46 comments

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  Michael Richter

  1 year ago

  Wikipedia is run by people. Unfortunately it is now run by a new generation of people like Guy Chapman. Most of the collegiate, enthusiastic, intelligent and dilligent people have either been bullied away or have left in disgust.
  
  Guy Chapman was himself one of the guilty parties at the center of this storm. He has no credibility and became a target of critics due to his poor attitude and relentless false claims against good faith users. He quit the site a number of times due to "stress" on the advice of senior contributors, but does not seem to be able to heed their warnings, returning each time. What we are seeing is someone with problems related to online addiction, these personality difficulties combined with a misuse of power are at the root of what is bringing the site down. For his own sake and everyone else's, he should be strongly urged to remove himself from the Wikipedia community before it is too late.
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  That's one way of putting it. Of course, I don't recall making any false claims against good faith users, and I certainly recall people like Charles Ainsworth making some blatantly false claims against me. I've been a Wikipedia user since 2004, so I'm not sure if I'm genuinely a "new generation". I do know that most of the criticisms against me have been by justly banned abusers of the project like Jonathan Barber (user JB196). As a paid up card-carrying depressive I do of course get down from time to time, but I have given thousands of hours of my time to the project and made many thousands of edits to articles. The refusal to accept that admins are devoted to the project as well was, in fact, a core part of the problem. And another core part was the refusal of some people to acknowledge that harassment of Wikipedia users is a problem at all. Perhaps they would change their minds if they were the ones being called at home.
  
  I note that the word collegiate is used. Giano, held up as a model of probity, is, in point of fact, one of the least collegiate people on the project. Most of his work is done one article at a time, with mostly him doing the work. He, like me, is prone to being rude, bullheaded and obnoxious. Neither of us is perfect, but there is no doubt in my mind of his commitment to the project. He, on the other hand, thinks I should be hounded out. This is emblematic of this particular teapot tempest: admins are evil, "contributors" are being done down. Only, most admins are contributors too. And if I was not committed to Wikipedia I hardly think I'd have put up with the kind of shit that's been sent my way over the last couple of years, since well before I was an admin, almost all of it from people who Wikipedia needs slightly less than it needs to be sued by a disgruntled article subject. The first time I was savaged by a website for a Wikipedia action it was for removing defamatory and false text from an article on a living individual, written by a tiny group of people who consider the individual concerned to be some kind of ogre. I was far less hard on them than others were, and they are all now banned from the project as being constitutionally unable to be anywhere close to neutral.
  
  Like it or not, Wikipedia is now a big target for people pushing an agenda. The old days when nobody cared, we could take time to fix things, and every newcomer was probably an OK guy at heart, are past. Every single article on a politician, fringe science subject, controversial individual, group, band or anything else that inspires strong passions, is at risk of being hijacked by zealots. And many of these zealots have to be shown the door, which was always the case. There are more articles, the profile is higher, there are more zealots. If you feel the existing admins are doing a poor job of dealing with them, then you are free to stand for adminship - it's no big deal. The more the merrier.
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  Angelo

  1 year ago

  The weirder Wikipedia's fabricated interpretations of reality become, the worse Wikipedia's reputation will be. It is not like the rest of the world actually shares these views, as much as they, and apparently you too, would like it to.
  
  And looking at the last twelve months, it seems it doesn't take much more to finally push Wikipedia over the edge of being classified as "group of total lunatics".
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  Kelly Martin

  1 year ago

  Guy Chapman's comments, above, are illustrative of the typical mentality of the Wikipedia cabalist. (He is, of course, one of the worst of them, he who has left Wikipedia at least four times now, and whose user page says that he's left, and yet he continues to actively administer the site as well as participate in controlling it through the cabal he is very much a member of.) I would know; I'm a former cabalist myself, and just as ex-Scientologists make the most ardent critics of Scientology, ex-Wikipedians make the most ardent critics of Wikipedia.
  
  I draw the cult parallel intentionally: Wikipedia has many of the hallmarks of a cult. Anybody who critically observes a Jimbo lovebombing session, on IRC or in person, will quickly see what I mean.
  
