I did not edit much Wikipedia lately because of lack of time, but I noticed a worrying trend:
A couple of days ago I got another harassing phone call from an apparently delusional person (complete with threats of lawsuit and vague threats of physical violence) over some older AfD and today, on another AfD I started, someone posted stuff like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion%...
Is there any psychologist here which can explain why such people are attracted to wikipedia?
Or perhaps, are there really that many people like that in the general population?
On 13/05/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Is there any psychologist here which can explain why such people are attracted to wikipedia?
[[Crank (person)]] used to have a very good Bruce Sterling quote about this:
"And even the emoticon doesn't help much in one's halting interaction with the occasional online stranger who is, in fact, gravely sociopathic. Online communication can wonderfully liberate the tender soul of some well-meaning personage who, for whatever reason, is physically uncharismatic. Unfortunately, online communication also fertilizes the eccentricities of hopeless cranks, who at last find themselves in firm possession of a wondrous soapbox that the Trilateral Commission and the Men In Black had previously denied them."
- d.
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
Is there any psychologist here which can explain why such people are attracted to wikipedia?
Is there some way we can report users we know or suspect may harm themselves or others in some way in confidence to someone with appropriate qualifications in this area?
I'm a bit concerned about a user who is currently opposing me. His user page looks, well, crazy right now.
I have already let the AMA team know by email a while ago and also an admin but I'm not sure what happened from there since responses dried up.
Regards, BKSimonB
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On 5/13/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Or perhaps, are there really that many people like that in the general population?
Yes, but they appear in public less often. Cranks are under-represented in the real world.
On 5/13/07, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/13/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
Yes, but they appear in public less often. Cranks are under-represented in the real world.
I sometimes think that there are more cranks/trolls/kooks in meatspace then we think. It's just that the big "I" gives these people the perfect opportunity to be dicks without the risk of someone they pissed off showing up at their door with a baseball bat with their name on it. otherwise they would be dicks in real life.
On 5/13/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AArticles_for_deletion%...
Is there any psychologist here which can explain why such people are attracted to wikipedia?
This may not be a real nut. There seems to be a dedicated posse that's hell bent on keeping [[wipipedia]] on Wikipedia at all costs, policy be damned. This may go as far as "creative harassment" of anybody who dares nominate their pet article. Same may be true for the other noms you mentioned. Maybe their hope is that if people fear real life actions from "nut cases", then nobody will dare nominate their pet articles for deletion.
Or perhaps, are there really that many people like that in the general population?
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I hardly think that's fair. I voted to keep it myself, as did some even more respectable editors. Individuals have their individual reasons, & they are given on the AfD page. That the guy who added the junk has made it less likely that it will be kept is in my view unfortunate. But I do not say he is part of any hypothetical group devoted to indirectly discrediting the article. -- David Goodman
This may not be a real nut. There seems to be a dedicated posse that's hell bent on keeping [[wipipedia]] on Wikipedia at all costs, policy be damned. This may go as far as "creative harassment" of anybody who dares nominate their pet article. Same may be true for the other noms you mentioned. Maybe their hope is that if people fear real life actions from "nut cases", then nobody will dare nominate their pet articles for deletion.
Checkuser showed that the same IP, and probably the same user, was engaged in other trolling, including impersonating a WMF employee.
-Matt
Tuesday, May 15, 2007, 9:08:39 AM, David wrote:
This may not be a real nut. There seems to be a dedicated posse that's hell bent on keeping [[wipipedia]] on Wikipedia at all costs, policy be damned. This may go as far as "creative harassment" <snip>
I hardly think that's fair. I voted to keep it myself, as did some even more respectable editors. Individuals have their individual reasons, & they are given on the AfD page. That the guy who added the junk has made it less likely that it will be kept is in my view unfortunate. But I do not say he is part of any hypothetical group devoted to indirectly discrediting the article. -- David Goodman
I doubt that [[Wipipedia]] will be kept. It's far less notable than GNAA and its has absolutely no reliable third party sources. We know how GNAA ended up...
I'm not saying that Wipipedia is not useful for its readers, but so are millions of other sites. Being a wiki and having a dozen or so Wikipedians who edit that wiki as well doesn't mean we must have an article.
I don't believe in exceptions of the policies just to please a group of editors. No matter how determined is a group of Wikipedians to keep an article, eventually, the policy will prevail.
On 5/15/07, Bogdan Giusca liste@dapyx.com wrote:
I doubt that [[Wipipedia]] will be kept. It's far less notable than GNAA and its has absolutely no reliable third party sources. We know how GNAA ended up...
I dunno, it's survived several AFDs already just as GNAA did. It took a special AFD where only editors with X number of edits (100 I think) were allowed to "vote" to get a clean close. If we don't get a clean close on the Wipipedia AFD, it might be necessary to do that again.
By "clean close" I mean a clear "KEEP" or "DELETE" without sockpuppets, posses, or DRV overturns.