The mess Laura Hale left behind

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The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Sun Aug 04, 2019 8:47 pm

Similarly to Project Qworty, Laura Hale has left a river of terrible articles in her wake.

Some samples:
Fifth-wave_feminism_in_Ibero-America (T-H-L)
Fifth-wave feminism in Ibero-America is an feminism that rejects English-speaking feminist models of discourse to address the needs of marginalized female populations by providing them with collectivist tools to fight oppression. The wave is a struggle against neoliberalism and capitalism, specifically at times as it applies to women's bodies. It is manifested most in Chile, Argentina, Spain, Brazil and Poland because of the specific socio-economic conditions in these countries.

The emergence of the fifth-wave takes place at a time when wave coherence is disappearing and feminists have problems acknowledging which number wave they are actually in, and what the values of each new wave are. The continued existence of the wave model, even hose that include the fifth-wave, is viewed by international feminists as racist, treating non-English-speaking feminism as provincial. These waves are also criticized as they stem from universities and academics, not from activists who are mobilizing women to affect change.
That's just mumbly mouthed garbage that could have come from a Monty Python skit.
Buzzword bingo for dipshits.
The entire article is filled with this stuff.


Entire reams of articles that should be one article

Here are the individual articles for Paralympic skiing
LW1 (T-H-L)
LW2 (T-H-L)
LW3 (T-H-L)
LW4 (T-H-L)
LW5/7 (T-H-L)
LW6/8 (T-H-L)
LW9 (T-H-L)
LW10 (T-H-L)
LW11 (T-H-L)
LW12 (T-H-L)
B1 (T-H-L)
B2 (T-H-L)
B3 (T-H-L)

That's one sport...
There are groups of classification articles for every single sport.
Hundreds of articles with the starting frame as a copy paste from another terrible article.
How on earth is someone to maintain that?



Hundreds of articles about Paralympic athletes that are just long lists of bullet items in somewhat prose format.
These aren't articles on a person, they are the rote accumulation of time/date/events tuples.
José_Martínez_Morote (T-H-L)
Anna_Cohí (T-H-L)
Oriol_Sellarès_Martínez (T-H-L)
Gabriel_Gorce (T-H-L)
Úrsula_Pueyo (T-H-L)
Andrés_Boira (T-H-L)
There are articles where others have taken them over, but when the article is Laura Hale's work alone, they're unmitigated garbage.
They're also WP:BLP violations just waiting to happen.
They're also mostly non-notable people who have competed but never won a competition.

And example of an article rescued by others that isn't total shit...
Melissa_Perrine (T-H-L)



On a funny note, she started a slew of articles about Gibraltars in other places right around the time of the Gibraltarpedia (T-H-L) debacle.
Gibraltar_Falls (T-H-L)
Gibraltar_Rock_State_Natural_Area (T-H-L)
Gibraltar Rock (Western Australia) (T-H-L)
Gibraltar Peak (Canberra) (T-H-L)

Totally not suspicious or anything...
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... r_for_you!




Rafts of shitty stub articles for every women's team at every age level
2011–12 Australia women's national goalball team (T-H-L) <--- Good Article?!
China women's junior national softball team (T-H-L)
Argentina women's national inline hockey team (T-H-L)
Puerto Rico women's national softball team (T-H-L)
All-Time Results
Summary
Year W L Pct
2004 0 0 .000
2005 0 0 .000
2006 0 0 .000
2007 0 0 .000
2008 0 0 .000
2009 0 0 .000
2010 0 0 .000
2011 0 0 .000
2012 0 0 .000
2013 0 0 .000
2014 0 0 .000
Totals 0 0 .000
New Zealand women's national softball team (T-H-L)
Canada women's junior national softball team (T-H-L)
Japan women's junior national softball team (T-H-L)
Mexico women's junior national softball team (T-H-L)
Bermuda women's national softball team (T-H-L)

There's 245 of those articles that she created and she alone has edited and they're all terrible.




