Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

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Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by deci » Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:54 am

There should be some common reference that identifies the active cliques at Wikipedia so that unsuspecting editors are better aware and informed what they are up against when they get into a dispute with one of them. As we all should know Wikipedia forbids the listing of Wikipedia members and groups that would allow the clear presentation of known associations with propensities to tag-team. This isn't Wikipedia however so let us educate ourselves.

One I know of is the Mathsci and MastCell group. Who else is among their number?

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by IRWolfie- » Fri Mar 29, 2013 11:05 am

What do you define a clique as in relation to wikipedia.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by thekohser » Fri Mar 29, 2013 11:18 am

IRWolfie- wrote:What do you define a clique as in relation to wikipedia.
We know exactly what he means. It's not important for you to know, if you don't already know.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Mar 29, 2013 11:37 am

deci wrote:One I know of is the Mathsci and MastCell group. Who else is among their number?
Maybe Mathsci can help, as he posts here quite a lot!
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by IRWolfie- » Fri Mar 29, 2013 12:05 pm

thekohser wrote:
IRWolfie- wrote:What do you define a clique as in relation to wikipedia.
We know exactly what he means. It's not important for you to know, if you don't already know.
This certainly puts claims that wikipedia isn't welcoming enough into perspective.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Peter Damian » Fri Mar 29, 2013 12:13 pm

deci wrote:There should be some common reference that identifies the active cliques at Wikipedia so that unsuspecting editors are better aware and informed what they are up against when they get into a dispute with one of them. As we all should know Wikipedia forbids the listing of Wikipedia members and groups that would allow the clear presentation of known associations with propensities to tag-team. This isn't Wikipedia however so let us educate ourselves.

One I know of is the Mathsci and MastCell group. Who else is among their number?
A good question. Broadly there are the many cliques that take opposing sides in edit wars, not endorsed by the Wikipedia ruling class. The wars include Baltic vs Russian (Radek has some good stuff on these), The Northern Irish 'troubles', although that has subsided since a lot of them were banned (am I right, who knows?), the British Isles naming war (one of the stupidest ever to be fought on Wikipedia), many others I am sure. Then there are the disputes where one of more of the sides has a foothold in the administration. Prominent among these are what could be termed the science/antiscience disputes. The science clique once (i.e. the Mastcell group you mention) had a prominent place in the cabal, less so now. Also there is a loose federation of anti-science cliques which for a long time had some influence, which dates far back in Wikipedia history, possibly because of the influence of Fred Bauder in 2002 onwards.

The content creators always used to be very powerful. Few of them (apart from Iridescent, I think) made it to Arbcom, but until recently they had the ear of the 'senior management'. Beeblebrox writes an essay about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Beebl ... blockables . Their influence has been weakened, due to recent arbcom blocks and bans, and I would say they are now broken.

Finally we have by far the most powerful group, namely the hard core administrators such as Beeblebrox, Sandstein, Fram, Ckatz and many others. These are fair in a sort of way, in that they will not allow the kind of rule-bending what oiled Wikipedia in earlier days. In the early days, many realised that the Wikipedia system was bad, and that the only way to get serious work done was to bend the rules a bit. But that led to all kinds of corruption and favouritism - see the Beeblebrox essay again - and now admins like Sandstein and Fram strictly enforce the rules in an impartial, though not necessarily a fair way. This group has been gaining the ascendancy since about 2008. I chart their story in the book. The first milestone was a block of the content creator 'Worldtraveller'. This was in March 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... dtraveller . March 2007 also coincided with the peak of wikipedia's editing growth, followed by a slow but steady decline, in lockstep with the growth of the hardcore admin class.

As a group, the hardcore admins are uneducated, indeed have a complete contempt for knowledge and education, and see themselves as impartial but ruthless enforcers of the peace. Their dominance was inevitable. I used the analogy years ago of your workplace allowing anyone from the street to come in and sit at your desk and do your work for you. You would be evicted if you complained too bitterly, and you would be ordered to be polite to any of these newcomers from the street. If that happened, then naturally the office security department, which usually has a pretty low status, would become the most important department. After a time, the officers who took a soft line would leave and be replaced by hardliners, who would evict anyone who was talking too loudly or complaining, regardless of their contribution to the business. The business would eventually collapse of course. However, we can assume it has a senior management who sell the existing product which they keep carefully guarded by security, and who also have an excellent public relations team.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Peter Damian » Fri Mar 29, 2013 12:23 pm

IRWolfie- wrote:What do you define a clique as in relation to wikipedia.
Any group whose interests either coincide completely, or which overlap strongly, where there is an implicit or explicit (usually offsite) agreement to support each other unconditionally in any dispute.

Cliques aren't a bad thing. The world is large, and you can't know everyone, and most of the time you have to trust someone simply on the basis that they are trusted by someone who you do know and trust. The world knows this, and has devised all sorts of complicated mechanisms to solve the problems that it leads to, principally by a system of dividing power so that one clique doesn't get too powerful (yes I know, it is far from perfect).

The 'theory of Wikipedia' is that such trust networks are a bad thing and a legacy of the pre-internet way of doing things. Therefore they do not exist on Wikipedia. We have always been at war with Oceania.

You can often tell a hardcore Wikipedian by the way that he or she denies, or pretends not to know, of the existence of such groups on Wikipedia. For example, if you ask any devoted Wikipedian if there is a division between content creators and admins, they will deny any such thing, or say they don't understand. I know this, having interviewed both sides for the book. The content creators say there is a divide, and seem bitter about it. The admins say that the people complaining about this are a tiny minority, and that the vast majority of content creators are quiet, and busily getting on with the job of 'being here to build an encyclopedia'.

