http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=176279272

What is that about?

They scrape their acess logs to find out just who's coming in. They did that to catch MONGO in the act of sanitizing the page on him, which caused them to put it on the front page... and you know what happened then.

Because, you know, Wikipedia would never do that. It's not like they've set up a "checkuser" system to harvest IPs from acess logs...

...oh wait.

I believe directly after making these bizarre assumptions, JzG commented that "other people" should stop taking hallucinogens

The part is jzG's edit summary claiming that Dan Tobias is a "member of ED" is what I found amusing.

I dunno if Dan is a Cialis customer, but I really doubt he is an ED member. That site just doesn't seem his style.

Who would you rather have as an administrator to your wikipedia? JzG or Dan Tobias?

If you say JzG, there's something really wrong with your idea of what sort of people should be in any position of authority over others.

I don't think Dan lies and does anything under false pretenses. JzG? He specializes in edit summaries doing just that.

Oh, wow, I just noticed the abuse of WP:POINT. How is it disruptive to add a link you truly believe should be added, and what other point is proved by doing this?

Of course, we won't get an answer to that, because to question his actions would also be WP:POINT.

Dan is honest enough, I should think. However, don't forget that one of the main reasons he started an account here is because several of us, including myself, got rather upset about his tendency to use reductio ad absurdem arguments when referring to some of our positions. The "classic," of course, being the one where we'd say, "this article about Daniel Brandt could hardly be considered essential to a general reference work" - and he'd respond with something along the lines of "if we deleted every article that someone thought was 'non-essential,' we'd end up with a 12-page encyclopedia." I'd like to think that experience may have helped him with the likes of JzG/Jayjg/Durova et al regarding the link-redaction controversy, particularly since JzG & Co. seem to be waaay worse about it than Dan ever was...

JzG has accused this site of "log-harvesting" too, as I recall. At the time he made the accusation, I hadn't even looked at a traffic-summary graph in over three months, much less an access log - and really, what could be less interesting than looking at a website's access log? I'd almost rather watch re-runs of Two and a Half Men.

I almost feel sorry for JzG at this point - he clearly hates what he's doing, by his own admission!

I've long had trouble squaring the outrage over Bagley's clever IP traps with the existence of checkuser, but as you observe it's comically hypocritical when we're talking about another site in which someone willfully participated (the content of that site being another matter.)

I don't think JzG is a liar. More like he doesn't always check things
out before reaching a conclusion. Perhaps he thinks more with his
heart than with his mind... or not... *shrug*

Oh, and, anyone concerned about log harvesting should be
using Tor!

Well, I'll take your judgment calls with a grain of whatever painkiller you happen to be high on now, thank you very much. That's not a personal attack, that's just recalling what you've already mentioned here before, so grant me that folks.

JzG calling Tobias a member of ED as a pretext to delete his edit, whther that deletion was right to do or not, is a false pretext, and lying. Just it was for Gerard to one-man ban me for being "wordbomb" or an "overstock meatpuppet".

And wtf does being a "member" of WP, WR, ED, etc mean?

I haven't joined anything. I edited WP some. i post at WR probably too much for the locals' liking now. I'm not a "member" of either of them.

I am not on propoxyphene + acetaminophen at the moment. Just
caffeine + asprin. Easier on the liver. : )



It's perfectly alright. It's not like I'm on the painkillers because of
you. That honour goes to WP, one member in particular, I'm afraid.

{{{Piperdown}}}



I don't know. Sometimes JzG seems to assume things for no
apparent reason. But being wrong and lying are not the same
thing.



Sorry to hear. {{{Piperdown}}}



*shrug*

You are a member if you self-identify as one, I guess.

I understand you have a soft spot for JzG, but he has nothing but contempt for this forum and many of its participants and unfortunately he lies and condemns when it suits him.

I hope that is not my only soft spot. : /



He also supports not dragging the names / pseudonyms of banned users
throught the dirt on top of Google... or at least he did last time I checked.

As admirable as that may be, I wish I could say his virtues outweigh his vices.

Guy Chapman is a pathological liar who vies with SlimVirgin for first place dishonors in the Pathological Liars Club Of The English Wikipedia. (The two are equally pathological but ranking them on a single scale is probably not feasible on account of the very different styles of their lies.)

If you cannot see that, then I fear that your judgment is beyond repair.

Yes, there is a distinction between liars and fools, the later being people who are simply mistaken and stubbornly opposed to considering any data that might serve to correct their views.

