I don't think this can be the mathematical member of the team -- a Berkeley mathematician would have understood the reference to the characteristic of a field.

Ah yes. Rings, Fields, Groups, and Cabals.

All part of Modern Mathematics.

I did a rough edit count for the various pages for this case. I see that WMC has made about 135 edits while Abd has made 362. Mathsci (who worked hard to promote themselves as "uninvolved") has made 345 and Raul654 has made 145. That's surprisingly little for WMC as one of the two participants and an awful lot for Mathsci as onlookers to a case they don't think they're involved in. Is there a meat-puppetry case to be made here?

What was Kato saying? It's on WR that we have the kooks. Grep apparently has difficulties in eliminating one variable from the simultaneous equations x_1 + ... + x_n=0 and x_1^k + ... + x_n^k = 0. Poor Grep.

No. There has to be meat for meat puppetry, and there is no real meat there. Just a skinny, standard my-side-is-right and the-other-side-is-evil beef.

This is normal cabal stuff. So many have been denying "cabal" for so long that it can come up and punch them in the nose and they will wonder "Where did that come from? Did you see anything? I don't see anything?"

It was truly necessary that I defy the ban, because as long as I didn't, they wouldn't see that WMC was continuously threatening to block me, and contiinuing the threat during the case. At least some of the onlookers, including arbitrators, got it.

Oh! He would actually block. I didn't realize that! How wildly inappropriate! We will have to ask him not to do that again. But not too harshly, he might take offense like JzG and vanish.

I really meant it, I can't keep writing about this, but it takes me a couple of minutes to write this here. To cover the same basic content translating it into what can be said on Wikipedia, filtering out any implications that would sprout legs and trample the flowers, I'd have to spend ten times as much time.

WMC has claimed that the AN/I close was irrelevant. Isn't that interesting? Because if it was irrelevant, then he had no right to block me the first time. Admin bans cannot be strictly imposed, otherwise an admin could arbitrarily block an editor, just tell the editor not to edit the article first. Most self-respecting editors would say "Why?" And when the admin wouldn't tell them, probably more than half would blow it off. And rightly so. An admin cannot demand that an editor not edit non-disruptively, and it is edits which can be disruptive, not editors.

Community and ArbComm bans are different. In order to avoid contention over every single edit, the default is that any edit by any banned editor may be reverted and the editor blocked.

Massive confusion over this is totally normal on Wikipedia. Which has no means of resolving such confusion, because try to make it explicit in policy, the discussion gets disrupted, and ArbComm can't address stuff like this very easily. This was an opportunity, but ArbComm let the cabal rule the roost, I tried, but one editor can't stop a cabal, he can only challenge it and hope that the community gets it. Maybe someday it will. And maybe not.

When a real person says "the emperor has no clothes," with a real emperor, they toss him in jail or worse. Only if it is a child can it be said, because everyone can laugh it off. "Silly child, what does he know?" An adult who says it must be a revolutionary.

It's a classic ADHD thing, actually. Look, the emperor has no clothes. Literally, it doesn't occur to me that I shouldn't say it, can't everyone see it? Sure, I understand, but later. In this case, of course, I knew it would cause a flap, but .... can't everyone see it? Really, I could prove this in a court, but on Wikipedia, not so easy. Proof matters little if a crowd, shouting, can successfully distract.

It is possible with most of WMC's blocks to assert some reasonable basis. But he does it when he's involved. And every time someone challenges it, and points out the involvement, the cabal piles in and asserts that the block was reasonable, and there are enough of them that it can disrupt any consensus, until and unless closing admins start to look for cabal involvement, i.e., habitual affiliation between editors !voting or commenting.

The cabal has used the argument of "but he's not involved in the article, how could he be biased?"

Missing the whole point. Blocks while involved are a problem, even if the block is very reasonable.
It is such a stupid argument that I'm lucky my walls are soft. Padded, they really should be.

