On the fascination with Rschen7754

[eagle]

Nay that collaboration, just like WikiProject United States and the other projects I tried to keep alive was an Epic failure. No one really wanted to collaborate. They were more interested in tearing down WPUS so their own projects like USroads could continue to peddle their POV and article ownership. Policy on Wikipedia no longer applies. The only thing that matters is that Admins are always right, editors are always wrong and no one has the morale courage to stand up to the bullies and do something about it.

Political skill will always trump policy. You went up against Rschen7754 who was at the time a 21 year old undergraduate student obsessed with U.S. Roads. If the conflict were to play out in a dark alley, you would have been the last man standing and the clear victor. But instead, the battlefield was Wikipedia with its wikirules of engagement. Two years later, you are a banned editor with post wikicombat fatigue. In contrast, Mr. RSchen7754 is now a graduate student in computer science with too much time on his hands, an Administrator, an Arbitration Clerk, OTRS agent, and global Steward. So, while you have been punching yourself out without a viable strategy, he has been taking his wikisteroids, and will be the first to see anything you try to do.

[Kumioko]

Yeah Rschen is a perfect example of the type of abusive admins I have been harping about. He is nothing more than a hat collector trying to accumulate as many baubles as he can. He is the perfect example of how the Wikipedia culture automatically favors the admin/functionary over the editor. Rschen frequently displayed strong article ownership issues on roads articles (along with other members of the US roads project I might add). So now a high output and devoted editor is banned from the community for advocating reforms to teh admin culture and the arbcom.

For what its worth though, I have multiple degrees (a BA, 3 Masters and a Masters cert) and a job, a nice house and a family. Whats Rschen got? Wikipedia! That's it. Same with a lot of the other folks on the project. They are good at school but when it comes to applying the knowledge they never had an original thought in their lives. So when these clowns block me and ban me from the project, I just think in the back of my head that no matter how important they think they are in the project, they are utterly insignificant an unknown in real life. The funny thing is, they have seen me on TV most likely and didn't know it (I used to do a lot of acting when I was younger, thinner and prettier).

[Kiefer.Wolfowitz]

I sometimes disagree with Rschen, to the extent that I opposed his bid for global stewardship. It would be off-topic to continue to criticize Rschen, so I'll not state my concerns here.

On the other hand, he usually acts from principle and shows some backbone. For example, his voter guide to Arbcom Elections in 2011 (12?) was the first (and remained one of the few) to mention the attacks on the featured-article process.

The personal attacks against Rschen do not help. Please focus on structural issues, or serious misbehavior, rather than make smirking remarks about the roads project or Rschen.

"We all know that ... there is good and bad in everyone...."

[Kumioko]

You may not believe me or care, but Rschen and several members of the US Roads project are as abusive as anyone on Wikipedia. He and the other roadies frequently run off new editors, they treat the roads articles like they own them and half of them should be kicked in the butt for doing it. The problem is, no one on the project cares about article ownership anymore, no one cares about abusive admins or projects that decide they own articles and can dictate which ones get infoboxes or portals or which ones can fall into what Wikiproject. YOu can defend Rschen if you want, but he is a straight up no bones about it bully. And I also strongly opposed his bid for Arbcom and the functionary positions. He as with many others, should have had their admin tools removed several times over.

If you want to get back to AGK though, fine by me. He is a spoiled brat collecting hats and I have long questioned his integrity on the site. More than once his decisions gave the impression he was playing favorites and the vaste majority of the time his comments show attitude and unnecessary aggression. I can name several more, shall I go on?

[Abd]

The personal attacks against Rschen do not help. Please focus on structural issues, or serious misbehavior, rather than make smirking remarks about the roads project or Rschen.

"We all know that ... there is good and bad in everyone...."

"Smirking remarks" is a personal attack. It imagines an emotional state.

Those who have followed my commentary for years will know that I ascribe Wikipedia problems to "structural issues." Behavioral problems and "serious misbehavior" are often simply symptoms of roles that are being played out by actors set up to play those roles by the "system."