Deciding whether a person is a liar, simply mistaken, or a stubborn fool requires us to assess the intention of the person in question. That can be a tricky business in dubious cases, but there is nothing dubious about the cases before us.

As it happens, we make judgments of that sort as an everyday affair, based on any number of heuristic rules that have proved their worth over the ages, so long as we remain flexible in applying them.

One of the best ways to recognize a liar, a person who asserts false statements with an intent to deceive others, is the utter lack of respect that they exhibit toward any contrary assertions by others and any data that might act to defeat what they say. Conduct like that is prima facie evidence of malice aforethought.

Guy Chapman is a prime offender in this regard, arrogating to himself the option of deleting any statement by anyone that runs contrary to his lies. This is the sign of deceiver who acts with the deliberate intention of preventing others from considering corrective facts, and not merely the symptom of a self-deceived person.

Jon Awbrey

Precisely! Couldn't have said it better myself...

What I've noticed lately is that JzG likes to respond to what we say about him here on WR by posting stuff to WikiEN-L in which he claims to hate and despise the very thing we've just accused him of. The latest one is a good example.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...ber/086977.html


Now, putting aside the fact that the truth is not always a completely black-and-white proposition, and that he's actually referring to the purpose of secret mailing lists whose archives either don't exist or have never been made public, the simple fact of it is that he started ranting about "lies" only after the thread called Lies, Lies, Lies, Yeah was started here by Yours Truly, detailing several of those very things perpetrated by Mr. JzG himself.

Prior to that, we've seen him rail against hypocrites after we've accused him of rampant hypocrisy; he's joined in with Jayjg in curtly dismissing his opponents' arguments as "strawmen" after we've pointed out a variety of strawman arguments used by them; he began accusing others of "irrational hyperbole" after I myself used that same term to describe most of his posted output; and after some of us called him a "drama queen" for incessantly defending various forms of the BADSITES proposal, he ludicrously began attacking his opponents as "drama-mongers" for having reverted the removal of links that had existed in Wikipedia for months.

Strangely enough, the one I feel really sorry for right now is actually Dave Gerard. He's supposed to be "moderating" that list, but JzG and Jayjg are his cabal-buddies, and loyalty trumps honesty in Wikiland. So, Dave has to sit back and watch, uncomplaining, as the J-boys turn WikiEN-L into a bitching 'n' moaning war-zone, pissing the other subscribers off, and making the list completely useless for its intended purpose (which, to be fair, wasn't really of much use to begin with).

It's a dirty business, is Wikipedia. Not something for decent people to be involved in.

Good for me! I don't believe in judgement anyway.



People who are emotionally attached to their beliefs
often do the same. Consider religion....

I consider it highly illogical, so I avoid any involvement in it if I can help it.

At any rate, even in cases where it is truly difficult to decide whether a person is a liar or a fool, it is not always necessary to do so. For example, if it's a question of «Which would you choose to follow as a leader?», the answer is «Neither!»

Jon Awbrey

Pure, unadulterated irrationality. Exactly. But irrational faith is not the
same as lying.

I am an atheist, but love should also be completely irrational. Love
is truly the best thing ever... except for the having your heart broken
part.



: )

Elsewhere, I remarked that accuracy is an important value, and that credibility is driven by a track record of accuracy.

Which brings me around to credentials.

Conventional encyclopedias rely on credentialed contributors, whose credentials are available for public scrutiny.

For a variety of complex reasons that need not be enumerated here, Wikipedia does not rely on a credentialing process in selecting who is invited, empowered, or prohibited from editing articles.

As a result, there are recurring troubling questions about the accuracy of articles and the credibility of editors. This is especially true for articles edited by anonymous or pseudonymous contributors who mask their identities, and thereby mask their credentials (or lack thereof).

Wikipedia makes for an interesting experiment, but the evidence suggests that it's not a sustainable model for an encyclopedia of human knowledge.

However, it does seem to be a sustainable model for a compendium of popular culture, where impressions are more meaningful than questions of scientific accuracy.

Anyhow Encyclopedia Dramatica's official Privacy Policy says:



Seems clear enough.

I think I see where you're going with this, AB - I assume you're trying to say that JzG's falsehoods are the result of some weird cult-like quasi-religious belief in WP's "noble aims" (or whatever). as opposed to malicious intent to manipulate others. Right?

