Sorry, but one more update about you know what

Anybody who knows anything about Wikipedia is sick of the Durova mess. I thought the whole hoohah was about done, until I glanced at the voting on the ArbCom case. For some wild-blue-yonder reason (I suspect temporary insanity) new proposals were added to sanction Giano.

Sure, truthtellers often get the shaft, thanks to good ol' human nature. But this is taking human nature around several bends into literal craziness. Giano's entire offense was that he published Durova's ludicrous "evidence". He should be thanked for adding to the amusement of the world.

This is a deal-breaker for me. If Giano gets any kind of punishment, I'm gone from WP and I've said so on the arbitration talk page. My departure would go virtually unnoticed, of course. But why bother contributing to the project after one of its best members is punished for one of his best actions?

Which would also mean the end of this blog. It's an ill wind...

Fortunately or not, depending on your point of view about me and the blog, the punishment proposals look like they will be voted down.

UPDATE: It now looks like Giano will be punished for telling the truth. One more vote from an arb kicks him off the encyclopedia for three months. That means I'm gone, too. It was fun while it lasted. I will vote for Giano in the upcoming ArbCom elections, but I'll never edit the encyclopedia again.

SECOND UPDATE: ArbCom split 6-6 on punishing Giano. Two of the arbs voting to kick Giano were on the ridiculous sooper-sekrit wpinvestigations-l list, which pursued these laughable withhunts against other Wikipedia editors. It's reprehensible but sadly not surprising that these two arbitrators did not recuse themseves from the case.

Despite the split vote, I've still decided to quit Wikipedia. The level of paranoia in the project has risen so high that I'm not enthusiastic about contributing to the encyclopedia any more. And once enthusiasm ebbs away, it's pretty near impossible to restore. I'm eminently replaceable, and WP will do fine without me. So long.

Play ball

The hoohah over Durova and her goofball mailing lists continues. My guess is that everything will be smoothed over and the clownish lists will continue their high-larious sockpuppet hunts. Maybe they'll find one under the Queen of England's bed. On my user page I've made my final statement on the matter, a quote of the last paragraph in yesterday's blog post.

So let's talk baseball. Durova and wpinvestigations-l have now proved with unimpeachable sooper-sekrit evidence that Alex Rodriguez is a sockpuppet of George Steinbrenner. Oops, got to get my mind off that drivel.

In fact, I've written a few articles on baseball for Wikipedia, including several on league championship series. Here's my account of the melodramatic 1980 NLCS between the Phillies and the Astros. These articles are fun to write because I can slip a little excitement into the prose. Usually, Wikipedia demands a style that's dull as reused dishwater. Try anything remotely colorful, and you get ominous notes about an "unencyclopedic style." I've handed out a few of those ominous notes myself.

But sports articles allow a little more latitude. The people who read them tend to be, surprise, sports fans. So they accept a little oomph in the prose.

I stole the markup for the box scores from other articles on championship series. It's amazing what you can do with those arcane symbols. Batter-by-batter records of the games were easy to find on the web, and I fleshed out the dry details with a few flourishes. Other editors have provided some nice touches, and the article is now more than respectable.

For once Wikipedia worked pretty well. Meanwhile, wpinvestigations-l is checking the umpires for nefarious connections to Wikipedia Review.

The stink that never ends

I really am getting bored with the Durova stink and its mailing lists. But a roster of alleged members of the real sooper-sekrit mailing list has just been posted at Wikipedia Review. This is the supposed investigations list that was spun off from the cyberstalking list which Jimbo says he's a member of. Jimbo also says that he doesn't know anything about the investigations list.

Don't ask me if the roster of alleged members has any validity. The supposed roster would be a high-powered group, with ArbCom members, checkusers, a paid employee of the Wikimedia foundation, and other prominent admins.

The two mailing lists apparently do exist, as confirmed by Guy Chapman and others. WP admin Moreschi has described the investigations list in, let's say, florid terms. He's been slightly less florid about the cyberstalking list, and Jimbo says that list was mostly harmless. Who knows?

The investigations list may be the group that Durova sent her ridiculous "evidence" to. SlimVirgin just confirmed that the "evidence" was sent to the cyberstalking list. To top off all the silliness, there are now rumors of a third mailing list.

I give up. I'm laughing too hard at all this paranoia, middle-school cliquishness, and Sherlock-wannabe-ism. If any of these asinine lists are investigating me, I'm flattered. Sadly, I doubt they even know who I am.

Living people who need living people are the luckiest living people in the world

The Durova bulldoza looks to be running out of gas, and I'm getting bored with the whole stink, anyway. So let's move on to something even more fabulous and fun...living people. In particular, living people with biographies on Wikipedia.

You may remember the Seigenthaler mess, and if you don't, anti-WP folks will gladly remind you. A direct result of the bad publicity was Wikipedia's policy on biographies of persons who have not yet stopped breathing. This policy implores WP editors: "We must get the article right." That sentence even includes a footnote to a Jimbo speech, so it's a Very Important Thing on WP.

The bottom line is that Wikipedia can't contain unflattering information about non-room-temperature individuals without loads of footnotes and references and links and documents and other stuff designed to keep the encyclopedia from getting sued. Frankly, I think the BLP policy, as it's usually acronymed, goes a little overboard sometimes, and I've said so on-wiki. For instance, the article on Crystal Gail Mangum got deleted because WP apparently has to be real, real nice to fantasists who almost ruined the lives of innocent people.

But by and large, I can see the need for extra caution on these articles. A pleasant example for me is the entry on Terry Teachout, an arts critic and blogger. I wrote the original article on Terry and I've updated it now and then. Terry occasionally drops by the article and updates it himself. For some reason that's supposedly a no-no on Wikipedia, though Terry begs to differ.

