Hmm... Until someone finds the (not-so-obvious) Scientology connection here, I'd say we have to assume he's either being paid for this article, or it's a feint to cover the other restaurant advertisements, i.e., "see, I write lots of these! I just happen to like the food!"

Personally, I can't stand Greek food, so I can't give him a pass for this one.

See also Light Horse Tavern (T-H-L-K-D). It is misdirection aimed at reviewers and Scilons.

And here's the obligatory main page reference, which I assume he gets a cash bonus for.

And here's the one for the Light Horse Tavern... at least that one contains an historical reference...

And once again, regardless of how historical or good the Light Horse Tavern is, this whole situation smells.

The Light Horse gets an article of length 11,066 bytes, while far more famous
restaurants get shorter ones--why? Because they're not in New Jersey?

If Cirt is not being paid for these, he or she is one of the stupidest Wikipedia editors on Earth.

No. Cirt couldn't give a shit about what people at WR think. It is misdirection aimed at fellow Wikipedians, just in case there should ever be any scrutiny of her actions. It enables her to play the innocent victim, pursued by mad conspiracy theorists -- who should ideally be site-banned, for not assuming good faith and pursuing a vendetta against her.

It's a strategy that works handsomely. And she doesn't mind doing some extra work, because she loves writing anyway, and is far better at it than the average Wikipedian. That's one thing you have to grant Cirt. She can pull a well-written article out of the hat in less time than it takes most other Wikipedians to find one source in google books.

She is a bit like an indispensable secretary -- slightly round the bend, but no one would like to sack her, because she does such good work. And in a way, her heart is in the right place. She does her advocacy out of compassion for the victims of cults. That gives her a moral authority and integrity that people, on some level, respect.

Um, Greg. Wikipedia isn't on Earth. It's in Cloud Cuckooland.

Hum, make sense to me I wonder if Jimbo is the first monarch of Wikipedia Cloud Cuckooland?

This Article created by Cirt yesterday has been nominated for deletion. He seems to be working feverishly. People seem to be really impressed with his ability to add content and format to the article but are oblivious to how that same work is furthering his obsession

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=history

Jeez...

I guess aside from the fact that it's pure navel-gazing from WP's perspective, it's actually a fairly good summary of what's happened over the years. It would have made for a pretty good WR blog post... In fact, if they delete it, we should probably run it here! This is the more appropriate venue, after all. (The article could stand to be a little shorter, of course.)

It was created at 1pm on August 23rd, and by
7pm on the 25th, Cirt had taken it to 40,000 bytes
plus 66 references.

That's not "editing", that's paranoid schizophrenia.

I notice the article says, "Author Jonathan Zittrain noted in his 2009 book published by Yale University Press, The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It, 'as Wikipedia grew it began to attract editors who had never crossed paths before, and who disagreed on articles they were simultaneously editing.'"

Zittrain also spent a whole page of that book discussing Wikipedia Review.

Posted on the article's talk page...

Suggestion

Cirt, I suggest you copy this article to Google Knol.

You can copy/paste from a fully rendered HTML page directly into the WYSIWYG editor on Google Knol and most (if not all) of the copy & paste contents will be replicated without distortion of the layout. If necessary, you can drop down to HTML editing to fix up any rendering anomalies. You can also select from among three different licensing options for your signed articles on Google Knol.

Generally speaking, any single-author article that generates controversy and conflict on Wikipedia is better published as a signed article by a self-identified author on Google Knol. There, you can take ownership and personal responsibility for your article, invite selected co-authors to collaborate with you to present a selected point of view, or open the article to anonymous or pseudonymous unmoderated editing comparable to the Wikipedia model. In either event, there is a space for comments at the bottom of articles on Google Knol, functionally equivalent to Wiki talk page threads (like this one).

Moulton (talk) 14:33, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Cirt wasn't the creator, he single-handedly rescued this from Articles for Deletion... It was an amazing piece of work, actually, take a look at the different versions if you don't believe me... I moved from being a "DELETE" vote to giving him a barnstar in half a day... That dude can write...


t

He should...he's being paid to do it.

I notice that the website for the Daryl Wine Bar in New Jersey hasn't really figured out how to display their menus. Maybe Cirt could help them out by posting the menu on their Wikipedia article.

Interesting hypocrisy by Cirt, who opposes a user's RFA on the basis that said user has a "history of sanctions".

How much nerve does it take to say this, having passed one's own RFA by failing to disclose one's own "history of sanctions"?

OMG, there's hypocrisy on Wikipedia?!