The problem with that argument is simply that the religious person admits he's religious, and should admit that statements he makes that are germane to the religon's precepts are at least influenced by, if not based on, his religious beliefs. Whereas JzG would never admit that his lies are based on anything but "pure objective truth." JzG has manipulated and distorted facts to suit himself for as long as I've been reading his silly, sometimes amusing rants, but the things he's been saying recently go well beyond that, to the point where they've become completely self-defeating. There's no point in even bothering to refute any of it.

I think WikiEN-L may have finally reached a catharsis point today, though - you'd think even JzG must realize that he's taking it way too far, though I suppose if anyone can ignore the obvious, he can.

Assuming your hypothesis is correct, Somey, there should be an experiment, observable to the public, to demonstrate it.

Perhaps we can (openly) devise such an experiment -- one that almost anyone might be able to perform.

I say "almost anyone" because for any experiment, there are typically one or two agents who cannot logically perform the experiment.

One of the hardest questions to resolve is whether a person who asserts a falsehood is 1) joshing, 2) simply misinformed, 3) delusional, or 4) intentionally deceiving others.

Asking someone to disclose their evidence and reasoning to support an assertion is one way to sort it out. A well-crafted dialectical process should be able to resolve the confusion. Part of our challenge is to discover how to establish a well-crafted dialectical process with those who harbor mistrust toward those of us who seek such a constructive dialogue.

In what universe to religious people contextualize their perceptions about religious as biased by his/her own faith? Most religious people I know, especially the most dogmatic, see themselves as "right" and the others "wrong". Most wars in European history were based on just that premise, as religion used to be the bastion of politics. I get what you are saying, Somey, but you are talking about an idea, where AB mentioned what-really-happens. JzG is a perfect example of someone who can't see how his beliefs are in fact shaded by his experience. Usually such reflective capacity is a combination of personal qualities as well as of having lived on both sides of the bridge, so to speak. Kelly Martin is a good example of that. A bit of time on the outside, and it was a whole new world...

But to him it is pure objective truth. He ascribes himself with sovereign right to determine right and wrong. In the current atmosphere on wiki he's not incorrect. Is it normal in the grand scheme of things? No.
People lacking reflective capacity can often be both funny and sad to observe. And they often do shoot themselves in the foot, because they've denied themselves the full information. If you make all criticism "bad", and all detractors "evildoers", then you've made yourself perfect, and since you can't improve on perfection, you've put yourself in a static state - worse, you've put yourself in an unsolvable quandry when problems arise that you can't hide (anymore)

Including headlines like: Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia: High School Musical 3

Admitting the list was wrong is to admit that his entire 'objective reality' framework is flawed (not at all unlike Durova having to admit that her sleuthing techniques were crap - a fact which she has yet to absorb or admit even to herself). The fact that the word "objective" is used at all sounds to me like they are using poor Ayn Rand as a justification for their severe, deep, intractable denial.
Well sure. Arguing with a person who thinks he is right and you are wrong is an exercise in frustration. You might well go bang your head in a wall.

Catharsis? Certainly emoting random blurbs at will is catharitic for Guy. I think you mean that it reached a "critical point" at which a turn is necessitated, right?
Because why? When you are right, you are right. He just thinks that this entire scandal is ridiculous, and he continues to say so. Of course, he belonged to both lists, and he's always right, so how could the use of the lists be wrong? We are all SO STUPID and JUST DONT GET IT. Man, it must be hard for him to watch all of us go on about nothing. Morons!
And so shall he.

They've put me on moderation on wikien-l now.

I'm pretty sure you're going to end up banned shortly anyway.

CMetz, BBergstein, YNoguchi should all be informed of this "mature" response to your interview.

Apparently the price of free speech in a totalitarian society. Sorry they are so awful Daniel.

The idea of JoshuaZ lecturing you on the value of maturity makes me want to either laugh or cry. I can't decide.

I'm sorry. ;_;

{{{Daniel T.}}}




I prefer the terms 'irrational' and 'emotional' over 'weird cult-like
quasi-religious belief', but basically.



Think back before modern free religion. Middle ages.

Alternatively, have you ever been in love with a total jerk? Or
known someone personally (not on the internet) who was in love
with a total jerk?



Catharsis? No. They keep holding themselves back by banning
the people who would bring them there.

I do not like the idea of experimenting on people.
We need to respect people's humanity.

Change that to dialog move, then...

There should be a dialog move, observable to the public, to demonstrate Somey's hypothesis.

Perhaps we can (openly) devise such a dialog move -- one that almost anyone might be able to perform.

