Wikipediocracy

My apologies if I'm creating a duplicate thread on this topic. I searched and couldn't find a similar thread. I thought this question from Casliber was a good thread suggestion about people who appeared to be doing their best to create a neutral encyclopedia on Wikipedia, not trying to use it to advocate for a pet cause, but who have left or otherwise disengaged. I will start off with two examples, one probably unknown to most people here, and one who should be known to most:

Bellhalla- His contributions are listed at the top of his user page. This is the kind of editor that the WMF should be willing to pay big money to keep. He studiously completed comprehensive and well-written articles on somewhat obscure military ships, plus he apparently did a lot of wiki-gnoming. He effectively stopped editing in 2009 without explanation.

Giano- Giano is a well-known foil of WP's administrative excesses and inconsistencies. But, when he started off with WP he toiled away writing long, FA-quality articles about a topic he apparently enjoys- the architecture of grand houses and the like. He generated a prolific amount of quality content on this topic until he became distracted by run-ins people were having with other editors and WP's administration's incompetent or arbitrary responses to dealing with the conflicts. I believe that if WP's administration had been doing a competent job, he would have been content to keep working away and he now likely would have double or triple the number of FAs on his topic of interest. Like me, he still pops into WP from time to time to say something, but he otherwise appears to have washed his hands of expecting that WP is ever going to amount to anything like it first appeared to promise to do.

"Neutral"? That leaves Malleus out, I presume?

It is really beyond the scope of WO, or anyone else, to discuss good content writers who quit. Because there were so many thousands of them. I could bring up the 600-plus administrators who did little other than write content who have left since 2010, and we'd still end up with the longest WO thread of all time. It is probably beyond reasonable study due to the sheer size of the population and the complexity of the database.

Plus, some of those "neutral contributors" I've looked at sometimes turned out to have performed COI editing secretly. Consider Ronhjones (T-C-L) or Laser brain (T-C-L) as examples. Finding them is a bigger job than one might expect.

I think this is a potentially fruitful topic, myself.

There is clearly a major negative trend going on here. Figuring out what is going on and why would seem important.

RfB

I know the complete list would be in the tens of thousands. It seems like many, if not most, of the editors who stick around have an agenda. If anyone would like to post an example of a particularly productive editor, like Bellhalla, who has left and not returned, please use this thread to do so.

EricBarbour wrote:"Neutral"? That leaves Malleus out, I presume?

It is really beyond the scope of WO, or anyone else, to discuss good content writers who quit. Because there were so many thousands of them. I could bring up the 600-plus administrators who did little other than write content who have left since 2010, and we'd still end up with the longest WO thread of all time. It is probably beyond reasonable study due to the sheer size of the population and the complexity of the database.

Plus, some of those "neutral contributors" I've looked at sometimes turned out to have performed COI editing secretly. Consider Ronhjones (T-C-L) or Laser brain (T-C-L) as examples. Finding them is a bigger job than one might expect.

A search of user pages and user talk pages for "thanks for all the fish", a term used by Laser brain on his userpage, returns 488 results. The couple of examples I clicked were content contributors who had retired:
Donlock (T-C-L):

This editor has decided to leave Wikipedia.

LinaMishima (T-C-L)/s]

This user will not return to active article editing until wikipedia stops eating itself

[edit: my mistake, only 22% of this user's contributions are to article space]
There are probably better ways to find retired editors, like seeing "what links here" for Template:Retired (T-H-L), but this thread looks like a massive undertaking.
(edited)

OK, Here's a published scientist who wrote tons of great stuff. Never spent much time on the drama boards and left without a peep.
PDH (T-C-L) http://tools.wmflabs.org/supercount/ind ... .wikipedia

I think Cla68 has already suggested the main reason for the decline of sensible content producers (be they article writers, good copy editors or practical and sensible gnomes), that for a long time Wikipedia has got stuck in the mediocre phase and there is no obvious mechanism to trigger a new phase of making it good to excellent.

While Wiki-politics clearly shoulders much of the blame - the toxic atmosphere and the refusal to accept change of whatever form from the perceived Borg-like perfection of the status-quo - the reality is also that the environment simply does not support a next phase. This goes back to the original Nupedia vision where Wikipedia was the raw material for something better and more professional. I do not need to expand on that well-worn topic.

So, Wikipedia is doomed by its mediocrity - the excellent and the good controibutors really aren't motivated to devote significant amounts of time to a result that is almost by definition going to be mediocre. Without a significant Big Idea to reboot the Wikipedia concept it is only ever going to be essentially what we have now, perhaps with some shiny new fonts and a new colour scheme to disguise its moribund state.

Perhaps the WMF should, instead of fiddling with nonsense tools to prettify the processes that already exist, consider what tools might inspire an enthusiasm for inspiring a new generation of article polishers. That is going to need inspiration and a good dollop of luck, WMF may have luck, but they are rarely inspired.

EricBarbour wrote:"Neutral"? That leaves Malleus out, I presume?

It is really beyond the scope of WO, or anyone else, to discuss good content writers who quit. Because there were so many thousands of them. I could bring up the 600-plus administrators who did little other than write content who have left since 2010, and we'd still end up with the longest WO thread of all time. It is probably beyond reasonable study due to the sheer size of the population and the complexity of the database.

Plus, some of those "neutral contributors" I've looked at sometimes turned out to have performed COI editing secretly. Consider Ronhjones (T-C-L) or Laser brain (T-C-L) as examples. Finding them is a bigger job than one might expect.

? - please provide examples of this

dogbiscuit wrote:I think Cla68 has already suggested the main reason for the decline of sensible content producers (be they article writers, good copy editors or practical and sensible gnomes), that for a long time Wikipedia has got stuck in the mediocre phase and there is no obvious mechanism to trigger a new phase of making it good to excellent.

While Wiki-politics clearly shoulders much of the blame - the toxic atmosphere and the refusal to accept change of whatever form from the perceived Borg-like perfection of the status-quo - the reality is also that the environment simply does not support a next phase. This goes back to the original Nupedia vision where Wikipedia was the raw material for something better and more professional. I do not need to expand on that well-worn topic.

So, Wikipedia is doomed by its mediocrity - the excellent and the good controibutors really aren't motivated to devote significant amounts of time to a result that is almost by definition going to be mediocre. Without a significant Big Idea to reboot the Wikipedia concept it is only ever going to be essentially what we have now, perhaps with some shiny new fonts and a new colour scheme to disguise its moribund state.

Perhaps the WMF should, instead of fiddling with nonsense tools to prettify the processes that already exist, consider what tools might inspire an enthusiasm for inspiring a new generation of article polishers. That is going to need inspiration and a good dollop of luck, WMF may have luck, but they are rarely inspired.

This is the key. However...

WMF engineering can't even code the pretty ones properly...
Do you really think the WMF has the brain power with the current crop to tackle something tricky?

Community liaisons routinely shit on the customers.
Is anyone in the community likely to help them?

Human Resources constantly hire whoever the has the most logged IRC hours.
Can they even find the people who might be able to ask these questions?

With the current employee mix, my money is on, "No."

I agree with pretty much everything Vigilant says above.
- The WMF is basically inept at all but the simplest tasks.
- Its not just the community liaisons but they set the tone. When people see them do it, they think its ok for them to do it as well.
- The whole editing environment has become toxic and no software in the world is going to fix that.
- Until something is done about the editing environment and abusive admins and arbs, nothing on the site is going to change

Cla68 wrote:I know the complete list would be in the tens of thousands. It seems like many, if not most, of the editors who stick around have an agenda. If anyone would like to post an example of a particularly productive editor, like Bellhalla, who has left and not returned, please use this thread to do so.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Xavexgoem (T-C-L) yet. There was a thread about him here. He was a member of the mediation committee, and seems to have been a valuable editor in most respects.

Anyway, here are two retired editors I'm familiar with weren't particularly well-known, but who I think were significant losses.

VsevolodKrolikov (T-C-L): Edited articles about science, politics, and philosophy. I became familiar with him because he was one of only a handful of editors who reverted vandalism on articles related to human intelligence without trying to push a point of view on them. (If he had a POV on that topic, I couldn't tell what it was.) He retired his account in April 2012, without giving a reason.

Varoon Arya (T-C-L): Edited mostly articles about archaeology and Hinduism, but also was the only person who maintained the article Race and crime in the United States (T-H-L). As I mentioned here, after Varoon Arya retired, IP addresses were able to blank upwards of ten kilobytes of sourced content on this article without anyone paying attention. This is the best example I'm aware of demonstrating the cause-and-effect relationship between editors retiring, and the articles they maintained falling apart.