'Xxxxxxx at the 2016 Summer Paralympics' articles
There are 145 of these articles all created from the original shitty framework
Filled with red links for the athlete names, most with no citations or references
Laos at the 2016 Summer Paralympics (T-H-L)
Ecuador at the 2016 Summer Paralympics (T-H-L)
Burundi at the 2016 Summer Paralympics (T-H-L)
Guinea-Bissau at the 2016 Summer Paralympics (T-H-L)
Turkmenistan at the 2016 Summer Paralympics (T-H-L)
Oman at the 2016 Summer Paralympics (T-H-L)

All of these articles start with the same exact text.
${Country_Name} competed at the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 7 September to 18 September 2016.


Contents
1 Disability classifications
2 Athletics
3 See also
4 References

Disability classifications

Main article: Disability sport classification

Every participant at the Paralympics has their disability grouped into one of five disability categories; amputation, the condition may be congenital or sustained through injury or illness; cerebral palsy; wheelchair athletes, there is often overlap between this and other categories; visual impairment, including blindness; Les autres, any physical disability that does not fall strictly under one of the other categories, for example dwarfism or multiple sclerosis.[1][2] Each Paralympic sport then has its own classifications, dependent upon the specific physical demands of competition. Events are given a code, made of numbers and letters, describing the type of event and classification of the athletes competing. Some sports, such as athletics, divide athletes by both the category and severity of their disabilities, other sports, for example swimming, group competitors from different categories together, the only separation being based on the severity of the disability.[3]
Every. Single. One.
They are all copies of each other and most of them are the still at the useless stub stage years later.




'Abortion in ${Place_Name}' articles
54 articles, all copies of each other.
20KB to 40KB each filled with repetitive material.



37 'Netball in ${Place_Name}' articles
All copied from each other and slightly modified
Netball isn't an Olympic sport, regardless of Laura Hale's wishes.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Sun Aug 04, 2019 9:15 pm

If you dig into Laura Hale’s user space you’ll see hundreds more crappy, copy/paste articles ready to be sharted out into mai space and abandoned like the rest.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Poetlister » Sun Aug 04, 2019 9:21 pm

I don't think that Laura left anything like the same mess as Qworty. However, she may have friends who won't want to see her legacy smashed up. That could lead to some interesting AfDs and edit wars.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Sun Aug 04, 2019 9:23 pm

Poetlister wrote:I don't think that Laura left anything like the same mess as Qworty. However, she may have friends who won't want to see her legacy smashed up. That could lead to some interesting AfDs and edit wars.
She wasn’t nasty the same way, but she created a whole bunch of lousy, unsourced blp articles and abandoned them.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by mendaliv » Sun Aug 04, 2019 9:36 pm

Vigilant wrote:If you dig into Laura Hale’s user space you’ll see hundreds more crappy, copy/paste articles ready to be sharted out into mai space and abandoned like the rest.
Well, given LH has vanished (which carries a presumption of permanence), perhaps all those should be sent to MfD as abandoned drafts. :banana:
“It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people.” United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 68, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J. dissenting).

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Sun Aug 04, 2019 9:52 pm

Poetlister wrote:I don't think that Laura left anything like the same mess as Qworty. However, she may have friends who won't want to see her legacy smashed up. That could lead to some interesting AfDs and edit wars.
It's a different kind of mess, IMO. Much of what Qworty did was subtle and required the WP folks to research various people and incidents, and also go through a lot of written material they otherwise would never have been interested in, in order to tell which edits were legitimate and which were based on some sort of personal animus (presumably the self-glorification activity would have been easy enough to spot). Whereas, with Dr. Hale's stuff, someone could argue that practically all of it is "above the bar" and justify it by saying, "well, I'm an extreme inclusionist."

Frankly, I doubt they'll delete more than a small fraction of these articles of hers, if any, and also I don't think there's any question that nobody will fix them. Nobody would even know they existed if it hadn't been for the Fram-ban fiasco.

If there's a comparison to be made, it's more likely to be with someone who ran (or maybe still runs) mass stub-creation scripts. The best-known example is/was probably Dr. Blofeld (T-C-L)... He didn't check with the admins in advance before auto-creating a few thousand stubs on obscure subjects, but in his (probably underserved) defense, most of those stubs were about things like towns, rivers, lakes, members of national legislatures, railways, and so forth, nearly all of them outside of the US and most of them outside of the English-speaking world in general. Apparently he believed all Wikipedia wikis, regardless of language, should contain coverage of the entire world, and mass stub creation was the first step to making that happen. We might disagree about this being a good idea (I know I do), but at least he had some sort of principle he was following.

