I'm thinking that we could be very helpful to those who wish to continue to edit at Wikipedia, by providing a list of admins that do not run with the cabal. I was thinking about Nobs' request for advice on getting unblocked, and my own recent experience, getting my oft-deleted user page restored once again.

My one concern would be that by posting a list of the names of honest admins, we might turn them into targets for the cabal. Any thoughts? Especially from you Wikipedia admins who are reading this?

The ones who post here....

Ashibaka
Elaragirl

Everyking and Karmafist used to be, but got de-sysoped. I think for posting here.

Mailer Diablo I think is a good guy.

Ummm... I can't think of anyone else. I don't study them much.

Elaragirl isn't an admin, silly!

AFAIK, the current and former admins who have registered here under their WP account names (or close enough to be obvious) are Karmafist, Everyking, Jaranda, Sceptre, FCYTravis, NSLE (now Chacor), W.marsh, mailer_diablo, (Dave) gerard, KimvdLinde, Phil Sandifer, Golbez (still not banned from here, though no one seems to know why), CBDunkerson, Doc glasgow, interiot, James F. (Jdforrester), JzG (assuming that's actually him), Essjay, FreakOfNurture, FloNight, FireFox, Grue, Linuxbeak, Xyrael, Ryan Delaney, Ta bu shi da yu, the wub, thebainer, mackensen, Utcursch, Alkivar, Ashibaka, AmiDaniel, and Avillia.

Of those, four have been desysopped since this site's inception, and in one or two of those cases this site was directly involved in the incident(s) leading to that action. The majority, of course, have stopped participating due to our occasionally exposing other admins' IRL identities, and are probably really pissed off about having been mentioned just now. Meanwhile, there are probably at least a dozen more who have registered under other names...

But if I had to pick one, personally, I'd go to FCYTravis. He seems like a fairly decent guy, really, and considering some of the stuff that's been written about him... elsewhere, he probably wouldn't mind having at least one person among the Multitudinous Enemies of Wikipedia who owes him a favor.

"Honest" probably isn't the word to use cause somebody's gonna get offended.

Those who aren't "honest" should be likened to careerists in a political machine (kinda like Bob Dole or Walter Mondale, for example), who via social promotion advance despite their dull personalities and lack of any other quality. There's basically two of these types:

(1) activists who kiss ass to curry favor; and

(2) bureaucrats scared to make any decision or take any action, cause that exposes them to the risk of failure.

Those who fall outside these stereotypes could be described perhaps as Independent, or some other such b.s.

Fuck! I get shooting pains whenever someone puts "admin" in the same sentence with my name.

Good admins hm...well, I have a list on my user page, but ''good'' has different connotations for me and you, I suspect.

But I think you know. The three best I can name would be

Ashibaka.
Mailer Diablo.
Firsfron.

Maybe throw Rama's Arrow into that mix.

The way I see it, there are only two kinds of Wikipedia Adminions:

• Evil Bastards
• Good Minions Doing Nothing

Jonny

How many of the 1200 Admins do you suppose are over the age of 30?

I believe that if you take a rough extrapolation from Daniel Brandt's Hivemind pages, based on the admins whose ages are known, you'd probably end up with a figure somewhere between 250 and 350... But obviously there's no way to be certain.

What good is it to "do something" if doing something only gets you banned and blocked and changes nothing?

Hurling rocks at the windows only gives the window repairman more business.

Shooting from the hip, I'd've (if such a contraction exists) guessed 300 to 400. So perhaps as many as 800 are under 30 years old, and if someone said 600 were under 18, I would not be surprised.

<nobs whispers>( Shhh ...no wonder there's such difficulting in the Humanities, and particularly the field of History...)

That was a terse epitome of a thesis that I've been stating since I arrived at this Review. We are talking about people in Positions Of Responsibility, not the sorts of Wikipeeons who can be banned at the drop of a hat. That puts them in positions to "do something" about the Evil Bastards, if anybody is. There are a half-dozen such people who I've personally observed trying to do something -- and yet the Responses that they manage to mount from their Positions Of Responsibility are always so half-hearted, isolated, and utterly wikiwimpy that whatever virtues they may have had as responsible adults are qwikly cancelled by swarms of hivemental cases. To bear a measure of influence and public trust, but to give up the ghost with such a token resistance, such a wikiwimper of protest, is just plain irresponsible.