  Somewhere (I forget where) I recently read someone who described Wikipedia as the latest in a long stream of failed utopian enterprises. Sad, but true. Godwin is going to lose his bet.
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  I love being a member of the cabal. As soon as I find out who the other members are I can get start getting my own way on Wikipedia :-)
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  PK

  1 year ago

  You know, if it was just this one thing, you'd be right. But it's not. Wikipedia is rife with arbitrary, capricious behavior that consistently bullies editors and enforces a bizarre bureaucracy. What it has become is everything it says it is not. You seem to have forgotten or did not RTFA, because this is not just about questionable mailing list on a private server, but also about the highly questionable banning of 'bang bang', when other 'elite members' such as slimvirgin, gets a pass at the far more serious crime of sockpuppetry which she was caught at red-handed.
  
  The secret mailing list is just a symptom of a much larger issue of transparency, a concept that completely escapes Jimbo Wales when he implemented the 'oversight' function. One can only guess hopw far this goes, so the idea of a 'conspiracy' is not as far-fetched as you seem to be ignorantly dismissing out of hand.
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  Except it wasn't secret, just private, and its existence was necessary to fulfil a function that cannot be fulfilled by any less private forum. Oversight is also necessary; we really do not need to leave Andrew Morrow's addition of people's addresses and telephone numbers in article history, for example.
  
  !! was not "banned" he was blocked, briefly, due to a gross error of judgement on the part of one admin. End of story.
  
  The fatuous claim of sockpuppetry against SV should also not go unchallenged; over two years ago she considered changing accounts due to harassment but finally decided nto to. Big fat hairy deal. If you want to see sockpuppetry, see user JB196. Or Jon Awbrey. Or WordBomb. Yet strangely it is these people's criticism of Wikipedia that is taken at face value, while the opinions of long-standing members of the Wikipedia community counts for nothing.
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  dtobias

  1 year ago

  Very politicianly of you, always picking the word with more of a "positive spin" where necessary to make your point. "Secret"/"Private", "Ban"/"Block", "Sockpuppetry"/"changing accounts due to harassment", "Tomayto"/"Tomahto"... which one to use depends on whether it's describing your friends or your enemies.
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  Dan, a list devoted to discussion of stalking *has* to be private.
  
  http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/wiki/The_Durova...
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• 

  Daniel Brandt

  1 year ago

  Part of the problem is that there is a three-way disconnect at Wikipedia.
  
  In one corner, Jimmy Wales goes around making speeches about how Wikipedia is changing the world. He pretends that there's some sort of long-tail, high-tech magic that makes all of that volunteer labor gel into something unprecedented and wonderful. He's a poor manager, and is usually unresponsive or even uninformed when he's approached by those who appeal to him as the god-king of last resort. There's also a conflict of interest in that Jimmy prefers the for-profit Wikia to the nonprofit Wikipedia. They're supposed to be completely separate, but he often starts talking about Wikia when he's invited to give speeches about Wikipedia around the world.
  
  In the second corner you have the Wikimedia Foundation, which tries very hard to pretend that it's not legally responsible because it's a service provider, not a publisher. They solicit donations, they own the servers, they hire the developers, they have lots of meetings, they get travel expenses, and now they're moving the office to expensive-but-fun San Francisco. None of this is concerned with, or even hardly aware of, the editing conflicts that happen in the trenches among the hundreds of volunteers, or the dozens of people who complain about defamation or invasion of privacy when they discover that they're mentioned in an article. For the Foundation, the best policies are no policies at all. If they made policies, a court might decide that they are a publisher more than a service provider. If that happened, they could lose their presumed Section 230 immunity.
  
  In the third corner, you have a cabal, you have lowly editors who can be banned on the whim of any of the 1300 administrators, and you have a bunch of already-banned people who went off and started anti-Wikipedia websites. That's the real foundation (small "f" as in "platform" or "substructure") of Wikipedia. This foundation is at war all day, every day.
  
  What you have at Wikipedia, then, is essentially a three-ring circus.
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• 

  mathewi

  1 year ago

  Thanks for the comment, Daniel.
  
  For anyone else reading, I just wanted to note that you are one of the
  founders of Wikipedia Watch, which -- I think it's fair to say -- is
  frequently critical of the site. Not that your comments don't have
  some truth to them, because they do; but I think you are focusing
  entirely on the negative, not to mention overstating things somewhat.
  I'm not sure it's fair to say that Jimmy Wales is a "poor manager" or
  that he's "usually unresponsive or even uninformed," but obviously
  you're entitled to your opinion.
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• 

  Seth Finkelstein

  1 year ago

  Mathew, my own column on it comes out tomorrow, so I'm in a better position to discuss my own take on it then (sigh, it'll be bogosphere "old news" at that point).
  