Only if it is an emergency, serious damage will be done if the admin waits, is it justified, and then there is an obligation to request review. Has WMC ever done this? I.e., "I had to block an editor for being boring today, is this okay?"

Wikipedia is harder on my sanity than was having five teenage kids at one time, as a single parent.

Well, I assume that that was Noll's point. Perhaps the Mathsci team could put their mighty heads together and show us how to eliminate t from x+y+z+t = 0 and x^3+y^3+z^3+t^3 over a field of characteristic 3: that is a field in which 3=0 (for example, over the finite field with three elements). [Aside for the non-mathematicians: This is of course impossible, and Mathsci's failure to realise this is what they themselves call a "howling error"] What was it that Charles Matthews said? Ah yes, Mathsci's comment here is "either ill-considered or faux naif". Of course this is all quite irrelevant to the WMC issue as this point related only to Mathsci's harassment of Noll. Perhaps Mathsci have forgotten that in our universe this AN/I case was closed as Original issue is now moot and the acrimony is now feeding on itself. How true! what a pity Mathsci didn't get to see that comment in their universe before trying to flog this very dead horse.

Meanwhile in another part of the forest, it will be recalled that TotientDragooned (T-C-L-K-R-D) was forbidden from commenting because he agreed with, and so was obviously a sock of, Arkady Renko. Totient appealed and was told by Hersfold to wait until ArbComm had ruled on the socking issue. That was two weeks ago. Funny how quickly a CheckUser can be done when it's a case of getting rid of someone (some people think that the answers seem to come back even before the check is started), and how slow it is when the results aren't coming out right

Charles Matthews made those remarks about A.K.Nole and were addressed to him:



Is this the kind of game you play when you're losing an argument? Well, I suppose we knew you lived in a different universe - now we know it's a warped universe.

Have you ever edited wikipedia? There are plenty of articles on video games and teenage comic strips out there for you to edit. But just one small piece of advice: stay clear of mathematics - you'll make a complete fool of yourself.

Meanwhile, back at the case, I note the inspired proposal that Raul654 (T-C-L-K-R-D) be put under mentoring. Brilliant! At 170 kilobytes of evidence, and 1,090 kilobytes of workshop, the hilarity level is consistently high. We can only hope that the proposed decision lives up to the standard of the first two volumes of this epic trilogy.

WP has a lot more than five teenage kids running amock.

In any event, it's a crazy-making culture because it embraces the single most idiotic belief and practice ever devised by humankind.

For extra credit, you and EK can team up to write the definitive encyclopedic article on Humankind's Original Logic Error (of which Wikipedia is a prime exemplar).

If you mean to reference the Wikipedia dogma that one can construct a "neutral" point of view, then I must agree. Wikipedia excels at making the sane crazy, and the crazy even crazier.

Poor old Hersfold doesn't seem to be doing too well at clerking this case. Going on holiday in the middle didn't help of course. The word limit on evidence got completely out of hand, for example. There's a proposal to improve case management on the table, hardly surprising, really, which Hersfold has seen fit to comment on. Not what one would expect from an impartial clerk.

I'm not quite sure how you meant this but I shall take it as an actual compliment rather than simple sarcasm. I will admit that the proposal was indeed devised and suggested because of it's likely targeted effect on Raul under the circumstances.

UPDATE: After rereading this I guess I better clarify that "likely targeted effect" can be interpreted as "likely to reign in Raul's excesses while allowing him to continue his work as an administrator and checkuser". I guess trying to be terse can sometimes be a problem in terms of giving a misleading impression.

GoRight has just been blockedfor 48 hours for trolling on/about ArbCom pages by Hersfold.

Yes, Hersfold has indeed lost control of the case. Ordering GoRight to remove part of his comment ("There is no deadline, except possibly for those who wish to turn out the lights as quickly as possible to avoid having them directed into the shadows."), but to leave in the part with compliments about the clerks is hardly impartial.

Anyway, we need to look forward. What drama comes next? The sock/meat puppetry case against WMC or the case for declerking Hersfold?