Jonny

Reference

• Porter, Martin (2002), " 'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing' (or words to that effect)"

So, whose block do you want reviewed? Herschelkrustofsky's? Provided sock edits become non existant I have no problems w/ recommending an unblock to someone in "the hive" who would be able to send a few eyeballs to take a look.

The only one that I know of whose actions seem to be relatively "cabal"-free would seem to be Antrandrus--He can be sort of a jerk at times, but I have to say that he seems to be fair and honest, in what I've seen of him.

...People who replace window glass are probably pretty happy about all of the stone throwing around that place!

There's FJB, who might have been Fred Bauder.

I've got good reason to suspect others of being admins, but if they don't use their WP account names then it's unfair to out them.

Of non-cabal admins, there are NLU who tried to help me (though he backed down when facing SlimVirgin) and Dan100 who tried to unblock me.

Nobs01. Facts and Summation are available here, and on the Unblock-en-1 mailing list.
See also Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Past decisions precedent, Lir#Policy proposals,

Here is my response to Fact 2), Charles Matthews question how I might contibute:


See User:Nobs02 (hardly evasive) contibs done with permission, to verify my story.

There was a time when I'd say Sango123 (she helped me when Freakofnurture used a very inappropriate block reason) but she doesn't respond to anything anymore which makes me think that maybe the Cabal's got her now.

Although, I have to admit, my first reaction when reading the topic was "They exist?"

As a friend said, "I thought it was part of the job to be an asshole".

These are the names that have been brought up thus far:

Ashibaka
Elaragirl
Mailer Diablo
FCYTravis
Firsfron
Rama's Arrow
NLU
Dan100

Any dissenting voices? Of these candidates, I am only familiar with Ashibaka, whom I heartily endorse. Ashibaka stood up to SlimVirgin, Will Beback, and Cyde at various times over the deletion of my User page.

I am not an admin. I will never *be* an admin as long as there are policies I would refuse to enforce , besides, I'm not qualified to be one.

I brought up Antradrus a couple of posts back. You must have missed that one...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=91071176

Presumably, Lamont is posting this to indicate that Elaragirl has endorsed a few admins that are otherwise widely condemned on this site. Well, to each his own. My objective is to compile a list of admins who are generally recognized as being straight-shooters, and not sleazy opportunistic double-dealing scum. I am particularly interested in those, like Ashibaka, who have demonstrated a willingness to confront the cabal. I think that Everyking would qualify in that regard, were it not for the fact that he has been de-sysopped.




Sorry about that, chief. Here's the revised list:

Ashibaka
Antradrus
Mailer Diablo
FCYTravis
Firsfron
Rama's Arrow
NLU
Dan100

Appears to violate What can I not have on my user page.

I post what I think , based on what I see. *shrug* It's nice to see consistancy though, since the thread was about "Admins you can trust" and not "Gee, what are Elara's opinions".

This is why I called this place full of ghouls. Let's go dig up something that has jack shit all to do with the conversation, for no better reason than to do it.

Well, I recently saw this AfD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mis...reemasonry_Page

if someone finds your page, you don't have much to work with.

Perhaps, but it's important that people know where you're coming from. And I may have been wrong about it not being your first account - once you've been around long enough, you'll almost have to see that Cyde is neither consistent nor focused on larger-scale issues! In fact, he's the quintessential case of someone who uses the rules (the civility rules in particular) as a cudgel, to tactlessly and relentlessly pursue a self-serving and self-promoting agenda - the sort of thing you're on record as not being especially fond of, IIRC. He's basically a game-player - in fact, he comes from the same sort of computer-gaming background as yourself, coincidentally - but unlike you, he's completely lacking in common moral decency, or for that matter, intellectual curiosity. (SlimVirgin doesn't even like him!)

Someone like MONGO, by contrast, may be incivil, tactless, and derisive, but at least he has some principles, and he doesn't seem to be on Wikipedia for the purpose of "winning" something for himself - whatever that something may be. I can still see why people can't stand him, but I'd rather have a site with a dozen MONGO's than one Cyde.

Also, why would User:Geogre be classified as a hypocrite with distasteful tactics? I was almost ready to propose him as an "honest admin." From what I can tell, the main issue with him is that he's highly outspoken on the "editors vs. janitors" debate, to the point of pissing off the pro-janitor side (hey, pun!) practically all the time... Is that the main problem, or does he do some other stuff I just haven't noticed?

When I directly see something from him (Cyde) that meets my criteria of jackass, I'll put him in that catagory. But I make two points.

1) Yes, WP likes digging into user pages too, with people trying to police the world. These people are IDIOTS. You've got at least one guy who does nothing with his time except dig up shit on people's user pages and get them deleted..but so what? The point of this thread is to present "honest admins". You'll note that I didn't push Cyde, or Slim, or anyone that would probably not been seen by the WGR as "honest". My own standards are just that: my own. But what happens is that people try to find something to say "aha!" with just because it's been done so many times it's de rigour. If someone deletes my pages in WP, then that's WP. But don't you hold yourselves to be "better" than that?

2) As for Geogre, I refuse to say things in a forum about him where he may not be able to reply, or to even know about them. Suffice it to say that from what I have seen, and been shown, and "dug up" like a ghoul myself, that his philosophy is ... antithemic to my own.

At any rate, honest admins isn't really a good topic title. "Open minded" admins. Or "rebellious" admins, perhaps. I don't like calling it honest because it implies everyone else is dishonest.

Elara: I've seen lots of things that put Cyde in the category of jackass. You don't have to look far. If you asked for a list, we could dedicate an entire thread to citing example after example...no wait, I think there already is at least one...no wait, two, three, four....

*runs*

The criteria I had in mind, when choosing the title, are the following: that the admins take Wikipedia policies at face value, rather than using them as weapons in POV warfare (i.e., "gaming the system.) That they apply sanctions against policy violators in an even-handed manner, without double standards.

That would be, to my mind, "honest," given that admins are given certain powers to enforce policy, not to gain an advantage over their POV opponents.

I wouldn't say it's a fair call to put all admins into the dishonest and evil category. Personally I'd say I've been pretty good at avoiding POV in admin actions.

I'd say ProtectionBot is going to be a darned good admin, no way for it to make POV edits.

No really, many admins aren't corupt and heck, some even agree w/ our friend Daniel Brandt and have made arguments to delete his bio. It's not exactly fair to put everyone in one evil grouping.

Who did that? Or is that a rhetorical statement...?


That's easy for you to say! You at least know who you are - we don't! (Though some of us have certain... suspicions?)


I'd actually tend to agree with that. Maybe this should be a new thread, but many of us have advocated using a greater degree of automation in reverting vandalism for quite some time, including me. It would take a lot of pressure off the admins, and possibly make them less cranky in general, especially when the vandals start getting really nasty and personal. What would be even better would be if specific access privileges (such as the power to protect pages) could be assigned to specific accounts individually, on an ad hoc basis - then you wouldn't have the huge debate that's going on right now, in which every "oppose" voter is getting harrassed by (uh, three guesses?) Cyde, who no doubt would just loooove to have all sorts of admin-level bots of his own someday. Power to the non-people, right on!


Are you being facetious? If not, then it almost sounds like you're equating the insistence on maintaining that one page with evil and corruption. I'm inclined to agree, of course - the anonymous misuse of other peoples' websites in the pursuit of spitefulness and petty revenge fantasies really is pretty bad... Either way, though, I'm sure Daniel will be pleased to hear that!

No, no. I would have to say from my perception of the Hive Mind page is that all Wikipedia administrators, even those who have never touched Daniel's page are still "harassers" and are listed. Lots of people on there haven't harassed anyone and yet they are listed. It's not like the majority of people are out to get anyone, they're just out trying to make Wikipedia a free public resource, much like NameBase.

There are over 1000 accounts with admin privileges (though many are pretty inactive). It would be absurd to say that all or even most are in the same league as some of the people regularly discussed here. However, I assume that we're trying to identify admins who can and will actively help anyone who feel that they've been treated unfairly.

The test of the righteous menschkin is not to cower in hiser hovel and pretend not to smell the holocaust, but to get off hiser hairy behind and do something about it. That is why I think this thread is so totally clueless, and I will continue to blame the good minions doing nada even more than I blame the brown sox -- the latter of whom are at least being true to their principles, or the lack thereof.

I think that Mr. H_2 (Herschelkrustofsky) should take a clue from Mr. H_1 (I mean Paul Newman, as in Cool Hand Luke). If he's trying to save Sodom and Jimborah for the sake of one good admin, then the time for that is past, and Lot and his kin should now high-tail it for the hills -- and for Heaven's sake quit looking back quite so much, lest you all turn to Wikipillars of Salt.

