For those of you who haven't noticed, our dear Scientology-obsessed Cirt is back after a two-month absence.

He's already gotten back to work on Santorum (sexual neologism) (T-H-L-K-D), and I wonder who's paying him for this one.

"The word became a successful Google bomb when Savage created a website for it, which unseated the Senator's official website as the top search result for his surname on the Google web search engine." That's almost an analogy for Wikipedia itself.

Cirt and Friends have doubled the size of the article and increased the references from 33 to 95 in just three days.


I detest Rick Santorum, but this is using Wikipedia as a flame-thrower.

That is Wikipedia's guiding purpose, so I don't know what's eating you.

Possibly nematodes.

He hasn't had a two-month absence. He's been hanging out at other wiki places. The sister sites and all. He's never GONE. He's addicted to wp. Apparently no other life.

My so far vain attempt to bring reason into the discussion is predictably rebuffed.

Well, this probably won't work (Cirt is, after all, crazy).........

......but if you need a bit of ammunition in this argument, you could ask them why they are spending all this effort to defame a minor right-wing politician, when the Wikipedia article about a notorious public-relations firm was recently rewritten, openly and with zero negative information, by an employee of said PR firm. With the full connivance of a well-regarded Wikipedia drone.

Said article was previously full of ugly little embarrassing tidbits like the ones in the Santorum article, but now it looks like a sanitized company press release. (I won't tell you what it is, because Wikipedia doesn't deserve to be informed of abuses. The rot and corruption in their database should be allowed to fester.)

My turn to try.

I took one more step to discuss stubbing the article and was met by a perfectly formed phalanx of tacklers. I give up.

How many links does it takes to create a googlebomb? To hear them talk they make it sound as if you need lots and lots of people. In reality you need very few, a single popular blogger can google bomb pretty much anyone, especially if that person has a somewhat unusual name. Some cunts will even brag about it.

In any case back in 2003 anyone with a history of internet postings in forums could google bomb anyone simply by changing their forum posting sig. Voila 1000s of pages all linking the same phrase to a single site. Around 2008 google changed the algorithm so it doesn't take much notice of links in sigs, but back in 2003 it was a piece of cake.

Interestingly in their haste to tag up all the mucky words, probably to hide the Santorum thing in amongst a host of similar edits, they managed to leave this article with major problems. Jayen seems to have followed behind.

There is some discussion of the Santorum article at the Wiki-EN list, starting with this post.

Obviously, this argument is being drawn out on the lines of personal politics.
Bauder thinks the article might be over the top. A few others agree.
And known "pseudoliberal" free-speechy Wikipedia trolls like Geni, Cunctator,
McWhiney and GWH see no problem with it, and respond to any call for moderation
with smug jeers.

And these assholes are "running" an "encyclopedia". Ya can't make this stuff up.

What what? Guest posts? When did that start?

It just stopped. It was evidently due to a mistake made while setting up this subforum. However, the guest seems knowledgeable about WP, and will hopefully register an account here.

Fred Bauder sez:I'm not holding my breath.

The santorum neologism article is up again for GA, it seems, too. If it passes, I wonder how much Cirt will be asking for as a bonus.

Also, I've always wondered where he gets his stuff from. I mean, someone who hates the politician isn't just going to ask a random Wikipedia admin if they can write a slanderous article about someone.

As I said above one can Google bomb anyone who has a name that it is not common. If you put my real name into google the second hit is a photoblog of mine. Nowhere on that blog is my real name mentioned, but 6 years ago I gave permission to a University to use a photo as part of a course website and they credited it with my real name. One link in all of the internet is enough to bring that photoblog to the top of Google with my real name.

Similarly, about 8 years ago I created a forum signature with the word "Codswallop" (not the actual word used but near enough) that linked to a site that promotes the idea that the the decline in garden birds is due to the increase in birds of prey. Within 10 days that word brought the site as the first hit on google. Even today, several years after I've stopped linking the page, that word has the site on the first page of google.

Cirt, George William Herbert, Geni, Will Beback, etc are not common names, and are susceptible to Google bombing. Very few links of those names to attack pages will bring the associated pages up to the top of a Google.

To his credit, Fred raised the matter on the article talk page.

Ian Woollard at wikien-l commented on the link farms at the bottom of the article -- three massive templates created by, you guessed it, Cirt, earlier this month, just after the press reported Santorum might run for president.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Dan_Savage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Political_neologisms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Sexual_slang

These templates add about 200 incoming links to the article, and thus drive up the article's Google rating, to the point where it is now the number 1 Google result for "Santorum", even ahead of Savage's original Google bomb.

That's using Wikipedia for political campaigning, just like in the earlier cases with Kenneth Dickson and Jose Peralta (T-H-L-K-D)/Hiram Monserrate (T-H-L-K-D) (see previous threads).

Putting all this together must have been a lot of work, but it's worth seeing Cirt's response, at least.

