I'm with George here - if the big bad wolf in this whole scenario is
Gary Weiss and a conflict of interest, then why is anyone scared? The
wolf has no teeth. CHL is not the only one writing that "This is
outrageous! Outrageous, I say!" but I don't see it. People are falling
victim to the dangers of a narrow perspective.
Let me line it out, in a different way than George did and with
somewhat less skill:
If: Mantanmoreland is Samiharris
And if: Mantanmoreland/Samiharris is Gary Weiss
Then: There is some minor sockpuppet abuse related to deletion and
content discussions.
But: This has had no appreciable effect on any actual content.
And: The content in question is an infinitesimal portion of the total
content on Wikipedia.
And: Wikipedia is a small portion of the total content on the Internet.
And: The Internet is a portion only of the total informational content
available to most users who have access to it.
So, where is the justification for outrage here? Easy - there is none.
The 'problem' springs from folks who are righteously offended by the
transgression against our bureaucracy, but both the transgression and
the bureaucracy are of little importance next to the point - the
published content. Remember that we are real people, generally adults,
who live in the real world. Sometimes we get caught up in our
processes and view events in our little world as if they had
significance in the wider world - but they don't. Only the product has
significance in the real world.
Having said that! Focusing on the actual evidence here - I'm not a
mathematician or an expert in statistical analysis, and few of the
folks working on this analytical project are either. However, it is
clear to me that the sample suffers from a number of mathematical
problems - mostly relating to its size and selection, and the
significance attached to the results. If you want to make a
comprehensive declaration based on this type of analysis, you need a
much more robust set of data to work with and a much more serious
approach to mining it for significant data points.
Nathan