I suspect that in Dr. Hale's case, there wasn't any sort of overarching principle involved other than a desire to stay relevant in Wikiland. That's not to say that country-specific articles on abortion or a specific "wave" of feminism are "completely useless"; it's just that they don't need separate articles, and an argument could even be made that having separate country-specific articles actually makes things worse by implying greater "relative legitimacy" for any one country's restrictive policies and/or cultural backwardness. Hard to say, though.

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by DHeyward » Mon Aug 05, 2019 1:49 am

Vigilant wrote:Similarly to Project Qworty, Laura Hale has left a river of terrible articles in her wake.

Some samples:
Fifth-wave_feminism_in_Ibero-America (T-H-L)
... even hose that include the fifth-wave...
Hmmmm...

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Mon Aug 05, 2019 1:57 am

DHeyward wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Similarly to Project Qworty, Laura Hale has left a river of terrible articles in her wake.

Some samples:
Fifth-wave_feminism_in_Ibero-America (T-H-L)
... even hose that include the fifth-wave...
Hmmmm...
:applause:
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Kumioko » Mon Aug 05, 2019 1:54 pm

It really is amazing how so many of these poor writers/contributors make it into positions of influence by doing substandard work or virtually nothing at all while other people are doing outstanding work and getting bullied, insulted and harassed. And they wonder why Wikipedia has such a bad reputation?

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Giraffe Stapler » Mon Aug 05, 2019 3:49 pm

LW10 wrote:In para-Alpine skiing, the skier uses a monoski, which is required to have breaks on both sides of the ski.

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Poetlister » Mon Aug 05, 2019 4:02 pm

Midsize Jake wrote:Apparently he believed all Wikipedia wikis, regardless of language, should contain coverage of the entire world, and mass stub creation was the first step to making that happen. We might disagree about this being a good idea (I know I do), but at least he had some sort of principle he was following.
If the English Wikipedia is meant to be the sum of all human knowledge, then how can it exclude detailed coverage of most of the world? And why should people who can't understand English be deprived of anything on the English Wikipedia? This is a reductio ad absurdum of the alleged philosophy behind Wikipedia.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by mendaliv » Mon Aug 05, 2019 5:08 pm

Giraffe Stapler wrote:
LW10 wrote:In para-Alpine skiing, the skier uses a monoski, which is required to have breaks on both sides of the ski.
Really really dire when a giraffe can detect your misuse of the English language.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Poetlister » Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:12 pm

mendaliv wrote:
Giraffe Stapler wrote:
LW10 wrote:In para-Alpine skiing, the skier uses a monoski, which is required to have breaks on both sides of the ski.
Really really dire when a giraffe can detect your misuse of the English language.
Not even a giraffe - a stapler designed to look like a giraffe. :D
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Midsize Jake » Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:12 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Midsize Jake wrote:Apparently he believed all Wikipedia wikis, regardless of language, should contain coverage of the entire world, and mass stub creation was the first step to making that happen. We might disagree about this being a good idea (I know I do), but at least he had some sort of principle he was following.
If the English Wikipedia is meant to be the sum of all human knowledge, then how can it exclude detailed coverage of most of the world? And why should people who can't understand English be deprived of anything on the English Wikipedia? This is a reductio ad absurdum of the alleged philosophy behind Wikipedia.
Good questions, but my contention has always been that "sum of human knowledge" is just a marketing slogan and has never been a serious goal or objective, even if you accept that not all knowledge is worth preserving (which I do). Either way, a site like Wikipedia, ideally, should be realistic about what it can handle during the maintenance phase of its life-cycle. If it isn't, the maintenance phase will lead into the attrition phase much more quickly.

To be more specific, the realistic (and, I would argue, more logical and ergonomic) approach to something like rivers in Sweden would be to do pretty much what they've done, namely to produce a List of rivers of Sweden (T-H-L) for the English WP that contains links to articles for the major rivers, and a list of all the rivers (including teensy-tiny ones) beneath that. That's really all anyone who doesn't live in Sweden needs, and aside from the fact that all the "minor" rivers appear as red-links, it's reasonably maintainable. And as for the red links, those are actually a minor problem of sorts because nobody bothers to check for naming conflicts on a tiny creek in Sweden - so you've got the Alman "river" (actually a creek) which appears as a blue link because "Alman" is a pre-existing redirect for Allemande (T-H-L), which is a kind of dance they do in Germany and Switzerland.