Another useful fiction is the idea of a 'community'. Rather than there being a complex system of trust groups, who may form alliances forged on the basis of mutual interest, or who go to war against each other, make truces, go to war again etc, a true Wikipedian will tell you there is no such thing, and that instead there is a single 'community' of members who collaborate with one another in good faith, and that this community is built on 'love and respect'.

I don't know which version of reality is true.

Interesting that a hardliner also seems to be recognising the existing of overlapping interest groups, who will support one another.
An administrator has been editing the controversial topic of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin for four years. It is almost exactly what they want it to be. It says the right things, it is formatted well, and it has been relatively stable for some time. A less experienced user comes along and begins making numerous changes. These changes are not vandalism by any reasonable definition but they are rolled back by the admin anyway because they see them as messing up their near-perfect article. Seeing no reason for this, the newbie makes the same or very similar changes again. The admin reverts them again. And the cycle repeats again, this time the admin warns in an edit summary to stop edit warring and use the talk page. The user posts their reasons to the talk page and adds the content back in again. The admin reverts them and says there is no consensus for adding the content. Another user who has the page watchlisted sees this and reports the incident at the edit warring noticeboard. A previously uninvolved admin blocks both users for one day. Within two hours an WP:ANI thread is opened on the subject, an admin with a long history with the blocked admin steps in and decrees that there is no consensus for the block despite the fact that only two users have commented and one of them supports the block. The blocked admin is unblocked. Ten minutes later the unblocking admin remembers to unblock the other user as well, "in the interest of fairness."
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Captain Occam » Fri Mar 29, 2013 1:18 pm

Outsider wrote:
deci wrote:One I know of is the Mathsci and MastCell group. Who else is among their number?
Maybe Mathsci can help, as he posts here quite a lot!
I'm very curious to see The Devil's Advocate's and Cla68's answers about who they consider to be in this group. I've got my own conclusions about it obviously, but what I'm most interested in seeing is whether other people with experience about it have reached the same conclusions that I have.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Triptych » Fri Mar 29, 2013 1:43 pm

Peter Damian wrote:
deci wrote:There should be some common reference that identifies the active cliques at Wikipedia so that unsuspecting editors are better aware and informed what they are up against when they get into a dispute with one of them. As we all should know Wikipedia forbids the listing of Wikipedia members and groups that would allow the clear presentation of known associations with propensities to tag-team. This isn't Wikipedia however so let us educate ourselves.

<text clipped>
The content creators always used to be very powerful. Few of them (apart from Iridescent, I think) made it to Arbcom, but until recently they had the ear of the 'senior management'. Beeblebrox writes an essay about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Beebl ... blockables . Their influence has been weakened, due to recent arbcom blocks and bans, and I would say they are now broken.
There are IRC cliques, I suspect. It could be a cool and innocent thing to hang out with your pals on IRC, but with these guys it's "hey look at this idiot editor," or "would somebody mind blocking him," or "hey, check out this crap he did last month," or best of all "anyone feel like running a checkuser on this one." It's particularly objectionable because the target doesn't know, and it's off-wiki with little possibility for the community to scrutinize it.

I was innocently, blissfully in retrospect, basically a content editor for years, unaware of the intrigues and alliances and bickering of the "administrative editors." These are those seeking authority, and hanging around ANI and its affilated cesspools, including not just the admins looking to up their stats for editors blocked, but those admins and hangers-on using it for a perverse form of social interaction.

Peter Damian, it is actually painful to read the likes of those Beeb essays, to realize that someone has put his head in that space, and then when you read it sort of puts yours there. All the intricacies and snark and so forth. In the one you refer to, it may well be a fair interpretation that it concerns some "new admin breed" in a war against the "entrenched" content creators. By all these pointers to the appeals subcommittee popping up recently, it would seem that "new breed" is asserting itself there, so, sure, winning and to the detriment of all. I see where you mentioned a book you've done or are working on. I hope you can avoid that snarky tone. Perhaps you could look at IRC's role, as well.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by thekohser » Fri Mar 29, 2013 1:54 pm

One (small) clique is the anti-diploma-mill gang. This is headed by Orlady (T-C-L), and she was in close cooperation with now-banned user Tallmagic, which was an outted sock of Bill Huffman (T-C-L). Nasty individuals. Orlady is a Tennessee politician and civil servant in real life. I've never bothered to check if she does a lot of WP editing on the taxpayers' hour, because I'm afraid of what I might find.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Hersch » Fri Mar 29, 2013 2:47 pm

Peter Damian wrote:Prominent among these are what could be termed the science/antiscience disputes.
I wouldn't use those terms. You have competing teams of science ideologues.

The cliques at Wikipedia are transitory, because if a prominent clique member gets into trouble, his buddies must decide whether it is in their interests to stand at his side and fight, or quietly sell him out. To paraphrase a well known imperialist, most WikiCliquers have no permanent allies, only permanent interests.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Peter Damian » Fri Mar 29, 2013 3:22 pm

Triptych wrote:I see where you mentioned a book you've done or are working on. I hope you can avoid that snarky tone. Perhaps you could look at IRC's role, as well.
It's snark all the way through, actually. There's a bit about the book here http://www.logicmuseum.com/x/index.php? ... king_Glass .

