Great Moments in Wikipedia Administrator History

[Triptych]

Okay, I'm hoping to kick off an enduring thread where we point to blatantly offensive or abusive quotes by members of Wikipedia's prestigious administrative corps in an effort to show they're basically a bunch of chatters, each accumulating the tools as a sick empowerment to push common editors around thus developing a sense of privilege and superiority.

Here's admin Bwilkins (note: real name is not "Wilkins," real first initial is not "B") a few days ago: "There's zero doubt, and may you rot in the hell that is eternal block" (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =566080466). This directed at editor TheShadowCrow, who complained to Arbcom. Predictable result: Bwilkins skates merrily away, TheShadowCrow gets blocked by Bwilkins' ally and fellow admin Sandstein.

[Peter Damian]

Too much to say. There is Guy Chapman, whose userpage (now deleted) supposedly once read "If you are going to be a dick, please be a giant dick, so we can ban you quickly and save time. Thank you so much."

He once redirected the "Turd Burglar" page to "gay" and then protected it as an "obvious" move. The entire exchange was subsequently oversighted and is no longer on the WP servers, but is documented in two Wikipedia Review threads: [1] [2]. Evidence of the redirect remains here.

[Triptych]

Too much to say. There is Guy Chapman, whose userpage (now deleted) supposedly once read "If you are going to be a dick, please be a giant dick, so we can ban you quickly and save time. Thank you so much."

He once redirected the "Turd Burglar" page to "gay" and then protected it as an "obvious" move. The entire exchange was subsequently oversighted and is no longer on the WP servers, but is documented in two Wikipedia Review threads: [1] [2]. Evidence of the redirect remains here.

Ah, I see that for Guy's (now JzG) meritorious contributions to "turd burglar" and demonstrable concern for gays everywhere, as well as "please be a giant dick, so we can ban you quickly and save time" etc. he was awarded the "Admin Barnstar" by WP:ANI captain Dennis Brown.

[Tarc]

Too much to say. There is Guy Chapman, whose userpage (now deleted) supposedly once read "If you are going to be a dick, please be a giant dick, so we can ban you quickly and save time. Thank you so much."

He once redirected the "Turd Burglar" page to "gay" and then protected it as an "obvious" move. The entire exchange was subsequently oversighted and is no longer on the WP servers, but is documented in two Wikipedia Review threads: [1] [2]. Evidence of the redirect remains here.

Ah, I see that for Guy's (now JzG) meritorious contributions to "turd burglar" and demonstrable concern for gays everywhere, as well as "please be a giant dick, so we can ban you quickly and save time" etc. he was awarded the "Admin Barnstar" by WP:ANI captain Dennis Brown.

WP:GIANTDICK (T-H-L) has been around for awhile now.

[everyking]

Wikipedia would be such a better place if admins were required to actually follow the civility policy and could be easily removed if they treated other volunteers so inconsiderately. It should be as easy for the community to desysop a blatantly abusive admin as it currently is for an admin to injudiciously ban some personal adversary.

[Peter Damian]

We need "blatantly offensive or abusive quotes" from administrators.

[tarantino]

Wikipedia would be such a better place if admins were required to actually follow the civility policy and could be easily removed if they treated other volunteers so inconsiderately. It should be as easy for the community to desysop a blatantly abusive admin as it currently is for an admin to injudiciously ban some personal adversary.

For example, Bwilkins (T-C-L), who's again retreated to his EatsShootsAndLeaves (T-C-L) character after people called him out for being a prick. Still, no one at wp cares that he's a liar.

[Jaranda]

Any discussion should start of with Wikipedia:Former administrators/reason/for cause (T-H-L)

[Malleus]

Wikipedia would be such a better place if admins were required to actually follow the civility policy and could be easily removed if they treated other volunteers so inconsiderately. It should be as easy for the community to desysop a blatantly abusive admin as it currently is for an admin to injudiciously ban some personal adversary.

For example, Bwilkins (T-C-L), who's again retreated to his EatsShootsAndLeaves (T-C-L) character after people called him out for being a prick. Still, no one at wp cares that he's a liar.

Some do, but as they're not administrators their opinions are easily discounted.

[Tarc]

Wikipedia would be such a better place if admins were required to actually follow the civility policy.

Why? Users don't have to follow it either, except for newbies.

[DanMurphy]

Wikipedia would be such a better place if admins were required to actually follow the civility policy.

Why? Users don't have to follow it either, except for newbies.

The fish rots from the head.

[everyking]

Wikipedia would be such a better place if admins were required to actually follow the civility policy.

Why? Users don't have to follow it either, except for newbies.

It should be enforced much more strictly with regard to admin conduct. People shouldn't necessarily be blocked so quickly for a few harsh words, but if you can't comport yourself properly as an admin, you shouldn't have the extra powers.

[Vigilant]

Wikipedia would be such a better place if admins were required to actually follow the civility policy.

Why? Users don't have to follow it either, except for newbies.

It should be enforced much more strictly with regard to admin conduct. People shouldn't necessarily be blocked so quickly for a few harsh words, but if you can't comport yourself properly as an admin, you shouldn't have the extra powers.

Truly.

And they always say, "The mop is no big deal."

It shouldn't be so tough to pry it out of their fingers then.
Looking at you, Oliver Keyes.

[Poetlister]

Any discussion should start of with Wikipedia:Former administrators/reason/for cause (T-H-L)

Who wrote that page? "they have not went without an edit or log".

[Triptych]

We need "blatantly offensive or abusive quotes" from administrators.

Yah, I meant "offensive" in the broader sense like spitting out chewing gum on someone's driveway or urinating in a public parking lot, and not in what I've come to perceive as the narrow British sense of the word where you've basically got to question the legitimacy of someone's birth or publicly accuse his or her spouse of sleeping around, etc.

For our next great moment in admin history, we go to Beeblebrox early this year, in which he said "FUCK OFF YOU PETTY FASCIST IDIOT" to Koshvorlon (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =534387497). The reason you can't read "FUCK OFF YOU PETTY FASCIST IDIOT" in the diff there is because, per Beeblebrox in subsidiary discussion about the edit, an arbitrator courtesy revdeled or oversighted it. Beeblebrox is good at obtaining courtesy deletions of his most egregious edits, he's only had to oversight a few on his own.

Koshvorlon was politely quoting policy when Beeble made the remark. In a discussion at WP:AN/ANI Beeble stated that he, blocker of about 2700 editors and empowered with the oversight tools, felt "bullied" by common editor Koshvorlon, and that he reserves the right to come back at such "bullies" with strong language (and, no doubt, blocks).

Edited to link diff. Edited to correct typo. Edited to correct another typo.

[Peter Damian]

In a discussion at WP:AN/ANI Beeble stated that he, blocker of about 2700 editors and empowered with the oversight tools, felt "bullied" by common editor Koshvorlon, and that he reserves the right to come back at such "bullies" with strong language (and, no doubt, blocks).

Definitely need more detail. ANI 22 Jan 2013.

Beeblebrox (talk • contribs) and his talkpage are on my watchlist. Having viewed the most recent series of edits to his talkpage, including the final one with the edit summary "FUCK OFF YOU PETTY FASCIST IDIOT", I have blocked Beeblebrox indefinitely as a possibly compromised account. This spate of behaviours does not appear to be consistent with Beeb's usual behaviour. Does anyone think we need an emergency desysop? (✉→BWilkins←✎) 21:51, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Couple thoughts here: First, no, he's not got his account compromised, that's Beeblebrox's style that we're seeing. Second, ugh, why must it be Beeblebrox's style. This is the sort of thing people complain about when they say that admins call people names, etc. It's not ok for Joe Editor to do it, and it's not ok for Joe Admin to do it, and it doesn't matter how upset or frustrated either of them claims to be to excuse it. Third: This immediate unblock has made things even more uncomfortable - Bwilkins had already been informed that the "compromised" bit was an error, and whether that part was or not, Beeblebrox has indisputably violated our civility policy. It pains and embarrasses me to have to say it about another admin/functionary, because we're supposed to be the people who know better, but a block for personal attacks was called for here. I would much have preferred letting the blocking admin (or AN) reconsider the block as an NPA block instead of what's now likely to be a bouncing ball of blockage because of the immediate unblock. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 22:05, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't react well to bullies. I'm referring to Kosh here, not B. Not content to just go away, he appointed himself the civility police as well as the content police, and was equally inept in both roles. So i told him to fuck off. Then he tried to re-open the closed thread, so I told him to fuck off, and that he was a petty fascist idiot. That is in fact exactly what he was acting like. A user persistently posting to my talk page after being asked to stop is the only situation that has ever compelled me to tell another user to fuck off, and I completely stand behind my right to do so. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:17, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Administrators and holders of advanced user rights should set the example, and not dish out personal attacks when feeling frustrated. I stand behind your right to behave like this once in a while, I do not stand behind you doing so in a position where you're representing this project. Snowolf How can I help? 22:20, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I have often told thick-headed people who refuse to stop posting to my talk page to fuck off. See User:Beeblebrox/fuck off, a page all about how I reserve the right to do so. Please undo this ridiculous block right away. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:52, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

[Salvidrim]

For our next great moment in admin history, we go to Beeblebrox early this year, in which he said "FUCK OFF YOU PETTY FASCIST IDIOT" to Koshvorlon (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =534387497). The reason you can't read "FUCK OFF YOU PETTY FASCIST IDIOT" in the diff there is because, per Beeblebrox in subsidiary discussion about the edit, an arbitrator courtesy revdeled or oversighted it. Beeblebrox is good at obtaining courtesy deletions of his most egregious edits, he's only had to oversight a few on his own.