  I actually don't even mention the secret mailing list angle, I cut that for space.
  
  But anyway, Wikipedia rank-and-file may not be in revolt, but there are a lot of Wikipedia people unhappy at what looks like political backroom factional dealing having to do with Wikipedia's judicial system.
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  Seth Finkelstein

  1 year ago

  My column is available now:
  
  <a target="guardian"
  href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia">http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia
  
  <a target="guardian"
  href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia">Inside,
  Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  Thanks, Seth. I'll take a look.
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  Don't get me wrong, Seth -- I think some of what appears to have gone
  on behind the scenes is kind of underhanded, and should be more
  transparent. But I think that kind of thing is pretty typical with
  social networks like Wikipedia, so I thought the shocked tone of the
  Register piece was kind of over the top.
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• 

  Mike Fuller

  1 year ago

  Dear Mathewi, Your responses are normal. This situation is not. This isn't gossip about a mailing list or normal power struggles. This is the tip of the iceberg of rampant abuses of power, lack of respect for rules (and basic human decency), and power hunger on the part of people who have no experience or preparation to be quasi-celebrities, who are punch drunk and behaving accordingly. What's the big deal? It's the 10th most hit site in the world. I don't see the problem being that they kick people off, per se (though for some people, that is the most troubling issue). For me, it is the fact that they are a 24/7 publication operating without any sense of moral responsibility.
  
  As such, the list and the lies and the secrecy (JW denies that this list was secret, whereas there is a huge uproar over that very fact. He also denied on his talk page today that the list existed. He also stated on nabble chat for wikipedia-en that he owned the list. So which is it? I couldn't care less. Other than that this is par for the course in the honest department). Thanks,
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  Seth Finkelstein

  1 year ago

  My column is available now:
  
  "Inside, Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop."
  
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/0...
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• 

  Jimmy Wales

  1 year ago

  The really strange thing is that the mailing list in question was not for "insiders" and was not run by the "ruling clique" if such a thing exists. The sad smear here is that a list for people who have been the victims of cyberstalking (including cases which have forced us to get the police involved) is somehow twisted by the Register into a list of the cabal involved in banning people. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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  dj hojo

  1 year ago

  the issues here are that you threatened to ban the whistleblower.
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  Er, not as such, no. No whistles required blowing. The arboitrators already had the email, and Giano freely admitted that his aim in posting the private email was "your entertainment". Sorry, that's not sufficient reason to post private data., although it does give us the fine irony of websites where Wikipedia's lack of respect for privacy is a recurrent meme praising an editor for gratuitously violating privacy. Seems it's OK as long as you are getting one over on The Man.
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  Thanks for that clarification, Jimmy. The whole event seems to have
  been twisted in order to make Wikipedia look as bad as possible, and
  the language used in the Register piece is just part of that.
  
  On an unrelated note, could you contact me via email at
  mathew@mathewingram.com when you get a chance? I'd like to ask you
  something privately.
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• 

  Ronald Dumsfeld

  1 year ago

  There are two lists here, one Jimmy Wales is thinking of, and another that was not widely known.
  
  The former is a list for people who have become the victim of cyberstalking due to their involvement in Wikipedia or other Foundation projects. Frequently these will be administrators who've discovered some action has upset Daniel Brandt or his minions.
  
  The latter is a wholly unsanctioned list which I would guess sounded like a good idea at the time. It isn't secret anymore, and thus any effect those on it thought it would have had is gone.
  
  I was delighted when someone pointed me at your blog post this morning; someone actually being sensible when it comes to Wikipedia instead of going "OMG! its a CONSPIRACY !1!!111!one one" - like the Register loves to do. As a consequence of that, I'd like to ask a question - which you can answer here, by email, or as a followup blog post.
  
  Why is the majority of the publicity given to Wikipedia of a negative nature? It mostly works. As said, there's about 1300 people with the power to block anyone. If it was out of control there would be cases like the one the Register chose to report on a daily basis. Personally I think it is a positive sign in a near-bewilderingly complex modern world. A mass-collaboration project like this can take off, become one of the most popular sites on the net without advertising, and - what I consider the best part - the people who want to keep the project on track generally win out over those who seek to subvert or derail it. What this says about human nature is encouraging.
  