Jonny

So long as creatures like Raul654 are in prominent higher positions, lesser, similar creatures will be attracted to, and appointed to, entry-level administrative positions.

Actually, I got the idea for this thread because Nobs was asking how to get himself unblocked, and I think the best hope for a person in that predicament is to search for an honest admin. I don't expect to see Wikipedia turn over a new leaf. If there are honest admins out there, and apparently there are some, this site should acknowledge them, so that we perform an even-handed function of criticism and not just a shoulder to cry on for the abused Wiki-refugee.

Oh, ok, that xplains a Lot. I thought maybe it was sum bit of left-over xmas spirit that inspired this "making a list and checking it twice".

If it's really about advising Nobs, well, I've already told himer that there's no such thing as a low-tar Virginia Slim.

But one of my brothers is a sociologist who studies substance abuse self-help groups like AA and NA, so I know all about co-dependency and how that works.

Jonny

Yes, I am on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Listusers somewhere. My exact identity I rather not disclose nor would I appreciate speculation as to my identity but to say the least, I am not Jimbo Wales or Danny Wool.



True, automation does lead to a lot fewer POV calls. I'd have to say without VoABot II, Wherebot and AntiVandalBot Wikipedia would likely have a lot more drama and content wars not to mention stressed out admins (it's much nicer not to have to frantically try and keep vandalism out of articles and Wherebot is a massive help at knocking down copyvios). Clear cut vandalism doesn't need a human's attention and the bot devs have done an pretty good job at auto fixing a lot of the stuff.

Of course, Wikipedia is scared of admin bots, so there's not much else I think they're going to be able to automate.

I recall the whole request for rollback (the specific permission) was passed but there was never a dev to implement it.



No, no. I would have to say from my perception of the Hive Mind page is that all Wikipedia administrators, even those who have never touched Daniel's page are still "harassers" and are listed. Lots of people on there haven't harassed anyone and yet they are listed. It's not like the majority of people are out to get anyone, they're just out trying to make Wikipedia a free public resource, much like NameBase.

Yikes, if anyone wants to try and read the mess above, it screwed up the /quote thing a lit, and double quoted a lot of stuff.

(Quotes fixed by Helpful Staff Member Somey, 1/13 @ 04:22 UTC)

Is Dr. Jimbo/Mr. Hive trying to spam us or something?

Does he think there's no fire out of the Wikipan?

Does he think we can't cut the mustard?

DiJonny

Do you need a large ventalation fan brought in to clear all of the bad smell away?

We're ghouls -- we have no fans.

Jonny

But you're electric. Hence an electric fan would work.....

Great thread guys. It's nice to get back to reality after the undercover and decoy crap i've had to do on there in the past few months.

The admins on there are destined to be corrupt, as anyone with unchecked power will be. You'd be surprised how quickly you'd do the same things they do if you had the opportunity or the ability, or for that matter, most human beings.

Power putrefies, and wikipower wikiputrefies. We all strive for self-efficacy, but not everybody wants the same kind of power. I remember having the darndest time trying to get it through Kim Bruning's head that not everybody who came to Wikipedia even wanted to be an administrator, or would even bother visiting the policy pages if some self-appointed posse of Barney Fifes wasn't always reading them their wacko readings of the Riot Act and constantly getting in the hair of anybody who was trying to do real work. This was in the context of trying to explain that a simplified set of rules for yeoperson editors was something far and away distinct from a prescription for wannabe administrators. I think that it really wikipeeved him and others to suggest that they were not universally worshipped as ego ideals.

Jonny

Is this an oblique reference to the Stanford prison experiment?

Y'know, for some reason I think having threads "pinned" actually makes them less noticeable. I'd completely overlooked all these posts... heck, y'all could have been talking about Israel 'n' Palestine in here for all I knew!


Okay, if we're going to deal with this constructively, then I guess we have to put aside the whole issue of whether or not such a resource is even a good idea, and also whether or not the HiveMind pages are actually harming Wikipedia in some tangible way. To me, it all goes back to the fundamental concept - in essence, selling an objectivized view of the world, neatly wrapped in "Wow, it's FREE!" packaging.

I've often asked myself, as I do with just about everything, whether or not I'm taking the so-called "threat of Wikipedia" way too seriously - and if at the end of the day it really isn't just a big website, nothing else - not some sort of huge monocultural juggernaut that's out of control and about to squash what little opinion diversity and philosophical depth the world has left.

