied. link

Hale was so disappointed that she resigned from WMAU. She later obtained a Wikipedian in residence which added (non-notable) Spanish Paralympic content to Wikipedia.link

[HRIP7]

Steven Zhang's Facebook page says,

Off to London and Berlin in a few weeks. Still don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing when I get there, apart from "get off the plane and get luggage"

Anyone like to bet that this jolly trip isn't financed from donors' money?

[Jim]

This is the second WMAU schism. The first was when John Vandenberg's protégé Laura Hale (Laurahale (T-C-L)) decided to run a slate of officers against his slate in the 2012 WMAU elections. Hale and Steven Zhang formally nominated the renegade slate. Vandenberg won and Hale lost on November 25link with 34 total votes cast.link In the wake of defeat, Hale, Hawkeye7 (T-C-L) and Robert Myers (aka Bidgee (T-C-L)) then travelled from Australia to a ski competition in Colorado. Prior to the election, they applied for a $4,635 grant from WMAU so that they could visit WMF headquarters and also photograph the competition. They left for the trip with the grant application pending and tried to negotiate the grant en route, which was ultimately denied. link

Hale was so disappointed that she resigned from WMAU. She later obtained a Wikipedian in residence which added (non-notable) Spanish Paralympic content to Wikipedia.link

Laura Hale is bizarre. A true acolyte, willing to war about anything, and cry anti-feminism if it suits, then fall back to being "one of the boys" if not.

I'm picturing her aggrieved little mind go up and down just reading this. "Why, you anti feminist uncaring about me bastard, you..." "Oh, you're a girl?" "Oh, you're not?" Explode.

She's full of wikipedia juice, firmly believes that what happens on wikipedia or her number of DYK, GA. or other TLA "matters" and will get her anywhere at all (clue, Laura - it won't).

Insane.

Also a good friend of Bidgee, I think, kinda remembering a travel grant fiasco, so maybe Greg was right all along and they are just "we who sponge for plane tickets". Who knows?

[eagle]

Laura Hale is bizarre. A true acolyte, willing to war about anything, and cry anti-feminism if it suits, then fall back to being "one of the boys" if not.

How true. There were also rumors about a romatic relationship between Hale and the other traveling companion Hawkeye7 (T-C-L). Do you know if his real life identity is Ross Mallett?

Hale and Hawkeye7 were tightly linked until she left for Spain in the summer of 2013. However, recently Hale self-identified as LGBT on her Simple English user page, but not her English user page.link

Any further information would be appreciated.

[thekohser]

I don't think the fact that one Australian works for them in a quite possibly minor role, and another (prolific) Australian, who seems to love to write a lot about all Australian places, companies and people, has also written a lot about a huge, iconic Australian company, and they both belong to the Wikipedia organisation for editors in Australia looks at all suspicious, no, quite honestly.

Quite honestly, I agree with you. But, we might also then want to tell Jimbo that not every IPv6 that begins with "2001:" is by definition me.

However, recently Hale self-identified as LGBT on her Simple English user page...

Maybe she represents the "B" in LGBT?

[Kelly Martin]

Anyone want some amusement? Look at Crossin's Facebook top banner, and see how many "famous Wikipedians" you can spot.

So, do I understand that Steven Zhang Crossin is president of Wikimedia Australia, but also a sales consultant with Telstra (an Australian telecommunications giant)? And, do I understand that the #1 contributor to the Wikipedia article about Telstra (T-H-L) is Wikipedia's user Bidgee (T-C-L), whose only userbox says "This user is proud to be a financial member of Wikimedia Australia"?

That doesn't look suspicious at all!

No, it really doesn't, any more than it would be suspicious if the top editor of Comcast was a member of some wiki group that also included someone who happened to be one of the multitudinous drones who do installations for Comcast. Steve's just some dude working in a cell phone hut. You probably have more capability to influence Telstra, via your role at Comcast, than Steve does via his, and it's exceedingly unlikely that anyone at Telstra would even know who he was without doing a database search first.

Nor is it terribly surprising that the top editor of an Australian business topic is an Australian.

[Jim]

I don't think the fact that one Australian works for them in a quite possibly minor role, and another (prolific) Australian, who seems to love to write a lot about all Australian places, companies and people, has also written a lot about a huge, iconic Australian company, and they both belong to the Wikipedia organisation for editors in Australia looks at all suspicious, no, quite honestly.

Quite honestly, I agree with you. But, we might also then want to tell Jimbo that not every IPv6 that begins with "2001:" is by definition me.

We might. If this was about you or Jimmy, at all . Any "suspicion" about the two Aussies was a bit of a stretch, and I tried to point that out. That's all.

I mean, ok, Jimbo is sometimes paranoid about being criticised by Greg, after all this time, and sees Greg in the shadows on occasion, when it isn't Greg at all...

This somehow equates, or relates?

[Jim]

Also a good friend of Bidgee, I think, kinda remembering a travel grant fiasco,

oops - sorry, eagle, you already said that. I must move "learning to read" up on my list of priorities...

[eagle]

Maybe she represents the "B" in LGBT?