Sadly, true. I suppose I forced this upon him by giving him a public compliment. He does need to be seen as being impartial in such matters. Does 48 hours seem a tad excessive for such a minor comment?

Congratulations, I think all of you are turning this case into one of the biggest circuses in ArbCom history, although I'm sure some other participants in this board might take issue with that.

Splendid stuff, Cla68. You lead by example.

Actually, I was referring to an even deeper and more profound erroneous belief, but the one you cite can be thought of as a derivative of the one I have in mind.


The erroneous belief and practice I have in mind is the one that generates the biggest and bloodiest circuses in all of human history.

I don't know why, but seeing comments on Hersfeld and "impartiality" seems a lot like someone watching People's Court and complaining that Rusty the Bailiff is smirking too much.

Here you go (scroll down to WMC's last comment). There he's biting a newbie, namely, me. As you can see from his actions in this case, such as deleting or altering other editor's comments, he seems to be unable to adjust his attitude.

What they need to do for Global Warming articles is state very clearly what Climate Scientists say, and make it clear that it is Climate Scientists who are saying it.

For example, rather than saying, "The remainder is due to a human-induced intensification of the greenhouse effect", they'd be better saying "Climate scientists determined that the remainder is due to a human-induced intensification of the greenhouse effect". This actually gives it more credibility.

Be clear though Cla68, when you are talking about Climate Change, it isn't really a case of "two sides of the debate". There is a discussion among climate scientists, almost all of whom have rejected the various scientific theories against anthropological Climate Change, and they can explain why. This video (and accompanying videos) is the best guide to the Climate Change situation we are likely to see. Essential viewing for anyone writing on those articles - forget Al Gore.

Good gracious, March 2006! And you've been keeping it to yourself all this time.

Me and a family friend who works for a Tokyo think tank which has given some free advice to Japan's government on its response to climate change initiatives had a discussion on this topic this past weekend. His think tank's advice to Japan's current leaders was to hold off on spending too much money trying to reduce CO2 levels until more scientific evidence could be produced to show that CO2 and warming were directly related. As you say, it's a complex issue.

It was treatment like that from him and a few other editors in that article, the same ones who are still "protecting" it now, that made me give up on it for a few years. I saw several other editors who tried to make good faith changes to the article then and since then who were driven away by the rudeness of Wikipedia's IPCC patrol. The arrogance that WMC still shows in his on-wiki behavior, such as using his admin privileges in content disputes that he is involved in, is indicative that his attitude has not changed.

Proposed decision is up for voting now

Ooh, we're officially recognised at last! Abd and Mathsci have engaged in personal attacks upon each other during public discussion of this case in an off-wiki venue.

You know, that actually had not occurred to me (slaps forehead).



Nah. There is no "original logic error." Logic did not appear in a formed state, such that "original error" is applicable. I would like to cooperate on essays about what Wikipedia is, however. As well as on what it could be, which is much more than what it is. My prior work led me to expect that Wikipedia would be as successful as it is, and that it would also fail as it has. In other words, I do have a vision of how it works and how it does not work, as well as a vision, in round outlines, of how to improve its function to a point where it truly does exceed in functional decision-making intelligence what is possible for any individual or faction or even elected committee. Where Wikipedia will go, though, in any detail, I cannot predict, it is far too chaotic, a butterfly flapping here, a typhoon there. So to speak, too many unknowns, too many individual decisions by too many different editors and "functionaries."

The Wikipedia core generally has an inflated concept of itself and what it does, trying to control a tiger by tugging on the tail. Oddly enough, at the "top," i.e., among most functionaries, there is a detachment, a sense of not taking it all very seriously, which is a good sign in one way and not good in another.... To me, the most fascinating part of this has been watching a tribe of editors claim that there is no such thing as a tribe. After all, look at us! No tribe here, no siree, and we all agree on that, except for you and your pitifully small band of meat puppets, so you must believe that 2 plus 2 equals 5. Literally, that's what was just written!

