Somewhat lost in the hustle and bustle of Wiki-drama was this nervous breakdown by admin Tanthalas39 on his user page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=264562383

He came back two days later. Personally, I don't think anyone missed him.

Two days is the average length of any Wikipedian retirement, no?

It is usually 24 hours, I think -- a good night's sleep helps knocks the sense out of the people and they return to where they left off.

And yet, you returned.
Masochist. Crazy man. Fool.

Many happy returns!

Almost without exception, every time I hear of a Wikipedia admin burnout, when I check their contributions I don't see a whole lot of article writing, just mainly admin work. This guy is no exception. Again, I believe the lack of an effective governance structure in Wikipedia contributes to admin burnout, because the admins don't really have any kind of established support foundation upon which to ground their activity, so they must feel like they're flailing away endlessly.

To my mind, the lack of a functional community governance model at Wikipedia is a fatal flaw. Other large projects (notably Debian Linux) have highly functional governance models that keep the project focused on producing high quality product with a minimum of sturm und drang.

That is very true indeed. And in the last 12 months, there's been more admin burnout than ever before, and not just due to the increase in absolute numbers ...

I say: since the flagged-revs change is dying out, and there still is no
impetus to devise a usable BLP policy, and crazies like Jayjg, MZMcBride
and JzG keep on playing stupid political games.....

Let it go. Encourage it, in fact. Let more and more people burn out.

Hopefully, people will pass negative opinions of how Wikipedia operates,
and the bad word-of-mouth will discourage more and more of those
young students (which they are highly dependent on) from editing.

Just like Citicorp or GM. Don't bail them out, let them go under.
They deserve it, the hard assets are still there, and maybe
whichever group takes the assets over will manage them better.........

gee, I'm sooo cynical today.

Well, Tan may also be burdened by a belated guilty conscience, as witnessed in this confession the day before his breakdown to Pedro about "gaming the system" to get his tools: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Pedro/Archive_33#Hmm

Perhaps the only positive Tan gave Wikipedia was his User Page photo: we should thank him for encouraging safety belt usage.

Whoa! That exchange opens up another, albeit related, can of worms concerning the role of adminship in Wikipedia's culture. Anyway, his choice of userpage photos was interesting.

I haven't observed an increase. I used to hear about admins quitting quite frequently, but now it doesn't seem so common. Then again, maybe it's just become so common that people don't think to comment on it anymore? Or it may be that I'm just not following events as well as I used to.

Admins are quitting constantly.

I just did Can't stand it any longer - I just had to get out. Eric Barbour pretty much got it right when he described admin/BLP work as just pushing against an overwhelming tide. And Milton is right in that the individual simply cannot fix the wrongs of the world ...

Quite right. Software projects need good quality contributions for the product to function. Wikipedia needs poor quality contributions to fuel its real product (which isn't "an encyclopedia"). Try using a linux distribution where untested code goes directly onto the end-users' machines.

Spring is almost here, it must be time to go round the circle again....

Dramaturgical Regurgitations


All true. But we live in the age of Borat, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert.

One individual cannot gain any purchase trying to fix the wrongs of the world, but there is a long tradition of satire, parody, comedy, and comic opera lampooning the ills of the world.

Under the circumstances, parody is emerging as the best game in town.


And I propose to lead the field in promoting utterly atrocious parodies.

Wikipedia:FORMER#Other
It was strong in December and January and has started to go back to normal levels since.

Alison, if I can paraphrase Don McLean...that world was never meant for one as beautiful as you!

True. But on the way out, the individual could have left a "Fuck You, Jimbo! Up your Arse with a Coconut!" on some talkpage or other. Would have been nice.


Uuuungh!!!

Any volunteers?

What was the last straw? Mail me if you prefer.

How does she know you won't leak it to your buddy Proabivouac?

I believe my original comment was something like
"bailing out the Pacific Ocean with a teaspoon"........

Sorry you had to quit, Alison. Please don't be tempted
to go back, it won't be any easier or more fun the
second time.

