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[Bbb23sucks]

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[Bbb23sucks]

Let me tell you about an editor called Serial Number 54129 and their recent dispute with an editor called Mzajac ("Michael"). It led to the disappearance of Serial from Wikipedia for 12 days, being last seen on 14 May and not returning until 27 May. The trigger for his dissappearance on 14 May, was the filing of a complaint about Serial to the Administrators notice (AN/I) board by Mzajac. Serial's last edit was literally the minute before he was notified.

For context, Serial is an established and well known editor, who joined the project in 2013. He was heavily addicted from 2016 until 2020. His participation since then has been erratic, with three long (multi-month) gaps of virtual inactivity separating equally long spells of editing. In May 2023, we join him at what would seemingly be the tail end of a third burst of activity, although clearly this 12 day departure was not it.

Now buried in the archives, here is the AN/I report filed against Serial by Mzajac....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... aspersions

It seems pretty cut and dried. Serial had been quite the fool, on 6 May randomly dropping into a proposal filed at the Military History Project to rename an internal task force, to cast an aspersion at the proposer, Mzajac. Serial claimed that he thought he remembered them (Mzajac) as the guy he "grassed reported" to ArbCom for canvassing as Requested Move of Kiev/Kyiv on Twitter. He ended the message with a big smiley. Prick.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... task_force

Quite why he wasn't quickly blocked for a rather blatant violation of CIVIL/ASPERSIONS/ASSHOLE, given he is obviously well aware that shit like this is unacceptable and inexcusable, is beyond me. Other than the fact Wikipedia has a high tolerance of assholes.

Even worse, Mzajac had quite literally no idea what this was about, because he had never had any prior interaction with Serial dickwad, but he had been at the Kyiv/Kiev request. Compounding matters, the link provided by Serial is a huge debate, and Serial had merely linked to the top header (don't click it, I provide a more specific link below).

It's worth noting that Mzajac is seemingly quite the dick himself, perhaps aggravated by being a non-native speaker, but that is hardly surprising. Chuck a rock into the Wikipedia sewer and it will bounce off the napper of an asshole before it comes to rest. Maybe if they were tougher on assholes it would be different....?

At the time though Mzajac showed restraint, and simply asked underneath the weird post if Serial would "please show evidence that this is true, or strike.". He made this request just over an hour after Serial had said it, and he pinged Serial to alert him. Almost 24 hours later, perhaps unwisely, perhaps not, but with Serial having not edited Wikipedia in the mean time, Mzajac left him a message on his talk page......

Please take back your unfounded accusation
You have made an accusation against me that seems to be made up from whole cloth.[9] This is WP:aspersion. Please strike or delete the comment. —Michael Z. 13:31, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Serial didn't reappear on Wikipedia until about 90 minutes after Serial's request, by which time it's been a clear 24 hours since his bizarre attack. Serial made three edits over 40 minutes, completely ignoring Mzajac's message and ping. Where doubt may have existed before, by now it was rather obvious Serial was deliberately ignoring Mzajac. To his credit, Mzajac does nothing. Perhaps Serial is just really, really, busy and will get around to it in due course? As anyone who knows Wikipedia, this is an extraordinarily generous amount of leeway in context.

A full 48 hours after that attack, now 8 May, Serial returns a second time, and seemingly finally complies with Mzajac's request. Sort of. He strikes the post, and leaves this one beneath Mzajac's request.....

Apologies. Indeed, it was a different legacy admin that I reported to the committee, with whom I was confusing you. You were not suspected of canvassing, I see on a re-read, but accused of harassment, bigotry and racism by one editor, allegations which seem to have been supported by another editor. Am happy to strike/clarify my previous remarks. Hope this helps! Apologies again. Cheers, SN54129 14:59, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Although Mzajac never asked Serial for an apology, he gets one. A really shitty one. The strange joviality in the face of someone who was pretty seriously maligned, intentionally and with malice, and the suggestion that now, with Mzajac entitled to think that at the very least he's been deliberately ignored for possibly anywhere up to 48 hours, that Serial is trying to help the guy out, seems almost deliberately designed to aggravate.

But clearly there is more to concern oneself with here than that, if you have respect for Wikipedia policy. Despite having had at least 24 hours to refresh his memory, check his facts and even remind himself of how editors are expected to conduct themselves, he has inexplicably now deliberately insulted Mzajac ("legacy Admin" is widely understood to mean shit Admin) on top of his earlier accidental insult.

Worth noting that while Mzajac is actually an Administrator, it is perhaps precisely because he was made one all the way back in 2005, that he doesn't appear to be very active as one, content to just edit. I could be wrong, but he hasn't blocked anyone since September 2021. You could argue his conduct is below Admin standards, but to have Serial being the one to bring that up, is faintly ridiculous. Despite the extreme provocation, Mzajac has certainly not broken the golden rule for Admins, do not abuse your power to win a dispute that involves you. A rule that many of Serial's defenders certainly treat as optional, especially where they see extreme provocation.

It seems like "legacy Admin" was what it was meant to be, a cheap and unjustified attack based on the simple fact Mzajac is a long time Admin, rather than what he has done with it. How ironic that such things, if targeting certain immutable personal characteristics, is an -ism. Serial real!y cares about that sort of stuff, or so he would have us believe....

Worse still (and hilarious frankly), in making the allegation Mzajac was "accused of harassment, bigotry and racism" in that two year old debate, Serial made the exact same mistake he did the first time, failing to accurately recall events in crafting his attack. Granted, in this second attack, Serial is at least talking about the right editor now, which I guess is something. But he has still completely misrepresented what happened, by 180 degrees. Even after he "re-read!". Skimmed at best, clearly. Even though "by one editor, allegations which seem to have been supported by another editor." implies a detailed reading.

The plain truth of it is, Mzajac wasn't accused of harassment, bigotry and racism, he was accused of any making false accusations of harassment, bigotry and racism against another editor, Impru20. Still bad by Wikipedia standards, but not nearly as bad. Remember that name btw. It is of course also not as simple as that, since accusations were flying all over the place. Mzajac was possibly being misrepresented, possibly not, and there is the language issue too. For sure though, Impru20 was pissed.

Yet again, Serial hadn't provided a specific link (never mind quotes) as to where he claims these things happened, merely relying on the same original all encompassing header link to a huge and rambling debate. The stuff he was now referring to is far removed from the canvassing stuff, which was at least semi-discoverable by being under a relevant sub-heading.

This second attack refers to events occurring (waaay) down in this section..... Just search for "bigotry".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kyiv ... September)

So it definitely happened and involved Mzajac, just not the way Serial says it did. Which is of course all beside the point. The point being, these things happened in September 2020, in an unrelated debate and between people who have absolutely nothing to do with the proposal made by Mzajac where Serial made his original drive by comment mistakenly targeting Mzajac.

Since we already know Mzajac wasn't even the original intended target of that drive by, we can safely conclude this subsequent obvious shit stirring was designed to provoke and smear Mzajac for no apparent reason. No good reason anyway (Serial might have just been bored or depressed and just looking for a fight, any fight). It was certainly long overdue (and in the wrong venue and in the wrong format) to be Serial raising concerns about Mzajac as an uninvolved party.

Since Wikipedia isn't therapy or a Fight Club, according to policy anyway, if you weren't sure about it before, this is most definitely the time when an Administrator needs to be taking Serial into a back room and giving him a damn good beating aside for a quiet word and request he withdraw his posts and walk away, or face being blocked. That is Wikipedia policy, designed to de-escalate and avoid drama. They're all supposed to be writing and maintaining an encyclopedia, right?

Sadly, Serial's plan worked. He secured a play mate, or at least a play date. An hour later, Mzajac took the bait.....

Lovely “apology,” user:Serial Number 54129. I was not accused of bigotry and racism. Please strike that too. Please stick to the subject and stop trying to score points by slagging me, poorly. —Michael Z. 15:54, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

To his credit, and bearing in mind he had done nothing that anyone can see here to provoke these aspersions and general disrespect by Serial (historical and presumably stale accusations aside), Mzajac is still being fairly restrained here. Snippy, but with justification. That is always important in pragmatic Wikipedia, where expecting perfect conduct is unrealistic. Violence is tolerable, you just need a valid reason.

Perhaps the lack of effective (or indeed any) Administrative intervention thus far, in a dispute that was now over 48 hours in the making, explains it. Perhaps not. Maybe nobody cares. They're all just volunteers, and all that. But I know if I were this shit at doing something for free, I'd have blown my useless brains out already.

When an Administrator did see the danger of what should have been a minor incident escalating rapidly (presumably because that is what one side (Serial) seems to want and has succeeded in baiting the other side into giving it to him) and stepped in quickly, it was not exactly the quiet word or clear and authoritative request you would hope to see. You might not even realise this guy is an Administrator.....