My theory is that they are pre-empting the dialog move that Somey and I are seeking to come up with. It's a common tactic in a dialog with a bully, when the dialog is not going well for the bully.

«Observable To The Public»

means

«Observable To The Public With Eyes To See»

Those of us who aren't playing Candide have seen enough …

BTDT —

The Experiment, er, Drama, er, Mess is Ended

Time to leave the Lab, er, Theatre, er, Cathedra

Jonny

Can't we just call it the Spammish Inquisition?

No one (on that list) expects the Spammish Inquisition.

Changing the terminology does not change the
essence of what you are doing. JzG is not a lab
rat.

Hmmm.... Judging by the last several hours of posts, I'd have to guess they put JzG on moderation too, and possibly Jayjg as well.

Of course, since the J-boys won't actually admit that publicly, we may never know for sure... but Dave Gerard isn't the only moderator on that list. I'm pretty sure Mark Ryan is another, and he's not quite so "cabalish." And he's smart enough to realize that the bickering, and the subsequent "unsubscribe" notices, aren't going to stop if it's just Mr. Tobias who's put "on moderation"... In fact, I suspect he only put Tobias on moderation in order to look more even-handed. I'd imagine Alec Conroy is getting the same treatment... (Anthony, how about you?)

I have to be honest here - if I'm right, and they have put all three of them on moderation, and that actually does reduce the amount of BADSITES-related bickering on that list, then with all apologies to Mr. Tobias, it was probably the right call. At least in terms of keeping that list from being bombarded with unsub notices and turning into a ghost town.

Not that that would be a bad thing, of course...

What is your evidence and reasoning to support that hypothesis?

THAT's RIGHT!

So we need to quit with the FrankenGuy jokes NOW

.

That needs to be photoshopped with a moustache and a cycle helmet....

That there are some things a lab rat just won't do?



You're probably right. If it is indeed part of a balanced multi-user moderation, it doesn't really bother me like it would if they were singling me out. Looking at recent list history, you can see "the two J's" sometimes posting polemic messages by the dozen all in a row, even in a period when I was making little or no participation in the list myself... so calling me the cause of all the trouble is a bizarre thing.

Not to derail this thread with a constructive suggestion or anything, but has there been any momentum towards discontinuing WikiEN-L in favor of a web-based board/forum of some sort? It might remind people too much of us, I suppose, but that could solve a lot of problems - in addition to their being able to impose more "granular" posting restrictions (like the one we had you on for a couple of weeks, Dan!), the mere fact that previous posts would be more easily visible in threads might help prevent a lot of the repetition and redundancy we've been seeing.

Citizendium did that quite early on with their mailing list, as I recall. It's just easier to manage and keep track of all the different subjects on a board, and ignore those you're not interested in... and for people who prefer e-mail, most boards (including this one) have a handy "e-mail me when someone responds to this post/thread" feature.

Indeed.

There are two words too many in that sentence... here, let me refactor.

JzG is not a lab rat.

There, much better.

What? This can't *possibly* be the same list to which JzG referred when he wrote:

Something is going wrong with my ability to reply to posts, and how the posts are listed for me tonight, so sorry if this is wrong.

I'm replying to post no.2 in this thread, by Amarkov:)

"They scrape their acess logs to find out just who's coming in. They did that to catch MONGO in the act of sanitizing the page on him, which caused them to put it on the front page... and you know what happened then.

Because, you know, Wikipedia would never do that. It's not like they've set up a "checkuser" system to harvest IPs from acess logs...

...oh wait. "

ED wouldn't have to do this, they would merely have to see MONGO's frenetic, probably numerous edits in 'recent changes' to know he was there. They wouldn't have to do anything nefarious- not in that instance, anyway

Go to "Options" and see if the forum posts are in "Standard" outline.

;_;

No, JzG is a human being.

I think the moderator was Steve Bennett, and yes, he seems to have just put everyone participating heavily in those threads on moderation.

Overall I don't think what he did was so bad, but a public "this thread is dead, post to it again and you're on moderation" would have been better IMO. Alternatively, just banning JzG from the list probably would have been enough, most of the bickering was over his nonsense. Even Jayjg was at least making an attempt at a decent argument. JzG would just invent false claims, pretend someone had made them, and then call that person an idiot.

Can't you just picture Frank Gorshin doing Jimmy Cagney, "You dirty lab rat..."

If you say so.

It doesn't mean he is a nice person.

I have yet to see any proof of this.

JzG, unlike a bot, is quite emotional.