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