[WikiEN-l] Brandt, bios, and other thoughts

[Brock Weller]

On 4/20/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/20/07, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The costs of trying to keep the article around, on the other hand, are
> > immediate and substantial.  Forget, even, the massive amounts of time
> > being wasted on this by everyone involved, the bad press we've
> > received, and all the other tangential problems; the most dramatic
> > loss to Wikipedia are the many productive editors that have left the
> > project as consequences of this affair.  How many editors are we
> > willing to sacrifice to keep the article?  A dozen?  A hundred?  All
> > of them?
> >
> > Some people may consider it to be a victory on our part to have
> > retained the article in the face of such determined opposition; if it
> > is, it's merely a Pyrrhic one.
> >
> Thank you for this injection of common sense.
>
> We should block Brandt, delete his bio, and wash our hands of the
> whole affair. I suggested this to Jimbo in October 2005, although we
> agreed at the time to delete the bio and not block Brandt. The block
> came later, from others, because of his behavior.
>
> The bio was duly deleted, and it would likely have stayed that way had
> Brandt not posted an open letter to Jimbo  (before deletion, I
> believe). This got some bloggers interested in it, and one of them,
> User:Philwiki, recreated the article.
>
> Tony Sidaway said earlier that Jimbo's decision to unblock could be
> seen as pragmatic, but it's the opposite, because it keeps Brandt
> around our necks. The pragmatic option is to get rid of the only
> legitimate reason Brandt has to be interested in Wikipedia. Delete the
> bio and have done with it.
>
> Sarah
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
The pragmatic thing is what Jimbo has done. Brandt has managed to defeat us
the only way anyone can, by turning our guns around and getting us to shoot
ourselves in the face. We are an open community. The best way for someone to
get another to stop attacking an open community is to get that person to see
themselves as part of it. Brandt posted information about me. Minions of his
heckled and harassed me off-wiki. In a minor issue, he also violated the CC
liscense with my picture on his site and no liscense link, which is a jab at
open-ness in general.

Brandt is an amazing editor when he participates.

No one can deny that, the man has amazing patience and thouroughness. He can
scan through hundreds, thousands of articles a day with a sharp, critical
mind and catch things we dont normally think about. He benefits the project
when he participates.

He stops harassing wikipedians, the project gets a very seasoned, sharp mind
on its team, and we all learn something about forgiveness, respect and
trust.

It's all win-win if we stop tearing each other apart.

-- 
-Brock