It appears that Cirt’s shiny new article is being nominated for deletion based on BLP and Coatrack issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...dcasting_System

Eh, phooey! Cirt is such a bore!

Cirt has left notices about the AFD at a dozen Wikiprojects, not to mention user pages. How does Cirt manage to get away with such overt canvasing?

That AfD was doomed before it started. The lawsuit is notable, and there is enough detail on it to warrant an article.

However, it is also true that the article is a coatrack. For example, see Cirt's last edit to the article. It shows the existing text in the Aftermath section regarding Erhard's daughter, Celeste. The opening sentence of that section is "In a lawsuit related to similar assertions made in the ''60 Minutes'' broadcast, by journalist John Hubner of the San Jose Mercury News, Werner Erhard's daughter Celeste Erhard sued Hubner and the newspaper seeking [[United States dollar|US$]]2 million, in a case filed in San Francisco Superior Court."

The statement is that this lawsuit is "related." How? "Similar assertions"? One person files a lawsuit against Does 1-20 for X, for a series of alleged torts. Daughter of the person files a lawsuit against someone else for a different set of torts (including alleged broken promises) How is this "related?" sufficiently to give it such prominence? Does the source make that statement? Is there more than one source for this relationship? It looks like Erhard and his daughter are not really connected (that was part of the scandal, in fact, that he'd abandoned his family).

On the Talk page, Cirt defends his article, "Background is appropriate, in order to ground the reader in an otherwise convoluted and confusing history involving Werner Erhard and his various organizations and successor companies."

That would be true for a limited amount of background. This article is full of material that is not actually about the lawsuit, material that, as to detail, belongs in Werner Erhard, Landmark Education, and related articles. What is missing here is an attempt to find consensus, it's quite visible in the Talk page "discussion."

However, so many times I've seen a motive to present facts in a way as to remove what is "confusing" that results in the presentation of a POV. POVs are simple, facts are confusing! Presenting facts clearly and in such a sequence that the reader can discern the situation is an art, but conflicting factions can usually agree as to what the facts are, and Wikipedia sourcing guidelines generally dictate what can be -- and should be -- included, somewhere. The situation with Erhard and Landmark has spawned a series of detail pages, which is proper, it's a way to avoid undue weight, but if each of these pages becomes a coatrack, with the same "facts" -- or opinions -- stated over and over, maintenance has been greatly complicated.

These conflicts can get truly nasty, and when an organization is involved, one being severely criticized, as Landmark has been (rightly or wrongly), socking is to be expected, if the wiki process doesn't seek consensus. Might happen anyway....

Well, almost all the notifications were of users who had edited the page, and the nominator really should have notified those people (it's a courtesy). AfD is supposed to be biased toward keep, and notifying the people who have worked on an article will often insure a base of Keep comment. Unless the work has been heavily to remove bias. From the history, Cirt could be confident that notifying the editors who have assisted him would not accomplish that. They were all, however, trivial edits. The only balancing editor there was the nominator.

The nominator, DaveApter (T-C-L-K-R-D) is not sophisticated. Not quite an SPA, but a heavy interest in Landmark Education.

Lotso Wikiprojects notified, including some very weird ones, like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sexology and sexuality. Normally, notifying WikiProjects is okay, but ... I'm suspecting that WikiProjects have been selected for some kind of expectation of support for the article. It could be subtle; but it is suspicious that a project like this is notified, when, on the face, it has nothing to do with the article.

There is are some user notifications that are suspicious, those of Magioladitis (T-C-L-K-R-D) , PM800 (T-C-L-K-R-D) .

Looking about, I see that Cirt has been heavily involved in editing the Werner Erhard, and one problematic edit popped out at me. He reverted an editor who was right to remove the information. It has little or nothing to do with Werner Erhard. Question is, is the award Erhard received notable? Who else received these awards, and do their articles, if there are any, have such a notification about what happened to Yoghesh Gandhi? I'm seeing signs of POV editing on both sides, likely, but it would take a lot more work to be sure. The inclusion of every mindless detail that can be sourced seems to be a Wikipedia trait. It's a problem with BLPs, as lots of us know!

Well, since I've seen it, here is the poop. According to the very reputable source Wikipedia, Ghandi Memorial International Foundation, which looks "shady as hell," a term of art, gave the "Mahatma Gandhi Humanitarian Award" to these people:

Werner Erhard
Joan Baez
Shirley Temple Black
David Packard
Hogen Fukunaga ... and there were other awards to
Bill Clinton and
Ryochi Sasakawa. In addition, the U.S. Senate hosts a report that the Ghandhi Peace Award was also given to Michael Gorbachev and Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela.