@Serial Number 54129: Specific links are particularly useful when making exceptional claims... If your memory was incorrect again, that's an egregious personal attack. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 16:04, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

It has a curious effect on Serial. Ninety minutes later he reappears, having been editing elsewhere.

He says absolutely nothing, and does only one thing. He pings Impru20.

Shit stirring to the MAX. There's not a part of this that complies with Dispute Resolution. A hanging judge might call it harassment. As it was, although ignoring the ping, another Administrator at least offered a more direct request (my bolding).....

@Serial Number 54129: - regardless of whether you're right or not (and my reading of the discussion doesn't square with your framing), I'm struggling to come up with a reason you'd dredge up an unrelated dispute that doesn't amount to trying to poison the well. Please provide an explanation or strike your comments. Parsecboy (talk) 17:35, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

...but by then Serial was presumably already an hour up the nearest highway. Prick.

Serial is ultimately on the run for a full 48 hours again. If this is starting to sound like he has a drink problem, you are not alone. Keep that in mind...

Perhaps assuming the at least two Administrators who are aware of this dispute had it in hand and were waiting with handcuffs ready for the return of the memory impaired shit stirring editor who had outstanding warrants requests against his serial number, Mzajak seemingly moved on and carried on editing, including at his move proposal, where the smears remained, only half struck.

Unsurprisingly, nothing was in hand and any handcuffs in the Wiki Police HQ were only being used for kinky sex games, because once Serial finally returned, nothing happened. I'm not saying that by now they absolutely have to give him a kicking if he doesn't take proactive measures immediately, that's just my own moral code. But it is reasonable to think there would be a follow up. But nope.

We cannot dismiss the possibility of course that Serial knows 48 hours is a long time in Wikiland, long enough for things to be forgottten by the hard working wikipolice officers who surely have better things to be doing than reminding an experienced editor to stop being such a raging asshole.

Sensing the coast is clear, Serial spends an hour catching up on matters arising, except of course the outstanding warrants. He was pinged, remember. Even if he missed it, surely he was curious to see if his own ping to Impru20 had actually caused any shit for Mzajac, in the absence of his good self to keep things on the boil?

Whatever his thoughts, he then embarked on a bit of housekeeping, archiving his talk page, one section at a time. Maybe an innocent act, but certainly a good way to make it just that little bit harder for anyone following up on the incident or just checking on this serial offender, to notice what he has been up to. He spends half an hour archiving nearly 150 sections, which adds 300 odd lines to his contribution history (10 May). And then he's gone again for another 48 hours.

He returns and makes one edit on the 12 May, and a handful on the 13th and 14th. He seems to feel the incident is behind him.

Clearly Mzajak was still annoyed, and was now surely quite certain that the Administrators had absolutely no intention of at a minimum, closing out this episode in a way that sees Serial comply with the outstanding requests by the WikiPolice.

To recap, it had only been 6 days since Serial compounded an idiotic act of attempted drive-by, with an absurd apology and more innacurate smears now specifically directed at the innocent bystander he had mown down two days previously.

Serial has ignored the implied request by one Administrator to provide more specific direction to the police to where these alleged crimes by Mzajac, these "exceptional" claims, occurred, or if this was a case of when his "memory was incorrect again" (which we now know it was), or presumably face the consequences for making an "egregious personal attack".

His only response to that was a cryptic ping to a third party that looks for all the work like an attempt to further stir the shit and turn this from an episode of trying to smear or provoke Mzajac into an all out act of harassment, all over an incident that occurred two years ago that has nothing to do with Serial or the debate he was already shitting up with his wholly innacurate accusations.

He has completely ignored a more direct request from another Administrator whose "reading of the discussion doesn't square with [Serial's] framing", to explain or strike his second contribution, on the understanding that without an explanation, it appears to them that Serial's intent was to "dredge up an unrelated dispute" in an attempt to "poison the well".

Serial had been taking the absolute piss for six days by now, editing Wikipedia on and off, latterly on, without acknowledging these outstanding concerns/requests of both a fellow editor and two site Administrators. Since 8 May, Mzajac has said nothing about it, keeping his counsel, waiting for justice.

On that score, it's worth remembering Mzajac has not asked for anything that he isn't absolutely entitled to as a minimum under clear Wikipedia policy, namely the striking out of a patently false but potentially damaging accusation, a gross personal attack. It goes without question that if the shoe was on the other foot and there was an unstruck comment by Mzajac that claimed at least two editors thought Serial was a racist, and yet Mzajac provided absolutely no means of verifying that claim or showing how it was remotely relevant to where the comment was made, Serial would be outraged. A friendly Administrator would likely have blocked Mzajac without Serial having to even ask them to.

To some, it might seem sensible for Mzajac to cut his losses, and accept Wikipedia is an inherently unfair place where there is "no justice", or that because it appears Serial had moved on, in the manner of a complete coward and utter asshole, and the passage of time means the statute of limitations has expired on any crime Serial may or may not be guilty of.

Obviously that is some Animal Farm shit, which any sensible person would push back against if they had the slightest care for Wikipedia's reputation, even If they though Mzajac made for a poor victim (a pretty unfair view on this evidence alone).

At the very least, this perhaps pragmatic view, which is tantamount to an Asshole's Charter and clear endorsement for the idea that even straight up harassment should be in that already large class of offending on Wikipedia the is included in the "just grow a thicker skin" / "just be the bigger man" / "just let it go" category, it rather does ignore the simple reality that the unstruck comment (and request for a potential ally) was still polluting an active proposal by Mzajac.

Any nominal statute of limitations on Wikipedia cannot logically say harassment ceases to be harassment while the intended harm is ongoing. The proposal has since been archived, so you could now realistically say the harm is lessened. But since archives can be read and linked to at any time, such as to show a user is a bad person, as shown by Serial, the potential for harm still exists.

This alone (ogoing harm from an unstruck smear in an active proposal) as well as the basic principle is reason enough to seek further assitance. Hence why Mzajac files an AN/I complaint, presumably. Assume good faith and all that. At the very least, to an unbiased observer who knows absolutely nothing about either party, who whatever their own histories have never interacted before this incident, an surely see Serial is the bigger problem here by a factor of about 100 to 1.

Mzajac perhaps now makes a very big mistake. Precisely because Wikipedia is a place with no justice and a lazy and borderline incompetent police force, escalating a matter officially, requires great care, if you want to get any kind of satisfactory outcome and avoid being further harmed.

The Wikipedia community loves nothing more than an epic show that, as one of the last corners of the unregulated internet untouched by modern day societal norms, It can engage in victim blaming and shaming and indeed straight up gaslighting, on a grand scale.

It is not unreasonable to think that given Serial clearly has absolutely no defence for the inexcusable and yet multiple violations of clear and serious Wikipedia policy governing minimal expectations of behaviour when interacting with others or pursuing disputes, a satisfactory outcome here, for Mzajac and Wikipedia, is nothing less than striking the comments, and a clear and explicit warning to Serial that personal attacks, aspersions, and in their totality, harassment, are totally unacceptable, and a single repeat of such things will result in an immediate block.

In fact, Mzajac actually files a pretty good complaint initially. He says what happened, he provides diffs, he says what policies he think these violate, and he makes a reasonable request for resolution (strike or delete). He even gives people a heads up that they might see him doing not so great stuff in the old discussion.

His only errors are to be a little bit snarky and presumptive about Serial's motives and intent (obvious as they are from Serial's own actions and indeed inactions), and not being clear enough that the old discussion was two years ago and both that and Serial's drive-by are off topic and irrelevant. As in, this was not a more typical AN/I report where one party of an active two party dispute has got fed up and is asking for his opponent to be eliminated.

He also makes an error where he misses the fact Serial was technically entitled to archive Mzajac's talk page message without acknowledgement because he had by then struck the original comment in question (but it was still a dick move, given it was still a an active dispute without outstanding issues Serial had yet to address, including an identical request to explain or strike an offending comment to that which he had just archived).

The thing about Wikipedia is that because the culture is so fucked and Administrators are so lazy, it's almost impossible to have the ideal scenario of a situation that is considered ripe for an AN/I report but is also easily explained without error. And any error, no matter how minor and frankly irrelevant to the meat and potatoes issue (Serial has harassed Mzajac) will be used against you by those who absolutely do not want to see Wikipedia take action against their friend. I am sure seasoned dickheads like Serial well appreciate that, as they play their games of chicken, daring people to escalate.

The fact is, this is a pretty well presented complaint about an issue where one editor has apparently launched completely unjustified attacks (or otherwise refuses to explain the reason for these attacks or why any nominal issue here isn't being handled in the proper manner) on an entirely innocent editor who thus far has conducted themselves with pretty creditable restraint in the circumstances (serious attacks, moderate to ineffective Admin interest) and is asking for an entirely reasonable and policy backed resolution.

Such as they are on Wikipedia, he is asking for his rights as an editor, to be upheld.

As much as they often like to pretend otherwise, this is a critical function of Wikipedia's Administrators.