Unlike VsevolodKrolikov, I do know the reason for Varoon Arya's retirement, since he explained it in his comments here and here. Neither of the editors who caused him to quit are active anymore--one is banned, the other has made no edits since last July--so I've wondered on and off whether Varoon Arya could be convinced to eventually become active again. You (Cla68) and I discussed this via PM a while ago, if you remember that.

Captain Occam wrote:

Cla68 wrote:I know the complete list would be in the tens of thousands. It seems like many, if not most, of the editors who stick around have an agenda. If anyone would like to post an example of a particularly productive editor, like Bellhalla, who has left and not returned, please use this thread to do so.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Xavexgoem (T-C-L) yet. There was a thread about him here. He was a member of the mediation committee, and seems to have been a valuable editor in most respects.

Anyway, here are two retired editors I'm familiar with weren't particularly well-known, but who I think were significant losses.

VsevolodKrolikov (T-C-L): Edited articles about science, politics, and philosophy. I became familiar with him because he was one of only a handful of editors who reverted vandalism on articles related to human intelligence without trying to push a point of view on them. (If he had a POV on that topic, I couldn't tell what it was.) He retired his account in April 2012, without giving a reason.

Varoon Arya (T-C-L): Edited mostly archaeology articles, but also was the only person who maintained the article Race and crime in the United States (T-H-L). As I mentioned here, after Varoon Arya retired, IP addresses were able to blank upwards of ten kilobytes of sourced content on this article without anyone paying attention. This is the best example I'm aware of demonstrating the cause-and-effect relationship between editors retiring, and the articles they maintained falling apart.

Unlike VsevolodKrolikov, I do know the reason for Varoon Arya's retirement, since he explained it in his comments here and here. Neither of the editors who caused him to quit are active anymore--one is banned, the other has made no edits since last July--so I've wondered on and off whether Varoon Arya could be convinced to eventually become active again. You (Cla68) and I discussed this via PM a while ago, if you remember that.

I always thought Elen of the Roads (T-C-L) was fair as well Dabomb87 (T-C-L) both of which walked away last year and were desysopped this year for inactivity.

This was a good idea for a thread. I'm disappointed it isn't getting more attention.

In my opinion, the most destructive long-term effect of Wikipedia losing editors is the way this causes Wikipedia's influence to become concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people. No matter how many editors quit Wikipedia, that doesn't seem to reduce its Google ranking, or the amount that the general public relies on it as a source of information. The fewer people are in control of that information, the more power each one of those people has.

If Wikipedia continues losing editors at its current rate, I predict that in another ten years, complex and controversial topics like Israel/Palestine will be under the influence of just three or four people. It'll be like what Peter and Valentine do in Ender's Game (the book, not the movie) where a pair of people writing under pseudonyms on the internet are in control of public opinion.

StAnselm (T-C-L) (104,000 edits, 85% in article-space) appears to have been run out of town on a rail for the crime of being a conservative Christian without powerful wiki-friends. ~~~~

greyed.out.fields wrote:the crime of being a conservative Christian without powerful wiki-friends. [removed four tildes]

Is that what's passing for "neutral editors who have left the project" these days?

More to the point, the idea that there is such a thing as a "neutral editor" is one of those canards I think is indicative of the idiocy inherent in Wikipedia work (the really stupid Wikipedia term "POV editor" is even more nonsensical). A "neutral editor" would be one that never took a side in any conflict. One need only look at the way Switzerland cynically exploited neutrality to see that this isn't necessarily an ethical position. I've also never ever seen any user act in such a fashion. Almost every user take sides in some conflicts.

Yeah, the more one thinks about it, the more one wonders if there are indeed any editors that iii, Cla68, me and Eric Barbour would all consider neutral...

the mind boggles....

Casliber wrote:Yeah, the more one thinks about it, the more one wonders if there are indeed any editors that iii, Cla68, me and Eric Barbour would all consider neutral...

the mind boggles....

...and would anyone consider that group as sufficiently qualified to judge?

dogbiscuit wrote:

Casliber wrote:Yeah, the more one thinks about it, the more one wonders if there are indeed any editors that iii, Cla68, me and Eric Barbour would all consider neutral...

the mind boggles....