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Impossible! Conservation of editorial units! Insane fantasy! Heresy!

I do think Hersfold is trying to be neutral. Difficult task. He has repeated on particular error. As a clerk, he's like a bailiff, his job is to keep order. Part of that job is dealing with uncivil edits. But he's faced with a fucking landslide of uncivil edits.

The error is in demanding that editors refactor their own edits. He should simply remove what he considers uncivil, and the simplest level of this would be that he simply says that in the edit summary: (removed uncivil comment. Discuss with me before replacing.) Very fast, very efficient, and just what a bailiff would do. Blocking is the equivalent of putting an offender in jail, when a real bailiff would act as simply as possible to stop the disruption, immediately.

Hersfold asked GoRight to remove the comment, and when GoRight didn't respond right away, he blocked GoRight. Bad idea. Not editing should never be a blockable offense, I can't think of an exception. Hersfold had the authority to remove the offending edit, and he ended up doing that. If GoRight continued a pattern of offending edits, then, yes, a block would become appropriate. That does not seem to have been the case, there was not a series of Hersfold complaints, I don't see any prior.

Yes, 48 hours was excessive, and given that voting has begun, quite possibly damaging. Clerk action should always be minimally disruptive. Clerking is a very sensitive position; ArbComm should provide better guidance for clerks. One thing that all sides on this case seem to agree upon: better clerking would have improved it. This is not, from my POV, to criticize the clerks personally, as should be clear, I think they were overwhelmed. The responsibility is with ArbComm, and it is a failure of omission, not of commission. ArbComm needs to blaze the trail for new process, the existing process, to use technical language, sucks. Even though it is the best Wikipedia has for careful decision-making.




(blush) (bowing, as the curtain comes back up after the performances)

Let me bring on those without whom this show would have been impossible. Come on out guys!

Give them a big round of applause folks, this is the Cabal!

Now, after the jury presents the awards for performances tonight, you are all invited to the afterparty.




I proposed, in the case, that NPOV can be a measured quantity, not an absolute. It can be constructed, but only by the cooperation of all -- or most -- POVs. We measure NPOV by the level of real consensus obtained, and if we ban for POV, we make NPOV impossible.

It's obvious: if we have 100% consensus, while this is not an absolute guarantee of NPOV (because there may remain some problem yet to be discovered), it's the best we could obtain. With a large community, 100% may not be attainable, but would remain as a desirable goal. To deal with the inefficiency of continuing discussion beyond a rough consensus, that discussion should take place in small consenting groups, as small as two editors, and possibly off-wiki initially.

The cabal is firmly opposed to this, it was amazing to see the arguments in the case. They are generally determined POV-pushers, often for a "majority POV," and they only "win" because they can quickly assemble a local "rough consensus" in their direction, mostly by very simple and instinctive tactics -- it takes no conscious coordination --, with tag team reversion as well as incivility toward interlopers, followed by block for uncivil response (i.e., normal human reaction).

Attribution is a common solution to make text NPOV. It always improves accuracy, so the question becomes whether or not a fact is controversial enough to require attribution. If the various sides were to set up a goal of consensus, and work toward that, the individual editorial problems could be solved, and fairly rapidly. But the problem with Majority POV-pushing is that the majority may feel that discussion is a waste of time, and I can understand that it seems that way. In the long run, though, higher levels of consensus are more efficient, because the group working to maintain article stability becomes larger.

In the field that I adopted when I discovered admin abuse and investigated -- I was originally skeptical --, Cold fusion, anyone working in the field, anyone with knowledge of the literature, which is vast and active, including recent sources of the highest quality, will read our article and see it as full of bloopers and serious imbalance, compared to the actual balance of publication in reliable source. If you aren't familiar, it can look pretty ordinary and sensible, stuff seems like it's reliably sourced, etc.

It's kind of a test bed for how to open up consensus process to minority views. It takes time, and a lot of discussion, to shift consensus. There are many ways to do it, and I'm learning still. Watch, if you care.