Only they carry the gravitas required to make sure an editor like Serial follows the rules or faces the consequences if they do not, especially where it is clear their failure to do so is deliberate, inexcusable, malicious and harmful to Wikipedia.

I'm not suitable for Wikipedia, because I'd have digitally kicked Serial's head in by May 10th. It was by then already obvious what his intent was. He was aiming to smear Mzajac and he could give two shits what even the site Administrators thought of his behaviour. He had done nothing in the face of push back other than show a willingness to recruit others in his efforts to bring irrelevant and factually inaccurate attacks into a proposal made by Mzajac for entirely unexplained and frankly inexcusable reasons, and then played a game of hide and seek. And he had faced absolutely no consequences and shown no remorse, not even the minimal sign of respect and contrition that striking the second comment would represent.

The cost to everyone of willingly choosing to be a Wikipedia editor, is to accept that, because Serial is a so called "Vested Contributor" with many friends and enablers, the perfectly reasonable opinion deriving from Wikipedia's own rules and PR, that this is deplorable behaviour that in a different world, is what Wikipedia should be delivering site bans for, is a fantasy.

The reality of Wikipedia is this. When a person like Serial targets you, your expected response is to bend over and take it.

Take it you must, and take it you will.

To think otherwise, is to invite crushing disappointment at best, trouble at worst.

Unsurprisingly therefore, the AN/I report rapidly turned into a trainwreck.

How could it not, given the first responses....

Oh for fuck sake, you're taking this to ANI? Move on. EEng 20:22, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

EEng, there are nicer ways to say that. —A. B. (talk • contribs • global count) 21:58, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

But it's warranted. This filing is ridiculous EvergreenFir (talk) 00:17, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

EEng is not an Admin and would lose an RfA 0-0-400 barring joke votes. So why the fuck is he even allowed to comment? AN/I benefits and indeed needs the opinions of non-Admins, but topic banning absolute assholes like EEng from commenting on reports he was not involved in, would benefit Wikipedia immensely.

Rather disturbingly, EvergreenFir is an Admin. And they are the exact opposite of a "legacy Admin", being promoted in 2019. Clearly standards have dropped, and it is now acceptable for an Administrator to dismiss a perfectly valid complaint out of hand, and very rudely.

They weren't involved in the incident, and presumably didn't spend the whole six hours it took for them to register this one word judgement looking into it, so one wonders how much effort they did put into it. EvergreenFir never returns to the report, perhaps because they soon realised theirs was the ridiculous comment.

Ritchie333 is the first Administrator to take a stab at responding properly. And he does very poorly. He starts out inexplicably framing this as a civility violation, and on that basis advises the best way to deal with it is to disengage. The second best is to figure out why the user is angry. While policy for mere rudeness, both are idiotic opinions in the circumstances. This was far beyond a civility violation, almost if not harassment. Mzajac had already shown incredible restraint, and got nothing in return. And of course he had tried to figure out what was going on, and was merely further attacked.

Only much later, once he realises from other's comments that he probably should have figured out what has actually happened before chiming in as an Administrator, Ritchie takes a second stab at it. And he fucks up again. He seems to think the matter ended at Serial's first strike, as it were. He uses that to again conclude this is all a fuss about nothing. He at least reveals why he is being such a useless bastard - he is a drinking buddy of Serial. It says a lot about Wikipedia that the concept of a conflict of interest doesn't come into play even when you are real life friends with the person.

Mzajak does Ritchie a kindness and explains the dispute again, even though Ritchie could have figured out there was more to this If he had simply read the report. Now Ritchie finally realises Serial had made a serious accusations referring to that two year old thread, and it remains unstruck. His response? He wanders over to his drinking buddy, and first of all reassures him that he doesn't think there is a case to answer here. Wow.

Then he issues a "gentle reminder" to make sure Serial supplies diffs next time. His literal words are hilarious in context, "it's best to come armed with a bunch of diffs, so the rest of us can evaluate things on their merits." given Serial was indeed engaged in Wikipedia's version of armed conflict, and it is laughable to think Ritchie was evaluating merits or otherwise. He was looking for excuses and loopholes. Bros before policy.

Clearly Ritchie's interest in the matter begins and ends at how can he get his drinking buddy off the hook. Ritchie clearly doesn't realise how absurd it is to advise someone that when they're bringing irrelevant and two year old accusations to a dispute as a follow up to a mistaken identity attack, he should bring diffs. Ritchie is a moron. He never returns to the report.

Circling back, the first person to support Mzajac is JPxG, who concludes Serial's comment "seems somewhat unwarranted and uncollegial to me". Not exactly a stinging rebuke, but by this point I guess Mzakak should be counting himself lucky someone who isn't a drinking buddy of Serial or just a drunken bastard has responded. It hardly helps his cause though, since JPxG is not an Administrator.

It doesn't go unanswered. Administrator Jayron32 echoes Ritchie and bizarrely suggests disengagement and letting the matter drop, and worse still, that Mzajak should learn from their "mistake" and not "interact with them [Serial] again". Holy fuck! If it wasn't clear before, it now definitely seems like Serial has indeed got powerful but frankly insane friends and they are turning out in force to protect him by saying whatever they think will convince anyone who is uninvolved but pays scant attention to the matter that there is nothing to see here.

By now, the thread is of course becoming hard to parse, with Mzajac not helping his case by understandably wanting to correct every obvious error and otherwise stick up for himself, because nobody else is, at least nobody with any authority. This is by design. The assholes of Wikipedia take full advantage of the phenomena.

An even more powerful person has checked in by this point. Arbitrator Barkeep (if there was ever a report that didn't need more booze, it was this one!). They take issue with Jayron, but it doesn't exactly go anywhere, and Barkeep's interest, perhaps understandably given the role of Arbitrators (the boss of ordinary Admins), begins and ends at ensuring Administrators talking utter shit in court doesn't go unanswered. It says a lot about Wikipedia that the equivalent of a Supreme Court justice feels the need to get involved in run of the mill assault cases.

Another non-Administrator points out the obvious, namely "Dropping the matter seems like poor advice for a direct personal attack out of nowhere." Jayron does not respond. Barkeep does not take issue with this failure to be held accountable for acting as an Administrator in a way that is patently absurd.

Perhaps finally sensing he had fucked up and his boss was maybe still watching, Jayron clarifies matters....

Just to make clear, SN was clearly and unambiguously in the wrong here. They should not have done what they did, and there is no possible excuse that could be offered up that would make it okay. Having said that, sometimes the effort spent getting a pound of flesh is better spent doing something else. Retribution is not always worth the effort. --Jayron32 14:49, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Sadly all he does is clarify that he (Jayron) thinks Mzajac is not in fact reasonably defending his perfectly reasonable AN/I report where he is asking for a perfectly reasonable outcome. Jayron thinks asking for the second comment to be struck and coming to the Administrators when he is blatantly ignored, is some kind of Shakespearean revenge mission. I think this is about the time Barkeep needs to breathalize Jayron. Sadly he already seems to have gone off shift.

Administrator Courcelles is next to offer an opinion. As a former Arbitrator, people were no doubt expecting a weighty and responsible one. They were to be disappointed. Presumably because they looked into this as little as Ritchie did, entirely missing the second comment, or have the same desire to see Serial get off Scot free (the motive and lack of diligence not necessarily unconnected), all they do is also suggest the matter is resolved with a simple reminder to Serial to check his facts before commenting. Wow. Check your facts before blundering into a debate to direct personal attacks at the proposer regarding two year old issues that have nothing to do with the current proposal? Just wow.

What follows next is an interruption while the report is diverted by the appearance of an obvious sock intent on causing mischief. This happens a lot on Wikipedia, but notably, usually only in those cases where it is widely known drama is likely (cases involving so called "Unblockable" editors). By now, if you didn't know it already, it seems clear Serial is an unblockable.

Everyone seems to agree it is reasonable to assume this interruption is not Serial, and yet, who can say for sure? Serial is an asshole. Serial is experienced in Wikipedia. Serial would know how to sock. And Serial would know socks engaged in blatant mimicry of people currently at AN/I are usually dismissed as uninvolved trolls. Add all that to the fact Serial had never been seen since the report was filed, and had shown his intent to fuck with Mzajac for no apparent reason at all, who is to say it wasn't Serial?

The diversion is useful since it elucidated this from an existing participant....

While I agree that SN's initial comment and pseudo-apology were both inappropriate, I don't think any admins on this board will strike them. My hope is that SN would be willing to self-reflect, admit that the comments were out of order, and strike them voluntarily. But given that they haven't engaged in this thread at all, I'm not holding my breath. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 05:09, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

It seems like a very apt reading of the situation. You can sense the depression. The realisation in this experienced user that this is what should happen, but never will.

Next cab on the rank is Lourdes. Her comment starts out very well, showing empathy and understanding.....

