Our favorite evil queen is back in a new tsk-tsk against the beloved Mr. Kohs:

http://blog.shankbone.org/2009/04/14/greg-...edia-dramatica/

Kohs, take it from this horse's mouth -- Mr. Miller ain't good enough to flush your toilet!

I get it. It looks like a newspaper because he's a journalist.

No, it looks like a newspaper because he's a parakeet.

Ja Ja

Makes me sad. I had to get rid of budgey. What with the demise of newspapers and all it just cost too much to line the cage with laptops.

Indeed a poor trade.

Fun fact: the inside of a thick never-opened conventionally printed newspaper makes a pretty good surface upon which to rely for cleanliness in emergencies. Such as where to put an emergently born baby, or what to use impromptu on a severe injury. The reason being that the high heat and pressures of the modern high speed press kill bacteria quite well, and the rest of the wrapping process then protects the surfaces from further outside contamination.*

And that's not all. Besides being relatively free of bacteria and viruses, the inside of a modern newspaper is also nearly sterile of imagination, wit, wisdom, perspective, and scholarship, as well.

Not that most of what you get over the net on your laptop is any better, and is usually worse. All of this has been eroding per Gresham's Law of the Jungle, these last 20 years. The losers being ye books in ye libraries. Which anon becometh harder and harder to find as the process doth proceed.

Let's hope something is found to turn this mess around before the Tragedy of the Commons finally kills it off completely. Not withstanding a lot of fine stuff donated altuistically to the world, the "free information" movement has too often given us only that which we paid for. Such is life.

Milton


* You don't know whether to believe this or not, do you?

David Shankbone:




Good grief.

Shankbone has become a gift for Wikipedia critics. A gift that just keeps giving.

Hahaaha. I just don't see how Shankbone can try to push that stupid blog off as anything but a joke. It's so funny in how completely ridiculous it is. The topics, his writing style, his complete lack of integrity. It's awesome. It's like the Fox News of internet shit no one cares about.

Hopefully everyone reading this is already aware that the ED "User:Gregory Kohs" is not, in any way whatsoever, the real Gregory Kohs. More likely, it's Shankers himself.

But just in case not everyone is aware, I just thought I'd mention it!

But! But!! Shankbone's VP of Wikimedia NYC! He's gotta be important!

Stuff sort of happens. Consensus is reached. The passive voice is used.










Penis photos are posted.

I looked but were unable to find any of those particular images that Mr Shankbone is so associated with (gynaecology detailed pictures of male genitalia) on Wikipedia - and here - anywhere on his blog. Why is this?

But Shanky can get a job a Fox News...doesn't he already know someone who works there (as per an older blog plop)?

He got jimbo to delete them, presumably connected to some posts on his blog about wanting to advance his career in the real world. Perhaps he doesn't want to seem like a type people wouldn't want to employ.

Which would then beg the question as to why he would do such a nasty pointless piece on Greg which shouts out personal grudge and failure to grasp the lack of importance of Wikipedia politics in the real world.

I remember the real world, it was much more fun than this one.

At the risk of redundantly repeating this repetitive point for the umpteenth time, this is just more of the same classic hypernarcissistic hoo-ha that we've been getting from Shankers all along.

In other words, getting published has little or nothing to do with talent, creativity, skill, effort, ideas, persistence, or even luck. Instead, getting published is something that happens when you go to a nightclub or a party, and meet someone who knows someone who knows an agent (ad infinitum), and who is naturally super-impressed by some aspect (if not all aspects) of your stellar-perfect personality.

In effect, this is the "extreme version" of the pipe dream Wikipedia sells to all its servants - i.e., the idea that you can "be somebody" by simply sitting in front of a computer, paraphrasing some content found elsewhere, and chatting with people. (Then again, maybe I shouldn't be so critical of them for that, since most other websites don't even require the paraphrased content.)

Ha! Ya, that might hinder his chances of getting hired there. I'd forgotten about that, actually. He criticized Fox in that one, right? Haha, oh... how hypocritical.

Some of them have been reuploaded by other users with "don't recall the source", for example, in the source field, verified through OTRS. And they no longer have the stupid "_by_David_Shankbone" in the title.