You can't approach Wikipedia through anything else but the lens of humour. Anyone who got uptight and angry and righteous about it would end up looking as foolish as a Wikipedian.

Yes there is something about IRC somewhere. 'Scatological'.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Randy from Boise » Fri Mar 29, 2013 3:31 pm

I'm sure that there is an editorial clique around medicine. Which is fine, actually, I think WP's content is excellent there. I have no idea who the players are, but just you go trying to fuck with a serious medicine piece and you'll find out fast...

Of course Israel v. Palestine are two warring teams of like-minded editors who loathe the other. Most "hot button" topics probably have cliques around them.

Malleus the Giant has a posse. I'd list my comrade Kiefer.Wolfowitz as a ranking officer in that beneficent cliquelet.


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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Malleus » Fri Mar 29, 2013 4:00 pm

Randy from Boise wrote:I'm sure that there is an editorial clique around medicine. Which is fine, actually, I think WP's content is excellent there. I have no idea who the players are, but just you go trying to fuck with a serious medicine piece and you'll find out fast...

Of course Israel v. Palestine are two warring teams of like-minded editors who loathe the other. Most "hot button" topics probably have cliques around them.

Malleus the Giant has a posse. I'd list my comrade Kiefer.Wolfowitz as a ranking officer in that beneficent cliquelet.


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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by iii » Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:23 pm

Hersch wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:Prominent among these are what could be termed the science/antiscience disputes.
I wouldn't use those terms. You have competing teams of science ideologues.
Perhaps. But one fun thing might be to see what the education and credentials are of these two groups to see if there is any additional correlation one might be able to find. I'll leave that to you as a little homework assignment.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by The Joy » Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:24 pm

Malleus wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:I'm sure that there is an editorial clique around medicine. Which is fine, actually, I think WP's content is excellent there. I have no idea who the players are, but just you go trying to fuck with a serious medicine piece and you'll find out fast...

Of course Israel v. Palestine are two warring teams of like-minded editors who loathe the other. Most "hot button" topics probably have cliques around them.

Malleus the Giant has a posse. I'd list my comrade Kiefer.Wolfowitz as a ranking officer in that beneficent cliquelet.


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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Vigilant » Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:30 pm

Malleus wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:I'm sure that there is an editorial clique around medicine. Which is fine, actually, I think WP's content is excellent there. I have no idea who the players are, but just you go trying to fuck with a serious medicine piece and you'll find out fast...

Of course Israel v. Palestine are two warring teams of like-minded editors who loathe the other. Most "hot button" topics probably have cliques around them.

Malleus the Giant has a posse. I'd list my comrade Kiefer.Wolfowitz as a ranking officer in that beneficent cliquelet.


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Malleus the Magnificent would be more alliterative.
Not Malleus the Magnanimous?
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Jaranda » Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:32 pm

Triptych wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:
deci wrote:There should be some common reference that identifies the active cliques at Wikipedia so that unsuspecting editors are better aware and informed what they are up against when they get into a dispute with one of them. As we all should know Wikipedia forbids the listing of Wikipedia members and groups that would allow the clear presentation of known associations with propensities to tag-team. This isn't Wikipedia however so let us educate ourselves.

<text clipped>
The content creators always used to be very powerful. Few of them (apart from Iridescent, I think) made it to Arbcom, but until recently they had the ear of the 'senior management'. Beeblebrox writes an essay about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Beebl ... blockables . Their influence has been weakened, due to recent arbcom blocks and bans, and I would say they are now broken.
There are IRC cliques, I suspect. It could be a cool and innocent thing to hang out with your pals on IRC, but with these guys it's "hey look at this idiot editor," or "would somebody mind blocking him," or "hey, check out this crap he did last month," or best of all "anyone feel like running a checkuser on this one." It's particularly objectionable because the target doesn't know, and it's off-wiki with little possibility for the community to scrutinize it.
That was years ago, now IRC is a pile of vile nonsense loaded with off-topic garbage, especially the main #wikipedia-en channel. I could safely say however, from 2005 to 2007 the IRC clique was easily the most powerful group in the project. Most administrators who were formed at that time period came from there, and many behind the scenes drama first started in these channels. You could say all you want about SV, Will Beback, JoshuaZ and the likes, but they were in the minority there.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Vigilant » Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:37 pm

Jaranda wrote:
Triptych wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:
deci wrote:There should be some common reference that identifies the active cliques at Wikipedia so that unsuspecting editors are better aware and informed what they are up against when they get into a dispute with one of them. As we all should know Wikipedia forbids the listing of Wikipedia members and groups that would allow the clear presentation of known associations with propensities to tag-team. This isn't Wikipedia however so let us educate ourselves.

