In an unexpected move today, Wikipedia pronouncer Jimbo Wales cleared the way for sockerry to go ahead unabated. This followed an unsuccessful move by the respected British Isles expert Mister Flash to once-and-for-all bring the serial British Isles deletor HighKing to book. In the first case of its kind Flash filed an SPI against HighKing. The latter, under protest and in secret, admitted to the crime by acknowledging one of the socks, Popaice, was him whilst refusing to comment on the other obvious cases. Nonetheless, the administrators of the case paved the way for HighKing to continue his crusade unabated by refusing to mete out any punishment whatsoever, stating that no (significant) puppetry had occurred.

Commenting on the case Wales, himself a noted socker (allegedly), said that if campaigners can exploit Wikipedia to push their filthy political agendas then good luck to them; "If it makes the world a better place for Irishmen then go ahead boys". Mister Flash, who according to the SPI has confidential information about HighKing, is reported to be considering his position and was today unavailable for comment.

MidnightBlueMan (T-C-L-K-R-D) , I presume?

Er..No What makes you think that?

For some reason, nothing seems to get Wikipedians as riled up as sockpuppetry.

Hint: the rest of the world doesn't care.

This is because if everyone realized how easy it is to do, and how impossible to police, Wikipedia would come to a grinding halt. As the OP points out, it is now only the cases that tweak the establishment that get followed up. They don't care about the day-to-day stuff.

This is news?

I thought it was pretty obvious that sockpuppetry is only considered a crime when trying to get rid of people.

Get rid of all these dumbass rules (including canvassing, civility, etc, etc); the only people who follow them are the people who don't really give a shit about any "cause" and those too new to know about socking.

http://mynameisearlkress.com/kermit/reporterkermit001.jpg

well, I think you sort of have it backwards. The establishment is not tweaked by socking; they are tweaked by incorrect POV. Socking, which is otherwise of little interest to them, then becomes the convenient pretext for eliminating the malefactors. And they don't need no stinkin' evidence; the Duck Test will suffice (because the Duck Test is based on POV.)

That won't be news to anyone who has attention to pay and wits to apply, of course, but I don't think anyone has summed it up quite so efficiently before. My compliments.

Jon

Yeah, that nonce HighKing is at it again. Taking advantage of the situation. I'd revert the lot but I don't want my socks caught up in it. Anyone else out there?

The term 'British Isles' has defeated Wikipedia on a number of levels. The relatively poor quality of British admin hasn't helped matters, but it's deeper than that - it highlights the inherent inability of Wikipedia to handle these kind of 'difficult' issues without resorting to really cynical actions. What is most telling is that some virtual-'SPA's regarding BI are in the running to be knighted over their contributions to the subject. Their political stance or editing ability has nothing to do with their ascendency (it's often extreme, unweighed, childish etc) - they have simply shown over time they are sneaky, dishonest (including obvious socking), and will support admin for tidbits, and shamelessly kiss admin arse. It's the only formula needed, and admin can easily justify all kinds of decisions 'for the greater good'. It's all birds of a feather sticking together, like any unregulated power base. 'BI' has always managed to highlight the inherent cynicism within Wikipedia.

It's a wonderful demonstration of the stupidity of NPOV, or at least how NPOV works in practice. Nothing that seriously regards itself as an encyclopedia could do other than follow the overwhelming world-wide consensus that Britain, Ireland and adjacent islands constitute the British Isles. Given that, the Shannon is the longest river in the British Isles, for example. But because a small number of extremist Republicans (in the Irish sense, not the US one) don't like to be associated with anything British, we get all this nonsense. I move that we start a campaign on Wikipedia to rename the Irish Sea as the British Sea.

Meh. The Guardian/Observer Style Guide says:
OK, it's the Guardian and Observer which sometimes have an eccentric take on things, but it shows that at least two major British newspapers think the term's best avoided.

You talking about HighKing by any chance?


Here's some of HighKing's stuff. Look how he takes out British Isles from the Cantona article then does a couple more edits to hide what he's done from anyone casually watching the page. Ah! an old trick.

How is Home Nations appropriate for an International encyclopaedia? Indeed it is probably a worse phrase with its implication of Britain as the centre of the world. Barking.

Well, yes, the Guardian is the only British newspaper (unless you count the Socialist Worker as a newspaper) that gives the time of day to extremist republican views. Nobody else - from the Financial Times to the Daily Sport - would do that. And anyone who doesn't know that Orkney and Shetland are integral parts of Great Britain is scarcely a reliable authority on British geography.

