I get it, you think I'm a dick. Whatever.

Yes, that is true, but this is about Wikipedia only. You have not behaved much differently here than on WP, but I would not have come to this forum to insult you. You just make a convenient example for my point.

My real point concerns Wikipedia, not you. Is there any hope to improve Wikipedia? How can there be when everyone with authority there claims nothing is, nor ever has been, wrong with how they use authority? It is human nature reacting, and functioning, in a situation that easily allows abuses of authority.

{{citation needed}}

Bro Lar, WP:V applies to WP content, which this question is not. Generally, questions have no proposition content, and not verifiable....although this may be an exception.

The question contains an assertion, that everyone with authority claims NOTHING is or ever has been wrong with how they use authority.

Please find a cite for where I've said that. If you cannot, the assertion is false.

Here's a hint: I've never said I'm perfect and have many times said I am not. I'm sure I've made mistakes in the past in specific cases, blocked people that ended up being unblocked or what have you.

My preferred mode of address is Lar, Larry, or Larry Pieniazek. I am not your Bro.

Bro Lar, as I said, I think you model the problem perfectly, and I have intended to use this thread to establish that.

Another unanswered point, and discourtesy to boot. Whatever.

Bro Lar, the only answer you ever had was: You messed up on en:wp, whether you admit it or not, and you're just trying to pin the blame on someone else, anyone else, for your inability to get along

That is the same nonsense as you have used in our disagreements on WP and Commons. The only difference is that here you have not threatened to block me for saying the things you do not want to hear.

Of course, I didn't "threaten to block me for saying the things you do not want to hear" there either. That's just your failure to accept what the difficulty in your contributions and your style of contribution was.

This is going nowhere useful, there's little common ground.

Bro Lar, I got quite a few blocks on WP but I do not recall a single one for "not getting along." That's nonsense. As for your claim that you did not threaten to block me for saying the things you do not want to hear, review this from Wikimedia Commons administrator notice board

Me: I understand your POV, but I am trying to find the Commons rule that gives Adambro actual grounds for his block. Blocks can not be given out just on the basis of what some administrator feels like doing. There are supposed to be grounds, a rule that is being enforced. For instance, when I brought up the issue of BLP, Adambro said there is no Commons rule that gives grounds for enforcing BLP. OK. Well, what gave him grounds for blocking Mbz1? Malcolm Schosha (talk) 19:09, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

You: Yes, looking for highly explicit rules is approaching this wiki incorrectly. It is collegial here, for the most part, because we all (or most of us anyway) work hard to get along, most of the time. Malcolm, do your part, please, and spare us the snarkiness. ++Lar: t/c 19:53, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Me: Lar, you have been highly involved in arguments with me from WP, although strangely those fights disappeared from my talk page after I was sent into wiki-exile. I really do not value your opinion, which amounts to: administrators can block anyone they want whenever they want and do not need to site any rule for that all. Nice. Malcolm Schosha (talk) 20:13, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

You: It's not necessary that you value my opinion, or anyone else's. Merely that you edit in a non tendentious and collegial manner. Which you haven't been. That's not an opinion, it's a warning. ++Lar: t/c 22:24, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

The above can be found here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:...blems_11#Mbz1_2
My main contribution to that particular dispute was a suggestion that it be resolved with a compromise. I was, in fact, not a party to the dispute, although Lar acted as though I was the entire problem. What Lar threatened me, with a block, for wasfor saying: if an administrator blocked a user (and the blocked user was not me) there should be a rule that justified the block. Lar seemed to find my request, to be shown a rule, itself grounds for a warning. (Saying that Commons is not a democracy would be an understatement. Police state is more like the actual situation.)

I gotta admit, that's quite an excellent essay there by Thatcher. The broader concept, of course applies... errr... more broadly.

I didn't know Lar was ombudsman. I had to look the word up again to see if it still meant what I thought it did.

Hey, Larzy! The public is not happy with Wikipedia. They make bios of people without asking them, and sometimes they aren't accurate, and anybody can mess with them, and yet Wikipedia gets all nasty when you ask them to fix things. And the rest of the time when they aren't nasty, they don't have time for you. Or they refuse to believe you are who you say you are. Like you have to prove this to them.

This could all be fixed by having Wikipedia just have a policy of not doing such a nasty thing as to make biographies of people, particularly people who aren't even close to being famous like the president. But they won't do it.

So this is a job for the ombudsman. You're supposed to tell us why the organization you represent, is behaving like such a bunch of assholes. And (if I understand the concept of ombudsman correctly) you're supposed to go back to the organization itself, and say something like "Hey! Why are you all behaving like such assholes?"



Helpfully, Milton

Thanks Uncle Milty. Unfortunately the remit of the Ombudsman Commission is rather narrower than that.



See the description on Meta.

Now why do I suspect you already knew that though? What my own personal opinion of the desirability of actually having that remit is... is left as an exercise to the reader.

So? Seems as natural as water seeking its level. After all, Lar is a wiki-potentate. And what is Wikipedia but an attempt to turn "encyclopedia" into a sort of board game, and trying to get some cheating into the game at the same time?

All else is mere commentary, as the rebbes say.

I suppose that, from one perspective WP can be seen that way. Certainly, a look into any topic where some flakes have their identities invested will find a never ending amount of material that needs to be corrected. But its like fighting back the tide, and so doomed to failure. This article on Gnosticism in popular culture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism_in_popular_culture is an example I noticed a few minutes ago. Its a load of crap from beginning to end, and should not be in an encyclopedia at all. But there are certainly enough defenders to put up a fight, so attempting changes might take weeks of time and still accomplish next to nothing. And after all that wasted time it would still, at best, just be just one more article on a on a shit website. feh.