<text clipped>
The content creators always used to be very powerful. Few of them (apart from Iridescent, I think) made it to Arbcom, but until recently they had the ear of the 'senior management'. Beeblebrox writes an essay about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Beebl ... blockables . Their influence has been weakened, due to recent arbcom blocks and bans, and I would say they are now broken.
There are IRC cliques, I suspect. It could be a cool and innocent thing to hang out with your pals on IRC, but with these guys it's "hey look at this idiot editor," or "would somebody mind blocking him," or "hey, check out this crap he did last month," or best of all "anyone feel like running a checkuser on this one." It's particularly objectionable because the target doesn't know, and it's off-wiki with little possibility for the community to scrutinize it.
That was years ago, now IRC is a pile of vile nonsense loaded with off-topic garbage, especially the main #wikipedia-en channel. I could safely say however, from 2005 to 2007 the IRC clique was easily the most powerful group in the project. Most administrators who were formed at that time period came from there, and many behind the scenes drama first started in these channels. You could say all you want about SV, Will Beback, JoshuaZ and the likes, but they were in the minority there.
IRC and commons cliques had/have a lot in common, "We're not ON wikipedia, you can't control us!!"
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Mar 29, 2013 5:58 pm

Peter Damian wrote:As a group, the hardcore admins are uneducated, indeed have a complete contempt for knowledge and education
I don't think that's remotely fair. Jfdwolff is a medical doctor. Sandstein I believe is a lawyer. SlimVirgin is rumoured to have a PhD from Cambridge.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Peter Damian » Fri Mar 29, 2013 6:03 pm

Outsider wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:As a group, the hardcore admins are uneducated, indeed have a complete contempt for knowledge and education
I don't think that's remotely fair. Jfdwolff is a medical doctor. Sandstein I believe is a lawyer. SlimVirgin is rumoured to have a PhD from Cambridge.
SlimVirgin did philosophy at King's College and is a competent philosopher. But I wouldn't include her in the 'hardcore admins' by a long stretch. Who is Jfdwolff?

I don't know about Sandstein. He clearly has a complete contempt for knowledge and education, but then some educated people do.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Jaranda » Fri Mar 29, 2013 6:22 pm

Vigilant wrote:
Jaranda wrote:
Triptych wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:
deci wrote:There should be some common reference that identifies the active cliques at Wikipedia so that unsuspecting editors are better aware and informed what they are up against when they get into a dispute with one of them. As we all should know Wikipedia forbids the listing of Wikipedia members and groups that would allow the clear presentation of known associations with propensities to tag-team. This isn't Wikipedia however so let us educate ourselves.

<text clipped>
The content creators always used to be very powerful. Few of them (apart from Iridescent, I think) made it to Arbcom, but until recently they had the ear of the 'senior management'. Beeblebrox writes an essay about them here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Beebl ... blockables . Their influence has been weakened, due to recent arbcom blocks and bans, and I would say they are now broken.
There are IRC cliques, I suspect. It could be a cool and innocent thing to hang out with your pals on IRC, but with these guys it's "hey look at this idiot editor," or "would somebody mind blocking him," or "hey, check out this crap he did last month," or best of all "anyone feel like running a checkuser on this one." It's particularly objectionable because the target doesn't know, and it's off-wiki with little possibility for the community to scrutinize it.
That was years ago, now IRC is a pile of vile nonsense loaded with off-topic garbage, especially the main #wikipedia-en channel. I could safely say however, from 2005 to 2007 the IRC clique was easily the most powerful group in the project. Most administrators who were formed at that time period came from there, and many behind the scenes drama first started in these channels. You could say all you want about SV, Will Beback, JoshuaZ and the likes, but they were in the minority there.
IRC and commons cliques had/have a lot in common, "We're not ON wikipedia, you can't control us!!"
Commons I'm not totally familiar with, but the IRC clique for en is dead, mostly wanna be vandal fighters and so forth trying to make "friends", but which the more experienced users completely ignore.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by iii » Fri Mar 29, 2013 6:28 pm

Peter Damian wrote:SlimVirgin did philosophy at King's College and is a competent philosopher.
Something of a wonder, that, considering her current tack of supporting New Age mysticism as a viable research path in quantum physics.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by mac » Fri Mar 29, 2013 6:32 pm

Jaranda wrote:Commons I'm not totally familiar with, but the IRC clique for en is dead, mostly wanna be vandal fighters and so forth trying to make "friends", but which the more experienced users completely ignore.
The former IRC clique is simply replaced by another batch of admin wanna-bes. Even Ironholds does not hold court in #wikipedia-en anymore:
[19:14] * Ironholds (~Ironholds@wikipedia/Ironholds) has joined #wikipedia-en
[19:14] <victorium> I can't see your ban being removed in the next three years
[19:15] <gwickwire> I can't see you being unblocked in the next year
[19:15] <dtm> gwickwire: he was making a historical reference, i believe
[19:15] <RichyRich> Basically I was trying to get evrything I did approved under the BRFA system
[19:15] <gwickwire> Ironholds: pls comment.
[19:15] <Ironholds> gwickwire: on what?
[19:15] <gwickwire> Rich
[19:15] <Ironholds> As what, a staffer or a volunteer?
[19:15] <gwickwire> both.
[19:15] * YuviPanda is now known as zz_YuviPanda
[19:15] <gwickwire> one and then the other :3
[19:15] <gwickwire> if you don't mind.
[19:15] <gwickwire> don't think I'm pressuring you.
[19:16] <Ironholds> I have no opinion as a staffer. Staff tend not to ;p
[19:16] <gwickwire> lol.
[19:16] <gwickwire> okay so as a voluntario
[19:16] <Ironholds> As a volunteer: my only dichotomy is whether "crazy as a badger in a sack" or "mad as a cut snake" applies better.
[19:16] <gwickwire> RichyRich: ^^^ I agree completely.
[19:16] <Ironholds> I'm going for 'badger', but I am willing to entertain counterarguments
[19:16] <gwickwire> Hmm, how about "just outright a [[WP:CIR]] violatior"
[19:17] <Ironholds> that seems overly cruel, Rich did some very good work.
[19:17] <victorium> please don't
[19:17] <gwickwire> I understand so, but the fact he pushed ArbCom and then grasps at straws... Fine, I like the badger one :3
[19:17] <Peter-C> http://ai1.livememe.com/ofph3p_lm36rkx.jpg
[19:17] <Peter-C> Murika
[19:17] <victorium> I don't think you know any of the backstory gwickwire
[19:18] <Ironholds> oh christ, Peter is still here.
[19:18] <gwickwire> ...
[19:18] <Ironholds> alright, bailing
[19:18] * Ironholds (~Ironholds@wikipedia/Ironholds) has left #wikipedia-en
The context here is Gwickwire was busting RichyRich's balls over whether ctrl+f is "automated editing".
He was there for all of four minutes before leaving. I suspect IRC becomes less appealing once one becomes sysop for life.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Poetlister » Fri Mar 29, 2013 6:50 pm

