I have a request: can any of Mike's victims offer an intelligible (brief) summary of Mike's odious "career"
on Meta, Wikibooks and Wikiversity? There's a lot of complaints about him abusing Kohs, Abd, Awbrey
and Moulton on various old WR threads, but it's difficult to build up a decent narrative, because Mr. Trites
was such a flake. He kept "retiring" and then returning, causing WR threads to fade out suddenly.

Just FYI: I would go thru his contribs on Meta, WB and WV, but it looks as if he or one of his friends
has been deleting and oversighting things. His Meta history is total crap. People tend to forget/ignore
him because he didn't commit his abuses on the main en-WP.

(I like his Meta RFA. "Support Seen Mike around tons of places, and I agree he's unlikely to go on a rampage. EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:56, 26 April 2008 (UTC)" )

If y'all give me something, I've got fresh dirt.....

I replied in the Book Club.

You know you have three different posts asking for Lifeguard info, Eric?

Just to make sure people see it. I'd like to get Moulton's opinion on this, if possible.

1. How Independent Are The Many Tongues Of Wikipædia?
2. Best Performance In A Self-Promotional User Page
3. BADSITES Goes Global
4. Characters Who Need To Be Watched
5. Catalog Of Wikipediot Threats To Users
6. Mr. Ollie's Wiki-Posse Of One
7. Advertised Policy vs. Actual Practice

Thank you, Jon. I already have those links. How about a blow-by-blow, short timeline of what Mike did to you?

Not worth the trouble.

It is simply part of Wikipediot Culture that Wikipediots do not care what their lackeys do, anymore than the Rape-Often-Again Party cares what outrages Rush Limbah commits in their service.

There are far bigger evils out there these days — Wikiputia is just a tiny, if instructive chip off the old bloc.

Jon

But a very viable indicator of evils to come?

Wikipedia is the very definition of inept evil.

It has no real villains of stature.

It is populated by the banal evils of self-righteous basement dwellers with tiny agendas.

When arguments abound around, "No!11! Pickachu is the bestest Pokemon!", you know that this is not real evil. This is merely self-absorption around tedious, mundane arguments.

Even the Isreal-Palestine "warriors" are ho-hum, no sense of humor, dictator-in-a-teapot type evil.

SlimeVirgin, arguably one of the most prolific edit warriors, is sitting atop a group of articles that have no impact on anyone's day to day lives.

They are inconsequential evils.

I think this is complacent. Wasn't there a case of someone being arrested by Canadian immigration officials because his WP article was incorrect? Isn't it likely that the naked short-selling stuff led to significant financial losses for some people? And who knows what damage has occurred because of errors in say medical articles?

Anyone who relies on Wikipedia on matters of the slightest importance is a fool, but fools do need protecting from themselves. As long as Wikipedia does so well on search engines (and not just Google, don't forget), it has the potential to harm people in unforeseen ways.

It is also complacent because that line of thinking fails to recognise the consequences of what Wikipedia is doing. As Wikipedia has a veil of respectability, a generation of Wikipedians are learning a very distorted culture and are carrying those beliefs into the real world.

There is the subtle effective censorship of information where Wikipedia becomes perceived to be the de facto correct view - Wikipedia makes a superficially attractive argument that it is neutral and is not influenced by so-called experts with their axes to grind, yet it does not have a proper editorial process that encourages thoughtful assessment of various sources especially those which require proper research. There is a presumption that someone is going to carry on working producing useful stuff, and will find it acceptable that they will not get remuneration because this information will be scavenged into Wikipedia.

The real problem is that there is a corrosion of information without thought to the long term consequences of this.

Professor Taner Akcam was detained for several hours by airport customs agents, not "arrested".