...and would anyone consider that group as sufficiently qualified to judge?

Indeed, is anyone? What makes for a sufficient qualification when it comes to judging the neutrality of a person changing a database?

dogbiscuit wrote:

Casliber wrote:Yeah, the more one thinks about it, the more one wonders if there are indeed any editors that iii, Cla68, me and Eric Barbour would all consider neutral...

the mind boggles....

...and would anyone consider that group as sufficiently qualified to judge?

I am of course

I hate almost everything with equal venom.

greyed.out.fields wrote:StAnselm (T-C-L) (104,000 edits, 85% in article-space) appears to have been run out of town on a rail for the crime of being a conservative Christian without powerful wiki-friends. [removed four tildes]

Gregbard (T-C-L) also, last week. There seems to have been a problem with copyvios. Maybe so, but he was one of the few remaining editors who looked after the philosophy articles, and he was reasonably competent, i.e. actually had a degree in the subject. I mean, look at all he did. Then, bang.

No unblock because not prepared for ritual self-abasement.

Are you sure you want that last paragraph there? It's enough for me to remove talkpage access, in part because it shows that you do NOT understand your block whatsoever, and are simply railing on against a policy that a) you agreed to, b) that is not optional, and c) you were well aware of the panda ₯’ 19:56, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gregbard

Ah right DangerousPanda (T-C-L) = Bwilkins. I remember that name. Has he written any articles on academic philosophy?

Casliber wrote:Yeah, the more one thinks about it, the more one wonders if there are indeed any editors that iii, Cla68, me and Eric Barbour would all consider neutral...

the mind boggles....

I took the thread title to mean, "editors who aren't obviously pushing an agenda." There are a lot of editors whose POV-pushing is so obvious that when they retire their accounts, most people at this forum would be glad to lose them. But I assume this thread is meant to be about editors whose retirement was an actual loss for the project.

Casliber wrote:Yeah, the more one thinks about it, the more one wonders if there are indeed any editors that iii, Cla68, me and Eric Barbour would all consider neutral...

the mind boggles....

Captain Occam wrote:I took the thread title to mean, "editors who aren't obviously pushing an agenda."

There are easy arguments that can be made to the the effect that essentially every single editor of Wikipedia (including Cla68, you, and me) are users who are "obviously pushing an agenda".

Peter Damian wrote:

greyed.out.fields wrote:StAnselm (T-C-L) (104,000 edits, 85% in article-space) appears to have been run out of town on a rail for the crime of being a conservative Christian without powerful wiki-friends. [removed four tildes]

Gregbard (T-C-L) also, last week. There seems to have been a problem with copyvios. Maybe so, but he was one of the few remaining editors who looked after the philosophy articles, and he was reasonably competent, i.e. actually had a degree in the subject. I mean, look at all he did. Then, bang.

No unblock because not prepared for ritual self-abasement.

Are you sure you want that last paragraph there? It's enough for me to remove talkpage access, in part because it shows that you do NOT understand your block whatsoever, and are simply railing on against a policy that a) you agreed to, b) that is not optional, and c) you were well aware of the panda ₯’ 19:56, 16 June 2014 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Gregbard

Ah right DangerousPanda (T-C-L) = Bwilkins. I remember that name. Has he written any articles on academic philosophy?

Not to mention EatsShootsAndLeaves=Bwilkins and god knows how many more SOCKS!

Casliber wrote:Yeah, the more one thinks about it, the more one wonders if there are indeed any editors that iii, Cla68, me and Eric Barbour would all consider neutral...

the mind boggles....

The two that I mentioned to start this thread, Belhalla and Giano, I consider to be neutral editors. In fact, I think I was fairly clear about that in my post. The others mentioned here in later posts also appear to meet that definition. These are the kinds of editors that Wikipedia needs, but they don't seem to want to stick around once they realize just how hopelessly dysfunctional WP's administration is.

The Greg Bard block is the result of a Copyright Copyright Investigation (CCI) case, which is rather akin to being audited by the IRS, if the IRS were massively understaffed and if an audit by the IRS meant that a proctologist would probe every single thing you ever did from infancy to the current moment.

This is the same thing that got Richard Norton into trouble and which largely eliminated him as an effective content writer.

