So I popped onto IRC to see if someone I used to be in contact with on WP was around [to ask them a q about an article]. Some people are talking crap, so I respond in kind.. trying to keep with the tone of the conversation.

Henrietta == me



A few seconds later:


Yeah, that's me getting banned.





??? What is with admins and seeing 'troll' in every offhand comment? And on IRC of all things!

It's not all in their minds. At least when I still used IRC, #wikipedia would actually get tons of real trolls. Because they entirely deserved it though.

oh, but i've been trolled on #wikipedia by those who call others trolls! so really, what is a troll? That could get me into a philosophical discussion about the term troll so I digress..

It is really no different than any other irc channel. Perhaps a bit more lame and not as much ascii art, but power trips and paranoia are a constant on irc channels, especially larger ones, in my experience. If anything the WP irc channels should serve as a reminder that there is nothing grand going on at Wikipedia, it's just a large social networking community.

I'd think the channel ops who ban people just for their own amusement such as ST47 are by definition trolling.

A troll is a big green thing, right? Like Shrek.

Of course, you conveniently left out what sex you were talking about...

Well, with the stakes being so low, this little display of abuse seems merely comical. However, I was once banned from IRC (for life! although in practice only a few weeks or so), and I remember being pretty outraged about it. I think that had more to do with the accompanying insults ("a disgrace to Wikipedia") than the ban itself, though. The ban and the insults were from Fennec, who is rather inactive (and unlamented) these days, but lorded over the IRC channel back then.

Give someone a modicum of power, and they will pass through a power-tripping stage of hubris. Most will eventually outgrow their addiction to power highs and learn to wisely temper their use of power. Some will become cult leaders, some will become bullies, and some will become tyrants. The more interesting stories are the ones that reprise a classic Greek tragedy. In the storied examples, the protagonist has the character flaw (hamartia) of hubris (the arrogance of power) which propels them into a classic hero-goat drama. The drama unfolds until the would-be hero stumbles and falls, becomes the goat, and sings the dithyramb (goat song).

There's a little Shakespeare Company in Chicago that whips up a smashing but all too brief season on Navy Pier every year. Two recent productions of theirs keep coming to mind in this connection. One was a Kabuki version of Macbeth, adapted from Shak by a Zen master playwright, that brought out aspects of the play that are there, for sure, but never quite hit me between the eyes in exactly that way before. Most pregnantly, as Leibniz might say, the Kabuki Zendition highlighted the way that spiritual disharmony, a lack of balance between opposing dynamics in the soul, is what brings on the consequential tragedy. The other was a chilling production of Troilus and Cressida — it's the play that echoes Matthew about the Generation Of Vipers (GOV), if that's a clue.

Jon Awbrey

ST47 is normally a good op. You have to remember that #wikipedia is full of trolls, so you can't blame them for being careful. I'm sure if you pointed it out again to him, he'll unban you. Since the "reformation" by the channel owners (seanw, Mark_Ryan, Dmcdevit) for #wikipedia, it's now a less popular place to hang out. This is one of the reasons I don't go there anymore, #wikipedia-en tends to be much more on topic.

Aren't the chan-ops some of the trolls, though? Like how on general IRC channels, ops that ban for fun are some of the trolls.

Erm I don't know of any that ban for fun. If they did it was probably just a joke.

YUP wikidikys are Circling the wagons. Every person a troll and every person a sock... millions of trolls and socks.

What do the PUNKs and SOCIOPATHS, like JImBo and his Frankenstein Crew, mouthing "the sum of all human knowledge" like some kind of Hara Krisna chant, and Chugging Jimbo Juice, expect when the world at large gets tired of their bull shit hypocrisy...

I predict there will be more wiki scandals, (wikipeida is so chock full of nuts, that it's mathematical that nuts should fall out of the wikibag at regular intervals.... and this will diminish wikipeida to joke status on Jay Leno show.


Ps.. to Jimbo/ Ryulong /and Gamaliel ..If you are reading this...YOU are spineless MAGGOTS.

In other words, power corrupts.

People in positions of authority go on power trips anywhere. They do it on Wikipedia, here on our own Wikipedia Review site, on any site on the internet, in business, absolutely anywhere. But it does vary a bit person to person, and of course depending on the power structure.

The problem with Wikipedia's power structure essentially is that in the early days they were so keen to not ban and not to let any admins have any power at all (they couldn't ban or see IPs initially - they could basically only delete or protect articles and were just there as janitors basically) with restrictions that all required one person to watch over them like an eagle, which of course became impossible once Wikipedia got beyond about 50,000 articles or so. As soon as Jimbo started to let admins ban people, and then letting them see IPs (but only with CheckUser), and then letting them ban (but only through Arbitration Committee), then more and more exceptions came in, and eventually exceptions became the rule.

This is the problem with Wikipedia's power structure. It has so many holes that it is more holes than solid. An administrator can pretend to be doing one thing whilst secretly doing something else. They can ban people as sock puppets of a banned user, they can revert edits and do lots of things in a manipulative way to get false credibility and allow them to get away with a lot more.

Wikipedia doesn't get any more bad admins than anywhere else. They of course do have the burden of it being a volunteer organisation - which leads to more corruption - and they also have the burden of being on the internet with primarily anonymous contributors - which leads to more corruption again. But the worst element that sets them apart from other organisations is the level of loopholes. The sheer existence of WP:IGNORE ALL RULES demonstrates the ludicruous level of these loopholes.

The fact that you can do something wrong on Wikipedia, then go around and change the rules and then suddenly you're right and someone opposing you is wrong and actually get them banned by doing that while you get praise demonstrates just how ridiculous it is. Having rules being able to be changed by anyone at any time is somewhat novel, shall we say.

Anyway, yes, power corrupts.

Wikipedia is a rule-driven system, so participating in Wikipedia is a lot like playing chess. Every move can be challenged if the challenger can cite a rule that the move violates. That makes every participant both a player and a self-appointed referee. As a result, some Wikipedians become very adept at gaming the system. They don't participate with an ethic of crafting accurate articles in a responsible manner, but with the personal goal of winning the match. Of course the outcome of any rule-driven game is arbitrary. It just depends on which player is better at citing the rules. When this practice is combined with the tendency to cherry-pick which reported claims found in the legitimate press to elevate to the unwarranted status of facthood, one finds a miasma of half-truths, misinformation, unwarranted inferences, and political spin-doctoring masquerading as verified fact.