Prompted by the recent spat between Giano and Postlethwaite, I had a look at their contributions, to see who was ‘better’. Postlethwaite has a massive 20,000 edits. Giano (II) has a mere 12,000. Postlethwaite’s contributions, however, are mostly stubs of which these are typical:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burneside a dreary town in Northern England (“The village has one grocery store, one bakery and a paper shop which is part of the Croppers paper mill.It also has a pub named the Jolly Anglers and a Chipshop named the Jolly fryer”)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Gaba An obscure CEO of a film company, which consists mostly of the sentence “Harold Gaba is the CEO and president of Act III Communications Holdings, L.P, a U.S. film production company.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Beasts The Wild Beasts, an obscure garage band who went to the same school as him (“Wild Beast [sic] quickly moved into their first practice studio at Mintsfeet Industrial Estate.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underbarrow an obscure hamlet in the north of England, consisting of a four uninteresting sentences.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugese A 40 word stub about a dog variety.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_parsnip a similarly-sized stub about water parsnips. “the Water Parsnip is a herb belonging to the parsnip family and comes from Africa and some parts of the Northern Hemisphere.”

His entire contribution to mainspace thus consists of about 400 words on utterly non-notable subjects. What happened to those 20,000 edits?

By contrast Giano is the author of many finely crafted articles, including the following

The magisterial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince%27s_Palace_of_Monaco (“During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the palace and its owners became symbols of the slightly risqué glamour and decadence that was associated with Monte Carlo and the French Riviera. Glamour and theatricality became reality when the American film star Grace Kelly became chatelaine to the palace in 1956.”)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Arbuthnot “She described Castlereagh as her "dearest and best friend" until his death in 1822, when she transferred her affections to the other great 19th-century Anglo-Irish peer, the Duke of Wellington.”

and many more. Postlethwaite justifies his aggressive blocking and bully-boy tactics as preventing disruption to the encyclopedia. But what has he done for the encylopedia? And how does the blocking and bullying of contributors who contribute the real content, really prevent disruption? Isn’t this disruptive itself? Something has gone badly wrong.

It's not what you've contributed, it's the way you've done it. Who has complied better with WP:NPA, WP:BenicetotheCabal and other key policies?

In any organisation you accept there is a division between those who contribute the real stuff, and those with not much talent except for adminstration. The latter are often genuinely useful. But there is a limit. This guy’s first edit

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=84312597

was made while he was still at school, in 2006. He is not much older than my children. He still works where he grew up, and has little experience of the outside world. There is no comparison between him and a valuable (albeit wayward and often arrogant) contributor like Giano. Yet he is entrusted with the direction of the world’s favourite encylopedia.

[edit] Of course 'fauvre' is not Latin for Wild Beasts.

[edit] Also the article was deleted once

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Art...ion/Wild_beasts

Giano had two earlier accounts- Giano and Conte Giacomo which had 9206 and 1526 edits respectively making a total of 23, 112.

Yes and there are some fine articles there too, such as West Wycombe Park.

But perhaps I am getting old. There used to be an automatic assumption that stuff like classical music or architecture or fine art was in some sense more important than garage bands or obscure towns, even if it was less popular. That was the unstated assumption behind the 'old' BBC. But the world has changed, as we know. Perhaps it is time to move on (cont. on p. 94).

Going back to the Pajama Media commentary, which Jayjg conceded was right wing, I am struck by the preponderance of right wing, fascistic, police style practices favored by so many of our least favored admins.

After all, what is the Spammish Inquisition but a reprise of the Star Chamber long favored by notorious fascistic regimes.

In my own case, the RfC was orchestrated and scripted by a small cabal from the Wikipedia Project on Intelligent Design who jointly shared the roles of plaintiff, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, in accordance with Lar's observation that Wikipedia doesn't do Due Process.

What is it about Wikipedia that it draws so many fascistic characters playing polizei into an enterprise that ought to be populated by professional scholars pursuing accuracy, excellence, and ethics in online media?

It's easy to play fascists when you're anonymous.

Which goes a long way toward explaining why a number of WP critics believe WP admins should not be anonymous.

You also didn't note that, quite frankly, most of Ryan's edits, including several examples in your quotes alone, consist of the most utterly horrendous incorrect usage of grammar, and in several cases, elementary syntax of the English language. Ye gods.