It's easy to make fun of Kumioko, but I don't doubt his report. His conclusions may be reasonable *given his experience.*

I voted Neutral on Rschen because I saw some serious indications in the No votes standing as of the time of my vote that there might be a problem with what might be called "balance," that is, an ability to handle criticism without taking it personally, and so I wanted to wait before voting. I never came back. I was already under some level of attack for my vote against Vituzzu, and that kind of thing should be a big red flag to the community.

It isn't. It is assumed that every opposition is personal. Few of those who vote Yes actually investigate complaints. It's too much work, it's not "wiki."

I am currently investigating a situation where stewards (two or three of them) appear to be violating global ban policy. Rschen7754's initial violation was minor, if a violation at all. The serious violation is Vituzzu, who has globally locked a series of accounts with, initially, no disclosure except what an investigator will extract from logs. The offense of those accounts is being single-purpose accounts interested in and only editing with respect to an apparently notable photographer. SPAs like this exist very commonly with no sanctions. None of these accounts had been warned. It's quite clear they are not all the same person. Only one had been recently editing, and it was the actions of this single account that brought down what I'm calling the Spamish Inquisition.

The account violated no policy. It is possible that the actions of this account could be considered disruptive: the account, Augusto De Luca (T-C-L), created 557 user pages, one on each of 557 WMF wikis, each with no text other than a single link to a file hosted on Commons, work of the photographer with the same name.

However, this action resembles the action of a spambot. It was asserted by those involved -- a global sysop, Rschen7754, and Vituzzu, and one steward took one questionable action in this case, the steward is also a local sysop, so the issue is muddied, that this was a "spambot," but spambots don't act like this. The global sysop involved, in one of the two deletion discussions -- both of which I triggered -- showed sorted account creation times from CentralAuth as "proof" that this was a bot, but CA account linking times are ''not'' edit times, and I just demonstrated that in a trial. Further, if I decided to create an account on all WMF wikis -- which this user apparently decided to do -- I could do it in roughly ninety minutes if I was willing to work hard for that period. It is still unclear to me how long the user took, but a figure of 13 hours has been stated.

"Spambot" is stated for obvious reasons: spam is extraordinarily unpopular, and adding spam by bot? That's horrible! Can we ban this person from the internet? If an account is editing cross wiki, it *must be a bot* and unapproved bots are prohibited, right? They will be locked, for sure.

No, not right. Bots operating at a rate not exceeding 1 per minute do not require authorization. 1 edit per minute, times 557 edits, is about 9 hours. I don't know about peak rate, because most of the evidence has been deleted, is not visible to ordinary editors, but the average rate was certainly under the limit.

Because this mass user account creation was noticed -- and there are people who watch for this kind of thing -- the articles on the photographer were examined. The home wiki of the creators of these articles is it.wikipedia. There is an article on en.wikipedia which has been edited by many others. Once the idea was created that this was "promotion," and Vituzzu tossed in "paid editors, SEOs," every SPA invoved was assumed to be part of a conspiracy to promote the photographer.

Without any discussion at all, Vituzzu blocked almost all of the SPAs. One was the daughter of the photographer (this is clear from Commons uploads), and she had been warned about COI editing on it.wikipedia, and she politely stopped, continuing to edit for a short time on general purpose edits, and stopped completed in November, 2011. He locked her account.

I believe at this point that all the other accounts, while not warned at all, had stopped. The only active account was the one in the photographer's name. I've spent a lot of time with the issue now, and this is what I would do if I wanted to set up communication with the world wiki community, and I wasn't aware of the Spamish Inquisition:

I would create all the accounts, and as a photographer, by way of introduction, I'd put up a link to my work. Is this "promotion"? Sure. It happens to be a kind of promotion that is "allowed* on user pages. Then, resting for a bit, "Whew! 557 accounts created! I think I'll rest for a day!" -- he came back the next day to set up email notification, because that requires a separate step per wiki, it's actually more than double the work. But by then, he could not log in to do it because the SUL account was locked.

Most of the created user accounts have been deleted. Most were deleted by the global sysop, by Rschen7754, and by Vituzzu. However, some wikis have not opted in to global sysop actions. So some of the files were tagged for speedy deletion. The reason for deletion was "cross wiki spam," or in what would be telling and seems to have been quite successful, "cross wiki spam, see CA."

