Andrew Davison given his marching orders from the deletion battle space

[Jake Is A Sellout]

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... w_Davidson

Hilarious for all the usual reasons....

1. How long he got away with it (inertia)
2. How much effort it took to eventuallly do something about it (bureaucracy)
3. The lack of anyone asking the real question - is this bloke actualy capable of following basic Wikipedia policy or not? (cowardice, incompetence)
4. Andrew not feeling any particular need to acknowledge or apologise for his behaviour (lack of moral leadership)

He'll not change, he'll simply move to another area, and be just as much of a dick there too. Notably his only response thus far has been to query where his topic ban applies. Never a good sign. It's easy enough to stay away from X, if you actually want to stay away from X.

Probably eventually be banned in five years time.

But at what cost?

I'm not sure the Wikipedia community has ever really understood the true cost of people like Andrew.

Thick bastards.

[ericbarbour]

Oh well, guess it's time to post the Colonel Warden notes. Hold your noses. As you can see, the deletionists are winning--Davidson is among the most deeply-embedded inclusionist assholes. And they're getting ready to kick him. After fifteen years of abuse.

Davidson, a bookish lad and Cambridge graduate, was also Colonel Warden, an extremely slimy yet successful sockpuppet.

history

Andrew created both accounts in February 2006. The autonymic account was used very little, but the Colonel became a very busy boy a year later, grinding hundreds of edits on garbage like Your Hundred Best Tunes and The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. By the end of 2007 he was voting to "keep" and fighting with others on an endless stream of AFDs, and doing little else.

A rabid inclusionist and member in good standing of the absurd Article Rescue Squadron, the Colonel was on the case whenever something was AFDed, whether justifiably or not. Defamatory biographies were treated with the same automatic rubber-stamp.[1] Even Angela Beesley was not immune.[2] The "Colonel" did not see an insipid or trivial subject that did not deserve a Wikipedia article.[3]

Andrew created an article about Penderel's Oak, a corporate-franchise pub that was popular for Wikimedia UK meetings. It was deleted in July 2009. Yet Andrew continues to brag about creating it on his userpage.

The "Colonel" developed a remarkably large profile of abuse by 2010. Noticeboard complaints abound, as is typical with a "true-blue Wikipedian". [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] This is especially remarkable for a known sockpuppet with no administrative powers. Obviously he was "useful" to someone.

In March 2009, a halfhearted attempt at a sockpuppet investigation was run on Colonel Warden. A complete failure, an embarrassment for the SPI system. The Colonel was keeping a list of Wikipedians who had disappeared, which went thru two unsuccessful MFDs, as various bad actors shrieked that it was an "attack page". "User subpage appears to be celebrating the retirement and/or indef blocking of former editors that the creator of this page did not like. This is unnecessary, polemic, and encourages a battleground mentality. SnottyWong spout 22:55, 27 September 2010 (UTC)" Despite the second MFD seeming to be closed as "delete", the page remained.

He was dragged to an RFC in December 2010, to little evident effect. Many administrators turned out to post complaints about his AFD activities. The abuses continued, the complaints continued.[16][17] Yet somehow he "miraculously" escaped arbitration, or further sanctions. He was blocked several times, and always managed to talk his way out of them.

For a time in 2012, Davidson was assisting GibraltarPedia with its aggressive self-promotion. [18] Unquestionably he knows Chris Owen via their connection to Wikimedia UK.

"outing"

After six years of little attention, Colonel Warden was outed on Wikipediocracy on 14 August 2012. As Tarantino said at the time:

"Even money says Colonel Warden is Wikimedia UK member Andrew Davidson."
"The Colonel Warden and Andrew Davidson accounts were created 3 days apart in 2006, and they're both from Ealing."

Comment from Dan Murphy:

"I know nothing of Davidson. But Warden is a screaming loon (and half a sociopath). It's hard to believe he could sit politely and munch his cucumber sandwich at one of their faux-intellectual gatherings (without starting to gnaw on one of his fellow attendee's legs) long enough to get elected. Go know."

As was commented later in that thread, Davidson had been using Colonel Warden to sockpuppet-protect his own articles[19]. Davidson unquestionably knows Ashley Van Haeften, as both are members of Wikimedia UK and the GLAM Project task force[20], along with the execrable Jonathan Cardy and Andy Mabbett.

