[WikiEN-l] Featured editors?

[Guy Chapman aka JzG]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 06:30:21 -0500, "Alec Conroy"
<alecmconroy at gmail.com> wrote:

>Point being--  in your  response to Dan T, you didn't address his
>points, you just harped on his affiliations, and (presumably falsely)
>claimed he was affiliated with Awbry.  Ya shouldn't have, and more
>importantly, you shouldn't in the future, end of story.

No, what happened was:

* A self-admitted sockpuppet posted an essay on a subject Awbrey
obsessed about as part of his POV-pushing campaign, and on which
several tenacious POV-pushers have also spoken, because after all if
we'd only recognise their "expertise" instead of those pesky
reliable sources, the world would be put to rights.

* I posted a light-hearted "oh noes" comment and went off to
investigate.

* Dan reckons that this is evidence that Wikipedia is fundamentally
flawed.

* I don't.

I think it's about as simple as that.  Dan has said many times that
he thinks people on WR make valid points - and they might, in the
way a stopped clock is right twice a day - but I have spent a lot of
time tracking down the ban-evading sockpuppets of these people,
trying to undo the effects of their harassment and abuse, and
generally cleaning up the sewage they leave behind.  

I think users that stand with one foot in the sewer will, as a
result, leave shitty footmarks on Wikipedia.  They should get their
foot out of the sewer, at least until the next rainstorm cleans it
out.  

In the case of Awbrey, the reason he was banned was because whatever
he said, no matter how superficially reasonable, came down to "and
this is why you should accept my original research rather than what
the sources say".  He was given months and months to reform or learn
to play nice, and he obdurately refused to do so.  After he was
banned he carried on posting here in the same style until he was
banned from here as well.

So in this case, as with Jonathan Barber (JB196), if it genuinely is
Awbrey then long experience shows that the banhammer is the right
approach.  Revert, block, ignore.

This is probably not, as it turns out, Awbrey.  It is some other
sockmaster.  I await developments.  But I do have a suggestion for
whoever it is: they should stand up and be counted.  It is very very
hard to take at face value the special pleading of someone whose
past history we cannot evaluate.  The increasing use of
single-purpose sockpuppet accounts to stir controversy is something
that really needs to stop.

I think that's probably more than enough on this subject.

Guy (JzG)
-- 
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG