Lynch Mob

[BrillLyle]

Bad times over on the projects.

I wrote this in response to Michael Mandiberg's grant -- a grant that by the way piggybacks on a ton of hard work and an initiative that GerardM and I were successfully working on. His grant will pretty much destroy that work.

My comments were deleted. Censorship by the WMF. I am apparently violating friendly space by being critical of their darling.

from: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants: ... dorsements
Do Not Support. This is another effort by Art+Feminism to co-opt current ongoing work to integrate Wikidata into Wikipedia outreach, twisting the current work into something that services the A+F initiative. Striking is the lack of actual work that A+F would do. The idea is that doing integration between Wikidata and Wikipedia takes actual hard work and curation. That is not something A+F has a proven track record of (a) doing (b) having interest in. So why throw more money at this initiative that is not really about Wikipedia, but is in service of the founders of A+F? It's a terrible idea. There is no clear benefit to Wikipedia. This is not a tool to establish notability in any way. Terrible idea and poor execution. Also, insanely expensive with no oversight. No. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 21:56, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Beyond the fact that this proposal piggybacks upon the work that GerardM and I have been doing with current outreach for a while now (which includes sustained muscular and most importantly curated effort), which there is no mention of here, this project could negatively impact and inadvertently silo the current outreach I'm involved in, and that is unacceptable. And Michael, before you whinge and moan and say that I have a personal vendetta against you and A+F, there's no need. You've already slandered me elsewhere. I have never publicly done the same to you, not with the specific details. I have just taken the abuse. I have also tried to move on. But this proposal is taking the work I have been involved in and using it for your own nefarious purposes (i.e., not doing the actual hard work and looking for an "easy" automated solution). It is another reflection of the ethics you have no problem bending and using for your own self-serving purposes. It stinks from the head. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 22:11, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

and more here:
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata: ... focus_list

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata: ... st_(P5008)

Mandiberg went to ANI against me. It's a personal attack. It's harassment. It's a lynch mob.

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata: ... Harassment

I guess all that is okay.

- Erika aka ~~~~

[Anroth]

Had you just stuck with your first comment. You probably would have gotten away with it. Your second comment was entirely attacking Mandiberg. What did you expect? A pat on the back? You dont have the right to free speech, so when you personally have a go at someone in a venue that has a 'friendly space' policy, expect them to enforce it.

I suggest you take a holiday and learn how to criticise something without attacking the person.

Although you get a bonus point for 'nefarious purposes' - even if it does make you sound like a paranoid loon.

[The Garbage Scow]

Mandiberg is a supreme politician, excellent at gaslighting. I've occasionally suspected Jooojay (T-C-L) is a sockpuppet of his.

[BrillLyle]

Had you just stuck with your first comment. You probably would have gotten away with it. Your second comment was entirely attacking Mandiberg. What did you expect? A pat on the back? You dont have the right to free speech, so when you personally have a go at someone in a venue that has a 'friendly space' policy, expect them to enforce it.

I suggest you take a holiday and learn how to criticise something without attacking the person.

Although you get a bonus point for 'nefarious purposes' - even if it does make you sound like a paranoid loon.

If you had been subject to the in person and various attacks he and his girlfriend who is part of A+F have made against me, then I don't think what I wrote was an attack. It's actually pretty factual.

Mandiberg was instrumental in my ouster from WM NYC's Board and is directly responsible for my event ban.

And now he's going into outreach work and turning it into an Art+Feminism project. All without understanding what the initial work was about. A ton of work by the way, now potentially unusable with this proposal. At least besmirched.

And since when don't I have the right to free speech?!? Oh wait, it's WMF and Wikipedia. Crazy ass jagoffs like JYTdawg and nasty players like Pigs can do and say what they want. Oh and if you are Asaf and work for WMF yes, be a gaping A. But me, I'm violating friendly space.

I have ethical issues with all of this. What Mandiberg did and does is unethical. He is only serving his own agenda. And it has little to nothing to do with what is good for Wikipedia or Wikipedia editors.