Shankbone's picture which he titled "The Taint of a professional model" is still there. ***DO NOT OPEN AT WORK*** There was that awful "Gaping Anus" shot as well, but I don't know what happened to that.

Down the memory hole...

GAAAH! I've been blinded like Tiresias (T-H-L-K-D)!

So now David has resorted to googlebombing his Kohs article up the Google rankings by tagging the blog entry with Greg's place of employment, his position there, etc, etc. How utterly vindictive and how absolutely juvenile. He's like a tweenager indulging in a MySpace tiff.

Seriously, David - I know you're reading this. Please do us all a favour and grow up. You're a big child!!

Why is this man not banned from all Wikimedia sites? His off-wiki and on-wiki behavior is deplorable and if he were anyone else, he would have been banned a long time ago.

For goodness sakes, Moulton was banned for less! (Sorry to drag you into this, Moulton).

Dueteronomic Descant


When Mr. Paschal Lamb first showed up here on W-R, I wrote this...

Exile may not solve the problem, but as Shankbone is a prominent Wikipedian who wraps his reputation as a photographer and journalist around WikiNews and Wikipedia, you would think that the English Wikipedia community, WikiNews, and the Foundation would denounce him and distance themselves away from Shankbone.

I'm just shocked that there is so little outrage over his libelous statements against Greg and The Fiery Angel. It's maddening and heartbreaking that he continues to do this and hurt people. Even worse, no one except us is standing up and admonishing him.

I'm not naive. I know people like Shankbone are out there. The lack of admonishment of his actions depresses and angers me more.

For me, sometimes it helps to remember that deep down, in their heart of hearts, as they walk the long, winding road of life, watching the sun rise and set day by day, hearing the laughter of children, and feeling the sand beneath their feet on some faraway beach, each and every one of the people who contribute to Wikipedia is full of pure, malicious evil.

I'm not sure why, but I just feel better knowing that.

Or sociopathic narcissism. Not that there is much difference.

Who do we notifiy at the Foundation to tell them that they need to remove Shankbone's blog from their blog distro list?

You're joking, right? People have already tried--over and over.

Discussed here last August. No action. November. No action.

And speaking of Shank attacking TFA.....

Perhaps CharlotteWebb and Acalamari could please explain this.

Why do people tolerate him? Are the photos and the Wikinews stuff worth all this abuse?

I've already discussed the matter over email with Jimmy tonight. Let's see if anything happens.

I just found this one. TFA is 'transgendered', according to David. Who knew?

I guess it's not much different from David's wild speculation on Alisa Valdes-Rodrigues sexuality

I guess I'd better start shaving then...It's a good thing that Oversight took care of all of my personal information on the EN-WP site, isn't it?

I thought they did? Or was that just for Wikipedia? Jimbo said he wanted it removed.

The problem is that Shankbone has no empathy for his victims and no remorse. Or, as Gomi puts it, he exhibits traits of narcissistic sociopathy.

For such individuals, admonishment and other traditional forms of shaming and/or guilt tripping are ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. Such unbecoming tactics tend to displace any fragile feelings of remorse — the crucial emotional state upon which a constructive change of behavior might otherwise have emerged, going forward.

"Prominent"? "Reputation as a photographer and journalist"? Who are we talking about? He's just, by his own admission, a failed would-be lawyer with serious emotional issues who sticks free photos online and gets invited on junkets because he gives away interviews to Wikinews.

Has Mr. Miller (I am not using his idiotic pseudonym anymore) ever been paid for his work? Any shmuck can click snapshots and put them online -- that doesn't make you a professional photographer. And which professional media sources paid for his articles? Outside of Wikinews and his increasingly deranged blog, I am unaware of his work being published anywhere.

Free photos do get picked up by newspapers.
http://www.patriotledger.com/archive/x1237...pical-rock-band
http://coloradoindependent.com/21271/focus...n-proposition-8
http://gawker.com/5067374/new-york-gossip-...out-jimmy-wales

Tell us something we don't already know...?


Do you have any constructive suggestions? I don't believe anyone here seriously believes there's a way to get Shankers to change his behavior, unless it's for the worse. The issue we're dealing with here is that Wikipedia encourages him, quite openly and directly, by including him on their stupid-ass "Planet Wikimedia" group blog site, among other things. (Yeah, some "planet"! Almost makes you wish Global Warming would get going a little faster.)