I also don't understand why still-sentient persons can't edit their own articles on Wikipedia. If they make good edits, fine. If they make bad edits, fix 'em. And you could say the same about any other editor.

The reason that this entry is pleasant for me is that Terry once publicly thanked moi for fixing some crude vandalism to the article. He didn't mention my name, but I preferred it that way. The incident was tiny, but it reminded me that there are real people out there behind those Wikipedia entries. And if I do a decent job, I might even get a thank-you note once in a while. And if I don't do a decent job....well, I'll stay as decent as I can.

Damage control

ArbCom usually moves like me in a hundred-yard dash. Cases sit for weeks and months. But Durova has set off so many alarums and excursions that the arbs are trying to shut down the drama now. They've already started voting on proposals they hope will end the stink.

The items are mostly inconsequential, except that Durova will apparently have to go through another request for adminship now that she's resigned as an administrator and withdrawn as a candidate for ArbCom. Giano won't be punished for publishing Durova's laughable "evidence" against !!, the user she blocked for no reason. But nobody will be allowed to publish the "evidence" on WP. Which is silly because the "evidence" is easily available at Wikitruth and Wikipedia Review. Not to mention that the "evidence" is superb though unintentional humor.

Durova not only blundered with her idiotic block. She also accidentally helped reveal at least two sooper-sekrit mailing lists of powerful people on Wikipedia, up to and including Jimbo and some of the arbs themselves. These lists seem to nourish an atmosphere of ludicrous paranoia against Wikipedia Review and other criticism sites. They also apparently hatch campaigns against Wikipedia editors who don't toe the line on Fear and Loathing of WR and other Officially Disapproved sites.

The members of these lists can't be happy that clueless Durova has inadvertently revealed their existence and purpose. Even Guy Chapman, Durova's number one fan, is thundering: "Boy does Durova ever look stupid here." My guess is that just about everybody on every side wishes Durova would go away. Which is why, as I said before, I honestly feel sorry for her.

List mania

I'm trying hard not to get obsessed with Durova's ArbCom case. But sometimes obsession is difficult to resist. The latest conniption fit is over the sooper-sekrit "list" mentioned in Durova's ridiculous "evidence" against !!, the very good editor she banned.

I thought the list was just a group of BADSITES supporters who really didn't do anything in concert. Oh, woefully naive me. This hush-hush mailing list apparently includes some of the most powerful people on Wikipedia, according to information from an admin named Moreschi. Or maybe there are two lists, with overlapping membership. Moreschi's information has been confirmed by our old friend Guy Chapman, who admits to being a member at least one of the lists.

And apparently these lists aren't just devoted to fun and frivolity. I'm really trying hard not to sound freaked. But some other editors are wondering out loud if they've been targeted by the list(s) for their opposition to BADSITES.

Is there any fire behind this admittedly foul-smelling smoke? Let's hope not. But if a banhammer falls on my BADSITES-opposing head one day, at least I will have some idea where it came from. And this blog probably doesn't help my case with the list(s), if they know or care about me at all.

Jeez louise, I hate sounding paranoid and I really hate being paranoid. Ah, fuhgetaboutit and just edit some articles. I've never been blocked or even warned and I'm not going to start trembling now.

By the way, the folks at Wikipedia Review are turning cartwheels over this stuff, which appears to confirm all their paranoid comments about the Evil Wikipedia Cabal. I'm glad somebody's getting their jollies from this mess.

Have payment, will edit

People get paid for editing Wikipedia all the time. There's the reward board, where WP editors offer each other cash or other goodies for articles or photos or backrubs. There are occasional article improvement contests where cash prizes are doled out for, you guessed it, improving articles.

Remember Cary Bass, the paid WP bureaucrat last seen threatening to block anybody who might embarrass Durova by posting her laughable "evidence" against an excellent editor? Bass announced that the Wikimedia foundation was making twenty grand available to editors who chipped in better illustrations to the encyclopedia.

So when a guy named Greg Kohs offered his services to organizations to write Wikipedia articles for them - at $49 to $99 a pop - it really shouldn't have been a big deal. But Kohs made the mistake of rubbing Jimbo and (gasp) the dreaded Durova the wrong way. Pretty soon he was blocked, banned, executed and later brought to trial for, well, doing what the Wikimedia foundation does itself with that twenty grand - running an edit-for-pay service.

Kohs has retreated to Wikipedia Review, where he gleefully skewers various Wikipedia editors and events. His comments on the latest fundraiser have been dead-on, though Wikipedians aren't even allowed to quote them on the encyclopedia, much less link to them. If any editor put a link on Wikipedia to Kohs' stuff, the BADSITERS would get him every bit as blocked, banned, executed and later brought to trial as Kohs himself. The dispute between Kohs and Durova turned particularly bitter, with nefarious allegations flying hither and yon and back to hither.

I never understood the fuss. If Kohs made good edits that improved Wikipedia, who cares if he got paid for them? And if he made bad edits, other editors would clean up the mess sooner or later, just as they do every day on the encyclopedia with thousands of other bad edits.

Kelly Martin, who I've been unkind to here, made the same point in her comment on, ironically, Durova's ArbCom case: "If Greg Kohser [sic] wants to edit Wikipedia productively, let him, too -- even if he does get paid for it."

But way too much bad blood has spilled between Kohs and the WP poobahs. He stands no chance of getting back into the project, paid or not. Meanwhile, other editors quietly edit for pay and nobody cares. It's a wonderful wikiworld. Now if somebody would only pay me...