But please keep hanging out on WR.

Alison, our postings are always a pleasant read.

I couldn't guess what would be worth "leaking" - more likely its an overture to an attempt to recover a dropout to the cult.

Cos she knows me a bit. I have never leaked anything to Proab from anyone, also Alison has mentioned on here that she sometimes chats to Proab, so if she wants to say anything to him, she'll say it herself.

Sure, pull the other one.

I honestly haven't. You can believe or spread and imply erroneous things about me all you like- but you cannot prove any of your obnoxious claims because they aren't true. Other people have passed on stuff of mine with out my consent, and I wasn't happy about it, but I can see why they wanted to do it, after they already had and I didn't have a choice but to accept it anyway.

I've chatted to him, like a lot of people do at some point, but I never revealed anything of anyone elses' or even of my own, only discussed in a very general way, things that he already knew or seemed to know in precise detail from other sources.

This smacks of another, very recent happening here. Oh, delicious irony!

Post evidence, Random, or drop it.


I've spoken with WW in person, and I do know her a bit. And as she points out, I chat with Proab all the time ... so what?

He will find no evidence of my passing on any logs etc or even telling Proab anything he didn't already know, because I have not. He could perhaps try and twist any words of mine to say that, but they will always be able to be read in another way which will be the correct interpretation without someone trying to put a false spin on anything I've said.

I like to think Alison knows that I would never betray anyone's confidence like that, especially another ladies', though I will and have spoken to arbcom and to others who shared my concerns, about things I think think they need to know about other issues, as everyone should to stop people they believe are dodgy. And if I think someone is dodgy and have had a bad experience with them, or know that others have, I will speak out about it in a general way, but that's the right way to go to avoid allowing someone to go on and do the same thing to other people. I personally think that would be failing to do my duty to others and allowing people to possibly have a very unpleasant experience, making me partly responsible for that.

Per dtobias's beloved [[WP:SAUCE]], I rather feel like I have to echo Alison here, lest I be more of a hypocrite than usual.

It's all subjective (and therefore you will say entirely worthless), but I will outline my reasons for coming to this belief:

You were the other person involved in attacking Kylu, and the only one of the two who would plausibly have had direct access to the wikichix post that Proabivouac copied here on WR. You were also shockingly unconcerned about his access to such material for someone who had been (and continued to do so even in making light of Proab's access) so condemning of the idea of anyone not in possession of two X chromosomes being able to access the list. I believe the only reasonable explanation for this sudden reversal is if you were the source (and therefore if that were the case, you knew damn well he wasn't going to get anything other than stuff you had no problem sending him and thus saw no cause for concern)

If you were sincere in your claimed belief that Kylu shouldn't have access to wikichix-l (and I believe you were), then your reaction should have mirrored Alison's - or, if anything, been stronger. That it didn't seems to imply that you have an additional piece of information (i.e. that you have control over what material gets forwarded to Proab).

Not that you don't have some very good qualities, Alison, but you are one of the most indiscreet people to ever pass through these parts...and that is saying a whole lot.

There are lots of ways to (intentionally or inadvertently) confirm an otherwise unproven assertion without passing the information directly.

Back in the 90s, I was completely in the dark about the role someone (whom I never spoke with in private) had played. So I boldly posted an assertion about her for which I had not a shred of evidence.

She immediately became incensed and demanded to know who had told me that, strongly hinting that it must have been leaked by the single person whom everyone knew was friends with both of us.

I responded that the person who told me was none other than the subject herself, who had confirmed my otherwise ungrounded theory by falsely claiming our mutual friend must have leaked it.

Oddly enough, she never let go of that erroneous indictment, notwithstanding the truth of the matter, that I had just made a good guess and published it as if I knew it for a fact.

It was a little like Claudius in Hamlet becoming visibly shaken when the play-within-a-play exactly mirrors his own nefarious misdeeds. Had Claudius been innocent, the scene would have gone by without him betraying the slightest hint of recognition.