So if a sysop looked at CA, they saw 1 edit per wiki, 557 wikis. OMG! Massive spam! Delete!

Some of the deletion reasons show that very little thought was given. One called the edits "vandalism." I'd think that was pretty crazy, but ... I mentioned that there was no discussion.

Normally, global locks will be discussed on meta at Steward requests/Global. Still nothing there. However, Vituzzu just mentioned his actions on meta, Vandalism reports. Hello? He gives no details, nobody could make any sense out of that report if they don't do a lot of digging.

Now, as to Rschen7754, why I'm mentioning this here:

Wikiversity Request for deletion. This RfD also links to my study pages, the study is in progress.

The point here is that we have a global sysop and two stewards commenting in a local RfD on Wikiversity. Highly unusual in itself. The claim was not made that they were wrong to tag a suspicious page. But the defense of their actions went way beyond any necessity. And I was, of course, attacked.

The RfD was filed and the first comment, immediately, was from Wim b, with a total error, treating account attachment time as if it were edit time. In fact, to accomplish the account creations efficiently, one first sets up the account links. I do not yet know the exact process, and simply being logged in to one wiki and looking at others isn't enough. But then a second login appears to trigger a rash of account creations. Once CentralAuth shows all accounts desired, then one uses a page of links, I created such a page to study the edits of Augusto and the response, trivial with a spreadsheet. With a few tricks, the whole process can be done very, very quickly with no bot and no script. A more sophisticated computer user (but naive as to WMF practice) would use a script.

Wim b never responded to his obvious error being pointed out. Instead:

Ah, ok, so: URL = spam, using a bot for created 557+ user's pages with your photos, orverlinking (also off-topic, edited by Ferdinando Castaldo, monotematic user whit user page identical at Augusto, a test before bigger spam?) and create a biography in NS:0 in much wikis using a babelfish and a sockpuppet (like Ferdinando Castaldo or Elvira Pisanti, another monotematic user with identical user's page) ≠ spam... Sure?!--Wim b 04:22, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

This is a global sysop! Nobody in that discussion knows who Castaldo or Pisanti are. I do, of course, because I just spent an insane amount of time researching it. The concept of a "test before bigger spam" is insane. Basically, do something to call attention to everything that has been done? No, it's almost certain: the photographer had no clue that this would be considered improper. There had been a lesser action by Pisanti, he did create user pages with single images. No problem. Pisanti had stopped editing, and never did what I'd expect a true paid editor to do: some ordinary wikignoming. Play a little whac-a-mole on Recent Changes. The antispammers will only catch the inept. And what he did wasn't spam. It was arguably promotion. These antispammers are clueless about the difference.

Abd feel free to say it's a fan rather than a hired SEO, feel free to say SEO is fine, feel free to deal with a lots of crappy non-relevant stuffs ("federal police" is what in communication is called "propaganda") but that won't change the simple fact you've made a personal quarrel out of a simple clean-up. --Vituzzu (discuss • contribs) 18:41, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

(I don't think that anything above was "personal quarrel." Vituzzu had made a comment about "pride" and I turned it around, that was trivial -- and brief -- dicta. I often use the analogy of "campus cops" for sysops, it's apt for Wikiversity. An analogy for global sysops and stewards would be "federal police." He thinks this is "propaganda" but he is projecting arguments that I wasn't making. And this demonstrates the level of thought involved. My comments here are far more personal than there. I attempted to stay focused on the issue, whether or not the page should be deleted on Wikiversity.

It's clear that Wikiversity deletion policy does not contemplate deleting pages like this. You can see the initial comment from the Wikiversity sysop. The page does not violate our policy. But there is another issue raised. If the account is globally locked, it can't edit, so it can be argued that it's useless.

But the page does not appear to violate policy on any wiki, as far as I've seen. It certainly does not violate any en.wikipedia policy, which didn't stop Rschen7754 from deleting it there. "Cross-wiki spam" is not a mentioned speedy deletion reason. Placing links to Commons photos on user pages is a very poor way to "promote" them. The only people who will find or see those pages will be those who are looking at the user's edits.