(The cabal believes I'm trying to warp consensus by overwhelming opposition. There is a truth to this, though it is not "warping," it is the opposite. What happens in real consensus process is that the final result -- which is unpredictable in detail -- overwhelms unreasonable opposition, which disappears, because it would expose itself if it continued.)

Note that if it were merely a matter of wearing out opposition by endless discussion, the result would be unstable, it would, in fact, be impossible to maintain the alleged "consensus."

Wow, Ikip really knows how to put a case together, and if I'm not mistaken he was instrumental in the desysopping of Mongo too (under another account).

Ikip did a good job. I initially confined myself to the particular example where I was involved. I did later put up evidence regarding one incident, where WMC had unprotected Global warming (T-H-L-K-D) after Jennavecia had protected it, and she had expressed, in the discussion on WMC talk, despair over ever being able to do anything about WMC's behavior. I had that in mind when I was deciding how to proceed with WMC's page ban. Maybe it was time that someone stand up to WMC. But if I was alone in this, forget about it. Ikip helped. It's still unclear what remedy ArbComm will determine, but A/C has a profound reluctance to desysop; I've been arguing that ArbComm should suspend admin privilege when there is an appearance of impropriety, that it should then restore it when the appearance has been dispelled, thus avoiding issues of "guilt" and "punishment." Purely protective, against the appearance of admin bias as well as against the reality. Standard operating procedure in real life with police.

Feels like a voice crying in the wilderness, sometimes.

This thread was titled "The Cabal strikes back." Did anyone here have any difficulty understanding "Cabal"? I.e., "Cabal, what cabal?"

I mentioned a larger cabal, and was promptly attacked for it. The larger cabal has been called that, by name, by others. It's a "cabal," not merely a faction, because there is some harm when the cabal bias is not recognized. In response to the ridicule, I mentioned that less than 0.1% of registered editors belong to it, all arbitrators belong to it, and only about 1% of its members are arbitrators. It holds views, generally, which are at variance from editors in general, and it can and does impose those views, and where the cabal bias is not recognized, damage is sometimes done, hence "cabal" instead of merely some defined interest group.

Anyone here have any difficulty in figuring out what this cabal is? Anyone who thinks that the cabal bias is not harmful in some ways? (It may be beneficial in others.)

I have been criticized by my friends for mentioning the cabal, not to mention not-friends. I bit off more than I could chew. Perhaps. But there was this big thing in my mouth, and it was about time someone took a bite. Definitely, it was bigger than I could handle on my lonesome, and only with a few valiant and brave editors, was any progress possible. Thanks, Ikip, for your service to the wiki. A few more like you, there might be some hope.

Depending on the outcome, which is still unclear, I might be shifting my work off-wiki, which, from more than two years ago, I understood might eventually be necessary, Wikipedia has a tendency to crush and salt reform efforts, i.e., Esperanza and the Association of Mediation Advocates. ArbComm has operating authority over the wiki, not the community and not me, and the wiki itself is merely one of the ways, albeit the default and currently most powerful way, that the community meets and finds consensus. Wikipedia will not progress toward stability and reliability until off-wiki connections, human connections, become much more consistent and effective.

It looks like the attempt to sanction editors based on comments here on WR is falling more-or-less flat, as it should, though arbitrator votes are a bit inconsistent at this point. (I.e., Mathsci should not be admonished for his very personal attacks here, but I should, apparently for using the word "asshole" instead of the word "uncivil," which is what it means? Weird.)

Same account, twice renamed Travb → Inclusionist → Ikip, but otherwise you are correct.

That is an excellent proposal.

Darn it, if Connelley gets de-sysopped, it will spoil his chances in next year's Wikipedia Review Dick of Distinction awards pageant. Otherwise, I think he could be a contender.

Thanks. I'll put it in my freezer with the other "excellent proposals." Snowballs don't last long without that.

Right now, it looks like he may escape with only an admonishment, which is an astonishment, given how blatant some of the evidence is. Besides, I move that the award be given to the admin who has admin status at the time of decision, and a temporary desysop would not disqualify. Last years winner, JzG, wasn't desysopped, but stopped editing almost entirely in May. Unstated reason.

I operate largely by intuition, sometimes I don't fully realize why I did something until much later. My revocation of my voluntary compliance with the topic ban during the RfAr was like that. I didn't think it all the way through, but if I had, I might have done it anyway. I'm famous for prolixity, but, in fact, I prefer a single quick demonstration to a sea of ink, or extensive characters clogging a page display.

WMC had been threatening to block me, up to and during the RfAr, but nobody was noticing., and a threat of block, while involved, is as offensive as an actual block.

Ah, WMC, isn't he cute? He wouldn't actually do it, of course, that would be so ... obviously improper.

But with WMC, WYSIWYG, that's what is actually appealing about him. He would, and he did. It was totally predictable. I did not actually know if he'd do it, but.... shouldn't ArbComm know the answer to that question? And I could have argued the point with any number of words, but one small, harmless edit, and, poof! like magic, the bunny popped out of the hat! Amazing! Never saw anything before like it, a party to an arbitration blocking another party! Unheard of!

Suddenly the cabal solidarity, for a moment, was broken. "He shouldn't have done that." Of course, but, er, why didn't you tell him before he did it? I'd been begging for that for two months! TenOfAllTrades (T-C-L-K-R-D) , I asked you, as his friend, to warn him. You interpreted that as "conveying a threat." Okay, what if it was a threat? If he enforces his ban, in spite of such an obvious and extended dispute, and given my "threat" to take it to ArbComm, is there a risk to his admin bit? Or not? I begged JzG's friends to warn him for months, before filing the RfC. Nobody did, the only people who warned him, being myself and Durova and a few others whom he did not consider friends, were blown off. Same with WMC, when he blew off warnings, when he wheel-warred with Jennavecia, the cabal laughed with him about how silly these blowhards were. Don't worry, WMC, they will lose interest when they don't get the attention they crave, and, of course, you can always count on our support, and we never lose.

Meanwhile, this morning I woke up realizing why it was essential that I raise the cabal issue. And I posted it to the arbitration proposed decision talk page.

Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William_M._Connolley/Proposed_decision#If_There_is_No_Cabal.2C_please_site-ban_me. (T-H-L-K-D)

Comments there may be in order for some of you. Be nice, but be clear.

If there is no cabal, then, it follows with inevitable precision, I should be site banned. If WP:TINC (T-H-L-K-D), I've been opposing, not a set of mutually-involved editors, acting as if they were a cabal, but a collection of uninvolved editors, who properly banned me, and, if I oppose, in content, so many uninvolved editors, I'm POV-pushing and should be topic banned. But because this conflict has spanned many topics and process issues, I should be, if the editors are uninvolved, site-banned.

If there is no cabal, I had no case at all, WMC was simply acting properly under IAR, and was, as usual, confirmed by a consensus of uninvolved editors, in every case, or at least was not determined to have acted wrongly, some discussions were about half positive and half negative, and thus WMC's action was, at least, reasonable.

Thus, rejecting the cabal accusation and setting it aside, the administrators had no choice but to conclude, about me, POV-pushing, disruption, unwillingness to accept good faith advice, offered by so many uninvolved editors, that I should take a flying leap and go away and please, please shut up. Consensus.

TINC, TINC, TINC, repeated three times every morning, will keep Wikipedia safe and avoid the tendency to disruptive thinking. Certain drugs can also be effective, and the combination of drugs and affirmations is never known to fail, it will keep you happy for your entire wikicareer.

WHAM! What was that? My nose is bloody! What hit me? TINC, TINC, TINC. I must have stumbled over a rock, I'd better be more careful. La, la, la!

WHAM! WHAM! TINC, TINC, TINC. How did my edit get reverted, it was sourced! I must have overlooked something, AGF. I'd better be more careful! La, la, la!