Further comment from Dan Murphy:

"No. He lies about the contents of sources. He does it all the time. Davidson and "Warden" are definitely the same person (I trolled through Davidson's contributions). That makes Mr. Davidson the sort of person who makes edits like this (was a flat lie, the cited source contained nothing of the sort) and this (cited work was published a year before the TV show he claimed it was about) and this (self explanatory.)"

"Davidson/Warden is a liar, and specifically he lies about citations in what's supposed to be an academic work. So of course he's a valued contributor. "

When it was posted on his talkpage that his cover was "blown", he deleted it and disappeared. For a few days, until it blew over. By late August he was back to the same old grinding, and arguing to "keep" on AFDs.

Identity

In case there was any doubt that Colonel Warden (T-C-F-R-B) was not an alternate account of wikimedia UK member Andrew Davidson (T-C-F-R-B), they both uploaded photos taken with a Canon IXUS 300 HS, [21], [22] and a Casio EX-V8 [23], [24].

And if there were any doubt on 13:09, 24 October 2013 Colonel Warden 'fixes' the signature of Andrew Davidson. Spotted by IRWolfie on WO.

[Jake Is A Sellout]

The deletionists need to win.

A couple of hundred editors can't oversee 6 million plus articles.

Even if you assumed 95% of it is utter junk that nobody is reading, which is INSANE when you say it out loud, that still leaves 300,000+ articles that need monitoring.

They've had long enough to know fine well that having watchlists in the hundreds, turns well meaning experienced generalist/maintainer type Wikipedia editors into gibbering wrecks or cynical bastards.

You just can't deal with that burden, and report all the vandals, and all the socks, and participate in all the debates, and have a laugh with EEng about how much of a fag he is, and do the hundred of other things a general editor needs to do, including, most of all, carry on the work of writing new articles. Becusee whatever the morons say, Wikipedia isn't finished, not even by a long shot.

And that's if you assume, perhaps fairly, perhaps not, that generalist Wikipedia editors are utter losers with no life and 18 hours a day to devote to the cause of keeping Wikipedia afloat.

It seems obvious, because you see it, that many in that situation, if they are able to self scout themselves and avoid becoming a Section 8 or a piece of shit, simply cut down their watchlist and set adrift that which they think nobody will care about. That's stuff in the critical 5%, getting cast adrfit.

They know fine well they are already under water, and sinking, slowly.

Jess Wade is adding one shite biography a day, and whether they want to admit it or not, getting those up to code will require the attention of one experienced editor for several hours a day, every day, for as long as Wade is still in her glorious delusion that she is a good editor doing good works.

As we all know, that editor isn't there. Wade's articles barely even get the quickest, easiest fixes on a reliable basis, even though all the patroller types know that if they're bored and need some work to do, she'll have pooped something out that needs a quick fix.

Wade shite rectification specialist is Just one of many, many, positions vacant. Assuming they want an encyclopedia where the articles meet their minimal standards. At this point, an encyclopedia where most articles are GA/FA, is an absolute pipe dream. They're actually going backwards!

Wikipedia has a labour shortage. A big one.

Lucky for them, and FUCKING HILARIOUS, is that the only reason this labour shortage hasn't had any noticeable effect, is because nobody is, and perhaps never was, really expecting anything of Wikipedia.

They most assuredly don't see it as an encyclopedia.

It's just junk. They achieved their goal, it is ubiquitous, but ubiquitous junk, is still junk.

Who but a fucking moron uses Wikipedia for anything? Even as a mere link farm, it fucking sucks.

The thousands of seriously active editors that drifted away in the late 2000s, they didn't leave because the place got more bureaucratic or hostile, all be it that didn't help, they left because they realised they weren't really making an encyclopedia.

At least not one that was ever going to be any better than simply.....GOOGLE IT FOR YOURSELF YOU LAZY BASTARD.

The experiment was a failure. Worse, it half worked. And was highly addictive.

The only people who stayed, are the saddest of sad addicts, wasting their lives on a pointless task. They know it. That's the real reason most Wikipedia editors look, sound and act like utter wankers. They hate themselves.

There's a perverse irony to them telling the Colonel to fuck off out of the deletion space and instead work on building the articles. If anyone can build articles from hard to find sources and thus add true value to the Wikipedia proposition, its him.

Why do they know that? His uncanny habit of pointing out when they were trying to toss out out articles on stuff that is of interest to sources that are hard to find.

Y'know.....books.