The older and more prolific the editor, the bigger the clusterfuck the CCI process is — their system does not scale.

The case is here: link

The block was by Moonriddengirl (T-C-L), who is absolutely one of the best people at CCI and a very reasonable person.

This has Norton Case written all over it.

Of course, the intervention of the mean-spirited BWilkins is an exercise in bullying.

I'll investigate further...

tim

I have invited Greg Bard to fill us in on the specifics of his case here.

Please expedite his access, if he chooses to do that.


tim




Addenda:

Here's a BWilkins gem:

Wikipedia's most sociopathic administrator wrote: The "suggestion" an accusation is that you were not dealt with politely and civilly - which is patently false, and thus a personal attack. Hence, rethink that paragraph - those who make personal attacks against others - including the blocking admin - get the pleasure of having their talkpage access revoked. Your choice here: refactor, or I'll remove it for you ... and if I have to remove it, I'll remove talkpage access as well. —The Panda/DP 1:32 pm, 16 June 2014, last Monday (2 days ago) (UTC−7)

link

Absolutely unadulterated abusive assholery...

RfB

Is anyone interested in inviting any of the other people we've discussed in this thread, so they could offer more insight into their reasons for leaving? When Xavexgoem retired a few months ago, people here were speculating about what caused it, but nobody ever figured it out for certain. (His comment "I actually hate it here" explains how he felt, but it doesn't explain what he experienced to make him decide that.)

If anyone can get Varoon Arya to join this forum, I'd consider that one of the most valuable things anyone could do for me here. He's the closest thing I had to a mentor in my early days at Wikipedia, but I haven't been able to find a way to contact him ever since he retired his account almost four years ago.

Captain Occam wrote:Is anyone interested in inviting any of the other people we've discussed in this thread, so they could offer more insight into their reasons for leaving? When Xavexgoem retired a few months ago, people here were speculating about what caused it, but nobody ever figured it out for certain. (His comment "I actually hate it here" explains how he felt, but it doesn't explain what he experienced to make him decide that.)

If anyone can get Varoon Arya to join this forum, I'd consider that one of the most valuable things anyone could do for me here. He's the closest thing I had to a mentor in my early days at Wikipedia, but I haven't been able to find a way to contact him ever since he retired his account almost four years ago.

Anyone, member or not is welcome to invite any Wikipedia or Wikimedia figure to participate. There are only a handful of people who obviously are not suited to be here (or our site is not suitable for them) and their identity is surely obvious by now.

Randy from Boise wrote:

Wikipedia's most sociopathic administrator wrote: The "suggestion" an accusation is that you were not dealt with politely and civilly - which is patently false, and thus a personal attack. Hence, rethink that paragraph - those who make personal attacks against others - including the blocking admin - get the pleasure of having their talkpage access revoked. Your choice here: refactor, or I'll remove it for you ... and if I have to remove it, I'll remove talkpage access as well. —The Panda/DP 1:32 pm, 16 June 2014, last Monday (2 days ago) (UTC−7)

link

Absolutely unadulterated abusive assholery...

RfB

A future WO member in the making.

Zoloft wrote:

Captain Occam wrote:Is anyone interested in inviting any of the other people we've discussed in this thread, so they could offer more insight into their reasons for leaving? When Xavexgoem retired a few months ago, people here were speculating about what caused it, but nobody ever figured it out for certain. (His comment "I actually hate it here" explains how he felt, but it doesn't explain what he experienced to make him decide that.)

If anyone can get Varoon Arya to join this forum, I'd consider that one of the most valuable things anyone could do for me here. He's the closest thing I had to a mentor in my early days at Wikipedia, but I haven't been able to find a way to contact him ever since he retired his account almost four years ago.

Anyone, member or not is welcome to invite any Wikipedia or Wikimedia figure to participate. There are only a handful of people who obviously are not suited to be here (or our site is not suitable for them) and their identity is surely obvious by now.

I know, but since I'm blocked at Wikipedia, inviting anyone myself would have to involve socking, which I'd rather avoid. That's why I'm mentioning it here and asking if anyone else is interested.

Randy from Boise wrote: The block was by Moonriddengirl (T-C-L), who is absolutely one of the best people at CCI and a very reasonable person.

Moonriddengirl is a wmf employee, but since she didn't use her Mdennis (WMF) (T-C-L) account to block him, it means he wasn't blocked by a wmf employee.

Peter Damian wrote:

greyed.out.fields wrote:StAnselm (T-C-L) (104,000 edits, 85% in article-space) appears to have been run out of town on a rail for the crime of being a conservative Christian without powerful wiki-friends. [removed four tildes]

Gregbard (T-C-L) also, last week. There seems to have been a problem with copyvios. Maybe so, ...

Here Here are some details of the investigation into Mr Bard's alleged copyright infringements. My impression after a fairly superficial reading is that his block was probably justified.

Here Here are some details of the investigation into Mr Bard's alleged copyright infringements. My impression after a fairly superficial reading is that his block was probably justified.

It looks exactly like the Qworty cleanup page.....are they implying that Gregbard is as evil as Qworty? Or is it just because he was rude to administrators?

Cla68 wrote:The two that I mentioned to start this thread, Belhalla and Giano, I consider to be neutral editors. In fact, I think I was fairly clear about that in my post. The others mentioned here in later posts also appear to meet that definition.

Sorry, what was that definition again? I must have missed where you explained it.

I can't say all of my personal interactions with Gregbard were steller, I seem to recall a few run ins over the years and thinking at the time they were being a dick. Aside from that, this is another example of a very long term editor with a long record of article development being run out of Wikipedia.

Randy from Boise wrote: Here's a BWilkins gem:

Wikipedia's most sociopathic administrator wrote: The "suggestion" an accusation is that you were not dealt with politely and civilly - which is patently false, and thus a personal attack. Hence, rethink that paragraph - those who make personal attacks against others - including the blocking admin - get the pleasure of having their talkpage access revoked. Your choice here: refactor, or I'll remove it for you ... and if I have to remove it, I'll remove talkpage access as well. —The Panda/DP 1:32 pm, 16 June 2014, last Monday (2 days ago) (UTC−7)

link

Absolutely unadulterated abusive assholery...

Yeah that is atrocious. Panda (and of course this is $#&%ing Bwilkins) says that a blocked user complaining that he or she hasn't been handled civilly or politely is a "personal attack" against the administrator, and of course all administrators are beyond even the slightest reproach by common users, and worthy of talkpage blocking.

Triptych wrote:

Randy from Boise wrote: Here's a BWilkins gem:

Wikipedia's most sociopathic administrator wrote: The "suggestion" an accusation is that you were not dealt with politely and civilly - which is patently false, and thus a personal attack. Hence, rethink that paragraph - those who make personal attacks against others - including the blocking admin - get the pleasure of having their talkpage access revoked. Your choice here: refactor, or I'll remove it for you ... and if I have to remove it, I'll remove talkpage access as well. —The Panda/DP 1:32 pm, 16 June 2014, last Monday (2 days ago) (UTC−7)

link

Absolutely unadulterated abusive assholery...

Yeah that is atrocious. Panda (and of course this is $#&%ing Bwilkins) says that a blocked user complaining that he or she hasn't been handled civilly or politely is a "personal attack" against the administrator, and of course all administrators are beyond even the slightest reproach by common users, and worthy of talkpage blocking.

I pity any children Wilkins has control over.

Triptych wrote:

Randy from Boise wrote: Here's a BWilkins gem:

Wikipedia's most sociopathic administrator wrote: The "suggestion" an accusation is that you were not dealt with politely and civilly - which is patently false, and thus a personal attack. Hence, rethink that paragraph - those who make personal attacks against others - including the blocking admin - get the pleasure of having their talkpage access revoked. Your choice here: refactor, or I'll remove it for you ... and if I have to remove it, I'll remove talkpage access as well. —The Panda/DP 1:32 pm, 16 June 2014, last Monday (2 days ago) (UTC−7)

link

Absolutely unadulterated abusive assholery...

Yeah that is atrocious. Panda (and of course this is $#&%ing Bwilkins) says that a blocked user complaining that he or she hasn't been handled civilly or politely is a "personal attack" against the administrator, and of course all administrators are beyond even the slightest reproach by common users, and worthy of talkpage blocking.

I'll vouch for every word of that.

tarantino wrote:

Randy from Boise wrote: The block was by Moonriddengirl (T-C-L), who is absolutely one of the best people at CCI and a very reasonable person.