Hi Michael, I am sorry to see you go through this. Let me with no qualifications mention that you shouldn't have been thrown such comments. And your filing of a complaint is perfectly okay, as it has the benefit of allowing other editors to understand the context and background of the issue and to keep an eye out so that in the future, if a similar issue arose, we can connect the dots.

But you can probably already tell where she was going.....

Having said that, if I may dare to speak on Sn's behalf, he is not a bad guy at all. I have interacted with him occasionally and found him to be extremely congenial and supportive (yes, he does snap sometimes, but that is sometimes... and he almost always comes around to ensuring he corrects his errors in spirit and in actions). An olive branch never hurts, and I would suggest extend to him the same this time... Like I said, he's not a bad guy at all, and would come around. That said, I will reiterate and hope that you don't go through such experiences again. Warmly, Lourdes 08:31, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

To any reasonable observer, Serial is not a nice guy, he's an asshole. Once again, the feeling that the only people responding to this report are Administrators who for whatever reason like Serial and want to interpret events through the most rose turned of glasses, spectacles that also have a clear tendency to completely change their actual perception of actual events, rather than just colour them.

Because as Mzajac quite reasonably pointed out, you would have to be one hell of a twisted person to advise the victim in this situation to extend an olive branch to the person who has already acted like a complete asshole, and has not been seen since it became clear he might actually face serious consequences.

Spoiler alert, this ends up being one of those times Serial doesn't come around. His spirit and his actions are incontrovertibly that of someone who wanted to harass an unknown "legacy admin" for unknown reasons, then went on to harass the entirely innocent Mzajac for as yet unknown reasons, as then disappears rather than comply with the very reasonable request to explain how any of this was relevant to Mzajac's proposal and strike the offending second comment.

It seems reasonable to suggest that Serial is only ever a nice guy to Lourdes (and Ritchie and Courcelles etc) because there is some kind of quid pro quo at work. You would be right. The phenomenon of unblockabke users arises precisely this way. An asshole befriends or otherwise cultivates a relationship with enough Administrators to make sure that Administrators who have no feelings toward them never become the deciding factor in reports like this. Indeed, that they stay away entirely.

Now the thread goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. Administrator Rhododentrites is next on scene. They bizarrely conclude that the comments were "inappropriate, but we're not looking at some pattern of egregious rhetoric, so "unblockables" isn't really relevant. " What a wierd thing to say, when you have literally just explained to everyone that what actually happened here was that Serial turned up in a debate and dropped an irrelevant accusation seemingly designed solely to smear someone for reasons they never explain, and rather laughably hasn't even properly checked their facts. And then they did it again! On 6 May, his target was some unamed "legacy Administrator" who Serial had mistaken for Mzajac. On 8 May it was actually Mzajac.

Two almost identical offences, two days apart, is a pattern. And while I know standards on Wikipedia are low, but if accusing someone of Twitter canvassing, and then of bigotry and racism, are not examples of "egregious rhetoric" (the word rhetoric wrongly implying this was part of a legitimate debate gone awry), then what is?

By now, the pattern of the report is clear, but Rhodoendtires helpfully explains why Administrators are being so ineffective here. Rhododendrites does not seem to think Serial is getting away Scot free because the responding Administrators are corrupt or the offences are not actionable, they have identified a systematic issue.....

We're in that large swath of territory where something is inappropriate but doesn't rise to the level of any real action being taken. Ideally SN would just pop in with a mea culpa or better evidence and this could be closed as resolved. Instead, it probably needs some sort of "please don't do that" or "reminder" about casting aspersions or content-not-contributors or some other stuff we all know SN is already aware of but performative tsk-tsking is the only option left, short of "just put up with it". — Rhododendrites talk \\ 12:55, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Just wow.

Take a moment to think about what this says about the current state of Wikipedia. There is a suite of very clear behavioural policies and a robust system of sanctions. If users do very bad things like casting aspersions (and we know from ArbCom that casting aspersions is a highly toxic behaviour the Administrators are supposed to be taking very seriously), they are meant to be sent through a series of escalating actions, from polite reminders to warnings to blocks.

If it becomes clear that the user is basically ignoring policy, you are not to persist in some kind of utter farce where they are allowed to repeatedly get away with it and Administrators stand around with their thumbs up their asses or otherwise continue to issue warnings they know will be ignored. It sucks for the offender, but rack up enough seeking minor infractions, and yes, Wikipedia can and will block you indefinitely. You will only be allowed back in, if you make a clear statement that you understand what casting aspersions means, you understand it is forbidden, and you commit to never doing it again.

Not now and again, not when you're drunk or angry, but never. You have had all the chances you are going to get, motherfucker. Editing Wikipedia is a privilege, not a right, and there are thousands of editors here who are more than capable of abiding the the rules for years on end. You are not special. Wikipedia does not need you.

That's the theory anyway.

Rhododentrites shows quite well, what the current practice is.

Step 1: Whether through incompetence, friendship or corruption, misinterpret a situation to the benefit of the offender, downgrading in your mind the seriousness of the offence (harassment becomes personal attacks, personal attacks becomes incivility, casting aspersions becomes a non-egregious offence).

Step 2: Acknowledge the offender is a serial violator of policies that he is fully aware of so hardly needs reminding of what they are, so throw your hands in the air and say, what can be done but engage in some kind of Administrative theatre for the sake of it, or just ignore it and do nothing at all.

Step 3: Do nothing at all.

In the fine Wikipedia tradItion of BOOMERANG, the thread doesn't peter out before some random nobody turns up to try and make It all about Mzajac.....

But my point is a far simpler one - your behaviour is a driver of conflict in the area, and not, as you say, a contribution to a less hostile environment. You fail to assume good faith and are constantly casting aspersions regarding other users in good standing, yet at the same time get worked up when you're on the receiving end of any such aspersion. I was very clear in stating that SN54129 should either rectify or withdraw his accusation, but I think you would do well to look at your own behaviour in the area. Ostalgia (talk) 00:39, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

This charge against Mzajac may very well be true, and Ostalgia made a compelling case with diffs and quotes. So maybe Mzajac is a problem that needs to be dealt with. But is this how to do it? Policy says no, obviously. At a minimum, start your own section with your own proposal.

What is even happening here? Is Ostalgia even seeking action against Mzajac? He offers no proposal. Even though if his claims are true, Mzajac should be blocked. A few things make it far more likely this contribution was made solely to assist Serial. With this comment, Ostalgia merely adds themselves to a long list of people who apparently accept Serial needs to strike his comment, but apparently doesn't want to force him to do it, and worse still, seems to take the view that one cannot ask them to do so unless Mzajac takes responsibility for entirely unrelated offences that we are apparently meant to generously assume was the underlying intent of Serial's aspersions.

Ridiculous. As any reasonable person can see, Ostalgia here is only to advocate for a situation and environment where Wikipedia becomes more hostile, not less. To sanction Mzajac not Serial (rather than both) would actually reward someone who violated every single part of Wikipedia's "dispute resolution" manual and was at this time still in hiding presumably to avoid any consequences, and encourage others to do it.

With that done, Administrators finally make it clear (as if it wasn't already) that the official position is that Mzajac can fuck right off if he thinks he is going to get anything from this report. He will get not a damn thing. Even though he has still never actually asked for anything more than the comment to be struck.

So it appears there is a rather long and convoluted backstory that led to a mistake that does not amount to a pattern. Action on either score is unlikely here, most certainly the message has been received; we have a productive editor no longer editing. Is it not time to close this thread with no action ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:41, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion has run its course. Thank you Sandy. Drmies (talk) 01:22, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

And there you have it, in a nutshell.

It is fitting that the substantive Admin response to the thread began and now ends with the lie about there being no parttern being repeated. Casting aspersions on May 6 and May 8 is a pattern. Ignoring requests for explanations, with pings while merrily editing elsewhere, several times, is clearly a pattern.

Being away from Wikipedia inexplicably for twelve days from the very moment an AN/I report is filed against you, when you have barely been off it for more than 48hours previously, is clearly a proportionate extension of that pattern. It is informally called "AN/I flu". Wikipedia having a rather bad habit of giving joke descriptions to serious personality defects. In this case, extreme cowardice and a steadfast refusal to take responsibility for one's own extremely despicable actions (in large part because you hope others will do it for you).

They do not wish to see the patterns, because in present day Wikipedia, it is all but accepted that an experienced editor who should know better committing a single yet egregious error, is "unactionable". Only patterns of misconduct are actionable.

It was a shock but hardly surprising to see it end with Serial even coming out of it as if he were the victim, as if his disappearance from Wikipedia is the harassment.

This is Wikipedia dysfunction, writ large. This is the bread and butter of AN/I. This is how Wikipedia Administrators handle their case load, day in, day out. A heady mixture of incompetence and corruption.