How this worked seems reasonably visible from the Senate report. Sasakawa, a Japanese tycoon, a year after receiving the award, gave the Foundation $500,000. Then, in 1996, Yoghesh Gandhi was able to gain a photo op for Fukunaga with Bill Clinton.

Plus the Foundation gave $325,000 to the Democratic National Committee (returned in 1996, and this was part of a huge scandal that I remember from the time.) The Senate report claims that this money came from Yoshio Tanaka, another Japanese tycoon, who also has an "Earth Aid International Foundation," and this was all aimed at providing more access for Fukunaga and thus more money for Yoghesh Gandhi to obtain and use.

Okay, there are some obvious possibilities here. In 1988, the award was given to a series of people, and it appears that the goal was to shine up the award and the Foundation. I rather doubt that the prominent recipients of the award paid for it! Warner Erhard was given the award because Gandhi believed that he would be considered an obvious humanitarian, and it appears that the Hunger Project was specifically mentioned with the award.

Unfortunately, Werner Erhard still cites the Gandhi award as evidence of his accomplishments, when, in fact, he's far more notable than that award.... Shooting himself in the foot, certainly as far as his Wikipedia article is concerned! Since he cites it (indirectly, through citing a book that refers to it), since it's been mentioned so much, there is hardly any way to keep both this out and the balancing fact that discredits the award. Which could be much better stated than in the article. The award was a scam, but given to people with real accomplishments, some of them. In order to make the award look more legitimate. If it had just been given to Fukunaga and Sasakawa, who would have noticed?

Cirt was roughly correct. But the presentation of the facts is not likely to give a clear picture to the reader of what actually happened.

I notice that the award to David Packard isn't mentioned in the Packard article. But it is mentioned on the hp web site, as one in a long list of awards that Packard received..

Cirt is up to her old tricks again. Clever use of the plagiarism and copyright violation meme in the AfD. Of course, guess who placed all those "warnings" ...

On Commons, he tagged photos of the covers of the Book of Mormon for copyright infringement... - it is just a few words, that never were copyrighted anyway. Looks mostly like harassment of the contributors.

Hilarious -- here's Will Beback, the pot, admonishing Jayen466, the kettle, about WIKIHOUNDING of Cirt.

And here he is again, doing the same with JeremyStalked, whom I believe I have seen posting here.

Of course harassing people on Commons via allegations of copyvio isn't something you'd know anything about, is it?

You abused your admin buttons to block me when I made deletion requests of your uploads. Those DRs were in line with Commons policy. This one ended in delete; this one was kept by your cronies. But it is good to have such an example, to counter the deletionism on Commons.

Your blocks, and they are legion, have nothing to do with your deletion requests, as requests. Merely with your combative nature. You really shouldn't criticize others while your own house is in such disarray.

I do not have much to do combat with. But you have all these hats and buttons. When I made a DR of your uploads, you knocked me down with a block. Abuse of power.

And back to the subject - "combative" fits Cirt.

Hey Lar, if you wanna bitch Kuiper out (and he does deserve a little bit),
you ought to open a new thread.

This is exactly how Cirt deals with criticism--by sleazy backstabbing and manipulation.
If an opponent does not have a warning or block, Cirt will sometimes manufacture one.
It's a tired old story, and obviously Cirt is "special", because he-she gets away with it all
day long. If admins really cared, they would put an end to Cirt's endless assaults on
people like Erhard and various Scientologists. It appears that no one cares--except here.

If anyone should be depressed about this state of affairs, it should be you, Lar.

I just find it funny to hear Kuiper complaining (as I find it funny to hear Wikifan123456789 complaining), because it's so hypocritical.

And ya, I'm depressed. But I'm (commons-wise) more depressed about the policy ( to require things like permissions and proof of age when it seems prudent... http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_...content#Support ) struggling to get adopted than I am about Kuiper's misstatements.

I keep thinking I should just give up, there's no hope, the whole thing's unfixable. But it does get a bit better here and there from time to time.

Note Cirt's spat with Scott MacDonald a few days ago. Cirt backed down in the end.

And there is currently an ANI spat between Cirt and Delicious Carbuncle.

While Delicious Carbuncle was in the wrong there as regards the BLP source, he is right for much of the rest. The thing is that in a way this comes a year or two too late -- Cirt is not quite the out-of-control POV warrior any more that s/he was then, and has been far more reasonable of late.