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! My, my, I seem to have been blocked. All I did was disagree with an editor. TINC, TINC, TINC. There, I feel better now, all I need to do is be more careful and never, ever oppose consensus when it is affirmed by such a reputable editor. I feel so good, I'm learning how to handle conflict so well. Just give up when opposed! That's so simple, why didn't I think of it before? Now that I'm off the block, I'll go do Recent Changes patrol, no problem. Make myself useful, that's my motto.

TINC, TINC, TINC.

On the other hand, how about WP:TIAC (T-H-L-K-D)? Nah, that is far too unsettling. If there is a cabal, it might actually be difficult to solve the Wikipedia structural problems. There is only one deep solution which has been proposed, and we all know what happened to that, WP:PRX (T-H-L-K-D), which was crushed even before it was tried, and the crazy editor (literally crazy, that's why he could recognize PRX so quickly) who proposed it was blocked and banned. PRX would institutionalize cabals, give them incentive to identify themselves, allow them to function efficiently, but, even more important, enable the largest possible cabal, the largest faction in the community of editors, or even the entire community that chooses to take a small step to connect with others, to communicate and express consensus on a truly large scale.

That's way too outside the box, too uncomfortable. Wouldn't that be a paradise for sock puppets? TINC, TINC, TINC.

I've asked ArbComm to definitively rule on the issue of the cabal, as raised, not as re-interpreted to make it into a preposterous claim, affirming, if it will, that the editors who have long called for my ban are not "involved editors," that there is no cabal, i.e., no mutual involvement through affiliation that would lead these calls to not be "independent," and, thus, the confirmation of my page ban was perfectly legitimate, a consensus of "uninvolved editors" as required by WP:BAN. And thus my work is obviously disruptive because it is upsetting so many uninvolved and unrelated editors. And thus, please, site-ban me, don't agonize over detailed sanctions, Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Or, otherwise, reconsider the whole affair. The idea that WMC has support is rooted in the idea that the support shown is unbiased, representative of the community as a whole, not merely of a faction. The idea that Abd is disruptive wasn't based on evidence -- bainer had it right, and he seems to have spent more time studying the evidence, as original drafting arb, than any of the rest, even Carcharoth, who can be spectacular. If Carcharoth persists in concluding that I should be banned, I'm history, I'll absolutely shut up, probably permanently. Unless I'm shown a great deal more support than has been manifest, it would take that.

When all that was visible was bainer's proposals, I thought we might actually get a good decision, even if I didn't agree with every detail. Nobody's perfect, including me. I concluded long ago that if someone appeared who was perfect, I would surely disagree with this person, the only question is how extensive that disagreement would be.

I've gone on wikibreak, and, for my personal sanity at this point, and my personal life, this will include posting here for a time, I have to stop peeking. If I'm site-banned, I may return here and participate. In the meantime, if anyone wishes to communicate with me, please use my Wikipedia email or, directly abd, lomaxdesign.com.

Ave atque vale.

Not one of Cla68's greatest moments on wikipedia. He was trolling on ArbCom case pages.

Cla68 , the wikipedia troll, seems to have lost his tongue here. His own namespace contributions on wikiedia are narrow and boring. Yet he feels in a position to criticize others. Might he possibly have a chip on his shoulder? He seems limited and shallow. In Britain he would be called a wally. Just my two centimes worth.

I don't find his contributions boring.

He might have something better to do that search his own username every 12 hours on Wikipedia Review. He probably doesn't look at threads that have been bumped three times consecutively by the same axe-grinder. Good for him.

Centime is the correct value here. Very little trolling there from any side, surprisingly, but if I were to name someone guilty of it that would be you, not Cla68.


Not counting Mr. Connolley himself, of course.

Boredom is the name of an emotion, and thus characterizes the current state of the person expressing some degree of boredom along the continuous axis ranging from ennui to fascination.

If subject X bores observer Y, the obvious question for observer Y is: What fascinates you?

Other than participating in W-R threads, that is.