Wikipedia WikiProject spam is blatant that those fighting spam should dump Assume Good Faith. And they do. There is an obvious explanation for the user's behavior, and it isn't to spam. It may be some sort of promotion, a kind that is allowed.

[WV user] a SEO teaching and writing stuffs on 557 wikis? That people have been teaching anything than how to spam for almost three years... --Vituzzu (discuss • contribs) 18:41, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

"Promote," Vituzzu. It's not contrary to policy. If these people were paid, it may be contrary to policy, but under the circumstances, it's unlikely. The daughter has a COI. She made no attempt to conceal it. The others may or may not have any connection with the photographer, other than obvious interest. He's a spectacular photographer!

@Abd: referred to this: i don't talk with you, is unuseful do it because you're in my opinion isn't in good faith and have demonstrated through dossier & CO. You have edit 10 pages for minute, do it for 13h at day, in alphabetical, order project by project. The project is your, if you would keep a spam only for spite, good...--Wim b 18:24, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Trying to justify his position, it just got worse. 10 edits per minute was roughly my peak (it was probably in excess of that). I sustained 6 edits per minute, including the setup. Setup was from a list compiled from CentralAuth, so, of course, it was in alphabetical order. And "spite" took the cake. I've long been concerned with how the wikis treat newbies.

I'm beginning to wonder why, because if they are treated like this at the outset, maybe it's saving them a lot of trouble.

Wim b points to the edits where I describe the test, and the top part of that diff shows a response to Wim b's phony proof, alleging 6 edits per minute based on what doesn't show edit timing at all. Instead of saying "oops, I was wrong about that, sorry, now here are some facts," he talks about "spite."

These are radically immature users, who have managed to rack up some privileges. That is a *structural problem*. The structure empowers these people and does not restrain them. So they get worse. And the criticism that may eventually appear is seen as "personal." And where this impression is shared, the critics get blocked and banned.

And very few editors will actually investigate. I'm writing about this here, and I'd bet that for most readers, it's "tl;dr." Wiki users come to expect predigested pap. and that's what they are fed, polemic designed to create knee-jerk reactions in naive users. Those who are good at generating that (often it's simply natural, they write the way they think, which is the way that others like them think, so it appeals), become part of the long-term core, for users who think more deeply, eventually, become disgusted by what the "community" does and leave.

Delete as someone who created my userpage manually on all 800-ish public Wikimedia wikis and knows how much time that takes, this was a bot. Obvious xwiki spam, with multiple accounts being used. And quite frankly, we should not be catering to the whims of one user who is known for wikilawyering on many wikis, and has been blocked many times, including here, for doing just that. --Rschen7754 23:32, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I've been blocked many times, though not for "wikilawyering," that's Rschen's POV. There is an argument here that sounds like "wikilawyering." That is, "the pages are not against policy." Yet Rschen7754 is not arguing substance, he is arguing superficial appearance. Only one account was used to create those 557 user accounts. He's mixed it up with a different issue, as if we were discussing the global locks.

He must be referring to the articles on the photographer, such as Augusto De Luca (T-H-L). Okay, where is the AfD for that article? It has been nominated for deletion on it.wikipedia, that's still open. Reading the arguments there, there are users arguing for what policy says on en.wiki about articles creating as "promotion," -- which is not "delete" if anything can be salvaged -- and there are users arguing "delete" and responding to the normal SoFixIt comment with "I don't want to fix something that is going to make somebody rich."

I just looked at the it.wiki discussion. A whole pile of Delete votes just accumulated. This is going to be interesting. The page violates no policy, the delete votes are not based on policy as to page deletion. The theme appears to be that the global account creations shows that there is "something wrong," and so the article should be deleted to punish the spammers.