Meanwhile, on the Swedish Wikipedia, they've got a shorter list article - though it only looks like their list is shorter because they've broken out the tiny creeks and streams into nine separate sub-lists. If they combined them all into the main list, it would be much longer than the English version. Most of the minor streams in the sub-lists are red links too, so it's the same problem (e.g., Sandbacken redirects to a section of the Katrineholm article that barely mentions the river at all). But this is at least somewhat defensible, because for Swedish people that's their domestic list, so there's a chance they'll eventually fix things like this. On the English version, probably not.

Getting back to Dr. Blofeld, he would have mass-created stubs for all those minor rivers in one fell swoop, resulting in a huge mess, or more accurately, a potential ongoing maintenance problem for people who, realistically, will never have any knowledge of obscure Swedish geography. And that big, harder-to-maintain slew of stubs, had he mass-created them, wouldn't have enhanced anyone's knowledge of Swedish rivers any better than the list does now.

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by mynameisnotdave » Tue Aug 06, 2019 7:41 pm

Just going through a quick overlook of the article. A small spruce-up, and it for sure needs a bit of a proof-read.

At least...

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 06, 2019 7:44 pm

Interesting page
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... oup%29.pdf
Summary
Description
English: Gap Analysis for ParaSports Data as of October 2018 (Wikibase Community User Group)
Date 22 October 2018
Source Own work
Author LauraHale
The grift unfolds

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibas ... ities_list

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wi ... e_question
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Katie » Tue Aug 06, 2019 7:47 pm

Vigilant wrote:Interesting page
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... oup%29.pdf
Summary
Description
English: Gap Analysis for ParaSports Data as of October 2018 (Wikibase Community User Group)
Date 22 October 2018
Source Own work
Author LauraHale
The grift unfolds

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibas ... ities_list

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wi ... e_question
Here's the Twitter page for ParaSport Data: link and the archived version of the ParaSport Data website: link. Here's the archived ParaSport News website: link and here's the Twitter account for it: link. Also, ParaSport News claimed to be ran by "Spacial Anamoly LLC", a fandom website created in 2013 - here's the link to the earliest version of the Spacial Anamoly website (before that one is a website about a painter's business): link. It cites Wiktionary so I'd bet that Laura Hale either created it or is friends with the founder. It also has some of Laura Hale's essays on fandom archived.
Last edited by Katie on Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:24 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:18 pm

Not one damn graph or map on this page makes a lick of sense.

https://twitter.com/parasportsdata/media
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:31 pm

She used to look kind of normal...

Image
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Kumioko » Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:33 pm

That's not creepy at all :blink:

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Smiley » Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:35 pm

Vigilant wrote:Not one damn graph or map on this page makes a lick of sense.

https://twitter.com/parasportsdata/media
ParaSports Data wrote:Almost a month of data hunting, and graph below:

Not entirely certain what to make of it
Image

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by mendaliv » Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:38 pm

Smiley wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Not one damn graph or map on this page makes a lick of sense.

https://twitter.com/parasportsdata/media
ParaSports Data wrote:Almost a month of data hunting, and graph below:

Not entirely certain what to make of it
Image
What uh... what does this graph tell us?
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:52 pm

Have we had a thread about Brian McNeil?

One of Laura's grifting partners...

https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:R ... ontribs.29

I'm finding bits of him all over the place.
wikinewsie.org is registered behind a proxy domain registrar, but it appears to be Laura's domain.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 06, 2019 8:53 pm

mendaliv wrote:
Smiley wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Not one damn graph or map on this page makes a lick of sense.

https://twitter.com/parasportsdata/media
ParaSports Data wrote:Almost a month of data hunting, and graph below:

Not entirely certain what to make of it
Image
What uh... what does this graph tell us?
Laura has no idea what she's doing with data.
That's what it tells us.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Katie » Tue Aug 06, 2019 9:00 pm

Vigilant wrote:Have we had a thread about Brian McNeil?