Moonriddengirl is a wmf employee, but since she didn't use her Mdennis (WMF) (T-C-L) account to block him, it means he wasn't blocked by a wmf employee.

Choked laughing and had to be resuscitated.

I think Moonriddengirl is great as a volunteer in the realm of copyright on WP. No opinion of her as an employee of The Machine.

RfB

Randy from Boise wrote:I think this is a potentially fruitful topic, myself.
RfB

Homophobe!

Randy from Boise wrote:I think Moonriddengirl is great as a volunteer in the realm of copyright on WP. No opinion of her as an employee of The Machine.
RfB

Since being employed by the WMF, Moonriddengirl still cleans up copyright problems but claims that they are not copyright-violations, likely to reduce evidence of Wikipedia's liabilities.

Hi All,

This is my first post to Wikipediocracy so please correct [but don't punish] me if I am posting this out of sequence. I was blocked shortly before User:Gregbard for the same issue, WP:copyvio, even though I had posted WP:consent for articles in question as well as WP:Consent for images of notable academicians; also, one of myself for teahouse. The controversy arouse when I experienced a template bombardment from an user that I did not know while I was posting an article called Super-team, I clicked vandalism since I had no idea why the attacker choose to hurtled rapid fire, inappropriate templates at me while creating the article. Efforts to provide correction were met with cursing, liable, slander, and character assassination from people claiming to be admin . . . I have no way to verify that they were admin but the block is in effect so I assume at least one of them had some authority. More later . . .

I later found malware on my system that would allow a cyber criminal to control my system . . . and my Wikipedia identity . . . I believe User:Gregbard and I were set-up by a special interest group. The article Philosophy of education, which is where User: Gregbard and I overlap, was trashed and a template blaming me for WP:Copyvio applied even though the only two edits cited were not my edits and involved minor grammatical errors not WP:Copyvio. The administrator applying the template seems to have conflated the terms censorship with copyright and correction with punishment. Several of those involved were ESL members who did not seem to understand that copyright is not censorship and that correction is not punishment which does not allow for a productive educational environment.

This makes it impossible for me to endorse Wikipedia for use by children or anyone not trained in the defensive arts. Wikipedia has become a dangerous place. I hope that the issues can be resolved because I applaud the mission statement and hope that the 5th pillar will be enforced, not the atmosphere of censorship and punishment which now prevails.

STlombardi wrote:Hi All,

This is my first post to Wikipediocracy so please correct [but don't punish] me if I am posting this out of sequence. I was blocked shortly before User:Gregbard for the same issue, WP:copyvio, even though I had posted WP:consent for articles in question as well as WP:Consent for images of notable academicians; also, one of myself for teahouse. The controversy arouse when I experienced a template bombardment from an user that I did not know while I was posting an article called Super-team, I clicked vandalism since I had no idea why the attacker choose to hurtled rapid fire, inappropriate templates at me while creating the article. Efforts to provide correction were met with cursing, liable, slander, and character assassination from people claiming to be admin . . . I have no way to verify that they were admin but the block is in effect so I assume at least one of them had some authority. More later . . .

I later found malware on my system that would allow a cyber criminal to control my system . . . and my Wikipedia identity . . . I believe User:Gregbard and I were set-up by a special interest group. The article Philosophy of education, which is where User: Gregbard and I overlap, was trashed and a template blaming me for WP:Copyvio applied even though the only two edits cited were not my edits and involved minor grammatical errors not WP:Copyvio. The administrator applying the template seems to have conflated the terms censorship with copyright and correction with punishment. Several of those involved were ESL members who did not seem to understand that copyright is not censorship and that correction is not punishment which does not allow for a productive educational environment.

This makes it impossible for me to endorse Wikipedia for use by children or anyone not trained in the defensive arts. Wikipedia has become a dangerous place. I hope that the issues can be resolved because I applaud the mission statement and hope that the 5th pillar will be enforced, not the atmosphere of censorship and punishment which now prevails.

Hello and welcome to Wikipediocracy!

Can you provide a link to the article in question? And what was your Wikipedia "User Name"?