Not worth even 2 centimes. Trashing Cla68 shows a distinct lack of class, and a very large lack of clue. I'm surprised at you, Mathsci, I'd expected better.

Actually, after leaving that comment on the case talk page, I had forgotten to go back and look at the responses to it, so I appreciate Mathsci bringing it up. When I get around to it one of these days I'll start a thread here on what I think is wrong currently with the climate change related articles.

In a nutshell, I don't have any problem with those articles concentrating on the IPCC's stance on the issue, because that does seem to be the prevailing belief by most in the scientific community. The problem is the ruthless suppression of minority, but notable, contrary views on the topic by a small group of editors who currently control those articles in Wikipedia.

If a notable scientist like Freeman Dyson believes that warming is localized, not global, in nature, then it shouldn't be so difficult to make note of it in the related article. The fight to keep Lawrence Solomon from being labled as an environmentalist is another example. I won't say any more until there is a dedicated thread on it.

This is part of what appears to be a big, complicated story. First of all, you have this battle on the ANI board about the edit warring at the Solomon BLP. It includes (gasp) allegations that Connolley has a tag team. This discussion is in turn blamed by Connolley himself for an interesting modification of WP:BAN, causing major distress to Will Beback, who was hoping to use the old version as a pretext for banning Leatherstocking. The focus of the debate is on whether it is permissible to restore deleted material that was added by banned users if there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Recently joined WR member GoRight is one of the principals in the discussion, as are our in-house ArbCom twin experts, One and No One.

I think that all of this may have far-reaching implications.

Trouble is, it's way outside his field of expertise. To my certain knowledge, Lord Peston strongly believes in global warming but nobody would cite him as an expert in the area.

Ahem, this is the only WR thread on the current ArbCom case, one in which Cla68 just tried to put a cat among the pigeons at the last minute. So its not exactly a needle in a haystack. But yes, the internet is asynchronous. In my case some article space contributions (audio links) take hours of time, sometimes even a week, to produce for youtube and a few seconds to add to wikipedia. The images do or will produce spin-off in other WP articles.

Yes, I agree, "boring" was the wrong word to use for his editing. He writes extremely well in military articles. The same applies to PGH.

However, despite the busy schedule you refer to, Cla68 must presumably have had time (hours, days?) to read all three case pages and their talk pages on wikipedia. He then chose to group together all science articles and a large and disparate set of editors in an ill-judged statement. As of now that's almost the last thing he did on WP. I don't have an axe to grind with him - I'm just a bit surprised. Presumably, if he really thinks he's right, he'll be opening a fresh ArbCom case with detailed diffs to back up his extraordinary claims. A brilliant choice for the advisory committee.

For reasons that I am at a loss to understand or explain, disagreements over ideas seem to morph into antagonisms between personalities. One of the remarkable characteristics about the late Senator Kennedy is that he had genuine (and reciprocated) love for those with whom he vigorously disagreed on ideological grounds.

Benjamin Franklin put it this way: "Gentlemen, we can disagree without being disagreeable."

I already replied to CHL and must agree with you here. Cla68's namespace editing record speaks for itself. However, to clarify what I wrote in the heat of the moment, the possibly isolated incident of edits to the talk pages of the PD was completely out of line there. If Cla68 suggests that a whole group of disparate editors should be banned from all science articles without a shred of evidence, that is effectively a trashing on wikipedia which is quite ill-judged. Hence my reaction here. As you say totally OTT - but isn't that what WR is all about?

Cla68 is probably correct that some thinking has to go into what's going on with GW or AGW articles, but that is tangential to this ArbCom case. It's a completely separate problem on WP and quite outside my wiki-universe.

Anyway it's more fun writing wikipedia articles. From day one this ArbCom case has been very odd. The number of bizarre interventions by sockpuppets has been one symptom of that.

The IPCCab editors are making the same mistake the IDCab editors made, which is making it way too obvious to everyone that they're editing with a coordinated POV agenda.