That Commons poll is indeed depressing. The lack of hope is the logical and inevitable result of these demographics and the projects' decision-making structure, whose failings Scott put it in a nutshell 2.5 years ago:

You misread what happened in the dispute between Scott and Cirt. Cirt had managed to stymie any effort to substantially remove obvious puffery from Sorrentini's bio. When Cirt raised the issue about sourcing at the reliable sources noticeboard, the very next thing they did was remove the disputed items so that the article was not tagged with a "POV dispute" template when people went to look at it. Otherwise, I'm sure it would have been removed when Scott gave up arguing about the details of an article that really shouldn't exist anyway. Meaning no offence, this is a minor TV actor with no significant credits, like literally thousands working in television at any one time.

I really do not wish to enable Scientologists to return to WP to push their point of view, but Cirt is being allowed to get away with all kinds of nonsense as WP's anti-Scientology attack dog. There are a number of articles that exist simply to label some otherwise unremarkable business or person as connected to the CoS. This is a systematic use of WP as the classic "organ of revenge", even if it is "far more reasonable of late".

I note Cirt has taken you to WP:AE.

Sad, but not surprising.

Looks like he is canvassing too with a non-neutral message.

I would post this on the AE request but I would probably be called a sock puppet or something. It is glaringly obvious what Cirt, Smee, Smeeglova, Curt von whatsisname has been doing for the last 5 years but it seems to align with the house POV which means nothing gets done about it. So much for a neutral encyclopedia. Why did I waste so much time editing? (And why do I continue to get attracted to all the dramahz...).

And DC gets smacked by someone canvassed. Cirt: Free to do what they have been doing.

Color me surprised.

I'm tempted to dig up some old WP propaganda about how WP's "neutral" approach was capable of solving every political problem of mankind, and was possibly a new discovery in How To Do Things. A main bit of propaganda in 2006 being the idea that SCIENTOLOGY had an article on WP that EVEN SCIENTOLOGISTS were happy with. So everybody was happy with WP's neutral ways. Yes, they were.

Well, I guess that was a rather overinflated or overoptimistic claim, now, wasn't it?

Where's my apology from WP, for their smugness? They used Scientology in their own wiki-propaganda, for a very, very long time.

Uh, because it beats the crap out of watching American Idol?......

Whoever Cirt really is (and there's been some talk that the Cirt account is being shared by two or more people), he/she/they will get one hell of a bullshit-filled memoir out of all this. Too bad there's no action, singing or dancing, or crime---without one of the "traditional" grabbers, it all translates into poor book sales. CIRT: The Most Boring Nerd Memoir Ever Written!

That's an amazing demographic. The box for the older age group is 31-85, that's a total of 54 years lumped into a single category. 25% of editors under 18. 50% under 22. Did someone question the other day whether there were really 'hordes of teenage admins'? And 75% 30 or under. 75% of all Wikipedians have no partner. 90% are male. kind of plays up to the stereotype.

What is the significance of the bar sections in blue versus those in yellow?

Yet another example of the fine research output from Wikimedia insider and supporter "Bridgespan Partners".

Yes, you'll want to check out those links.

I am married.
I am well over 31.
I am not Jewish.
I am not gay.
I have never worn women's clothing, nor been sexually attracted to animals or small children.
I do not have aspergers, strong feelings on global warming, or an obsession with Intelligent Design.
I am not terribly interested in the second amendment to the US constitution, and for the most part I find pornography aesthetically dull.


So, you can see why I wonder if I really belong in a Wikimedia community.

Everyone knows that graphs should have a bump in the middle. It's called standard divination. I thought you were supposed to know stuff like this?

It's on AN/I, and Will Beback comes riding to Cirt's defense. Jayen466 made Cirt canvass.

Same here. I am even a dad.

I must say that those demographics have made me reassess what I can reasonably hope to achieve in Wiki[m/p]edia projects. Not much, basically.

And the latest appeal shows that DC's tactic of shedding light on a dark situatiion worked. Some of the admins are getting a clue

Interesting. I'm a latecomer to this thread, and sometimes I can't tell the players without a program, so may I ask a few n00besque questions?

1. I see that DC's well-written argument refers to Cirt with plural pronouns. What's up with that?

2. Is DC the same person as Jayen? As i recall, Jayen has an account here, but I've forgotten the name. Could someone sort all this out for me?

Smeelgova/Smee, Cirt's old account, was uniformly referred to as "she" in Wikipedia, and to my knowledge never corrected anyone referring to her as such. Cirt, the new account, usually goes by "he". Nobody knows which it is, and it doesn't really matter, though I personally tend to assume it's a "she". "They" is probably safest.

Delicious Carbuncle is Carbuncle here. Andreas/Jayen466 is HRIP7 (me).