Specifically, this was a textbook example of how an unmitigated asshole of an editor who breaks every rule in the book and does it brazenly but with absolute cowardice, is allowed to get away with harassment. This is how editors like that are allowed to get away with it so often without any consequences at all, that the phenomenon of "unblockable" editors became part of the official Wikipedia lexicon.

Unbelievably, the last time Serial was actually blocked, was 2018, but that seems to have been a mistake. Their last block for cause, was 2015. Tellingly, he had been blocked for 48 hours personal attacks, and yet was unblocked after convincing an Administrator he understood what he had done and wouldn't do it again. Ha.

So clearly, given what his own friends say about him, you can be sure he wasn't reformed by that experience and he has been getting away with this shit for THIRTEEN YEARS.

Since that block, the last time Serial was officially warned was, well, who really gives a fuck? It hardly matters, does it? If it ever even happened, it will have been a "performative" act of "tsk tsk", not a necessary element of behavioural change.

Even here, the thread is not ending with any kind of formal warning by way of conclusion.

A message has "almost certainly" been heard, supposedly, but what message? And how do they know that?

Serial was still missing at the time the report petered out. Did he transmit his sense of guilt and apology through telepathy? And in recognition that Wikipedia doesn't do guilt or forced apology, did he transmit a clear statement that he knows what he did is wrong, and promises never to repeat it?

Of course he didn't.

He was reported to the Administrators, and he ran away. Many people clearly stated his conduct was inappropriate, others still said his second comment should be struck. Many expressed an apparently forlorn hope that Serial should be man enough to realise this and do it himself. Some even claimed that is who he really is, a stand up guy with integrity, while providing no evidence for this extraordinary claim which is contradicted completely on this evidence, which shows Serial has no integrity and is a total coward. Other people defended his behaviour using specious if not downright mentally retarded arguments, and when a last ditch attempt to make this about the victim, the whole thing eventually went away on this absurd assumption that Serial has somehow learned his lesson.

As you are no doubt already suspecting, he won't.

His first substantive edit upon his return was this perhaps unsurprising defence of an Vested Contributor...

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1157423297

Buried within it you will see the rather hilarious claim that Serial believes that on Wikipedia, in order to foster a non-toxic collegiate environment, everyone should.....

treat people as you want to be treated

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

This is Wikipedia. A community where this asshole is getting away with saying that on the very same noticeboard where his twelve day absence was a critical factor in how a report arising him for doing something very toxic and then compounding it with other toxic behaviours, went absolutely nowhere.

Did anyone notice? Did anyone care?

The hypocrisy is astounding, the Administrative complicity, clear and obvious.

And as you may or may not know, if you think it is intolerable that Serial can get away with this, as an outsider, your ability to flag it up is non-existent. Making a post to Wikipedia pointing out that Serial has returned, praise be, and so he can now be asked formally why he did what he did and why he won't voluntarily strike that comment as a gesture the he does indeed believe in equal treatment and the message of the AN/I report (inappropriate etc) was actually received, will be instantly removed, your account blocked. Emailing your concerns will be filed the the round shaped object marked "fuck off". It won't matter if your name is Jimmy Wales or Joe Biden. It's their project, managed by and for them, nobody else, so you can go fuck yourself, you fucking snowflake.

And the owners of Wikipedia certainly cannot get involved, the Code of Conduct that suggest otherwise being a complete lie (in formal terms, rather laughably as you can see from incidents like this, the Arbitration Committee assumes full and complete responsibility for ensuring the external Code is respected by ensuring the internal rules of Wikipedia are respected). What a joke that is.

The rules exist and are clear, to the point of being unambiguous when faced with a situation where a user commits egregious violations such as casting aspersions, does it repeatedly, deliberately declines to offer reasonable or indeed any explanations for what is on its face a wholly unacceptable behaviour, up to and including taking an unexplained leave of absence when the matter is formally raised. Add to that the fact their only actual responses look awfully like an attempt to harass by recruiting confederates, if harassment isn't already a reasonable explanation of their conduct up to then, and what more needs to be said?

The editors, Administrators and even Arbitrators, never do and never will enforce these rules.

Perhaps because they wrongly believe that something of value would be lost to Wikipedia in the form of productive edits from problematic but otherwise productive editors. Not only does that go against official Wikipedia policy, which naturally cannot ever formalize such a destructive quid pro quo, it flies in the face of all the actual surveys and studies that suggest that asshole editors are in the clear minority. There is a silent majority that just puts up with it. Pathetic morons that they are.

(I assume we can all agree that with this comment Serial is not saying that should he ever have cause to complain about a user, he wants the accused to face no consequences for being an asshole and a coward, and he wants the Administratiors to respond to his concerns in ways that range from insufficient to corrupt, but above all, are wholly ineffective.)

Then again, perhaps that is what he really meant? Since Serial is entirely fine with being a cowardly asshole and has no problem with Wikipedia justice being about who you know not what you did, except in terms of having done good things to outweigh bad, perhaps he recognises it would be unfair to expect anyone else to expect their experience to be any different?

If that is the case, he has already got his wish.

This is how Wikipedia currently enforces its rules, and has done for a very long time. Long gone are the days of idealism or even high standards.

It is dysfunctional. It rewards toxicity by design.

It encourages editors with deeply damaging personality defects (assholery, pride, ego, cowardice) and discourages normal people.

This is why brand Wikipedia is losing its lustre among the young, who are idealistic by their nature, and getting increasingly intolerant of institutional tolerance of behaviours that wholly disrespect and disparage their fellow humans, failing to protect victims from aggressors.

This is why individual small donations to Wikipedia are falling, and the Foundation is turning to the likes of Google, Amazon and rich boomers for funding. Paragons of virtue, well known for their love of equality and charity.

The death of Wikipedia is inevitable. A future where Serial, Ritchie, Barkeep, and all the other incompetent or indeed corrupt bastards deny they had anything to do with it, is similarly inevitable.

I'm the mean time, while we wait, Serial can be found at the following address....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 1157273821

2A02:C7C:36B1:FB00:E8F1:B916:A759:5EFD

He was no doubt hoping he could use these edits to explain his absence, not that he needed to of course.

Oh noes! My computer exploded, so of course I couldn't respond to that AN/I report. Oh what terrible bad luck for all concerned. Oh well. Never mind. I guess I will just continue the behaviour I am known for around Wikipedia, being a stand up guy who has total respect for Administrators and total intolerance for trolling or users that want to continue arguments for the sake of it.

Spoiler alert: All the really bad actors on Wikipedia think you dear reader really are just that fucking stupid and don't recognise performative theatre and institutional disinterest/complicity when you see it.

You can also find Serial and several Wikipedia Administrators over at Wikipediocracy. But since that nominally independent venue is nothing but an offshoot of Wikipedia with no real interest in exposing the root causes of its dysfunction and therefore determining a reason why the whole world has to suffers its malignant presence in our information space, well, don't expect any assistance from them. They are even less interested in why Serial is a despicable coward or Ritchie is a dumb basard at best, complicit harasser at worst. Questions like that annoy their membership, because these shithouses are their membership.

[Bbb23sucks]

In a sign of how completely fucked English Wikipedia is, a proposal by Fram to just ban EEng from noticeboards, is going down in flames.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... 73302#EEng

Fram wrongly focused on the quirky humour aspect. He vastly under-estimated the appetite there is among the freaks and fuckheads of Wikipedia for this type of utter nonsense, even when it is unambiguously just trolling.

EEng actually needs to be banned for contributions like this.....

Oh for fuck sake, you're taking this to ANI? Move on. EEng 20:22, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

As rude and inflammatory as it is, the real question is why was he even making that comment? The incident in question was this one.

EEng had absolutely no involvement, no reason to comment as an involved party. And of course, EEng is not and never will be an Administrator, so his opinion as a neutral observer is worthless when not carrying the weight of policy, or even any kind of justification at all.

AN/I Is not a vote. For very good reasons, nobody should be giving a flying fuck if an absolute prick like EEng thinks a report is meritless if he can't even pay everyone the courtesy of explaining why.

He was also, and this is very important, completely and totally in the wrong. A user had cast serious aspersions on another editor, calling them a racist and a bigot. These were completely unjustified personal attacks, not least because the attacker had not accurately recalled a two year old incident he was dredging up. The attacks were made in a way that was seriously prejudicing a proposal by the victim, and the attacker was refusing to explain the purpose or even relevance of their attacks, or strike them if as it seemed to all concerned, he had none.

The victim had been completely ignored by his attacker, who alternated between merrily editing other areas and taking uncharacteristically long periods way from Wikipedia. Two Administrators had demanded explanations, they had also been ignored, but had apparently forgotten about it because of the attackers cowardly habit of disappearing at convenient times.