And what he has done to me personally has been devastating. I was focusing more on Wikidata and outreach with one kind entity because I was trying to avoid his brand of "editing." He saw the work I did with Black Lunch Table and now I am essentially out of that -- and he's pushing his own agenda using that work as his framework. It's beyond. As always, the effect is self-serving and it's just pretty much pure evil.

It's also unfair. But yeah, there's no crying in baseball.

[BrillLyle]

Mandiberg is a supreme politician, excellent at gaslighting. I've occasionally suspected Jooojay (T-C-L) is a sockpuppet of his.

Ha. Yes he is. That is pretty much the sum total of his work.

I don't know about the sockpuppetry. That editor is actually contributing to Wikipedia somewhat regularly. Zing! :-)

[BrillLyle]

Since my comments on the issue were deleted:

from: https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?ti ... =660837010

I think this property is pretty much useless. I also don't think anything has been resolved. This is the same initial issue without a satisfactory solution. So creating a new property, which is poorly named and not clear at all, doesn't solve the problem. So why do this. Just use catalog until there's something that addresses the issue better. I still don't think this is (a) a good idea and (b) worth using. And just because everyone has had a discussion and there hasn't been further discussion means that this is the time to push it forward. I think that's a mistake. I don't support this. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 07:32, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Also, the new name is not an improvement. Still problematic. Too long. Too vague. Basically meaningless and unhelpful. I don't mean to be harsh here but really this is not the answer to the problem. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 07:33, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Wait, so you, just one editor, made this executive decision to create this property?!? This is not okay. I'm not going to use it. There was no broad support or consensus here. I find this seriously objectionable. You can't just do this and push whatever agenda you have here like this. I'm not using it on the outreach I'm working on. It's not workable or helpful. -- Erika aka BrillLyle (talk) 07:37, 4 April 2018 (UTC)


https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata: ... st_(P5008) -- BrillLyle (talk) 07:44, 4 April 2018 (UTC)


Also: A heads up that Michael Mandiberg from Art+Feminism is proposing to exploit catalog for his own uses. See https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants: ... dorsements It's pretty clear that his work will be more negatively impactful on Wikidata than any of the outreach initiatives that GerardM and I have assisted with to use this property responsibly. Our work has involved the support of careful curation of entities. This proposal will automate the uncurated addition of items to Wikidata without establishing notability or even doing the base work to create items properly. As someone who worked with GerardM to assist and set up this usage, this manipulation and exploitation and piggy-backing on the responsible outreach that does the hard work is a real slap in the face. I hope that editors invested in this catalog property and whatever eventual replacement property are aware of this A+F project. -- BrillLyle (talk) 08:18, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

[BrillLyle]

And now Multichill is involved. He deleted the catalog property for all of the outreach I was involved with for Black Lunch Table on Wikidata.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... d=17917283

Do Not Support: The hard work that involves establishing notability is just not clearly enough established in this proposal and its workflow. It does not seem central to the project proposed. Major concern that automation would increase glut of entries of early- to mid-career items without sufficient oversight and curation. The success of the Black Lunch Table initiative in creating a task list was in direct correlation to a very specific localized outreach process at various artist communities throughout North America, coming from within that community of Visual artists of the African diaspora. It required a lot of manual labor to curate and assess the task list on a constant basis. Instead, this project would focus on automating the addition of academics working in the areas of feminism I assume? In an automated way? Again notability and a real concern about cruft with slant towards cronyism in the too loose process, having a mass impact of adding entries that have notability issues. I also have concern at the use of the ethnicity identifier in a wide-spread way. Another issue is the singular focus on En Wikipedia. A clear benefit of focusing on curating via Wikidata is the language neutral impact of establishing notability there first as a scaffolding for various language Wikipedia entries. -- BrillLyle (talk) 19:45, 5 April 2018 (UTC)


Since when is it not okay to not endorse a project proposal? I have seen dissenting views in the Endorsement area.

This is ridiculous.

[Kumioko]

Welcome to the hostile workplace of the WMF projects.

[Bezdomni]

Also, the new name is not an improvement. Still problematic. Too long. Too vague. Basically meaningless and unhelpful. I don't mean to be harsh here but really this is not the answer to the problem.

Description catalog
Data type Item
Domain Creative works, celestial objects, probably other things.

The original domain *was* more poetic.

and regarding the proposal, how would Wikidata cross-reference all the google swooner reviews of Omeros in Derek Walcott's entry? (It should, it's a great read.)

If you have a minute to explain something to an outsider, BrillLyle... what was this wikidata game exactly? outreach? wwwrestling?

[BrillLyle]

Also, the new name is not an improvement. Still problematic. Too long. Too vague. Basically meaningless and unhelpful. I don't mean to be harsh here but really this is not the answer to the problem.

Description catalog
Data type Item
Domain Creative works, celestial objects, probably other things.

The original domain *was* more poetic.

and regarding the proposal, how would Wikidata cross-reference all the google swooner reviews of Omeros in Derek Walcott's entry? (It should, it's a great read.)

If you have a minute to explain something to an outsider, BrillLyle... what was this wikidata game exactly? outreach? wwwrestling?

I like the celestial things bit. Hadn't seen that.

Outreach.

The Wikidata work was helping an initiative to automate their task list by tagging the items with catalog = Black Lunch Table, location = event location (i.e. Brooklyn Museum), point in time = date of event, and then making sure that the metadata included location, either based on place of birth, place of death, residence -- so that Black Lunch table could create Listeria tables that pulled by geographic location and/or place and date of event in SPARQL queries that ran off the Wikidata information.

Here's an example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _task_list

and a bit more outside the scope, but having to do with Brooklyn based hip hop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... yn_Hip_Hop

Heather from BLT has done some great work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... nt_Archive

I provided assistance. But have stopped now.

The focus of the other outreach I do was on establishing notability on Wikidata first and using that as complete as possible metadata as scaffolding on which to build articles in hopefully different language Wikipedias. Wikidata is good for being language neutral and extrapolate-able.

- Erika

[BrillLyle]

So....

I am banned from editing Wikidata for 3 days. No consequence for Mandiberg or Pigs.

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata: ... Harassment

Only person who defended me is GerardM.

There is no acknowledgment of the work I have done, the outreach that was so effective. The actions of Mandiberg will destroy that outreach. And I am the one who is being punished.

I do not agree with everything that has been said about BrillLyle’s behavior. I would also like to remind everyone that this is not Meta and while the context can be helpful, we generally cannot sanction anyone based on what happens on another project (neither the attacks nor the “censorship” of comments). Finally, while outreach for underrepresented subjects on Wikimedia can be helpful, it is not an automatic trump card that wins discussions and debates. However, it is clear that there is a battleground approach/mentality with BrillLyle that is not acceptable for a collaborative project. Accordingly, I will block BrillLyle for 3 days. I will also warn User:GerardM that their approach to this situation is not helping matters either. —Rs (A)chen7754 01:47, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

1. The outreach work I was doing was on Wikidata. It just happened to incorporate both Wikidata and Wikipedia. No due diligence or research was done to investigate this inaccurate fact.

2. This is one of a handful of arguments I have heard on Wikidata that "underrepresented subjects" as an initiative is not supported. So what, no women, minorities, diversity of coverage is supported? It is offensive that Wikidatans can publicly state their disregard for diversity and this is supported. It's unacceptable.

3. Battleground approach where I am the only one to face consequences. I was also called spiky. I pointed out that I am a volunteer, that unlike Pigs and Mandiberg I am not on these projects for my career and CV.

4. Neither Pigs nor Mandiberg is collaborative. They are proven bad actors.

So Mean People Suck -- and they win.

This is a cautionary tale to women and people attempting to add diversity and independent action to any of the Wikimedia projects, in person or online. You will get attacked. You will not be supported. Politics reigns supreme. Questioning bad actors is not allowed because it is too threatening to their Fragile Male Egoes.

The context of this, me, a woman editor who is prolific and well-intentioned, who has proven this by actual editing and outreach, facing this wall of male editor disapproval, is not okay. I actually don't know of many other women editors who have active participation in editing Wikidata. I don't think this is an outlier. I think it's a fact that the general population of Wikidata editors is white men from Europe. Muting me like this is not going to change the fact that Wikidata is okay with being an echo-chamber. I am not saying being a woman was the only reason this happened, but I believe it was a contributing factor.

And again, the fact is that this is about a man who runs a feminist initiative: Mandiberg is a white man who runs Art+Feminism. A man who is attacking a woman editor. The precedence of this, him attacking a woman who has a dissenting viewpoint here, does no one have a problem with this?!? It is just flipping bizarre.

Pigs is a whole nightmare unto himself. But Mandiberg, he will succeed in trying to mold Wikidata to his nefarious purposes. The only upside is that like the WM NYC Metrics Assistant position scenario, he has proven to be both ineffectual and unsuccessful in his attempts to substitute automation for hard work. So Mandiberg will fail. But not without co-opting and destroying things that were in place before his "brilliant" idea to automate a process that is manual and human-centric. It would be hilarious if it was't having the effect of a magnifying glass on an ant, toiling away, getting singed.

I was not wrong. I know this, believe it strongly. Yet I am the one punished here. So glad the Wikidata project -- and the Wikimedia community in an of itself -- is doing such a good job protecting itself.

- Erika

[Randy from Boise]

BrillLyle's comments on meta have been removed by the Grants team under their Friendly Space policy.

Is there anybody out there yet that doesn't grasp that WMF's Friendly Space™ horseshit is nothing more than a cudgel for crushing dissent? A perfect tool to help bureaucrats keep being bureaucrats...

RfB

[BrillLyle]

Is there anybody out there yet that doesn't grasp that WMF's Friendly Space™ horseshit is nothing more than a cudgel for crushing dissent? A perfect tool to help bureaucrats keep being bureaucrats...

RfB

Right? It is so weird.

Pigs has been blocked for 31 hours. And if you look at the ANI, there are multiple people who are having issue with him. Yet I am the battleground editor.

I used to think I was a friendly, somewhat positive to people I didn't know in real life, person. My faith is shook. I am obviously a Medusa-head She-Ra of unacceptableness.

[BrillLyle]

And...

the edit block on me is only for Wikidata. I could edit Wikipedia to my heart's delight. How does that make any sense?

Yikes -- just saw these. Egads

https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?ti ... =&subtype=

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... sonthewing

[Poetlister]

Each WMF site is a law unto itself. You can be banned on one site and a bureaucrat on another. There is very little logic.

[Kumioko]

Let's also be clear that pretty much everyone on this site knows Rschen is a clown and is extremely biased towards those he thinks are his Wikifreinds and is a very, very problematic admin so the fact that he favored one side of the discussion, rather than being neutral really isn'y a huge surprise. Pigs is another one that is highly problematic but as an employee for the WMF its pretty obvious to see why Rschen would favor them.

[BrillLyle]

Thanks to both of you. I am learning more and more. More than I ever really wanted to know. But tools in the toolbox or forewarned is forearmed? Or something like that.

Thank you to whoever started an obvious sockpuppet account to taunt Pigs. That gave me an honest chuckle on what is a pretty rough time for me on and off the projects. I’m not smart enough to sockpuppet. There’s a sockpuppet accusation now started by Pigs now about me. I’m still laughing. Which is probably not a good sign. This won’t end well I suspect. If he wasn’t such a gaping asshole I would feel sorry for Pigs. He doesn’t seem to have much interests beyond the WikiDome.

Probably because I flagged his Wiki redirect of himself as being non notable puffery and fancruff. That was triggered by some discussion here about how ridiculous it is that a lot of these Wikimedians have lint-stained entries that serve as echo-chambers of their own self-importance. But I honestly believe the redirect is wrong. So...

Oy freaking Vey!

- Erika aka ~~~~

[BrillLyle]

Annnnd...

My Stalker™ has weighed in on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... #BrillLyle

The pile on continues.

So yes, I have learned that there is no right to free speech -- or even asking questions and voicing concerns -- on the Wikimedia Projects.