I will at least say that 3,000 uploaded photos is an impressive number of uploaded photos. Not technically difficult with today's technology, but still... awfully time-consuming, and even in New York City it must have been hard to find some of those things. The question is, can he legally demand that all of those photos be deleted if he gets blocked, or banned... or even dropped from their group blog? Because you know he'll try, there's no question of that. I have to believe that's what's holding them back - it certainly can't be his behavior, that's for sure.

So long as we're all asking questions that ought to be purely retro-ical by now —

Why do you think they encourage him?

Jon

Tell me what puzzles or perplexes you, and we can define a research project around it.


Yes.

But Cognitive Behavioral Therapy requires protracted dialogue, which is not supported here.


There is a way for him to change his behavior, but not a way for anyone here to coerce or manipulate such a change by means of rebuke.

Heh. People criticize me for a lot of things, but of these "focusing too much on people's good sides" is among the rarest.

I've never had the pleasure (or displeasure) of directly interacting with David, I've only noticed photos on a conspicuously great many of the biographical articles I've read and edited. I sure don't read his blog, and I'm not going to complain if somebody declares it a BADSITE if that's what it mostly is.

I'm also not going to complain if some of his uploads are deleted if plainly established to have no encyclopedic use. I've heard a few of them are, well, gross but I do know most of the ones I've seen are an unambiguous asset to the project ([1][2][3], etc.) without which we'd be stuck (in most cases) with no image, "fair use" images, or images dubiously uploaded as "free" by a single-purpose account. Sure, find the bad ones (such as this one which clearly violates BLP) and nominate them for deletion but try not personalize the issue, resort to name-calling, etc.

Content over conduct, matter over mind, deeds over words, however you want to look at it. You have to weigh the pros and cons of everything, and I stand by my previous statement that banning him (or intentionally pissing him off) would do the project more harm than good.

As a wholly practical matter consider that prolific photographers are the last people we'd want to have issuing take-down notices in the event of a license change. At least for article text one can re-write completely from scratch and reach a similar level of quality, much more easily than one can obtain a free picture of a specific person.

Sure people take pictures of people all the time but I doubt I've ever set foot close enough to photograph anyone who has an article on WP (always up in the cheap seats I guess). I know anyone can do it but most people don't, plus there's a lot to be said about having connections (and a camera handy at all times—and a willingness to do it for free, release it as "free", but allow other people to make money off it). Most people fail in at least one of these areas.

Licenses are not revokable, once granted, for a particular version of an image.

He can demand whatever he wants, the important question is whether Commons is bound to delete them. The Commons community has a long standing practice of deleting images at the request of the uploader if they are not in use, but that's a courtesy granted to editors in good standing.

A considerable fraction of the images that David has contributed are the best image that the project has of the subject. In some cases by a wide margin. On the other hand, some are not, and are replaceable. Further, some of the images strike me as not particularly useful at all.

If an image is among the best we have of a topic, and is in use, I'd be arguing against its deletion.

In January, at Miller's request, his blog was taken off the Meta blog aggregator "Planet Wikimedia" (scroll down to "Requests for Removal")

Wikipedia has its own aggregator, "Open Wiki Blog Planet" (why pick a name that can be so easily confused with "Planet Wikimedia"??). Apparently User:Nickj operates it from this Wikipedia page. The discussion page has a removal request from Kelly's Nonbovine Ruminations blog. Miller's blog is still listed (see link "87")

Well yes unless I'm missing something it does seem outrageous that one would consider Kelly's blog more offensive than David's. I shouldn't be surprised though.

The licenses themselves say that they're not revocable, but to quote Eugene Volokh: "Nonexclusive licenses given for free are generally revocable, even if they purport to be irrevocable."

Like the err... editnotice... says, "Please source your claims and provide links where appropriate".

Context: http://lwn.net/2000/0330/


To know whether the example he cited should mean anything to us we'd have to understand the incident in question, which doesn't seem to be mentioned on Wikipedia at all (!) but here's one summary of it:

http://www.tbtf.com/resource/cphack-history.html

"Outrageousness" is an interesting concept here. Wikipedia tolerates an editor's stated belief in anything, and probably just about any non-Wikipedia-related actions by any editor. I think Idi Amin, if he were still alive, could be an editor in good standing, editing articles between bites of human flesh, as long as he wasn't eating another Wikipedian.