Peter Damian wrote:SlimVirgin did philosophy at King's College and is a competent philosopher. But I wouldn't include her in the 'hardcore admins' by a long stretch. Who is Jfdwolff?
Maybe we have different definitions of 'hardcore admins'. I'm surprised that you've never come across Jfdwolff; to me, he seems ubiquitous.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Ealdgyth » Fri Mar 29, 2013 7:12 pm

The Joy wrote:
Malleus wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:I'm sure that there is an editorial clique around medicine. Which is fine, actually, I think WP's content is excellent there. I have no idea who the players are, but just you go trying to fuck with a serious medicine piece and you'll find out fast...

Of course Israel v. Palestine are two warring teams of like-minded editors who loathe the other. Most "hot button" topics probably have cliques around them.

Malleus the Giant has a posse. I'd list my comrade Kiefer.Wolfowitz as a ranking officer in that beneficent cliquelet.


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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Captain Occam » Fri Mar 29, 2013 7:13 pm

iii wrote:
Hersch wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:Prominent among these are what could be termed the science/antiscience disputes.
I wouldn't use those terms. You have competing teams of science ideologues.
Perhaps. But one fun thing might be to see what the education and credentials are of these two groups to see if there is any additional correlation one might be able to find. I'll leave that to you as a little homework assignment.
I've looked into this already, at least with respect to the race and intelligence disputes. Plenty of the "pro-science" editors have had impressive academic credentials, but they've generally been in fields like economics or mathematics that aren't really a qualification to be knowledgeable about that topic. Of the people who've participated in the topic whose academic credentials I know about, only one of them has done professional research related to R&I, and that's Bpesta22 (T-C-L). He's the cognitive psychologist Bryan Pesta, and is the author of this paper about race and intelligence published in Elsevier's peer-reviewed journal Intelligence. But he gave up on the topic area in 2010 after an attempt by the "pro-science" group to topic ban him at AN/I.

You'll notice I'm using the term "pro-science" in scare quotes here. After they tried to topic ban the only editor who's done professional research on the article's topic, I think that's justified.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Malleus » Fri Mar 29, 2013 7:50 pm

Vigilant wrote:
Malleus wrote:
Randy from Boise wrote:I'm sure that there is an editorial clique around medicine. Which is fine, actually, I think WP's content is excellent there. I have no idea who the players are, but just you go trying to fuck with a serious medicine piece and you'll find out fast...

Of course Israel v. Palestine are two warring teams of like-minded editors who loathe the other. Most "hot button" topics probably have cliques around them.

Malleus the Giant has a posse. I'd list my comrade Kiefer.Wolfowitz as a ranking officer in that beneficent cliquelet.


RfB
Malleus the Magnificent would be more alliterative.
Not Malleus the Magnanimous?
I'm afraid not, more like Malleus the Malevolent.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by EricBarbour » Fri Mar 29, 2013 8:35 pm

Jaranda wrote:That was years ago, now IRC is a pile of vile nonsense loaded with off-topic garbage, especially the main #wikipedia-en channel. I could safely say however, from 2005 to 2007 the IRC clique was easily the most powerful group in the project. Most administrators who were formed at that time period came from there, and many behind the scenes drama first started in these channels. You could say all you want about SV, Will Beback, JoshuaZ and the likes, but they were in the minority there.
Perfectly put. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone's listening.

Wikipediocracy is full of disgruntled people looking for "patterns" and "conspiracies". When none exist (which is most of the time), they desperately
try to create them to fit their concept of why Wikipedia kicked them out.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by iii » Fri Mar 29, 2013 8:39 pm

Captain Occam wrote:[You'll notice I'm using the term "pro-science" in scare quotes here. After they tried to topic ban the only editor who's done professional research on the article's topic, I think that's justified.
We've had this discussion before. In short, there are contested domains of "knowledge" (note the scare quotes) that are essentially stand-ins for political conflict. Psychometrics correlated to phenotype is such an area, except where there is obvious etiology (as in the case of Downs Syndrome, for example). Those who argue otherwise are simply not regarded academic mainstream no matter what way you try to slice it.

The point is that the correlation sits on one side of these disputes. Yes, one can cherry-pick outliers with all manner of bells-and-whistles. That's a rather tiring game. One can do it with practically any field you care to name.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Captain Occam » Fri Mar 29, 2013 8:51 pm

iii wrote:
Captain Occam wrote:[You'll notice I'm using the term "pro-science" in scare quotes here. After they tried to topic ban the only editor who's done professional research on the article's topic, I think that's justified.
We've had this discussion before. In short, there are contested domains of "knowledge" (note the scare quotes) that are essentially stand-ins for political conflict. Psychometrics correlated to phenotype is such an area, except where there is obvious etiology (as in the case of Downs Syndrome, for example). Those who argue otherwise are simply not regarded academic mainstream no matter what way you try to slice it.