I'm just documenting it here for now. I like the idea of Wikipediocracy as a repository of the insane mishegas that goes on in this ridiculous WikiUniverse.

I am also grateful that there are fellow past and current editors on here who grasp what is going on. I'm sad that the consensus seems to be that these bad actions have been experienced by the majority of us on En Wiki especially.

It makes me even more angry that Katherine Maher gives huge amounts of lip service to bullying and problems with online communities -- and nothing is done when bad actors and mental patient editors misbehave like this. And other editors of questionable agendas pile on with what seems to be glee. There's got to be something enjoyable and rewarding (to them) that the rest of the editors get from this experience.

Really disheartened. The majority of people are actually quite stupid. And they suck. I'm grateful to feel that there are some decent folks over here and in other online communities to prove this wrong, but you and they are the exception to the rule.

[Midsize Jake]

Thank you to whoever started an obvious sockpuppet account to taunt Pigs. That gave me an honest chuckle on what is a pretty rough time for me on and off the projects. I’m not smart enough to sockpuppet. There’s a sockpuppet accusation now started by Pigs now about me. I’m still laughing. Which is probably not a good sign.

To be fair, it really is ridiculous that Andy Mabbett's personal Pink Floyd fanzine has its own Wikipedia article when other people's personal band fanzines are routinely dismissed and ignored.

[Kumioko]

And in further proof people are reading this site even if they do not comment, someone hath submitted said fanzine for deletion.

[Midsize Jake]

And in further proof people are reading this site even if they do not comment, someone hath submitted said fanzine for deletion.

Just to clarify, I think what happened is that someone (who was probably reading this site) decided to "support" Ms. Erika by creating a throwaway account (TammyBri (T-C-L)), the first action of which was to propose deletion of the fanzine article - so naturally Mr. Mabbett immediately (and/or opportunistically) assumed that person must be Erika herself.

It's funny, I was listening to the 5.1 remix version of Dark Side of the Moon just this afternoon, which I hadn't put on in two or three years, and then this popped up only a couple hours later.

[Poetlister]

Looks like a no consensus, though depending on the closing admin it's possible that the delete arguments will be ignored, meaning it's a keep.

[Kumioko]

Thank you to whoever started an obvious sockpuppet account to taunt Pigs. That gave me an honest chuckle on what is a pretty rough time for me on and off the projects. I’m not smart enough to sockpuppet. There’s a sockpuppet accusation now started by Pigs now about me. I’m still laughing. Which is probably not a good sign.

To be fair, it really is ridiculous that Andy Mabbett's personal Pink Floyd fanzine has its own Wikipedia article when other people's personal band fanzines are routinely dismissed and ignored.

I'm sure that a CU will find that the account was not created within 300 miles of where you live. Having said that, depending on how friendly the CU is with Andy, there is a good chance they could confirm it saying that the decision is based on behavioral evidence. Everyone knows the CU checks are nothing more than a drum head trial and they say pretty much whatever they want the outcome to be.

[BrillLyle]

I'm sure that a CU will find that the account was not created within 300 miles of where you live. Having said that, depending on how friendly the CU is with Andy, there is a good chance they could confirm it saying that the decision is based on behavioral evidence. Everyone knows the CU checks are nothing more than a drum head trial and they say pretty much whatever they want the outcome to be.

Wait, what? So if whoever did this was within 300 miles of NYC then I would get dinged for it? What exactly would happen? Would they shut down my BrillLyle Wikipedia account?

It's so weird, I feel like I edit in such a distinctive way that it's almost like a fingerprint. I am pretty stuck in my ways, I don't think I could edit another way. Plus the specific editing focus areas I work in are also pretty distinctive. And I've been very up front about even the few times I have done deletion requests, which are never positive for me.

The using of the "Bri" is also super obviously a joking reference to me. If I was a real sockpuppet, I wouldn't be letting Andy Wandy know it was me like that, would I?

But these editors are not that bright, clearly....