One of Laura's grifting partners...

https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:R ... ontribs.29

I'm finding bits of him all over the place.
wikinewsie.org is registered behind a proxy domain registrar, but it appears to be Laura's domain.
WR had a thread about him: link. EricBarbour also posted about him on WO: link. He's a very unpleasant sort who has no business editing anywhere. Also, WO had a thread about Wikinewsie: link.
Last edited by Katie on Tue Aug 06, 2019 9:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 06, 2019 9:19 pm

A partially formed grift...

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wikinewsie_Group
Provisional board
Chairperson: LauraHale.

Board: Pi zero, Brian McNeil, Bjarki S, ProtoplasmaKid

The meeting for the provisional board selection meeting took place in #wikinews-groupconnect on May 4, 2013 at 13:00 UTC.
Mr McNeil rears his head again.
Names to faces
Expounding in a thoughtful and caring modality.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... id=5518504
You fucking ignorant bastard. You wasted over 30 minutes of my time filling in this section with a relatively constructive comment, lacking in expletives, by editing the whole bloody page, and causing an edit conflict. Get a fucking grip, get a fucking clue, and stop being so bloody desperate to have the last word. Your idiocy is costing me money. Wikinews is not a game. Try some real journalism, god only knows how often you needed taken to task before you thought reproducing VoA would help 'level grind' to a position of authority. -- Brian McNeil (alt. account) /alt-talk • main talk 19:24, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
He seems nice.

Not everything went well on the board, apparently...
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... ng_pi_zero
Report concerning pi zero
pi zero (talk • contribs • deleted contribs • logs • filter log • block user • block log • GUC) — Reasons: My Wikinews account has been repeatedly vandalized and blocked by a local admin there (@Pi zero:). There are apparently no other active admins on Wikinews who can correct this. I need a Wikimedia global admin to unblock me and to remove the Wikinews local admin privileges from user "pi zero." See "wikinews:user talk:NicoleSharpRFS#Unblock_request." NicoleSharpRFS (talk) 11:55, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
Persistently disruptive user (making the request here, that is). Please refer to the longest-standing talk page where the person claiming to be Nicole Sharp has run up against several adminstrators (plus 'crats), and been blocked for shuffling around so many identities as to destroy any hope of gaining trust in a journalistic setting. --Brian McNeil / talk 13:52, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
He brings out the best in everyone!


Oh dear...
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Wik ... al_members
Looks like more digging.
Each of you get a quick digital enema...
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 06, 2019 9:29 pm

Hello, John. John, hello. You're the one soul I would come up here to collect myself.

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 06, 2019 9:58 pm

Hello, John. John, hello. You're the one soul I would come up here to collect myself.

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 06, 2019 10:05 pm

Jesus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HOPA ... ympics.pdf

She flatly told them she'd created mounds of garbage...



She's got some kind of grift going with this organization as well.

http://www.hopau.paralympic.org.au/
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Aug 06, 2019 10:11 pm

Making friends wherever she goes

http://ffnetlf.tripod.com/eckscrimes.htm
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Smiley » Tue Aug 06, 2019 10:32 pm

Vigilant wrote:Making friends wherever she goes

http://ffnetlf.tripod.com/eckscrimes.htm
Jeepers! She has three entries in the fanfic dic..
Fanfiction.net Liberation Front Dictionary

PRINCESS PROZAC: Another name for Michela Ecks, longtime scourge of the FLF. Refers to her mental instability. (RD, 2001)

EMPRESS: Yet another name for Michela Ecks. (RD, 2001)

PULL AN ECKS: Can mean a variety of different things, mainly to threaten someone with libel and slander lawsuits because you do not like what they have said. Can also mean to act erratically, to pen manifestos, or to impersonate others on public message boards.

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Smiley » Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:04 pm

Image

Brian McNeil's rare appearance on en:wp lays out their grubby little scheme.

It's pretty clear that the ultimate goal for this grotesque gang of grifters is to eventually have teams of fee-paying students do all the grunt work while they reap all the goodies. It wouldn't be quite so bad were they in any way shape or form qualified for their self-appointed roles.

I severed my ties with the world of education many years ago over concerns about management "selling out" the students. I had no idea it had got this bad.