The point is that the correlation sits on one side of these disputes. Yes, one can cherry-pick outliers with all manner of bells-and-whistles. That's a rather tiring game. One can do it with practically any field you care to name.
I'm not seeing how this relates to the point I made. The point I made is very simple: it's that on a somewhat technical topic, having someone involved in the article who's researched the topic professionally should be a good thing. I think that's true whether it's having a professional climatologist involved in climate change articles, having a professional physicist involved in physics articles, or having a professional cognitive psychologist involved in IQ-related articles. Do you disagree with that?

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by iii » Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:14 pm

Captain Occam wrote:on a somewhat technical topic, having someone involved in the article who's researched the topic professionally should be a good thing. I think that's true whether it's having a professional climatologist involved in climate change articles, having a professional physicist involved in physics articles, or having a professional cognitive psychologist involved in IQ-related articles. Do you disagree with that?
If you have a single self-selected professional, then you run the risk of attracting an outlier, is what I'm saying. Larry Sanger, in particular, has been criticized for falling into this trap (c.f. Bernard Haisch and Dana Ullman). For more on this, try on this screed for size.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by isaan » Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:24 pm

Peter Damian wrote:Also there is a loose federation of anti-science cliques which for a long time had some influence, which dates far back in Wikipedia history, possibly because of the influence of Fred Bauder in 2002 onwards.
This intrigues me, and I know nothing about it. Can you elaborate?

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Triptych » Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:41 pm

Jaranda wrote: That was years ago, now IRC is a pile of vile nonsense loaded with off-topic garbage, especially the main #wikipedia-en channel. I could safely say however, from 2005 to 2007 the IRC clique was easily the most powerful group in the project. Most administrators who were formed at that time period came from there, and many behind the scenes drama first started in these channels. You could say all you want about SV, Will Beback, JoshuaZ and the likes, but they were in the minority there.
Irc.netsplit.de says #wikipedia-en-spi hosts about 30 users on any given day. Wouldn't know if it's equally prone to scatology and off-topic nonsense and so forth. What I've gathered from reading their comments at the project, these guys enjoy the hunt, I don't think I'm imagining it.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by IRWolfie- » Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:44 pm

Captain Occam wrote:
iii wrote:
Captain Occam wrote:[You'll notice I'm using the term "pro-science" in scare quotes here. After they tried to topic ban the only editor who's done professional research on the article's topic, I think that's justified.
We've had this discussion before. In short, there are contested domains of "knowledge" (note the scare quotes) that are essentially stand-ins for political conflict. Psychometrics correlated to phenotype is such an area, except where there is obvious etiology (as in the case of Downs Syndrome, for example). Those who argue otherwise are simply not regarded academic mainstream no matter what way you try to slice it.

The point is that the correlation sits on one side of these disputes. Yes, one can cherry-pick outliers with all manner of bells-and-whistles. That's a rather tiring game. One can do it with practically any field you care to name.
I'm not seeing how this relates to the point I made. The point I made is very simple: it's that on a somewhat technical topic, having someone involved in the article who's researched the topic professionally should be a good thing. I think that's true whether it's having a professional climatologist involved in climate change articles, having a professional physicist involved in physics articles, or having a professional cognitive psychologist involved in IQ-related articles. Do you disagree with that?
On the physicist analogy; it's good to have a professional physicist involved in physics articles, but you don't really need someone in the same field except for the nuances.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Hersch » Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:51 pm

iii wrote:
Hersch wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:Prominent among these are what could be termed the science/antiscience disputes.
I wouldn't use those terms. You have competing teams of science ideologues.
Perhaps. But one fun thing might be to see what the education and credentials are of these two groups to see if there is any additional correlation one might be able to find. I'll leave that to you as a little homework assignment.
I must say that I am surprised that you, of all people, would get huffy about my characterization.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Moonage Daydream » Fri Mar 29, 2013 10:21 pm

Triptych wrote:Irc.netsplit.de says #wikipedia-en-spi hosts about 30 users on any given day. Wouldn't know if it's equally prone to scatology and off-topic nonsense and so forth. What I've gathered from reading their comments at the project, these guys enjoy the hunt, I don't think I'm imagining it.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by iii » Fri Mar 29, 2013 10:49 pm

Hersch wrote:
iii wrote:
Hersch wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:Prominent among these are what could be termed the science/antiscience disputes.
I wouldn't use those terms. You have competing teams of science ideologues.
Perhaps. But one fun thing might be to see what the education and credentials are of these two groups to see if there is any additional correlation one might be able to find. I'll leave that to you as a little homework assignment.
I must say that I am surprised that you, of all people, would get huffy about my characterization.
Aw, shucks, Hersch. Why do you think everything is an ideology? I really wish I understood that aspect of your worldview.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by greyed.out.fields » Sat Mar 30, 2013 6:41 am

There's a classical music clique that I'm sort of part of. They produce good content and zero drama. Then again, it's hard to imagine an anti-Bach cantatas or anti-Philip Glass clique to oppose them. I also guess that isn't the sort of clique you were thinking of.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Peter Damian » Sat Mar 30, 2013 8:55 am

isaan wrote:
Peter Damian wrote:Also there is a loose federation of anti-science cliques which for a long time had some influence, which dates far back in Wikipedia history, possibly because of the influence of Fred Bauder in 2002 onwards.
This intrigues me, and I know nothing about it. Can you elaborate?
There's much I could say about this. For example, if you reconstruct the Wikipedia database in 2001 you find plenty of woo, as well as plenty of stuff about anime, trivia and so on. It's not that Wikipedia started out as this pure thing that eventually got corrupted. The rot was in there from the very beginning.