[Kumioko]

I'm sure that a CU will find that the account was not created within 300 miles of where you live. Having said that, depending on how friendly the CU is with Andy, there is a good chance they could confirm it saying that the decision is based on behavioral evidence. Everyone knows the CU checks are nothing more than a drum head trial and they say pretty much whatever they want the outcome to be.

Wait, what? So if whoever did this was within 300 miles of NYC then I would get dinged for it? What exactly would happen? Would they shut down my BrillLyle Wikipedia account?

It's so weird, I feel like I edit in such a distinctive way that it's almost like a fingerprint. I am pretty stuck in my ways, I don't think I could edit another way. Plus the specific editing focus areas I work in are also pretty distinctive. And I've been very up front about even the few times I have done deletion requests, which are never positive for me.

The using of the "Bri" is also super obviously a joking reference to me. If I was a real sockpuppet, I wouldn't be letting Andy Wandy know it was me like that, would I?

But these editors are not that bright, clearly....

Well I think if they determine that the sock is in your neighborhood so to speak they would use it to justify it was you and yes they could block that account.

Personally I could and have editing from IP's all over, including the WMF headquartsds office in San Fran, so if I wanted to hide I could, I just rarely make the attempt to do so because I have no reason to as someone who is globally blocked. Certainly you do and so it doesn't make sense that you would do such an obvious sock.

Personally if the wikipediots like Andy think that is you, then they are even dumber than we think (and that says quite a bit). If they use the "behavioral evidence" argument then they are just spitting on the policy because there isn't any "evidence". The problem I see is this, if they want you out, they will find a way even if that means violating policy. So at the end of the day, if the admins and staffers don't have any respect for the community or site policy, and they don't, then they'll do whatever they want.

[BrillLyle]

Thanks Kumioko. Appreciate the additional info.

Personally if the wikipediots like Andy think that is you, then they are even dumber than we think (and that says quite a bit). If they use the "behavioral evidence" argument then they are just spitting on the policy because there isn't any "evidence". The problem I see is this, if they want you out, they will find a way even if that means violating policy. So at the end of the day, if the admins and staffers don't have any respect for the community or site policy, and they don't, then they'll do whatever they want.

Yes to what you say above. I am very concerned about that, which was why after all the mishegas with the local chapter I tried to refocus on just editing. I thought that would be safer, and I actually enjoy that a lot more than the outreach work, as I am pretty anti-social and dealing with hoards of newbies is pretty exhausting, no matter how excited they are and no matter how positive the experience. Which aside from the leadership of the WM NYC chapter, the editathons were all really great times for me....

But then I encountered JYTDAaaaawg and it became more and more clear, with the helpful context of you folks, that the En Wiki editor community is a flipping minefield of nightmarishness. Between the Dawg's insane stalking of the poor ''Wiki What?'' entries and then the not-that-smart and minutae-fixated My Stalker™ CA2James following my edits like a banshee, I think the concern is even more possible.

I am not the most politic person. But I also don't have a dirty agenda where this is about my career or my CV or my paycheck. I'm truly a volunteer. For my current job I was so happy that my work schedule is set up in a way where I could have days off to volunteer and/or edit Wikipedia, Wikidata, etc. I thought that my master's in library science and my over 17 years as a NYC word processor on speed would be an asset to editing Wikipedia. I also naively thought -- and still do if I'm honest -- that asking questions and expressing concerns was/is a positive thing, that this type of "free speech" #hahaha would only strengthen Wikipedia. Yeah, sigh, I'm a dumbass.

I edited and improved The Amazing Pudding article as an act of good faith. To prove I'm not a total bastard hopefully. I do enjoy editing, and I am a huge music fan, too, so it was something I felt good about.

I think one of the bigger ironies is that I have a lot of things in common with Pigs in some respect, with goals that are not dissimilar. But the instant nastiness (and now what I am understanding includes a lot of martyrdom) is a constant in his interactions with not just me but slews and slews of other editors. If Pigs and others can't figure out a way to operate without this consistently mental behavior -- and yes, I understand this is rich/ironic coming from me, I do -- and if WMF and the community allows this shit to continue, then I will eventually be driven out, I suspect.

Sigh.

[LynnWysong]

Hmmmmm