And yet, time and again, there are all these "initiatives" and "project announcements" that really do indicate that the people behind it, including most of the admins, want it to have that sort of impact. I know it's mostly hype, and that things like "Wikiasari" and "Wikiversity" and "Campaigns Wikia" aren't likely to amount to much of anything, particularly in comparison to the Big Ol' Mothership. But what seems to be happening is that there's this feeling-out process, whereby the people who might be in a position to make some money out of it are poking and prodding to see where they can best concentrate their efforts, and at the same time, there are all these people, again including many of the admins, who have managed to convince themselves that everything they're doing, and everything about what they're doing, is universally beneficial.

In both cases, everyone is willing to try just about anything, and nobody thinks about the consequences in advance. After all, they didn't think about the consequences of Wikipedia in advance, and look how that turned out, right? Top ten website, millions of articles, tens of thousands of active users, billions of clicks per day. It must therefore be a good thing!

I suspect that Brandt's worldview probably hasn't changed much since The Sixties - largely anti-establishment, humanistic, non-trusting of authority... If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Whereas today, we often hear things like, "the internet is here to stay, privacy ain't what it used to be, so get over it and stop whining." Well, if fighting for the pre-internet version of personal privacy means I have to be a "whiner," then so be it - I guess I'm a whiner, and proud of it, too! Even if it means some of the people on the other side have to lose a bit of privacy in the process, if only so that they'll know how it feels.

It may well be that they're not out to get anyone, in fact I'm sure they're not - but if their "right" to possess information about me trumps my right to privacy, why should I treat them any differently? It makes no sense to me that I should, and if a politely-worded take-down request doesn't get the job done, what else am I supposed to do?

I think that the privacy issue is a red herring, in this sense. Wikipedia has no standards about anything that it applies equally across the board. In Wikipedia, Jimbo Wales and whoever the hecque SlimVirgin is have rights to privacy that they do not accord to Brandt or to anybody else that they do not want to. So their pseudo-policies are simply guns that they stick in other people's faces, shouting "Do as we say, and nobody gets hurt".

So let's quit buying the wikipretense that we are talking about norms, policies, principles, or standards here.

The Wikimedia Foundation does not exhibit sufficient integrity to suggest that its members even know what those words mean.

Jonny

Welcome to the internets where privacy does not exist. The second you post something online, your privacy goes out the window. Is Wikipedia helping ruin privacy, likely, is Hive-Mind, likely too. Are Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and next about every web 2.0 site around helping privacy. Not a chance. Your blog can be your worst enemy most of the time. WHOIS is evil (and that isn't even Web2.0). In this information age anything you say, anything about you can instantly be searched by anyone good or bad. Take a look @ http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116....html?mod=blogs it's an interesting article addressing the issue.

In short, I don't think privacy issues are just restricted to Wikipedia as a whole, everything online has privacy issues.

Sure, everything online has privacy issues... no question about that!

But for the most part, people ''choose'' to put themselves in front of the world via MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, etc. Someone else on those sites might post something about you, but in almost all cases, that post is clearly coming from a single individual. And in fact, it rarely happens — because people are afraid of the other person retaliating in kind. Meanwhile, YouTube and Flickr are more prone to people posting material that attacks another person without their knowledge, but they're also more responsive to take-down requests, and it's very difficult to search for someone on Google as a video or image file, assuming the person's name isn't one of the keywords.

So in that respect, Wikipedia is different, because the people who are being written about don't get much choice as to whether or not they're written about, and there's no specific author. Somebody just does it, and the fact that the site doesn't put even a screen name attribution in the actual article makes it look like everyone is being told "this is the objective, consensus view of the whole world about this person or organization." It isn't, of course, but it tries to look that way - after all, if it wasn't, surely someone would come along and change it, right? Meanwhile, any attempt to retaliate in kind will almost always fail, as we've seen time and time again.

So if one cares to look at it from that perspective, an opt-out policy would elevate Wikipedia to the same level that MySpace and Facebook currently occupy, with respect to the moral conventions under which they operate.

Btw, there actually is a feature that's being tried on a few wikis, whereby a list of the article's contributors is displayed at the bottom of the article page. That might help somewhat, at least psychologically, but it's a band-aid approach, and it doesn't solve the Google problem. Also, they can't really do that on Wikipedia because every article has at least 50 contributors, half of whom are actually vandals and revert-bots!