On 11/29/07, jayjg <jayjg99(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I suppose you're technically correct. Rather,
these sockpuppets shout
"REVERT BLATANT CENSORSHIP"
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Black_%28professor%29&…
in their edit summaries, then advertise their activities on Wikipedia
Review in the hopes it will draw a crowd.
Actually, it's "Irony Time!" (cue cheesy game show music)
Yes, that's right! I knew nothing about this case until you brought it
up! And youy know, it's rather funny, because this is a perfect
repetition of the TNH case, modulo Jon Aubrey and another unidentified
BADUSER. Robert Black dropped one of the Forbidden Identifications
into his blog, based on a month-old post somewhere else, which if we
are feeling conspiratorial can be assumed to have been somehow
prompted by the Evil WR-ites. The next day, someone unidentified (and
subsequently banned as a "sockpuppet" (meaning really a user of
multiple identities)) creates a user and BADSITES the links to the
blog that were already there. Jon Aubrey pops in, using an account he
had created over a month earlier, to revert (and make a bunch of other
minor edits along the way). At that the BADSITES furor was off and
running.
The curious thing is that (a) the original reverter against Jon Aubrey
was quite unconcerned with the fact that the original erasure was
blatantly single purpose as well. After another BADSITES supporter got
in a few licks, the slack was taken up by yet another (admitted) sock
of someone else who got banned for that. In the end, the conclusion
was practically foreordained: modulo a few positive edits along the
way, Black's involvement in the Lockerbie matter dictated that the
blog reference stayed, and the mention of the blog obviated giving its
URL.
I haven't looked for reference to this on WR, but if the admins who
got involved had simply put the thing back the way it started and
protected it while they investigated, the whole thing would have blown
over quickly with even less fuss (not that there was much). Instead,
they took advantage of Jon Aubrey's presence to push BADSITES
themselves, backing off again when someone took up the cause for them.
The thing seems to have drawn a crowd of one, and I don't see anything
wrong with his edits. If WR was responsible for alerting him, then to
that degree they performed a service towards Wikipedia.