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Moral Hazard » Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:17 pm

Communications students are easy marks. Their parents have enough money to pay for their college, and they feel bad about the tough delivery in which oxygen was cut off for too many minutes.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Poetlister » Wed Aug 07, 2019 2:45 pm

mendaliv wrote:What uh... what does this graph tell us?
Very little!
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Poetlister » Wed Aug 07, 2019 2:47 pm

Vigilant wrote:Have we had a thread about Brian McNeil?
"Wikinews accredited reporter"! Presumably, "reporter" is one of those words that has an entirely different meaning in Wikiworld from its normal meaning.
"The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly" - Nietzsche

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by mendaliv » Wed Aug 07, 2019 3:43 pm

Poetlister wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Have we had a thread about Brian McNeil?
"Wikinews accredited reporter"! Presumably, "reporter" is one of those words that has an entirely different meaning in Wikiworld from its normal meaning.
I wonder if "wikinews" accreditation got you press access to events. I'd considered doing that while I was in law school to get press-level access to Notre Dame football games. That would've been so sweet.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Smiley » Wed Aug 07, 2019 4:38 pm

mendaliv wrote:I wonder if "wikinews" accreditation got you press access to events. I'd considered doing that while I was in law school to get press-level access to Notre Dame football games. That would've been so sweet.
Just use the old "Peking Duk" method and you could be one of the referees.


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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Moral Hazard » Wed Aug 07, 2019 6:10 pm

Laura Hale is Wikipedia's Ed Wood.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Katie » Wed Aug 07, 2019 6:15 pm

Moral Hazard wrote:Laura Hale is Wikipedia's Ed Wood.
Ed Wood could at least make several films known for being funnily bad: Laura Hale doesn't have any of the passion he had. Laura Hale is motivated by money and getting more of it, like the FanHistory Wiki she did or the ParaSport News/Data thing.

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Poetlister » Wed Aug 07, 2019 7:58 pm

mendaliv wrote:I wonder if "wikinews" accreditation got you press access to events. I'd considered doing that while I was in law school to get press-level access to Notre Dame football games. That would've been so sweet.
I think Smallbones managed to use that status to get interviews with VIPs. I don't recall him ever mentioning access to sporting events.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by eagle » Thu Aug 08, 2019 10:06 am

Vigilant wrote: Entire reams of articles that should be one article

Here are the individual articles for Paralympic skiing
LW1 (T-H-L)
LW2 (T-H-L)
LW3 (T-H-L)
LW4 (T-H-L)
LW5/7 (T-H-L)
LW6/8 (T-H-L)
LW9 (T-H-L)
LW10 (T-H-L)
LW11 (T-H-L)
LW12 (T-H-L)
B1 (T-H-L)
B2 (T-H-L)
B3 (T-H-L)

That's one sport...
There are groups of classification articles for every single sport.
Hundreds of articles with the starting frame as a copy paste from another terrible article.
How on earth is someone to maintain that?
After Laura Hale stopped editing those, there were a few edits by Raystorm (T-C-L) and a bunch by Hawkeye7 (T-C-L) who nominated them for GA. Once he got a bunch approved for GA, Hawkeye7 gained a "Good Topic" designation for the Paralympic skiing classification group on May 29, 2015. linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... n/archive2[/link] The intrepid Fram (T-C-L) launched Good Article reassessments in 2016, which delisted these articles despite Hawkeye7's efforts to save them. Once they were no longer GAs, the "Good Topic" designation was also removed. Of course, while his actions were appropriate, Fram has paid a terrible price for his efforts. Fram was blunt, but I believe polite:
I have now also delisted the final 3 articles in the GA review. In looking at the changes that were made at the start of this GA review to avoid the GA delisting and keep these articles listed as GAs, images were added to Para-alpine skiing classification. The result is that the first two images at Para-alpine skiing classification are two able-bodied skiers, which is insulting in general and certainly on a GA. Apart from that, many of the original problems still haven't been addressed (e.g. in the same article, we have capitalization issues like "They are tested based on medical classification by an Ophthalmologist." or "Downhill was open to the LW classification, the Super G had a blind event and an LW event, the Giant was open to blind and LW classes, and the slalom was open to the LW classification." Factual errors also remain: "There were 25 men and 18 women in the downhill standing classes": no, 28 men and 13 women; "25 men and 10 women in the downhill sitting classes": no, 28 men and 6 women... It's information that shouldn't even be included on these articles, but if it is there, it should be correct to be worthy of a GA label. (the same wrong numbers can also be found at another delisted article, Para-alpine skiing). Fram (talk) 10:10, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by mendaliv » Thu Aug 08, 2019 10:09 am

eagle wrote:After Laura Hale stopped editing those, there were a few edits by Raystorm (T-C-L) and a bunch by Hawkeye7 (T-C-L) who nominated them for GA. Once he got a bunch approved for GA, Hawkeye7 gained a "Good Topic" designation for the Paralympic skiing classification group on May 29, 2015. linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... n/archive2[/link] The intrepid Fram (T-C-L) launched Good Article reassessments in 2016, which delisted these articles despite Hawkeye7's efforts to save them. Once they were no longer GAs, the "Good Topic" designation was also removed. Of course, while his actions were appropriate, Fram has paid a terrible price for his efforts. Fram was blunt, but I believe polite:
I have now also delisted the final 3 articles in the GA review. In looking at the changes that were made at the start of this GA review to avoid the GA delisting and keep these articles listed as GAs, images were added to Para-alpine skiing classification. The result is that the first two images at Para-alpine skiing classification are two able-bodied skiers, which is insulting in general and certainly on a GA. Apart from that, many of the original problems still haven't been addressed (e.g. in the same article, we have capitalization issues like "They are tested based on medical classification by an Ophthalmologist." or "Downhill was open to the LW classification, the Super G had a blind event and an LW event, the Giant was open to blind and LW classes, and the slalom was open to the LW classification." Factual errors also remain: "There were 25 men and 18 women in the downhill standing classes": no, 28 men and 13 women; "25 men and 10 women in the downhill sitting classes": no, 28 men and 6 women... It's information that shouldn't even be included on these articles, but if it is there, it should be correct to be worthy of a GA label. (the same wrong numbers can also be found at another delisted article, Para-alpine skiing). Fram (talk) 10:10, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
Oh man, that point about using images of non-disabled athletes is downright sublime.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Poetlister » Thu Aug 08, 2019 12:37 pm

eagle wrote:The intrepid Fram (T-C-L) launched Good Article reassessments in 2016, which delisted these articles despite Hawkeye7's efforts to save them. Once they were no longer GAs, the "Good Topic" designation was also removed. Of course, while his actions were appropriate, Fram has paid a terrible price for his efforts.
The moral of the story is that there is little to be gained by striving mightily to improve Wikipedia ... and there may be much to lose.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Moral Hazard » Thu Aug 08, 2019 12:53 pm

Poetlister wrote:
eagle wrote:The intrepid Fram (T-C-L) launched Good Article reassessments in 2016, which delisted these articles despite Hawkeye7's efforts to save them. Once they were no longer GAs, the "Good Topic" designation was also removed. Of course, while his actions were appropriate, Fram has paid a terrible price for his efforts.
The moral of the story is that there is little to be gained by striving mightily to improve Wikipedia ... and there may be much to lose.
Ya think?
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Thu Aug 08, 2019 12:59 pm

However, once you've realized most of the people controlling things on en.wp and at the WMF are recidivist assholes, then publicly shaming them becomes a rewarding sport and pastime.

I predict a banner year for doxxing, outing and general gofuckyourselfism from this stalwart warrior.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by mendaliv » Thu Aug 08, 2019 1:08 pm

Honestly I find the whole idea that WMF are entitled to the same respect and privacy as some first-day editor to be especially ridiculous. When you climb that ladder and take that paycheck, you gave up something along the way. They're the enwiki equivalent of public figures, especially when they parade around with their (WMF) signatures.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Thu Aug 08, 2019 1:20 pm

mendaliv wrote:Honestly I find the whole idea that WMF are entitled to the same respect and privacy as some first-day editor to be especially ridiculous. When you climb that ladder and take that paycheck, you gave up something along the way. They're the enwiki equivalent of public figures, especially when they parade around with their (WMF) signatures.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Vigilant » Wed Apr 06, 2022 3:41 pm

Almost all of these articles are still extant and terrible.

Wikipedia - always improving.
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Re: The mess Laura Hale left behind

Unread post by Ada Sinn » Thu Apr 07, 2022 6:32 pm

Vigilant wrote:
Wed Apr 06, 2022 3:41 pm
Almost all of these articles are still extant and terrible.

Wikipedia - always improving.
Hasn't there been some AFD activity in that area recently?
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