QUOTE(dtobias @ Sat 29th December 2007, 10:55am)
Thinking some more about JzG, I'm convinced the motivations for what he does are rooted more in frustration than anything else. He's on the losing side of a culture war; he can't get the masses on Wikipedia to consistently rally on his side against all the evil trolls, and he finds this very frustrating.
Well, no question. I just wonder if there's any way left to ameliorate the situation at this point, without one side or the other completely disappearing from the scene. (This is assuming that by "one side or the other," we're talking about JzG vs. Wikipedia Review, or even JzG vs. all websites he finds objectionable.)
Probably not, right? It's clear he's reached the point where the end justifies the means for him... And since it's the internet, and every attack practically
demands a counter-attack, the whole thing eventually spirals out of control. We're probably just as responsible for that as he is, but the chances of our starting to like JzG as a person and the things he does are far lower than the chances of him eventually getting fed up and leaving WP for good. That's not to say we're deliberately trying to drive him away (though I suppose some of us might be) - it's just a fact, as I see it.
By the way (and I may post some more about this later), I can finally confirm that JzG's statements about Andrew Morrow having been "jailed" are a gross distortion of the facts. Apparently Morrow
did spend about a month in a county lockup after pleading "No Contest" to some sort of domestic abuse charge, which occurred in the midst of a child-custody dispute with his (now ex-) wife. However, that was
several years before Wikipedia came into existence, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the internet (and did not involve "stalking" of any description), and he hasn't been back to the slammer at all since then. For JzG to keep saying this in connection with so-called "attack sites" is almost certainly libelous, not to mention the fact that it's a bit like saying that because one person on Wikipedia opposes bicycle-helmet laws, "Wikipedia opposes bicycle-helmet laws."
That sort of thing should only be reserved for
legitimate generalizations, such as "Wikipedia supports naked short-selling."