The victim had every right to file an AN/I report. Who is seriously going to say otherwise? Who the FUCK would edit Wikipedia if it became common knowledge that their official Administrative advice to people who are subjected to completely unjustified accusations of racism and bigotry by an editor with THOUSANDS of edits in a way that completely derails their own efforts to edit, is to just shrug your shoulders and accept it? Fuck that shit. That user should count themselves lucky Wikipedia allows them to be anonymous. That incident would not be out of place in an official complaint of egregious harassment to the Foundation.

The only plausible explanation for EEng's angry dismissal of a perfectly valid report, was because the attacker was one of their friends. Both EEng and that attacker, Serial Number 54129, are unsurprisingly very close with Drmies, which gives you a good idea of who the current fountainhead of assholery on Wikipedia really is.

It was of course Drmies who closed that report, despite nothing having happened to reassure anyone the attacker had indeed learned anything, not least since they sat the entire thing out, completely off wiki. Drmies gets away with stuff like that, because, well, who is going to stop him? The only users more powerful than him, are even less bothered about being seen as asshole facilitators than he is.

It is widely acknowledged that AN/I is corrupt and so getting any kind of satisfactory result at all against a Vested Contributor is hard at the best of times. Allowing the presence of EEng to interject in his own unique way, needlessly rubs this sense of absolute hopelessness right in the faces of the people on Wikipedia who are genuine victims with legitimate grievances. The sort of people who aren't the kind of disgusting human who Drmies would naturally become friends with.

Eeng offers no actual value to AN/I except amusing some seriously disturbed people and furthering themes that go entirely against the principles of how governance should actually work on Wikipedia. But they won't ban him. He has too many friends, arguably some weird kind of fandom. You can see why. Drmies surely hates himself. EEng's satirical posts are presumably a nice distraction.

It's ironic that EEng was often a vocal critic of the little weasel Eric Corbett. It if course wasn't a dislike of how that particular nasty little fuck had complete immunity despite making endlessly acerbic and unhelpful comments because he too was protected by scum like Drmies. It was of course rooted in content disagreements between the two.

It should be a rule on Wikipedia. Whenever two Vested Assholes are going at it, the feud should be shunted off to an area that is only visible to their friends and enablers. Let Drmies deal with it. I guarantee that bastard would be off on a wikibreak immediately.

Cowardice in the face of assholery pervades Wikipedia. It will eventually corrode the whole p!ace from within.

[Bbb23sucks]

I must admit even I was surprised to see David Gerard is still being given carte blanche to make absolutely atrociously crap edits to Wikipedia as part of his one man crusade against the Daily Mail.

He is living proof Wikipedia governance is entirely mythical. People do whatever the fuck they like.

Naturally, this thread must be read with the ever present knowledge that David is an Administrator, so he is theoretically held to a higher standard. And that even if he wasn't, even if he was an ordinary editor, this thread should be read in full realisation of the fact David Gerard has been reminded/counselled/warned that his allegedly good work removing a "bad" source like the Daily Mail is no excuse for not taking the time to ensure his individual edits aren't complete nonsense.

There is of course also a policy on Wikipedia that says if your edits are so crap they are indistinguishable from a poorly coded bot, then you should be blocked as a fucking INCOMPETENT.

[Bbb23sucks]

The example to kick the thread off is hilarious.

* K1 Britannia - HMY Britannia Replica Project
(26 June 2023)

At time of writing, the article has been redirected for the usual reasons, but for the purposes of this thread, when David Gerard arrived, it was an article, and he left it as an article.

Before David Gerard fucked it up, the relevant content was as follows....

There was an auction of Britannia’s spars and fittings in Southampton on 24 June 1936, to raise £1050 (worth £58,684.50 when adjusted for inflation) [11] for the King George’s Fund for Sailors, and K1 Britannia is hoping that families may still have items from that auction in their possession.[12]

Source [12], as you would hope, exists to support the entire sentence. It is the K1 project's own website, and says.....

But there was an auction of Britannia’s spars and fittings in Southampton on 24th June 1936, to raise £1050 for the King George’s Fund for Sailors, and K1 Britannia is hoping that families may still have items from that auction in their possession.

It is straight up copyright violation, but this is Wikipedia, so that is to be expected.

As you can see, all that source [11] was doing, was helpfully showing the well meaning editor who added the inflation adjusted figure, had used an inflation calculator hosted by This Is Money, a financial website owned by the same media group the owns the Mail.

Fun fact, this financial website wasn't originally included in the decision to ban the Daily Mail from Wikipedia, and the follow up "discussion" to add it was as intellectually rigorous as you would expect from a bunch of retards writing a "free encyclopedia". Yet more proof Wikipedian's view of the Mail is borne of prejudice, a bit more prejidice, with some added prejudice.

If David Gerard wasn't such a fool, he would have realised this was all that source [11] was being used for, a currency factoid, and therefore realised he could have simply removed the source and the conversion simply for being original research and recentism. No need to confuse the fuck out of onlookers by mentioning the Daily Mail (casual observers wouldn't spot the small print connecting the website to the Mail group) or bringing deprecation into it at all.

A simple edit. A fucking monkey could do it. Then again, monkeys don't usually edit Wikipedia for reasons of pure hatred.

Here is the content after David I'm A Right Fuckwit Gerard takes a hack at it. His edit summary was "rm deprecated Daily Mail", which is obviously a canned message he uses when purging the Mail, because putting down what he is doing in his own words would be too much like real editing.

These canned messages are probably why nobody noticed that Gerard is being sloppy at best, negligent at worst.

After his edit, the content now read like this......

K1 Britannia is hoping that families may still have items from that auction in their possession.[11]

It is a completely nonsensical statement. What auction? Why are they hoping this?

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?

It says a lot that you can't even look at the change and make an educated guess as to what David Gerard was trying to do.

All he did, clearly, and this is fucking hilarious, is he saw a reference in an article from the Mail, and simply removed the, the words behind it up to the last paragraph break, and the words after it up to the next punctuation mark.

It is incredible to think how little attention it takes to make a monumentally stupid mistake like that.

He quite literally didn't read the source or the article.

[Bbb23sucks]

I never get tired of seeing stuff like this.

On 21 June 2023, David Gerard removed the factoid that top class cricketer Mark Wood supports Wimbledon football club, purely because it was sourced to the Daily Mail. As he always does, he used a canned edit summary ("rm deprecated Daily Mail, unusable on a BLP") rather than words that would give anyone any confidence he is checking his own work or putting any thought into It whatsoever.

It reminds me of a simpler time, when reliable sourcing was context based, and crying BLP!!!!1! wasn't a convenient way to avoid scrutiny of your (probably quite ludicrous) editing.

David Gerard and his retarded mates changed all that, and we can see from edits like this why he did that.

It absolutely BOILS GERARD'S PISS that for all their efforts, the Daily Mail is still a widely read, widely trusted mass market newspaper.

Nobody believed Wikipedia when they said it is "generally unreliable", and it is moronic edits like this which underscore the average person's scepticism whenever they read anything that starts, "according to Wikipedia editors...." , especially if they're reading it in The Guardian. Wikipedia's bias is widely known.

Why is this edit so stupid? For a start, a claim that person X supports football club Y is so far removed from the sort of controversial and potentially damaging claim BLP was written to prevent, it isn't even funny. It is a banal fact you find in any celebrity profile in Britain. We love football. You can make the argument this sort of stuff is trivia that doesn't belong in a biography, but David Gerard isn't doing that.

That's not even the most hilarious part. This isn't a claim that is coming from a Mail journalist. This is quite literally Mark Wood's own words. The Mail is reproducing "exclusive extracts" of his new autobiography. The article is quite literally bylined, "By Mark Wood, for the Daily Mail". The article ends.....

Extracted from The Wood Life by Mark Wood, published by Allen & Unwin at £20. © Mark Wood 2022. To order a copy for £18 (offer valid to 01/10/22; UK P&P free on orders over £20), visit www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937

Such is their Nazi like hatred of the Mail, their prejudice so total, so rabid, I would genuinely not put it past Gerard to try and argue the fact a book is being sold via the Mail, means its entire contents must be fabricated.

To be fair, I can't actually fault Gerard here, not in the main. It is precisely because of the lies told by Gerard and company, that without any evidence at all, quite officially, Wikipedia editors happily believe that even this type of content should be presumed a fabrication.

He is entitled by policy to remove this claim and it's source. He is entitled to say, "I have no reason to think this content isn't a complete lie", and nobody can challenge it. I shit you not, this is Wikipedia policy. As solid as it gets.

Nobody on Wikipedia cares how absurd It sounds to suggest that Mark Wood and his publisher would sign an exclusive deal with the Mail, and then the Mail would randomly make shit up claiming It comes from Mark Wood's book and was written for the Mail by Mark Wood, and nothing would happen.

It should tell you something about what a massive propaganda effort this Daily Mail ban was, this fact free prejudice fueled ban of the Mail, if the source here was Fox, there would be literally no issue.

Ideally Gerard would have simply removed the source and tagged it as {citation needed} or even better, replaced the Mail reference with the details of the actual book. As a non-controversial claim of literally no real importance, Wood is allowed to be a self source.