Not Oversighted; only RevDeleted by Risker for "Grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive material: personal attack."

[Smiley]

Becoming an admin makes you significantly ruder - FACT.

A computational approach to politeness with application to social factors -- Stanford University (pdf)

To see whether politeness correlates with eventual high status, we compare, in Table 5, the politeness levels of requests made by users who will eventually succeed in becoming administrators with requests made by users who are not admins. We observe that admins-to-be are significantly more polite than non-admins. One might wonder whether this merely reflects the fact that not all users aspire to become admins, and those that do are more polite. To address this, we also consider users who ran for adminship but did not earn community approval. These users are also significantly less polite than their successful counterparts, indicating that politeness indeed correlates with a positive social outcome here.

5.2 Politeness and power

We expect a rise in status to correlate with a decline in politeness (as predicted by politeness theory, and discussed in Section 1). The previous section does not test this hypothesis, since all editors compared in Table 5 had the same (non-admin) status when writing the requests. However, our data does provide three ways of testing this hypothesis. First, after the adminship elections, successful editors get a boost in power by receiving admin privileges. Figure 3 shows that this boost is mirrored by a significant decrease in politeness. Losing an election has the opposite effect on politeness, perhaps as a consequence of reinforced low status.

Editors that will eventually succeed are significantly more polite than those that will fail. Following the elections, successful editors become less polite while unsuccessful editors become more polite.

Also:

Wikipedians from the U.S. Midwest are most polite (when compared to other census-defined regions)

[Tarc]

For our next great moment in admin history, we go to Beeblebrox early this year, in which he said "FUCK OFF YOU PETTY FASCIST IDIOT" to Koshvorlon

To be fair, he kind of is.

[EricBarbour]

For our next great moment in admin history, we go to Beeblebrox early this year, in which he said "FUCK OFF YOU PETTY FASCIST IDIOT" to Koshvorlon

To be fair, he kind of is.

And that's putting it kindly. KV is, hands down, one of the worst Wikipedians I've ever run across.

[Peter Damian]

A very weird discussion going on here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... _Apologist about the unblocking of a prominent defender of Wikipedia from fringe science nonsense. It clearly illustrates the change in Wikipedia since about 2007, from a place where you really could ignore all rules if someone was making genuinely good contributions, to place entirely governed by stupid and counterproductive rules, enforced by the victorious administrator class.

The statement by Kww here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... ent_by_Kww is especially weird. He concedes that the editor was 'invariably right: : the material he was removing was nonsense, superstition, and sometimes conscious fraud'. But because he wasn't removing it in the 'right' way, and being civil and polite to the people who were pushing this kind of nonsense, he must remain blocked.

They also concede that Wikipedia isn't working. There are internet chat boards frequented by the promoters of fringe science nonsense, who organise periodic assaults on the defenders of mainstream science. According to Kww "We cope with that problem through patience and persistence, combined with a certain tolerance for having some truly hilarious nonsense in articles for short periods of time". Lol.

Beeblebrox naturally has a point of view on this.

[Triptych]

A very weird discussion going on here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... _Apologist about the unblocking of a prominent defender of Wikipedia from fringe science nonsense. It clearly illustrates the change in Wikipedia since about 2007, from a place where you really could ignore all rules if someone was making genuinely good contributions, to place entirely governed by stupid and counterproductive rules, enforced by the victorious administrator class.

Would someone tell that jackass and kindergarten playground barrister Silktork who keeps saying it that Arbcom's standard trick tactic is not in camera but rather in camera ex parte? The first means "we and you get together in private and discuss your case," the second "we get together secretly and discuss your case without you there to defend yourself."

[Peter Damian]

He gets it.

Anyway, I get it. I understand why Wikipedia functions in this rather punitive way. To be sure (ha!), I'm not at all sure what should be done about me. I'm in a weird position that any contribution that is attributed to me without an unblock is considered bad regardless of merits. I sorta get why. Since Wikipedia has no content standards, it can only enforce behavioral standards and that's the only way that things can be clear-cut. I was blocked a half a decade ago for violating a topic ban by correcting spelling errors at cold fusion. The claim was that these spelling corrections were WP:POINTy. I guess that makes sense if you follow the model that Wikipedia can only function on the basis of the rules that are set-up around social networking. That's, indeed, from whence most of the behavioral guidelines are derived.

[Ming]

He gets it.