Once these things are known it will be possible to examine the edit history of the article to see exactly what happened.


tim

STlombardi wrote:Hi All,

This is my first post to Wikipediocracy so please correct [but don't punish] me if I am posting this out of sequence. I was blocked shortly before User:Gregbard for the same issue, WP:copyvio, even though I had posted WP:consent for articles in question as well as WP:Consent for images of notable academicians; also, one of myself for teahouse. The controversy arouse when I experienced a template bombardment from an user that I did not know while I was posting an article called Super-team, I clicked vandalism since I had no idea why the attacker choose to hurtled rapid fire, inappropriate templates at me while creating the article. Efforts to provide correction were met with cursing, liable, slander, and character assassination from people claiming to be admin . . . I have no way to verify that they were admin but the block is in effect so I assume at least one of them had some authority. More later . . .

I later found malware on my system that would allow a cyber criminal to control my system . . . and my Wikipedia identity . . . I believe User:Gregbard and I were set-up by a special interest group. The article Philosophy of education, which is where User: Gregbard and I overlap, was trashed and a template blaming me for WP:Copyvio applied even though the only two edits cited were not my edits and involved minor grammatical errors not WP:Copyvio. The administrator applying the template seems to have conflated the terms censorship with copyright and correction with punishment. Several of those involved were ESL members who did not seem to understand that copyright is not censorship and that correction is not punishment which does not allow for a productive educational environment.

This makes it impossible for me to endorse Wikipedia for use by children or anyone not trained in the defensive arts. Wikipedia has become a dangerous place. I hope that the issues can be resolved because I applaud the mission statement and hope that the 5th pillar will be enforced, not the atmosphere of censorship and punishment which now prevails.

ANI thread

I have the Malcolm Knowles photo with permissions still in my files if anyone would like to reload that image to Wikimedia. I think Dr. Hase is done with Wikipedia so I would not suggest trying to reload his image since he provided permission 3 times only to have User: Diannaa delete the image.

The articles that were trashed: Behaviorism (Philosophy of education), Cognitivism (Philosophy of education), Humanism (Philosophy of education), Constructivism (Philosophy of education), Philosophy of Education, Learning Theory, Malcolm Knowles, Androgogy, Stewart Hase, Heutagogy, and Social reconstructionism. Again, WP:Consent was ignored for the articles . . . just a haphazard admin rampage that destroyed the work of multiple editors with no WP:Copyvio . . . just plain admin bullying . . .

Okay, from what I gather from the English-Wikipedia article Malcolm Knowles (T-H-L)

...you appear to be the editor Stmullin (T-C-L)

I think "trashed" is a bit of hyperbole in this case, it appears that JurgenNL at Wikimedia Commons deleted an image File:Malcolm Knowles.jpg on Commons for not having what they deem a satisfactory copyright release since upload on March 26, 2014.

This deletion of the image file was then executed on the article at English-Wikipedia automatically by a "bot."


This is the only one I've looked at so far but I will say this: YES, photo uploads at Wikipedia are confusing, the copyright rules they use are unnecessarily restrictive, Commons in particular is dominated by "Free Use" ideological extremists that enforce narrow interpretations of the law rigorously.

You MUST do their stupid paperwork by the book or else the files will be removed.

Here is the link to the photographic consent form: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CONSENT

I advise you, if you choose to upload something again, to have this form handy. Your upload will be flagged for deletion immediately or eventually and then you have 7 days to get the form submitted before the deletion kings get ahold of it and make it go away.

I've myself run afoul of jerks pushing these crap policies twice this year: once on a 1927 youth camp photo passed on to me by the daughter and literary heir of the deceased photographer, once on a photo by my cousin of her parents, one an Oregon State Senator. Both uploaded with permission of the rights holder, and this noted, of course.

So much time had lapsed between the time that the photo was uploaded and the flag for deletion that it was more work to backtrack for their stupid permission requirements than the photos were worth. Call me lazy, but I don't want to screw around redoing work from three months previous.

Anyway, yes, Wikipedia's photo rights people are some of the most officious and annoying. Sorry for that, but that's the way it is.

I don't see any sign whatsoever that the article in question was "trashed" for copyvio, however.


RfB

The articles and photos were either reverted or deleted even though appropriate forms were completed and WP: Consent provided. I completed the forms numerous times for several images, including one of myself for teahouse . . . yet that too was deleted.

The discussion here is Why Neutral editors have left the project and the evidence I've provided should give a clue as to why people would leave. I'm not asking for an investigation . . . only offering information about how relationships get destroyed.