Professor Kohs, may I propose as my dissertation topic, "The manifestations of human sexuality in the writings of Laura Hale?"

[EricBarbour]

Professor Kohs, may I propose as my dissertation topic, "The manifestations of human sexuality in the writings of Laura Hale?"

Better yet, why not write up her Wikipedia/WMF history? It's stunningly insane. I promise.

[Jim]

Professor Kohs, may I propose as my dissertation topic, "The manifestations of human sexuality in the writings of Laura Hale?"

Better yet, why not write up her Wikipedia/WMF history? It's stunningly insane. I promise.

Isn't she currently banned from translating her tedious little sport stubs from Spanish without getting a grown-up to check them, because she translated so many so very wrongly?

edit: ah, found the link: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive258#Laura_Hale_topic_ban (T-H-L) Seems Fram is not a fan...

[Versus]

Professor Kohs, may I propose as my dissertation topic, "The manifestations of human sexuality in the writings of Laura Hale?"

Better yet, why not write up her Wikipedia/WMF history? It's stunningly insane. I promise.

Just what the world needs, an Arts Thesis on Fandom, link Arts = useless piece of paper.

[eagle]

Just what the world needs, an Arts Thesis on Fandom, link Arts = useless piece of paper.

In 21st Century academics, people tend to get a PhD for the value of the credential rather than the pure quest for discovering knowledge. That being said, it is difficult to understand how a middle-aged midwestern instructional technology assistant who was caught in a dead-end career in the public school system of her parents' hometown would seek out a PhD program offered by University of Canberra "on the social, demographic and geographic characteristics of Australian sport fandom online." In fairness, the thesis advisor that Hale first found left the University, but Hale did submit repeated drafts of her dissertation, which has yet to result in the award of a PhD.

Although analysis of Twitter data is not my academic specialty, the basic idea is that Hale retrieved a set of tweets from a large database and tried to draw valid conclusions from a statistical analysis of the data. It is very hard to do that because the criteria used to sample the database can bias the statistics. (For example, if you retrieve the tweets that have the text string "#soccer" you might be missing all of the soccer-related tweets that did not include that hash-tag.) So, it is hard to move your thesis beyond the mundane conclusion that Austrialan sports fan like to tweet about it.

Being in a research PhD program is a blessing because coursework is not required. One can research and write full time. However, Hale began editing Wikipedia for the first time after joining the PhD program. Given the amount of time she has spent on-wiki and at meetups and workshops, it is not surprising that her PhD is behind schedule.

[thekohser]

This somehow equates, or relates?

I said it doesn't look suspicious! What more do you want from me?!

[Jim]

This somehow equates, or relates?

I said it doesn't look suspicious! What more do you want from me?!

Well...
Nothing, I guess - but it really doesn't look very suspicious to me, you know.
Thought I should just mention that.

[eagle]

This somehow equates, or relates?

Mr. Wales believes that a reliable encyclopedia can be crowd-sourced.
Ms. Hale believes that a PhD can be some-how crowd-sourced.
and perhaps
Mr. Kohs believes that a Wikipedia criticism website can be crowd-sourced.

Is that the possible unifying theme?

[Jim]

This somehow equates, or relates?

Mr. Wales believes that a reliable encyclopedia can be crowd-sourced.
Ms. Hale believes that a PhD can be some-how crowd-sourced.
and perhaps
Mr. Kohs believes that a Wikipedia criticism website can be crowd-sourced.

Is that the possible unifying theme?

Works for me.

But where does the "B" thing come in, then? I think we might need more about that. With tasteful pictures if possible...

[eagle]

But where does the "B" thing come in, then? I think we might need more about that. With tasteful pictures if possible...

I am sorry, but because she has self-identified only on the Simple English Wikipedia and not the plain-old English Wikipedia, I am only allowed to discuss this matter using the 850 basic words link and I am not allowed to upload any pictures. link So, here goes:

"It is strange. A person would write the same thing on both user pages. It may not be true."

[Anroth]

Vandenberg is the sanest of the WMAU bucket of frogs. It was actually a bad day he quit. WMAU was on the rocks from when Hale and her ilk tried to supplant him. I suspect in order to milk the grants. It was quite refreshing seeing their grant *which they had already spent* being turned down.

Zhang is not much better however. Paid editing anyone?

Tony's problems really are in the obsessive compulsive area. Some of the mailing list arguments over crap that just does not matter went on for weeks. Its entirely reasonable they would quit the mailing list and start a no tony club. Its not like there is any other way to shut him up.

FWIW I think I am still on some of the Telstra internal lists, and I aint worked for them since I was deported from Aus in 03... They are not a small company. Nor are they too choosy about checking work visas

[Silent Editor]

I see that Steve Zhang is still posting on the list that he said he'd leave. Apparently that list has a new title, and David Gerard is now the list manager.

It is unclear whether Tony is on it or not...

[EricBarbour]

I see that Steve Zhang is still posting on the list that he said he'd leave. Apparently that list has a new title, and David Gerard is now the list manager.

And no one calls him on this? WTF? Cowardice or stupidity, or total lack of interest?

It is unclear whether Tony is on it or not...

I would expect he can see this, and doesn't want to start another screaming match.