That matches, quite closely, the global blacklist administrators. It makes some level of sense where a web site is actually spammed, i.e, if links are added to pages that don't make sense on those pages. But, of course, an enemy of a site could spam it in this way. And it makes no sense when an ordinary user, not an SEO, adds a lot of links to a site, believing that the links are useful. That is the lyrikline.org story, and why a prize-winning web site, reliable source for approaching a thousand poets, including biographical information, with texts in the original languages and translations, and audio of the poets reading, a project of the German government in collaboration with universities, came to be spam-blacklisted for years because the antispam people found a conflict of interest, i.e., it appears that the editor was editing from the lyrikline office IP.

That is conflict of interest behavior, which by guideline would result in a warning on en.wiki. Not to the antispammers. Off with their heads! The user was blocked on en.wiki and the site was globally blacklisted.

My view of the Italian article is that it sucks, as to presentation. For a better sense of who and what this photographer is, see the Commons category for Augusto De Luca

What I get reading the Italian deletion discussion, I certainly would not want to be a part of a community that runs a discussion like that. Even if they didn't delete the article.... Maybe it's google trans' fault...

I started a Wikiversity resource, just for fun.

[Abd]

Those who have followed my commentary for years will know that I ascribe Wikipedia problems to "structural issues." Behavioral problems and "serious misbehavior" are often simply symptoms of roles that are being played out by actors set up to play those roles by the "system."

For the community that reads Wikipediocracy, I wrote too much. And this is part of the structural problem, that bites here. I could hat the comment and summarize, but it's too much work.

I've spent about a week (probably substantially more than forty hours) researching the issue I documented. While writing, I discarded maybe a third of what I wrote, knowing that this was getting too long. It was still too long.

The ultimate wiki problem is that few care enough to *actually become informed about situations* before writing about them and commenting. And this affects almost every controversy. Deletion discussions are almost inherently controversial, when any likely good faith contributor is involved. ("Good faith" includes conflict of interest contributors who might nevertheless be required to suggest, rather than insist, it includes "POV pushers" who may not be "neutral," but who will be specially qualified to detect contrary POV.)

In a sane system, a matter would first be researched before discussion of what to do about it would begin. The Wikipedia system is like the court of the Queen of Hearts: verdict first, trail later. If ever there is actually a trial, i.e., collection of evidence.

This collection of conclusions, from which "consensus" is determined, and in so many cases, can be shown to be a summarizing of what those who are uninformed, or, more often, slightly informed by previous comments, have thought. Later comments may correct errors, but the earlier judgments stand. And then even later comments may be based only on the earliest comments, as a discussion becomes long.

In a sane system, raw support for proposed results would be deprecated until the community was satisfied that the matter had been thoroughly investigated. This is standard deliberative process (the motion to close discussion, and to close amendment of the motion, is "Previous Question," and it takes, under Robert's Rules, a two-thirds vote. I.e., some level of consensus, not on the question, but on readiness, on every significant comment having been collected.)

In a sane wiki system, before voting begins, the discussion would be refactored to state the arguments clearly and concisely, to refer to collections of evidence to support the arguments, pushing the original arguments and comments to a subpage. And, longer-term, voters would be responsible to the overall community for ensuring that they were adequately informed before voting. A pattern of voting contrary to policy could result in the loss of the right to vote.

The wiki system works great for decisions that are not truly controversial. It breaks down and is vulnerable to classic repressive social effects in the presence of controversy.

Wikipedia, early on, made certain naive structural decisions, based on the early success at growing the project. It was assumed that a wiki could only continue to get better, because consensus would never approve of a decline in quality, right?

The problem is that no method was developed of efficiently estimating true consensus, and methods that could approach this (Flagged revisions, perhaps, or WP:PRX (T-H-L) were rather vehemently rejected by ... by the community?

No, by those who sit at or near the core, who are differentially empowered by the existing structure, and who resist what might distribute power. All very naturally.

Wikipedia was designed to fail, effectively. It's brilliantly successful in certain ways. But not at realizing the goal of a neutral encyclopedia, where often quite sensible policies are unenforced, and what is enforced is the emotional response of the core.

For those who have served seriously as project administrators, "spambot" arouses an intense aversion. If a user looks like a spambot, he is dead meat. The locking steward stated, categorically, that these users would not be unlocked, period, end of question. Was this without discussion? We don't really know. There has been no real on-wiki discussion, but it is entirely possible there has been off-wiki discussion.