As for the National Geographic Atlas of the World, do they really have a plate showing just Britain and Ireland (why not Great Britain)? Have they failed to show the Isle of Man and the Channel Isles? Are they so ignorant as not to know that those islands are not part of Great Britain or even the United Kingdom? If so, they're scarcely a reliable source either.

The matter is simple in some respects, but does need explaining.

There has always been 'Britain and Ireland' maps. With maps and globes, some are 'political', some 'geographical' - with different layouts both - and road maps (in my experience) have tended to be 'Britain and Ireland'. It does seem that over the years the term 'British Isles' has been slowly less used by cartographers. Which is perfectly natural with this term surely. I hear “across the British Isles” used on the daily BBC weather report whenever I happen to catch it, and see and hear the term used quite regularly, and when I really think about it it does sound archaic. But the million dollar question is "how many people really actually think about it"? And who (on Earth anyway) really wants to use Gold Heart's 'Atlantic Archipelago'? 'Britain' is an old word, and is indirect enough to make the term 'British Isles' pass for the past 90 years (ie since the Republic of Ireland's independence from the UK).

So where's the offence? When a publisher of a schoolbook children's encyclopedia in the Republic of Ireland stopped using the term (one of the few examples of 'dissent' ever found outside of polemical Uni-pulp) they admitted it was not prompted by complaints (they had had none at all), but rather a warning from someone that it may cause offence. But the reasonable “may cause” in the British Isles introduction was always stepped-up to the direct “many Irish find it offensive” of course, with the usual dumb cries of “But I have a source!!” and demands of the impossible counter-source (ie "Ireland loves the term BI"!). Polemics aside, I personally never found any evidence of real discontent within Ireland (though it's a while since I've looked), and I mainly objected to Wikipedia claiming such offence existed, mainly because I saw that it was part of a broader anti-UK nationalist 'movement' across Wikipedia and I don't want to see the UK break up! Unlike an fully independent Scotland etc, the UK simply exists, so UK nationalist arguments should not be the seen as the 50/50 turf war Wikipedia irresponsibly rights them off as. There is a huge amount of socking involved OK, but the 'nationalist edit' is still there, and when unnoticed it can be quite effective. Unfortunately when it is noticed things end up with locked articles and masses of wasted time for all involved - except the various motley admin who engage only periodically, often with typically irresponsible shallowness.

Regarding the 'British-dependency' Channel Islands sitting just off the coast of France, dictionaries tend to say that they are 'included' in the British Isles, where all the major encyclopedias (which are naturally more careful in terms of uniformity) either do not include them, or say they are sometimes 'also included' suggesting a kind of second definition. The Big Deal over the Channel Islands is that if they are included in the British Isles (as the more fervent nationalists insist) it makes more of a mockery of the term being 'archipelago/geographical only' and 'non-political' as is normally claimed. Geographically, the Channel Islands are inarguably part of the mainland of Europe - not the archipelago that includes Britain and Ireland - and the whole island of Ireland is unquestionably not a 'British' island in any political sense. Thus they can argue the term 'British Isles' is inherently contradictory if it includes the both the Channel Islands (for political reasons), and Ireland (for geographical reasons). In reality (and in terms of sourcing), the widespread usage of "British Isles" tends to adapt to a wide range of contexts, which is why the serious encyclopedias out there define their own-use definition for the sake of uniformity, wisely using a safe non-political, non-Channel Islands 'archipelago' one as the 'top level' definition. But can Wikipedia get to that stage? Of course not.

Underneath it all of course, the energy and anger is not really about the term British Isles at all. It's about Northern Ireland and/or the breaking-up of the United Kingdom. All the main 'contributors' are Scottish, Welsh or Irish nationalists, or those who strongly support Britain – although some of the British 'editors' can be overly jingoistic themselves too admittedly. At least one British editor and a couple of Irish ones between them own about half the accounts who edit on the subject at any one time. On a bad day it's just all socking.

RE the Guardian/(Sunday) Observer (sister papers) I honestly would not put it past them to have used Wikipedia as the singular source for their statement. Why do they go so far as to mention an "understandable unpopularity" in the Republic of Ireland itself? They must have seen 'evidence', and Wikipedia is the place for sure. Can WP really be pushing a river here? I wonder. WP is subtly invasive and little-understood for sure, but who knows.

My guess is EmpireForever (T-C-L-K-R-D) . :-)

Next thing you know, they'll be saying Greenland isn't part of Denmark.