See the Stanford Prisoner experiment. Young people without life experience find it almost impossible not to get drawn into this kind of thing, especially if they're given "permission" by some charismatic figure. Hitler Youth. Lord of the Flies. The gungho marines (Semper Fi, bro). Fifty year-old academics rarely get freshly drawn into some mass movement, as True Believers. That typically happens to 20 year-olds, looking for their new mommies and daddies as models.

You can't really compare Ryan and Giano. Give the boy a chance- he still has about another ten or fifteen years or something to develop a love of all that stuff my mum and dad tried to instill in me, by dragging me around stately homes. I'm 31 now and still have a rebellious love of pop music instead.


Ryan at least uses his real name (I assume.) Some people have no shame (joke)

I did note it, but kept quiet, except for the appalling one about 'Fauvres' which he claimed was Latin, but is (mispelled) French. Remember that Giano's spelling is terrible also. Except, he very conscientiously works until it is right. Moreover overlying the spelling is an understanding, in Giano's case, of grammar and logic and thread and phrasing that make his articles so great. In each of these cases, Postlethwaite is entirely lacking.

Yet, we are now both in the clink, and the boy Postlethwaite struts round, swinging the keys.

Per Lar's guidance, Ryan drank the Kool-Aid.

Unfortunately, most admins are just common trollers. I studied this aspect on Wikipedia for months and months. Good editors eventually get eaten and consumed by hostile admins, who don't really give "two plonkers" for Wikipedia, who really only care about their admin-ship and their own survival. That's another reason why admins form themselves into micro-cabals, little self-protection societies. -

This certainly wasn't true when I started (2003). All the admins were unfailingly polite and worked hard for the best interests of those who were more inclinded to editing. The first indication things had changed were a strange block from HighinBC for questioning his judgment, then shortly later from Postlethwaite himself. E.g. I accused him of bullying & he said that was enough to earn a block.

I think at some point the need to 'build' an encyclopedia got swamped by the need to protect the existing content from genuine vandals.

I don't know about "most", but certainly many. To be a troll is to delight in initiating and escalating interpersonal conflict, which describes many administrators (JzG comes to mind,) and even some arbitrators, such as Morven (Mathew Brown) who define their self worth not by what they contribute to the project, but by how many good faith contributors they can drive away.

Is the results of the stanford prison experiment soley attributable to the impressionsim of youth though? I was of the understanding that the conclusion was that humans willingly submit to authority, adn that conclusion you draw you undermine the published on.

Yes, it was that -anyone- could become corrupted by power or something like that. I mean, JzG is 40-something I think

The Milgram experiment was said to show that people would injure others if they were told to, and the Zimbardo experiment said people with status felt less need to exhibit social graces- or something

What is curious is how it all can have started on wiki- I mean Jimbo -claims- not to be a despo, hes definitely not anal-seeming, so who was the first higher-up on wiki who started this trend and inspired all these people?

Jefferson said (something like) most people can withstand a great deal of adversity. Few people can withstand a great deal of power.

Most institutions are designed in recognition of this fact, and suitable checks and balances applied, e.g. non-executive directors, upper and lower houses, and so on. There is also the notion of personal accountability, which means at the very least a real-life name and a real-life address.

Eh?

Refer back to your suggestions to me in our PM exchange. Ryan has apparently adopted the self-same guidance that you suggested to me.

Oh please- don't be a tease. Do tell

ArbCom/Troubles was one defining bad experience for many editors. A cabal of about seven admins, rode roughshod over the wishes of many editors. Most of the correspondence between admins was done in secret and by email. All that went on between admins isn't even known today. I don't believe that things will ever be as "good" again.

If Lar consents to make our private messages public, I will be happy to disclose his advice to me (and my response to his suggestions).

Come on then Lar. You can't throw a piece of caviar down like that and not expect us to have it for breakfast.

I'd rather they remained private, that's the point of private messages after all. But I'm not averse to the general sense of the conversation being conveyed, and I trust Moulton not to deliberately distort what was said in his take, as that's not his style.

Broadly, (and Moulton is welcome to elaborate, give a different slant, or clarify as he sees fit) I said something to the effect that I'd be willing to try to work to get Moulton unblocked, if he was interested and willing to abide by the norms of the project, but that I expected that absent an agreement to concentrate on articles, that it wouldn't go well.

