Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The lawsuit here is not a matter of having been so unfortunate as to be caught driving drunk pure and simple. The issues relate to how Langan presents himself to the world in relation to those issues and organizations which make him encyclopedic and/or notable. The references to the judgements may very well havew come from his opponents in the case, but that is not the same as systematically sifting through court records to find dirt on the guy
Here is the problem: Langan and his wife have edited Wikipedia disruptively and have been sanctioned for it by ArbCom, they are also experienced in forum shopping. The Mega Society people have also edited Wikipedia disruptively, and have expended considerable energy in trying to promote their society. They have also used Wikipedia to pursue their vendetta against Langan - and probably vice-versa, though I have not seen that myself.
That means that every addition and every removal brings at least the suspicion of outside influence by POV-pushers. I am very much with the "plague on both their houses" camp on this one.
The lawsuit appears important only to the two parties, nobody else. And the presentation here has all the hallmarks of being the work of the Mega Society guys, so it's very easy to see why it would be removed.
However... it was not added by them, it was added by FeloniousMonk. Felonious is one of the good guys and I generally agree with him. I think he may have a slight tendency to resist removal of sourced controversy (and this *was* sourced, as we all know) because he does not like Wikipedia being used as a publisher of hagiography. There was an arbitration case relating to WebEx and Min Zhu where we crossed swords over this, but in the end his behaviour was so reasonable that I can't bring myself to criticise him for it :-)
Ultimately, I think we should wait until we have some external sources *for the importance of the case*. As it stands, it looks to me as if only Langan, the Mega Society pushers and a few Wikipedia editors actually give a damn about it. And that says "undue weight" to me.
Thank you for the perspective on this. It would seem then that when Jimbo gets an earful from one side of such a dispute, he is easily pushed into an unintentional POV position. His drive-by editing ends up tipping the argument in favour of one side rather then letting the discussion take its natural course. In situations like this one he would do better to privately seek out the advice of key trusted users before taking unilateral action.
The other problem here is that there is no article on Mega Society while there do appear to be articles on a significant number of other high-IQ societies as well as the article on Langan. Viewed together this tends to weigh the curent POV heavily in favour of Langan. It would also seem that the lawsuits would be more notable in a Mega Society article since it is about the use of their own name.
I probably would never have known about this dispute if it had not come to this mailing list because of Jimbo's action. At this stage Langan's disruption is more evident to me than Mega Society's, but I believe you when you say they have both done their share.
It is reasonable to call down a plague on both houses. These disputes and bickering on the far right tail of the IQ bell curve lend credence to the premise that the two tails of that curve eventually converge. :-)
Ec