  Yet, this can be contrasted with the World Economic Forum recently listing the Wikimedia Foundation as one of their Technology Pioneers of 2008 - the only non-profit organisation on the list. This got slightly more publicity than the last time I cut my toenails. I believe the only serious coverage was from sister site, Wikinews who were criticised for not sticking more closely to the famous NPOV policy when writing about the Foundation.
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  I think that's a good point, er... Ronald.
  
  I think there's an inherent desire to spot the flaw or pick up on the
  weakness, or to see a conspiracy where there is just a group of people
  trying to accomplish something. Let's face it, whether it's Facebook
  or Google or the war in Iraq, the majority of the publicity about
  pretty much *anything* is negative. It's just the way people are
  wired.
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  dtobias

  1 year ago

  For most of this year, I've been fighting a clique that is adamant in enforcing its bizarre ideas involving draconian censorship of any criticism they don't like, such as by banning links to so-called "attack sites". That clique always seemed to be well organized at ganging up to shout out opponents. Now I find that this "cyberstalking" list apparently consists of the same "Usual Suspects" I've been fighting all along. This sure smacks of cabalism to me.
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  Extreme Unction's first law: If enough people act independently
  towards the same goal, the end result is indistinguishable from a
  conspiracy.
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Linking_... may be of interest to those who would like to contextualise Dan's comments.
  
  Dan's not teling the whole story here (who'd have guessed?). What he's fighting is a battle to prevent people removing links to offsite harassment, principally from a site in which he participates and from which some extraordinarily vicious attacks have originated - mostly from editors who have been justly banned from Wikipedia. Contrary to popular belief, Wikipedia is incredibly tolerant of dissent and you have to try really quite hard to get actually banned. At least four Wikipedia articles (that's under one quarter of one thousandth of one percent) are known to have been impacted by misinterpretation of rulings against attack links; in each case the problem was rapidly fixed. In no case was the article itself skewed or biased, it was links that were the problem.
  
  Dan is still fighting this war, when most of the rest of us have learned fomr the experience and moved on.
  
  Unfortunately, Dan made some rather intemperate comments, including likening harassment of editors to mentioning the word "rutabaga". As Jimmy says above, we've seen some pretty vicious attacks, several long-standing contributors have been driven form the project and the police have had to be called. We're not really dealing with rutabaga-mentioning here.
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  dtobias

  1 year ago

  Ah, yes, the "harassment card"... played like the "race card" to shut down rational discussion and justify some really ridiculous positions by spinning them to where supporters of free speech are "promoting harassment" or "cyberstalking", which are defined in a highly elastic way to encompass pretty much any activities that the speaker dislikes, or anything done by people they have a grudge against.
  
  For my position on the specific issue of "attack site links", see my essay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dtobias/Why_B...
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  Still flogging the bloody smear where the dead horse once lay, I see.
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  dtobias

  1 year ago

  An ironic attitude from somebody who posts messages by the dozen on the wiki-en-l mailing list, on the same sorts of topics.
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  Pot. Kettle. Black.
  
  Next case.
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  engtech

  1 year ago

  it really strikes me how the wikipedia power corruption is a lot like local politics.
  
  People get so wrapped up in it when the stakes are so low.
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  mathewi

  1 year ago

  I agree, engtech -- or high-school student council :-)
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  dj hojo

  1 year ago

  google the great purge.
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  dtobias

  1 year ago

  More info and discussion on Wikipedia's troubles can be found at these sites:
  
  Kelly Martin's blog: http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/
  Casey Abell's blog: http://wikipediafunnies.blogspot.com/
  Wikipedia Review: http://www.wikipediareview.com/
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  And a very tiny proportion of it might not actually be gross misrepresentation or complete bollocks :-)
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  dtobias

  1 year ago

  Now webcomics are getting into the act too:
  http://www.ubersoft.net/comic/hd/2007/12/climbi...
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  Zara

  1 year ago

  Wikipedia is pure trash. It is a crazy secret society that is being presented as an encyclopedia. It is controlled by a mob of ignorant and lifeless creatures, most of whom have no knowledge of the subjects theyve chosen to hijack, as is expected. for who has time to obsessively edit and distort particular articles but one with an unhealthy fixation of the subjects of such articles? if one were interested in knowledge and not propaganda, one would not hawk but research. Then you have the socially inept minions who are looking for approval and acceptance, these creatures are employed to revert, revert..they even have "to do lists" : keep an eye on this article, revert this article automatically. Jimmy Wales, no one is buying it. Wikipedia is worthless, it is a cult of ignorance, filthy Fascist.
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  dtobias