Yes, it's top-notch work. Will Cirt respond? If not, what about the Communityâ„¢?

A couple of editors aren't too happy with Jayen's research and conclusions. It was Cirt's defensive reaction and his choosing not to respond to everything that Jayen brought up that caused me to think that Jayen was probably onto something.

Probably on to something? Wow. To me, this is just more of the same with Cirt. Same tactics, same motivations, same result.

Jayen466 put an excellent case together, but I am not sure what effect it will have. For one thing, doing this on Cirt's talk page -- the correct and polite WP thing to do -- means that it won't be as widely read as it should be. For another, the "santorum" issue is very muddled. Even if one assumes that everything that Jayen466 says is correct, the question that is likely to be asked is "Has Cirt broken any rules?".

There seem to be some widely divergent views about what should happen with the santorum article, from deleting it, to renaming it, to merging into another Rick Santorum article, to keeping it as is but removing the actual definition of santorum. It will be fairly easy for Cirt and his supporters to defend keeping the article as is, since there is a fractious opposition. And honestly, although many people are apparently having the same reaction to the article -- that it is an unnecessary hit piece -- there isn't any rule against it. The fact that Santorum seems to be a rather odious politician doesn't help.

It is much bigger now. It's not that Will Beback doesn't believe in WikiHounding. It's just that you must WikiHound the correct people, not Cirt.

Is this article by Cirt really about David Shankbone?

Look at the article history:

David Shankbone posts on Cirt's page.

I started a new thread about the santorum article in the articles forum, mostly in the interests of later search results. Short version: Cirt isn't interested in santorum, they are interested in Dan Savage because Savage had Scientologists kicked out of a flea market.

The Cirt drama is unfolding so fast and taking up so much bandwidth that I feel somewhat overwhelmed. What about this gigantic eruption?

Well, first the Cat in the Hat showed up, then Thing One and Thing Two. They caused a huge mess. Then Little Cat A complained, followed by Little Cat B under his Hat, all the way down to Little Cat Z, who threatened me with a salami. That mess got Hatted with a Voom. Then Bartholomew showed up with some Oobleck and nobody's found a way to get rid of that yet.

I like salami.

I like it too, but the serving suggestion I found to be lacking. But it was when I offered to slice up the Littlest Cat's salami that things became quigley.

Not wiggly. Not jiggly. But all over quigley. He popped up and behaved in a manner most piggly.

...and in a related manner, my final edit on the slippery subject of Savage's Google-bomb.

Cirt's use of wmf projects for political activism is currently being discussed on ANI, commons, jimbo's talk page and the wikien list.

No doubt this is all being instigated by wikihounders who congregate in off-site forums. His supporters include the likes of David Gerard, George William Herbert and Wnt (whom Jimbo respects very much, lol).

Wow, you can really count on Georgewiliamherbert to suck. "Dan Savage is responsible for this." These guys take a non-notable POV and amplify it to 125 dB, and then say, "the sources made me do it."

Wikitorum:

The frothy mixture of anal-retentive addition of content and drama-filled accusation against opponents when editors in good standing use discussion based on common sense and basic human decency in an attempt to uphold the stated principle of Wikipedia that articles that touch on living people not be used to create harm to said people.

Social lubrication between editors currying favor with each other to further their future influence onsite and accusations based on bad-faith interpretation of legitimate offsite criticism add a characteristic odor to this mixture.

Wikitorum was first detected by users of Wikipedia in 2001. Massive supplies of it are now available.

aaagggghhhh head hurt head hurt.............

(assholes, all of 'em)

Add it to urbandictionary.

A user of WR forum
Once bought some tight pants and he wore 'em.
Then he stooped and he laughed
As he felt a big draft
And he said right away "Wikitorum."

Urban Dictonary? I would never dream of attempting such a thing. I am a wiki guy all the way.

There is an arbcom opened on Cirt's political activism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arb...itical_activism

But he has family problems and is too ill and busy to be involved, and requested to be let off.


(Meanwhile he has an FAC going on one of his bacon books.)

WP is unable to handle these issues. It is a systemic problem. Once they have cited crap on the system it is near impossible to remove it. In this instance the battle lines are drawn, no RFC will resolve it one way or the other, and the default position is to do nothing.

The cites on that particular page are all speculation. Talking media heads pontificating to other talking media head, and chuckling over a bit of toilet humour. That is basically all it is. The cites also demonstrate another problem with WP, all of it is recentism. It doesn't matter whether the citation is from 6 years ago or 6 days ago, the citation itself is almost always a response to some news event of the particular day or week. So: guy says he's gonna stand for office, whadda we know about him? Oh there is that Savage site, that's funny lets work that in. No one else cares, none of his core supporters are going to not vote for him because of it. None of his detractors are going to vote for him if the site suddenly disappears. The middle ground won't give a flying fuck, as Clinton said "Its the economy".