A group of users, then, the stewards, are acting to promote their own agenda, developed naturally out of the valuable work they do combating a real problem, spam, but out of view of the community, and losing sight of the ultimate goal, the projects. Policies are stated and users assume that policies will be followed. Policies generally require warnings before restricting the rights of editors. But "spammers" have no rights at all. And a steward can apparently decide that a user is a spambot, based solely on a quick appearance, and it's unappealable, in effect.

More accurately, if you appeal, you are dead meat, eventually. It can be pretty quick.

[thekohser]

Five dollars to the first person other than Abd who can honestly say they read every word of the previous two posts, in their entirety.

[Jim]

Five dollars to the first person other than Abd who can honestly say they read every word of the previous two posts, in their entirety.

I read them.

Honestly. I could do tests and stuff...

I don't want your 5 dollars though. Psychoanalysis costs far more than that.

[Cedric]

Five dollars to the first person other than Abd who can honestly say they read every word of the previous two posts, in their entirety.

I read them.

Honestly. I could do tests and stuff...

I don't want your 5 dollars though. Psychoanalysis costs far more than that.

Jim wins this thread. We can go home now.

[Poetlister]

Five dollars to the first person other than Abd who can honestly say they read every word of the previous two posts, in their entirety.

Surely each and every staff and moderator reads every single word in every post.

[SB_Johnny]

Five dollars to the first person other than Abd who can honestly say they read every word of the previous two posts, in their entirety.

I'll read them 3 times for $100, otherwise not worth it.

Splitting this off to an Rshen (or however yuou spell it) thread since it looks like it will be a popular topic.

[EricBarbour]

I would say a few things about Mr. Chen. But he is an utter nobody, and deserves no attention.

(However, I will say this: he's a poor excuse for a "Christian".)

Hey Roy, you little snot! I see that you deleted your LinkedIn.
Sorry Roy, too late, saved a copy. Have a nice day.

[Cla68]

When I tell people who aren't familiar with how WP works about the different groups who control topics on that site, they nod their heads in understanding about the atheists, environmentalists, and nationalists who control their topics of interest. When I mention North American highways and severe weather, they respond with, "You've got to be kidding. There are road and weather cabals?"

[Zoloft]

Five dollars to the first person other than Abd who can honestly say they read every word of the previous two posts, in their entirety.

Surely each and every staff and moderator reads every single word in every post.

I come close. I read every unread post each time I log on, looking for stuff that could damage the site. Often another mod or admin has beat me to it and removed stuff.

[SB_Johnny]

Five dollars to the first person other than Abd who can honestly say they read every word of the previous two posts, in their entirety.

Surely each and every staff and moderator reads every single word in every post.

I come close. I read every unread post each time I log on, looking for stuff that could damage the site. Often another mod or admin has beat me to it and removed stuff.

If Schrödinger's cat hat meowed rather than purred that fateful afternoon, you'd probably be a formidable wikipedian admin by now.

[Zoloft]

Since I helped drag this off topic, I'll drag it back.

If you were trying to write a blog post, explaining to the casual reader what was broken about the 'Roads' folks, and what Rschen's role in the Wikipedian tragicomedy was, what would you say?

[Vigilant]

Five dollars to the first person other than Abd who can honestly say they read every word of the previous two posts, in their entirety.

He's one of three on my ignore list.
I regret nothing.

[Abd]

When I tell people who aren't familiar with how WP works about the different groups who control topics on that site, they nod their heads in understanding about the atheists, environmentalists, and nationalists who control their topics of interest. When I mention North American highways and severe weather, they respond with, "You've got to be kidding. There are road and weather cabals?"

They are "We are right and you are wrong" cabals. Those cabals are all over the internet, and this has been going on since the WELL in the 1980s. When "we" is just a fantasy, the cabal doesn't have much power, but when a few conspire in this, they can, in an adhocracy, dominate.

[Kelly Martin]

Administrative note: I've split the US Roads discussion to a new thread; it's an interesting discussing but it now has fairly little to do with Rschen. Carry on.