Anyway, Fred. He arrived in November 2002. He quickly became part of Jimmy's inner circle. He got administrator, oversight and checkuser power in March 2003. He was appointed to arbcom December 2003. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wi ... 08801.html

Larry quickly got on the wrong side of him. Fred wrote an incoherent article "Reality" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... ldid=27840 in March 2002. Larry deleted it in October, Fred proceeded to drive Larry crazy http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... did=367080, and Larry quit Wikipedia shortly thereafter.

Larry:"OK, I'm going to make time right now. The article is so completely silly that I can't believe it's been let stand this long. ... You can have a world view about what reality is, but that doesn't entail that "reality" means "world view." Even idealists/phenomenalists, who would say that reality is a sort of mental construct, would not say that reality means a world view when they were writing an encyclopedia article about reality. They would say, "Idealists and phenomenalists believe that reality is..."

[...]

Fred: "The concept you are using in the above paragraph is not reality but knowlege. An encyclopedia contains knowledge not reality. BTW, that's where general semantics comes in and their slogan "The map is not the territory" "

Larry: "The concept you you are using in the above paragraph is not reality but knowlege." Fred, that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to me. "

Fred: That's a problem. You don't seem to understand the basics of the topic yet you insist in being editor in chief".

Larry: "I give up. I do not insist on being editor-in-chief, and the reason I don't understand what you said is that it didn't make any sense".

Note the reference to 'general semantics', which is classic pseudoscientific tosh which has a close connection with Neurolinguistic Programming. I also had a run-in with Bauder in 2004, it was clear he hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about. Yet these people were running the show.

Interesting how that dialogue above reads. With my doctoral hat on, I can see Larry as completely in the right, and it's how a tutor might admonish a first year student, or comment on a poor essay. Trying to see the world through Wikipedian spectacles, I see Larry as being abrasive and uncivil, and if I had a block button I would be pressing it now.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Kiefer.Wolfowitz » Sat Mar 30, 2013 11:29 am

Randy from Boise wrote:I'm sure that there is an editorial clique around medicine. Which is fine, actually, I think WP's content is excellent there. I have no idea who the players are, but just you go trying to fuck with a serious medicine piece and you'll find out fast...

Of course Israel v. Palestine are two warring teams of like-minded editors who loathe the other. Most "hot button" topics probably have cliques around them.

Malleus the Giant has a posse. I'd list my comrade Kiefer.Wolfowitz as a ranking officer in that beneficent cliquelet.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Eclipsed » Sat Mar 30, 2013 11:48 am

Maybe just confirmation bias on my part, but I'd say there is a clique of editors who think paid editing is an existential danger to Wikipedia and must be wiped out.

The opposing camp of 'focus on the contributions, not the contributor' doesn't seem as loud.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Peter Damian » Sat Mar 30, 2013 1:32 pm

The alliances can be quite complicated, and include alliances off-wiki, such as here. Sometimes these conflict in odd ways. For example, we generally support Giano here, at least I do, because he is or was the chief person who speaks up for content creators. Thus Giano is friendly with Malleus, for instance, and both loathe and detest the hardcore admins like Beeblebrox and Sandstein, and the Arbcom in general.

But then you see Giano on Russavia's talk page here, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =547752907, offering support and condolence to him. That is probably because Russavia is seen as a victim of Arbcom, whom Giano et all hate. Also Sandstein has just blocked Russavia, and Giano hates Sandstein.

But Russavia is not supported here because of his extreme misogyny, e.g. his 'public masturbation' remark in front of a grandmother who unwisely turned up on Jimbo's page. So we ought to support Sandstein for his block. I see also that Volunteer Marek has got into a spat about the same thing here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =547806625 . Marek is one of the more moderate editors in the 'Baltic States' cabal, who are generally against articles whose main purpose is to degrade Eastern Europeans and depict Poles as being fat and dumb.

It gets very complicated.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Kiefer.Wolfowitz » Sat Mar 30, 2013 1:43 pm

Peter Damian wrote:The alliances can be quite complicated, and include alliances off-wiki, such as here. Sometimes these conflict in odd ways. For example, we generally support Giano here, at least I do, because he is or was the chief person who speaks up for content creators. Thus Giano is friendly with Malleus, for instance, and both loathe and detest the hardcore admins like Beeblebrox and Sandstein, and the Arbcom in general.

But then you see Giano on Russavia's talk page here, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =547752907, offering support and condolence to him. That is probably because Russavia is seen as a victim of Arbcom, whom Giano et all hate. Also Sandstein has just blocked Russavia, and Giano hates Sandstein.

But Russavia is not supported here because of his extreme misogyny, e.g. his 'public masturbation' remark in front of a grandmother who unwisely turned up on Jimbo's page. So we ought to support Sandstein for his block. I see also that Volunteer Marek has got into a spat about the same thing here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =547806625 . Marek is one of the more moderate editors in the 'Baltic States' cabal, who are generally against articles whose main purpose is to degrade Eastern Europeans and depict Poles as being fat and dumb.

It gets very complicated.
Your explanation was helpful to me. It seemed that the usual alliances had broken down.