That's because my observation has been that people who turn up with the main theme of fixing what ails the project as their starting point tend not to meet with much success, as despite whatever credentials or previous expertise they might have, many will view them somewhat dubiously... even if they are brilliant people who make very astute observations.

"Build up your street cred" in the form of article work (or other kinds of useful work) is advice I give to recently unblocked people all the time. I'm neither condemning nor praising that state of affairs ... that's merely my observation. Rightly or wrongly, not everyone can contribute successfully at Wikipedia.

I'd say Moulton agreed with the observation, more or less, but declined to pursue matters under that framework, as he felt that incremental wasn't the way to go, a very large and rapid change was needed instead. I daresay I would have done the same in his shoes if I held his views. (I don't of course. See my sig, I don't see things as dire as some do, by any stretch of the imagination.)

I think we more or less agreed to differ at that point, with mutual respect. Which continues to this day... while I may not always completely understand where Moulton is coming from or some of his allusions, I nevertheless have a high regard for his intellect.

All THAT said (tl;dr!) I suspect it's pretty much what you all suspected in any case rather than any earthshattering revelation.




Wasn't me tossing out the dead fish eggs there, mate.



I think this is metaphorical, I don't think I've ever given Ryan any guidance of any sort whatever.

I didn't mean to imply that Lar dispensed the same guidance directly to Ryan, only that Ryan seems to have (independently) adopted the self-same guidance that Lar directly dispensed to me.

With respect to Lar's cordial inquiry as to whether I was interested in or otherwise seeking to be unblocked, I told him that I thought someone who is fair and objective needed to review my case.

I told Lar that, while I don't object to being unblocked (if for no other reason than to restore my User page), I still didn't understand why it was summarily blanked and protected. To my mind, that just seemed unnecessarily mean-spirited, vindictive, and unprofessional.

I went on to explain that, as things stand now, it seemed rather futile to try to edit any articles, as the site lacks a sufficiently professional process for resolving inevitable editorial conflicts.

And so I reiterated that mainly, at this point, I'd like someone who is fair and objective to examine the question I raised to ArbCom: Was I afforded due process, or was my case just another instance of the railroading of an editor who challenged the authority of the embedded powers that be?

And Lar responded (in the open in these threads) that Wikipedia doesn't do Due Process. That explains why ArbCom ignored my request to examine whether my case conformed to reasonable norms of Due Process. As I understand Lar's response, my case is not an exception to Due Process, as it basically doesn't exist at all in the halls of Wikipedia.

In a followup message to Lar, I further noted that, given the way the embedded editors operate (within the existing system), it would be futile to try to improve any of the articles that I had been working on, as there is simply no practical way, under the existing system, to achieve the goal of accuracy, excellence and ethics in the way articles are crafted on Wikipedia.

I acknowledged to Lar that I understood that he didn't have the power to make that happen. Probably no one does. That's the lesson I take away from my lamentable experience on Wikipedia.

And so, while I'd rather see the system fixed, given the unlikelihood of that prospect, probably the best alternative is to reveal the extent to which Wikipedia systemically fails to achieve that level of professionalism.

Frankly, "paying my dues" by building up a reputation as a "reasonable contributor" whose opinions on smaller matters are "widely considered sound" (by established editors whose own opinions are at times laughably mistaken) just didn't seem a realistic course of action to me.

Coupled with the "expert withdrawal" issue raised by Raymond Arritt and Bob Stevens, I politely declined the suggestion to drink the Wikipedia store-brand Kool-Aid.

On thing I'm convinced of -- Postlethwaite's using Wikipedia as MySpace.

Where's Ryulong to delete this material that is not helping to build an encyclopedia??

But Adele is pretty hot, hot, hot. Agree?

Wikipedia is not MySpace.

Apparently, Wikipedia is not a Brain Trust, as well.

"And the sexy ladies shall inherit the wiki and the Postlethwaite shall lead them."
King Jimbo's Bible, Constipations 1:1.

Does Postlethwaite still have that picture of a large penis on his user page. Very appropriate.

There you have it, the face of Wikipedia. These are the administrators of the world's most important reference work.

What a disgrace.

You mean this picture?

Yes he does.