It says a lot about David Gerard's attitude and incompetence that we can't really say why he didn't take those alternatives, since it seems equally likely that either he had no fucking clue what the context here was at all, that he didn't know the source was Wood himself, quite literally, because Gerard clearly doesn't read the source he is removing, but he has also previously suggested to detractors that it isn't his job to find alternative sources or use tags, he can just yank it out. He cites ONUS.

I of course look forward to the day every single banal biographical fact is removed from Wikipedia and anyone who complains is met with "he ha, fuck you, ONUS, bitch!". It will never happen, because as you might have guessed, ONUS is for controversial claims, and this would be the day Gerard is blocked for disruption.

[Bbb23sucks]

This edit in 22 June 2023 again sadly can't be faulted on policy. This is the Daily Mail ban in action.

What's hilarious is the context.

Because so much of Wikipedia is quite literally unsourced, the {citation needed} tag having attained meme status for it, every now and again Wikipedia runs a campaign called #1Lib1Ref.

To quote the cult.....

Imagine a World where Every Librarian Added One More Reference to Wikipedia.

Yeah, great.

So, someone noticed that a factoid in the Marmite article has been tagged as citation needed since August 2021.

The content is....

Marmite should be stored in the dark and kept cool, but should not be refrigerated. The "[[best before]]" date is given as guidance for the loss of vitamins rather than [[Food safety|safety]].

The enterprising librarian found a Daily Mail article from 2 April 2015 that seems to support it....

Whether you love it or loathe it — and I count myself firmly among the latter — it seems everyone has an opinion on Marmite. But very few of us actually know what it contains, or how it’s made. So the Mail took an exclusive tour of the world’s only Marmite factory in order to find out.

....

The distinctive salty odour surrounds the factory like a fog. St John Skelton, the factory’s quality specialist and master taster who has worked here for 41 years, is positively infused with it.

He’s like a savoury Willy Wonka, hopping from one foot to the other with excitement as he reels off some of Marmite’s statistics

.....

St John, known by his colleagues as Mr Marmite, is about as big a fan as they come. He trained as a biochemist before taking his first job at the factory straight out of Warwick University, aged just 21, but has never lost his taste for the spread.

.....

And his favourite thing about the product is its ‘astounding’ shelf life

"We put 18 months on the jar, because that’s how long it retains its vitamin content. But you could eat Marmite that was manufactured in 1945 and it would be safe. Its flavour would have changed, but it would still taste good. "

..... But one thing St John can’t abide is people putting Marmite in the fridge.

"If a Marmite jar is contaminated with bacteria, leave it alone in the cupboard — because of its high salt content, the Marmite will kill the bacteria. Putting it in the fridge, on the other hand, preserves the bacteria. So not only does it taste better out of the fridge, it’s safer."

What a brilliant find, eh?

Straight from the horse's mouth.

Nope. Rejected by David Gerard, solely for reasons of prejudice.

Probably because he realised this was a campaign edit, he at least said "sorry". His full edit summary, rather unusually, reads like a personal message he crafted with thought...."Daily mail is deprecated and not usable, sorry" . What a suck up. Ordinary editors aren't given the same treatment.

As I say, he is entitled to remove it because this is what Wikipedia editors want.

It makes absolutely no sense. It is all well and good virtue signalling and making grand claims about how the Daily Mail has no scruples, but does anyone seriously believe that, like the Mark Wood case, the Mail secured an exclusive tour of the factory of a beloved national food, manufactured by a billion dollar conglomerate, and then just wrote down any old bollocks, because nothing would happen, right?

It is beyond ridiculous. Again, there are valid reasons to question the content, anything from promotion to medical claims, perhaps fixable by attribution. But I stress again, such things were entirely outside of David Gerard's concern. He has left the content there, unsourced, even though It is potentially a medical claim in Wikipedia voice.

It will be a long wait. Wikipedia has no deadline, but it will be a cold day in hell by the time someone bothers to source a fact like this from an actual book. It will eventually come from a circular source no doubt.

This is what pisses Wikipedia off, drives them mad with jealousy. It is the Mail's success that means they can fund the sort of fluff content this is. The depth and breadth here, is their bread and butter. Pages and pages, every day.

Contrast that with the miserable failure that is Wikipedia.

And look who the source is. A female journalist writing for the Mail's female oriented magazine, Femail.

The Mail hating (overwhelmingly male) bastards of Wikipedia will never admit it, but Femail is one of many examples of the Mail being a pioneering newspaper that has always been supportive of women. Femail was founded and run by a woman, with the express goal of allowing the marginalised and patronized women in journalism at the time, to write about what they wanted to write about and what they knew their readership (women!) wanted to read about. Complete editorial freedom. It was an instant success and an enduring hit. This is why the Mail is very popular among women, and Wikipedia is, just, not.

Why would you edit Wikipedia when their editorial policy, crafted as it is by old white males, essentially calls you a misogynyst, racist and a moron, for daring to choose to read the most widely read mass market newspaper in Britain?

Activists like Jess Wade (unsurprisingly a Mail hater) are not remotely representative of the women of Britain, that's why she cuts a very lonely figure on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia hates history, and this is why. History and fact always proves Wikipedia editors are fucking liars.

It always shows Wikipedia editors are driven by their own prejudices, and neither facts or logical argument can ever sway them from it.

The rich fruit of the Mail ban is the enduring proof that nobody cares about Wikipedia. The journalist here, Sarah Rainey, hasn't got a Wikipedia biography. She doesn't need one! Jess Wade can fuck off if she thinks she is "invisible" .

She is invisible only to the old white males of Wikipedia. Her website is her voice.....

I'm a feature writer and interviewer for national newspapers and magazines, as well as a cookbook author, recipe columnist and host of my own foodie chat show.

I have 10 years' experience as a staff feature writer and extensive interviewing, pitching, writing and editing experience for national publications.

....

My work has appeared in: The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, Grazia, The Spectator, The Evening Standard, Metro, MailOnline, The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent, The Sun, Sun Online and The Belfast Telegraph.

I write a weekly recipe column, Three Steps to Delicious, for the Mail and have a Saturday chat show, The Influencers, discussing all things food on Mail Plus.

I edited The Telegraph Book of the Kitchen, How to Jug A Hare, in 2015, and my first cookery book, Three Ingredient Baking, was published by Penguin in 2018.

[Bbb23sucks]

This removal (29 June) has the unfortunate effect of persuading readers of Wikipedia that something like...

[Pearl Bar] is the only lesbian bar in Houston, one of only two in the state of Texas, and fewer than 25 in the United States.

... is just a dumb factoid of interest only to local media (Houston Chronicle) and a South western USA dyke blog. After removing the Mail, those are the only sources for this statement left in the article.

The reality of course is that this coverage exists because the U.S. Republic party's war against non-traditional values is manifesting in curious ways, including the loss of lesbian bars across the nation due to, of all things, loss of insurance coverage because of the widely known dangerous activity of hosting drag shows!?!

Amusingly, the remaining sources Gerard left behind, don't seem all that great at fact checking, and could perhaps learn a thing or two from an award winning national newspaper like the Mail. The dyke blog takes a vague guess that there are only ten such bars in the US, after a bit of Googling one presumes (or consulting Wikipedia maybe?).

The Houston Chronicle undermines its whole reporting angle, the Republican War, by telling readers that the number of lesbian bars nationally is actually rising, from "16 in the nation" in September 2020 to "fewer than 30" as of May 2023. Both reports are by "staff writers". They can't all be in Portland, so what the fuck?

But as well all know, the Daily Mail ban wasn't about comparing the Mail to the reliability of other newspapers (not honestly anyway). It wasn't about empirical data at all. Nor was it about whether Wikipedia should be relying on newspapers at all for this kind of dry but important cultural statistic (unless the reports identify their data sources as credible for such a purpose, which they don't).

This is what makes me laugh about Gerard and once again proves he probably doesn't even read the stuff he is editing.

As a spokesperson or whatever of the WMF, the very last thing Gerard would want, surely, would be for people to think he is hiding or minimising a hot button LGBTQ issue of our times. They would want to know that in situations like this, he would not want to harm Wikipedia's coverage, and so if he deemed the Mail report to be unreliable, he would seek out a different source that showed this was an international news story.

Was his removal without replacement really a mistake though, really? Perhaps not. The very excellent and highly detailed Daily Mail report is typical of the Daily Mail, whose commercial success ensures they can produce more news reporting and to a greater depth than other newspapers.

I haven't looked, but it is a fair bet there probably isn't another UK outlet, least of all a national newspaper, that saw this content as newsworthy. The Mail is probably the only newspaper that has taken this local news / special interest story, and turned it into an international issue.

Gerard would of course be FURIOUS to have seen, if he looked, that this perfectly neutral report totally undermines the common myth the the Mail is a raving hotbed of lunatic right wing nutjobbery, an active and willing participant in the global culture wars.