  1 year ago

  Soylent Green is.... Wikipedia!
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  So leave.
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  In case anyone is interested, the mailing list was actually set up as a way of managing an increasingly cumbersome cc list in a lengthy email thread started by a past victim of harassment. The group was constituted to discuss the problems of harassment arising out of actions taken on Wikipedia, such as the blackmail and attacks launched by Judd Bagley when he was frustrated in his aim of promoting Patrick Byrne's jihad against naked short selling. The irony here is that Wikipedians are, in the main, all to happy to get one over on The Man, and a less obnoxious approach would have resulted in support rather than banning.
  
  Whatever, the group includes people who've been around long enough to have pissed off someone who then went off the deep end. Most of those engaging in harassment are just garden-variety kooks, but some are incredibly dangerous - one has served jail time as a result of stalking and is considered particularly dangerous.
  
  Unfortunately, attempts to manage harassment often fall afoul of the free-speechers on Wikipedia. This puts us in a no-win situation: we leave unfounded allegations on the site, or we delete them and then have a weeks-long drama about it. This is the fundamental problem the group was set up to discuss. And no, we don't have an answer yet, but if anyone feels like suggesting one then we'd be glad to hear about it.
  
  Unfortunately, one of the group made a jaw-droppingly bad call, based on evidence she mailed to the group but nobody, it seems, interpreted as indicating she was intending to block the user. This has brought out of the woodwork a nunmber of people who have a pre-existing agenda against this person, others close to her, or the Cabal (TINC) in general. A lengthy discourse on the Wikipedia mailing list, wikien-l, left some people feeling dissatisfied. I have a view on that; one individual repeatedly insisted that we provide evidence to identify the individuals plotting to ban the editor despite repeated statements that no such plot existed and therefore no such individuals existed and therefore no evidence would be forthcoming. And so on, round and round the same loop.
  
  So yes, it's disappointing to see the blatantly false picture of this group, rebutted at great length by long-standing editors of the very highest levels of community trust, members of the Arbitration Committee, and even Jimbo Wales himself, taken to media that are all ears for any kind of low drama. It was a petty and vindictive thing to do. One of them seems to have been retaliating for a 90 day ban enacted that day as a result of his careless editing of biographies of living individuals and abuse of multiple accounts.
  
  All in all, one of the more depressing outcomes of a genuine good-faith attempt to make Wikipedia a nicer place.
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  dtobias

  1 year ago

  Your idea of how "to make Wikipedia a nicer place" by putting all sorts of dissidents and nonconformists under threat of banning, and making and enforcing policy of all sorts in the most draconian and vindictive way possible, reminds me of the old joke: "Floggings will continue until morale improves."
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  I wonder if you will ever get tired of misrepresenting things in this way. Perhaps you are just paranoid, I don't know. Nobody is banned for being nonconformist, Giano's problem was (as ever) trolling, something he has done since well before I ever came to Wikipedia, combined with repeated gratuitous posting of a private email with intent to humiliate someone who had already done a pretty good job of humiliating herself.
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  dtobias

  1 year ago

  He's also received (at last look) 221 votes in favor of his ArbCom candidacy, which is more than the 168 opposed. The majority is certainly not always right, but the existence of so many Wikipedians in good standing who not only don't favor banning him but want him to be elected to high office within Wikipedia means that your own harsh opinion is not universally shared.
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  That has no relevance. It doesn't matter how many people misunderstood or misrepresented what went on, there was no need for Giano to post the email, he did it for entertainment not out of principle, and he should not have done so.
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  dtobias

  1 year ago

  Your arrogance seems to have no bounds; those who disagree with you can never be considered to have any sort of valid point, but are always mistaken if not malicious, even when they're in the majority. This attitude of yours has probably driven away many more positive contributors than the "enemies" you're attacking.
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  Guy Chapman

  1 year ago

  Er, no, it's more that the people who planted the Register piece are simply wrong. I am on the list, I know exactly what went on on the list, and they are wrong, and they have been told it numerous times. It really is as simple as that.
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