Anyway, I get it. I understand why Wikipedia functions in this rather punitive way. To be sure (ha!), I'm not at all sure what should be done about me. I'm in a weird position that any contribution that is attributed to me without an unblock is considered bad regardless of merits. I sorta get why. Since Wikipedia has no content standards, it can only enforce behavioral standards and that's the only way that things can be clear-cut. I was blocked a half a decade ago for violating a topic ban by correcting spelling errors at cold fusion. The claim was that these spelling corrections were WP:POINTy. I guess that makes sense if you follow the model that Wikipedia can only function on the basis of the rules that are set-up around social networking. That's, indeed, from whence most of the behavioral guidelines are derived.

No, it just means that he cannot for whatever reason regulate his own behavior, so he's at a disadvantage where there is any expectation of civility. And really those expectations are pretty low, as demonstrated by the fact that Andythegrump (T-C-L) hasn't been blocked. Of course it's unfair that someone like BWilkins can get away with it, but hat's another problem.

[Cla68]

I didn't know that SA was still blocked. I thought he had been unblocked a long time ago. By the way, what was it that SA did to GregJackP? Didn't he take some real-world actions against him off-wiki?

[EricBarbour]

I didn't know that SA was still blocked. I thought he had been unblocked a long time ago. By the way, what was it that SA did to GregJackP? Didn't he take some real-world actions against him off-wiki?

You really don't want to know the "whole story". It could fill a 400-page book easily. Ask SA yourself, he'll probably give the most coherent
account of what happened, despite being neck-deep in all of it. And guilty of more than a few bad things himself. (He's user "iii" on here.)

[Cla68]

I didn't know that SA was still blocked. I thought he had been unblocked a long time ago. By the way, what was it that SA did to GregJackP? Didn't he take some real-world actions against him off-wiki?

You really don't want to know the "whole story". It could fill a 400-page book easily. Ask SA yourself, he'll probably give the most coherent
account of what happened, despite being neck-deep in all of it. And guilty of more than a few bad things himself. (He's user "iii" on here.)

I think it happened during the global warming show down about three years ago. I don't remember much, just the impression that it was really nasty and that the parties involved were fortunate that they didn't end up in a courtroom, either civil or criminal.

Anyway, it looks like he will be unblocked this time now that more people have noticed and are participating in that vote.

[Abd]

Anyway, it looks like he will be unblocked this time now that more people have noticed and are participating in that vote.

Indeed. He had been indefinitely blocked pursuant to an arbitration enforcement. He socked up into about July 2012, though no socks were identified after that, so he might have stopped. I saw, in the discussion, all his old friends show up to support unblock. The way it was engineered left him with no editing restrictions at all. It was quite contrary to the arbitration enforcement administrator's explicit interpretation, but ... that administrator had no cojones. He saw all the support for unblock and just gave up.

I wrote a report on this at http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/newv ... topics/648.

It's quite clear from the discussion that there is a sizeable faction of administrators who use people like Joshua P. Schroeder (ScienceApologist) and Hipocrite to do their dirty work. They don't revert war and run massively uncivil campaigns themselves, but they protect those who do.

Bishonen wrote that it would be silly to unblock the fellow, because he's such a useful editor, and then have him restricted so he can't do the good work. Bishonen's opinion -- remarkable for what it admits -- may have been telling.

Basically, this faction just pulled off a complete end run around Arbitration Committee sanctions. The Arbitration Committee had rejected his appeals.

You may have noticed, I essentially gave up on Wikipedia. I am, however, back on Wikversity. I have some educational resources to work on. I've been busy with cold fusion, with the real scientists, just went to ICCF-18 at the University of Missouri in July, I'll be at MIT next year, and at ICCF-19 in Venice in 2015. I'm having so much fun I can hardly stand it. The Sidney Kimmel Institute for a Nuclear Renaissance -- that's a cold fusion lab -- at U Missouri is well-equipped, and I saw Cerenkov radiation for the first time. I'd never visited a reactor before. It's beautiful, that blue glow.

I was also at a small international conference at SRI International last Thanksgiving. I'm being effective[/] with my writing, and it doesn't all slide back down the mountain, as whatever I did on Wikipedia tended to do.

Every time I look at Wikipedia, I get crazy for a few hours. Maybe that's a sign?

On the other hand, I've been paid to consult for a person with a bio on Wikipedia. No violation of policy involved. Easy money, using what I know, in fact. And effective.

[Zoloft]

Good to see you back, Abd. If you would like to give me an opinion on Polywell fusion, PM me.

[EricBarbour]

I am, however, back on Wikiversity.

And you are welcome to it.
As I pointed out recently, it's almost dead anyway.

[Abd]

Imagine what it will be like at a university if only general purpose teachers were allowed to manage course content and special-purpose teachers would be banned because they express points of view.

Traffic on WV seems to be higher than it was two years ago. Lots of resources are dormant, that's true. But WV is a place where a user can create deep resources without harassment. Where discussion and debate can build content instead of deleting it. Subpages can be, effectively, "owned."