(BTW, Jack Kiefer and Jacob Wolfowitz were two different statisticians who collaborated for decades, and established various Kiefer-Wolfowitz theorems and procedures.)
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Peter Damian » Sat Mar 30, 2013 3:01 pm

I may have already mentioned the Wikimedia Uk chapter. This includes all the proponents of the 'GibraltarPedia' project, which is widely seen as paid editing in disguise. Nearly everyone who posts to this list http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wi ... /date.html is in that group. If you post anything even slightly hostile to that list you will be called a troll or banned. The group includes Prioryman, Fae, Roger Bamkin, David Gerard, Andy Mabbett, WereSpielChequers etc. Any one member will defend another other member unconditionally.

That group is highly resentful of arbcom because of the ban of Fae, and probably of Rich Farmborough too. They are generally supportive of Russavia and 'Demiurge1000' too. They hate Wikipediocracy probably more than any other group on/off Wikipedia, because of the perceived 'outing' of Prioryman, and because of our publicising of the conflict of interest in the media.

This puts them against the anti-paid-editing cabal on Wikipedia - people such as OrangeMike - who are suspicious of them. On the other hand the anti-paid-editing group are diehard Wikipedians, who hate Wikipediocracy for being 'against' some of the core principles of Wikipedia.

And what about the people who post here http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wi ... /date.html ? These tend to be close to, and supportive of the Foundation. I've never understood this group quite so well. It's fairly diverse and includes people from the WMUK group. They say things like "We all started talking about "Sue Gardner for President 2016" on IRC today. I'd vote for her...", or "I'm so happy for everyone -- particularly for all the folks in the developing world who are now getting access to free knowledge they wouldn't otherwise have".

Another marker is the expression 'the movement'. Anyone who uses that is either deeply in denial, or is trying to exploit the movement for one cynical reason or another. Also 'the Project' or 'the mission'. Bamkin used the latter when I posted to his talk page last week. I asked him who had sponsored the GibraltarPedia first prize, and he accused me of getting in the way of 'the mission'. It's a kind of code. If you talk about 'the mission' you have immediately identified yourself as being one of, and on the same side as other people who use that expression. If you accuse someone of getting in the way of the mission, it's like a clarion call to all those who identify with 'the mission' to expel you instantly, and it's a very good way of getting rid of awkward questioners.
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Mason » Sat Mar 30, 2013 3:28 pm

Peter Damian wrote:The alliances can be quite complicated, and include alliances off-wiki, such as here. Sometimes these conflict in odd ways. For example, we generally support Giano here, at least I do, because he is or was the chief person who speaks up for content creators. Thus Giano is friendly with Malleus, for instance, and both loathe and detest the hardcore admins like Beeblebrox and Sandstein, and the Arbcom in general.

But then you see Giano on Russavia's talk page here, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =547752907, offering support and condolence to him. That is probably because Russavia is seen as a victim of Arbcom, whom Giano et all hate. Also Sandstein has just blocked Russavia, and Giano hates Sandstein.

But Russavia is not supported here because of his extreme misogyny, e.g. his 'public masturbation' remark in front of a grandmother who unwisely turned up on Jimbo's page. So we ought to support Sandstein for his block. I see also that Volunteer Marek has got into a spat about the same thing here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =547806625 . Marek is one of the more moderate editors in the 'Baltic States' cabal, who are generally against articles whose main purpose is to degrade Eastern Europeans and depict Poles as being fat and dumb.

It gets very complicated.
Indeed. I was quite surprised to see Giano turning up to fight - and fight hard - on Russavia's behalf to keep another Polack joke in the "encyclopedia." He can't actually believe "Advice Polack" is encyclopedia material, can he? Is he doing this purely to tweak Sandstein? Wikipedia:Wikipolitics makes strange bedfellows (T-H-L), I suppose.

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Mason
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Mason » Sat Mar 30, 2013 3:32 pm

Kiefer.Wolfowitz wrote:My role model would be your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, rescuing little old ladies from gangs of ruffians, etc.
Welcome to Wikipediocracy, KW.

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Zoloft » Sat Mar 30, 2013 3:34 pm

Yes, welcome and hope you enjoy the place. Have a look around. There's a lot to read.

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Peter Damian
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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Peter Damian » Sat Mar 30, 2013 3:41 pm

Written by Floquenbeam, who is either a good guy or a bad guy, can't remember.
Mason wrote:Indeed. I was quite surprised to see Giano turning up to fight - and fight hard - on Russavia's behalf to keep another Polack joke in the "encyclopedia." He can't actually believe "Advice Polack" is encyclopedia material, can he?
Well, this is the excellent version http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =547619178 he restored, so he must.
οὐκ ἀγαθὸν πολυκοιρανίη: εἷς κοίρανος ἔστω

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Re: Exposing the cliques of Wikipedia

Unread post by Mason » Sat Mar 30, 2013 3:47 pm

Yep, strange bedfellows indeed:
*Keep: There seems to be a perectly adequate and referenced vesion in the history - so I have reverted to that version. [1]. Giano 14:00, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
*Keep, good deal of references in version as pointed out by Giano (talk · contribs), above. — Cirt (talk) 14:12, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
*Keep. Appears to be more than adequately referenced to meet basic notability requirements. If it's to be argued that the sources used are unreliable, then it should be explained why they are unreliable. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 14:22, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
Gwickwire, why haven't you voted there yet? Wikipedia needs your help to hasten the day! Get crackin'!

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