Bedford, on the other hand, was desysopped (but not banned as an editor) by Jimbo, partly because of some statements made online but off Wiki, if I remember correctly. It had something to do with derogatory statements about women, but my memory is vague about it. And it dealt with specific Wikipedia editors, or could be interpreted that way, but again, my memory is vague.

These seem to be some of the de facto rules for being sanctioned in some way for outrageousness (other than obvious bad behavior on wiki):

1. You can put up any photo you want on your own user page, no matter how pornographic (see the current AN page for a discussion of that. Privatemusings started it). Unless, of course, it depicts children.

2. You can do anything you want to a non-Wikipedian off wiki.

3. Offend fellow Wikipedians with sexist comments and you're nearing the boundary. Make a sexist comment *about* a fellow Wikipedian and you've crossed the line, on wiki or off. Probably anti-gay or racist comments would also get you over the line into sanctionable territory, but only if directly connected with a fellow Wikipedian.

If I had to bet, I'd bet against the Shankbone blog being yanked from the Wikipedia blog aggregator, although the standards there probably should be even higher than what Wikipedia would tolerate in an admin before removing the tools. Mr. Miller has probably made the same calculation and is keeping just on the safe side of the line -- just where the maximum level of drama and tolerable outrageousness would be.

Ah hah, so this must be why everyone assumed Bedford was trolling when he implied Shankbone's photo was creating BLP problems on the Sarah Palin article! No, it's because he's a right-wing nutter, or no, it's because he's homophobic and this was just part of some blog war between him and Shankers!

There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy. Dave Mason said so.


Well, you might be giving him a little too much credit for thought put into his statements.

Bah! Nothing wrong with being a right-wing nutter!

Maybe. It's probably more like a feeling of entering dangerous territory than much of a thought, but I'm happier being ignorant about it, which, as usual, means I probably should've shut up a while ago.

Jimbo requested shanky's blog be removed in december , which I presme is why shanks wanted it removed in january, as an "I dumped you, you didn't dump me" ego-saving type thing.

Looks like someone forgot to remove him after Jimbo's request, if he hasn't been removed.

Ehh, I seem to have gotten confused as to which "blog aggregator" he's on, and it could be argued that the one he's on now isn't as "official" as the first one, which means he's not being encouraged to the same extent he was a few months ago.

But as Moulton suggested, given the nature of NPD, his removal from the preferred blog aggregator probably just made him nastier, given that he can now self-justify by saying "they dropped me from their blog aggregator, so I'm going to get my revenge," blah blah blah.

The fact remains that there will always be a handful of Wikipedia Uber Alles types for whom someone like Shankers can do no wrong, simply because they see him as some sort of rottweiler-ish attack dog. And when a person is that far gone, narcissism-wise, that's all it takes - unless he receives (for all practical purposes) unanimous repudiation, he'll always be able to say, "but so-and-so knows me and thinks I'm a great guy, so what's your problem?" ...and just keep on doing what he does.

All I can do, speaking only for myself, is continue to point out that as long as Shankers remains unbanned and/or tolerated on Wikipedia, nobody from Wikipedia should be deemed to have any legitimate right to complain about how we operate or what we post here on WR, or even to complain about Encyclopedia Dramatica. To suggest otherwise is utterly laughable. We will always have and maintain the "moral high ground" over Wikipedia, as long as this situation continues.

As long as it's seen as a contest between competing tribes, the contest is likely to continue whilst the pep squads cheer on their respective teams.


The problem with moral relativism is that the contestants tend to think they are winning if they doing at least incrementally better than the other guy. What moral relativism overlooks is that the whole arena can be ineluctably sinking into the dark and deplorable depths of damnable depravity.

Hobgoblind o' th' Duelist Mind, Batman! Why is everyone always so oblivious to the Turdium Quid who always wins, the one who rents out the stadium?

I guess my guess would have to be that Skunkboner gets e-couraged to whatever extent he does because he's a representative sampleton of the target market that Jimbo guesses he'll get the greatest return pandering to. In this case, it's a brand of mutual pandering — Panders Of A Feather Pimp Together.

Jon