This is where prejudice comes into play. The existence of this report causes a huge disconnect with Gerard's deeply held world view. He has in his gift the power to alter reality. Poof! The report is gone. Doesn't exist anymore, right?

The Mail is first and foremost, a newpaper. It isn't Fox. It isn't The Guardian. They do do straight up reporting by and large, keeping their opinion to the opinion pages. The Guardian, not so much.

Post-Trump, this report is actually pretty standard fare for the Mail. Even our most right wing outlets, do see the U.S. Republican Party as a bunch of absolute fucking nutjobs.

The right wing in Britain, while not being all the happy about immigration and loss of a sense of control over ones own destiny and prosperity in a globalised world (in common with most Western democracies as they veer right), they aren't reaching for their Bibles or their guns or any of the absolute bullshit you can see on Fox News.

The reason we have nutjobs in our high streets carrying placards about chips in vaccines, is because of Facebook and Fox. And they have flourished because of the bias of Wikipedia, furthering their suspicion that official information itself is in the grip of the left.

Britain has an exemplary record on gay rights and has historic low support for religious, and this is all under a long history of mostly right wing governments, latterly the last thirteen years included.

David Gerard doesn't care for these facts. They see the world only through their prejudice, and they are many years into an effort to reshape Wikipedia to fit it.

Lesbian citizens of Texas could perhaps be helped by knowing they have an ally across the pond in the Mail.

Gerard says no. Wikipedia says no.

The report is a complete and total lie, they say. The Mail only prints what makes money, they say.

Stay in your lane. Stick with our approved sources. Fuel our goals with your pain.

Join the fight!

Neutrality my arse.

[Bbb23sucks]

Two weeks later, and Chips&Dip has quite literally been ignored. Melanie hasn't found the time to give a fuck, and nobody else has even responded.

It's amusing to think how damages are calculated in case like this. As I have argued before, and the learned dipshits at Wikipediocracy seems to not want to even acknowledge as a basic FACT, Section 230 only protects Wikipedia up until the point they are properly notified.

One can argue whether an edit request is a proper notification, but one cannot argue the mountains of evidence that show Wikipedia heavily steers anyone who has an issue with Wikipedia content and has a conflict of interest, and in a very official way, to go the route of the edit request system.

It isn't the way people should go if they want results. For that you must completely ignore the volunteers and contact the Foundation legal department directly. But figuring out how to do that is almost as hard as figuring out how to cancel your Prime subscription.

So, why isn't the mandated route working in this case? There is no excuse really. They will have excuses, but they wouldn't stand up in court. Hence why it would pay a firm like Jones Day to have them tested in court.

Who seriously gives a fuck If Wikipedia's recruitment problem means that their COI edit request system is permanently backlogged with 100+ cases? That sounds like a problem entirely of Wikipedia's own making.

As we know, Wikipedia officially had a chance a while back to strip Bbb23 of any semblance of authority based on his apparent disregard of basic policy and lack of any detectable morals at all. They did not do so. So the Foundation is at least partially culpable for Bbb23's presumably deliberate act of obfuscation here, hampering this specific edit request (because Bbb23 removed the section header, to a casual observer the request appears to have been answered).

If it were me, if I was responsible for millions of dollars of donor money, I don't think I'd be taking even the slightest risk that Chips&Dip isn't who he claims to be and doesn't at least have some merit to his request.

But isn't that rather the flaw with the Wikipedia model? The editors aren't responsible for anything.

Literally nothing at all. There is absolutely nothing about the way Wikipedia is organised that conveys to Wikipedia editors that they have very serious responsibilities.

When you see a highly trusted and experienced Administrator like Drmies breaking basic editorial and behavioural policies with absolutely no repercussions, officially or unofficially, doing it as a routine part of their daily editing with absolutely no mitigating reasons for it (and Holy Fuck, we all remember the gross violations he committed when he was handed the justification of Protect Eric Corbett!?!!), why would you assume being an Wikipedia editor was meant to carry a single iota of responsibility?

[Bbb23sucks]

Neelix was an equally grave and hilarious example of Wikipedia's irresponsible handling of serious issues.

Neelox was clearly mentally ill, the very last thing Wikipedia should have done was subject them to a very public, very brutal humiliation, especially since their real world identity was known.

Quite how people in serious power on Wikipedia get away with showing such outright disgust and venom, when there really isn't anyone else to blame for how it can possibly be that someone like Neelix can survive on Wikipedia so long until a crisis point is reached, baffles me. If you espouse these views on Wikipediocracy these day, you get banned.

Just as an example, and there are many, Neelix was made an Administrator in March 2011, even though there was already this pretty good evidence he was unfit to serve, as recent as April 2010.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... April_2010

Rather incredibly, even though he literally drew attention to it himself in A3, absolutely nobody discusses it.

It's actually quite HILARIOUS to see Wikipediocracy members and Wikipedia Administrators like Boing!, Mason/28Bytes and NewYorkBrad offering support by explicitly saying they saw no red flags and asserting Neelix had great experience and was fully qualified.

Where can these fools be found these days? Being feted and cosetted by Wikipediocracy as if they have something to offer Wikipedia criticism. And as anyone can see, their offering is not made with any real awareness that they are fucking incompetent arseholes who carry great personal responsibility for what an absolute shit show Wikipedia is.

It is nobody else's fault bar every single Administrator and Arbitrator that by 2015, it was inconceivable to all involved in the car crash official responses of this scandal exploding in their faces, that a situation like Neelix had IAR written all over it. Emergency desysop, block and lock, and engage in private over email. As we can see, it would have become quickly apparent Neelix was not where he needs to be, and should never edit Wikipedia ever again.

Nobody on Wikipedia has the moral character to do such a thing. People like Floquenbeam, Beeblebrox and Drmies want people to think they have what it takes, but when shit gets real, they are left wanting, embarrassingly so.

It is nobody else's fault but the powerful of Wikipedia that even though it was mentioned a lot, the core problem with Neelix was largely ignored. This problem being his ability to hide in plain site by having a superficial ability, and an aversion to conflict with the big beasts, meaning he could get away with spectacularly innapprorpriate editing, displaying epic levels of poor judgement at a very fundamental level, all of which made it hardly surprising he went on to do things like mass create inappropriate redirects and make involved blocks.

It has become far easier to desyop, since that is a rather technical matter, and satisfies Wikipedian's need for blood lust.

It has become far easier to restrict certain editing rights, for the same reason.

It is as hard as ever to address a matter of competency in an editor who has superficial skills.

This is why at the conclusion of that complete shit show, INCREDIBLY, Neelix emerged as an editor. Chastened, for sure, but clearly not as much as many might have assumed, precisely because if they had done a proper job, the inevitable conclusion that his lack of recognition and contrition was not mere pride but literal incapacity, the manifestly right conclusion, would have been reached.

The problem was treated as one of loss of trust in an Admin and inappropriate redirects creation, not as a core competency issue. Wikipedia compounded one mistake with another. As they always do.

The inherent weakness of their model is, after all, weakness. In all respects.

Why is this a baked in flaw of Wikipedia? Well, if people started questions like, why does Drmies edit war and why is he such an asshole, they would find themselves realising that his incompetence is as an editor, and so those who offered him their trust to be an Administrator, did Wikipedia a great injustice.

A fatal flaw. An unfixable flaw. Wikipedia already has enough manifestly unfit Administrators to ensure they are a self-replicating self-serving breed.

With people like Drmies in positions of power, it was inevitable that Neelix would be subjected to a horrific ordeal, and for largely the wrong reasons. It couldn't be more obvious that Neelix wasn't a breast fetishist or a cancer troll, but of course, Wikipedia hate mob lapped that shit up. Drmies has no virtues, so when opportunities present to signal that he does, he takes it.

Neelix was crucified publicly and dealt with so inadequately that that there was absolutely no surprise he simply retired and then returned as a SOCK. Who else but Wikipedia gives a straight up literal retard like Davey2010 an actual say in what should happen to a deeply troubled individual like Neelix? If he had any sense of what happened, which is debatable, he would feel aggrieved.

It's actually more than a little annoying that this incident didn't end with Neelix committing suicide, because as tragic as that would have been, a more perfect away of Wikipedia being fatally wounded as the media picked over this incident looking for root causes, and found it to be structurally flawed beyond all plausible fixing, that would have been a great day for society.

Wikipedia is still the Wikipedia of Neelix. It is still quite easy to hide in plain sight. Red flag issues are still missed for years and then handled with incredible irresponsibility. People like Drmies and Boing and NewYorkBrad still embody what passes for the higher standard of Wikipedia editors.

The only change is that Wikipediocracy is now a full and willing participant in deflecting blame away from the root causes of such scandals, because it would be absolutely unbearable to those cult defending bastards that the whole rotten edifice could come crashing down before their eyes.