There is, however, a difference between this and if you had instead published actual words written by her and not intended for your eyes - while what you did only weakly implied a leak, that would confirm it for certain (and only be possible if there had actually been one). It is not in dispute here* that _someone_ leaked / is leaking messages from wikichix-l to Proabivouac (either that, or he somehow gained direct access himself). The only question is who. And the only plausible suspect I can think of is wikiwhistle.

*The possibility remains, I suppose, that the message he posted was a fabrication, but it seems likely someone would have called him on it were that the case

To be fair, you don't know the member list of Wikichix, so to say "the only plausible suspect I can think of is wikiwhistle" is sort of silly. Only suspect out of whom? Not all chicks on WP are members of this group, and not all members of this group are chicks. It could be any number of people. WW said she didn't do it, Proab says he doesn't have access. That doesn't mean that one of Proab's cronies doesn't have access, pretending to be a female... or that he doesn't have a female crony on the list willing to spill the secrets.

Befriending someone like Proab is, in my opinion, ipso facto support of his actions. So for the sake of his cronies, I hope they've got a sturdy lock on the closet that holds their own skeletons, and no one who knows their secrets willing to spill them.

Wasn't this precisely my hypothesis? And you're discounting WW's odd non-reaction to his having gotten his hands on a copy of that post.


The difference is, all my cards are on the table now immediately after someone bothered to actually ask.

Indeed. It could be any of a number of other people that immediately come to mind, actually. I count four of five Chix members on WR right now, with little effort I'd also really like to know who it was who did leak that info, but he ain't tellin'

It's not ipso facto anything, any more than posting here is ipso facto support of WordBomb (remember those days?) I don't buy guilt by association at all, sorry.

I'm not saying it's not WW. I'm saying that it's not clear, and that it's silly to claim she's the only suspect when you don't know who the other possible suspects are.

As far as your evidence goes, I find it compelling, but it's still not proof.

Of those, which others took up the strange position that it is more acceptable for Proabivouac to have access to that material than it is for Kylu?

Don't much care what you buy, Alison. I'm just stating my opinion. Feel free to disagree.

If the fact in question is the communication of specific information, evidence (here admissions) of a channel of private correspondence is certainly relevant. This is not "guilt by association." It is establishing a requisite fact in a chain of reasoning.

Listen to what Lara is saying. It could be any of a number of others - not even WR folks - that were silent on the matter. It's that simple. You're judging based on the one or two you see on here.

I don't think Alison leaked it, if that what you thought I was implying. I'm fairly certain her trustworthiness is of the highest level.

I didn't leak it. Absolutely not. And I was seriously annoyed at Proab for what he did, and told him so to his face.

I don't know either. She is not the only person who has made such admissions. I can't agree about her "trustworthiness" if by that you mean "the ability to keep information to herself." While I might "trust" her in many ways she has a reputation for revealing information that others might have thought should be kept to herself.

This branch of the thread has seriously drifted off, and should be moved.

With that said, it seems a bit strange that there's been little condemnation of wikileaker. S/he's probably an ex-arb who's retained CU and OS. The information s/he has access to and has leaked is arguably more sensitive.

I guess some of us aren't as worried about ArbCom's dirty little secrets getting released as we are about people's personal docs being dropped along with other such sensitive information that causes real world damage.

And wasn't it already established that Wikileaker screws around with information, so it's not in its original form, or was that someone else that took Arb comments from the list regarding Majorly and tweaked them to be harsher than they were?

Are you saying I said that, Random, because I don't think that I would say that exactly, and I'm not sure what context that was in. What I can say is that I've never leaked anything off wikichix, and I've sworn to them that I haven't, however I've heard that several people are leaking info from there. I don't know who those people are, and that action is not condoned by me.

All I'm saying is you didn't seem particularly concerned about it at the time, contrasted with the kind of crap you were saying about Kylu being on the list. You even made jokes about it (at Kylu's expense, no less).