The Aftermath

We need to mention some things that happened after I ran "FLOP", along with some things left unwritten from the Scientology posts.

Wikipediocracy Messageboard not Happy with Eric Barbour

Almost immediately after "FLOP: Why Wikipedia Criticism Will Always be a Waste of Time", there was a thread on Wikipediocracy's messageboard, which as of October 2nd, you can only reach though a Google cache because they hid it. Some comments:

Zironic: That entire blog is a weird incoherent mess that never seems to actually make any sort of point.

Casliber: Stream-of-consciousness speech can be pure and special sometimes[.]

The Garbage Scow: I'm not here very much. Why was Eric kicked off WO? What have I missed?

Greybeard: It was discovered that Eric was leaking information that he had promised to keep private to various outside sources, including Encyclopedia Dramatica and others. This made the people who had entrusted us with that information unhappy. As a result, Eric was asked to step down as a Moderator here, though he was not, and is not banned, blocked, or anything other than a member in good standing. Eric made substantial positive contributions to this site and whatever he says or does, those contributions remain, and he is welcome to restart his participation.

Over the years we've had quite a number of Wikipedia critics go off the rails in various ways, first on WR, and now here. I won't name names, but one can see that in the same way Wikipedia attracts a certain number and types of borderline personalities, so does criticism of it. In this, I suppose, I probably agree with Eric. What Eric would not agree with is that he is one of them. We could see it happening, and it was somewhat predictable that when caught in the duplicity noted above, Eric lashed out against us in shame and anger.

Eric has never had a cogent point to his Wikipedia-criticism-criticism, other than "they don't listen to me enough"! He's desperate for attention and validation of his views, and very thin-skinned about disagreement with them. It is this that makes it hard to be his ally, even when one mostly agrees with him.

thekohser: Greybeard is welcome to his own opinions of Eric's intent when re-publishing information that was thought of by everyone else as confidential, but I still maintain that what Eric did was not maliciously deliberate in any way in his mind; rather, it was an act of inadvertent carelessness.

Parabola: It was extremely tiring to finish reading it while my hand involuntarily kept making the jerk-off motion, but it was too funny to stop. Probably not in the way he intended, though.

Hex: Any enjoyment I had from Eric's posts has just been outweighed by reading "...Heebs (and more Heebs), transsexuals...". If that's what's been under the surface the whole time, I'm glad he's gone.

Zoloft: To be fair to Eric, his narrative is often 'set fire to everything, it all sucks.' For a better look at his style, in a private room far away from family and co-workers, peruse: Shit Planet

Tarantino: Wikihell is undoubtedly Eric's work, also.

Auggie: There are two inaccuracies in his coverage of Encyc, though I do appreciate the attention of course.

1) I am not banned from Wikipedia, nor do I have a blocked account.

2) Encyc was not a "fork" of Wikipedia in the commonly understood sense of starting with a copy of the database. Encyc was built from the ground up.

As for whether you did the right thing getting rid of your antisemitic, misogynistic, unreliable, game-playing, hate-speech spewing embarrassment, the answer is yes.

Tarantino ended the cached version of the thread by accusing Barbour of reusing a joke he supposedly posted to Encyclopaedia Dramatica under the moniker Lavrenti Beria (Jr.), then claimed he would never work with Barbour again. I have no idea if the Beria thing is true or not.

It wasn't all negative; The Devil's Advocate (now banned) understood the point, as did Randy from Boise and MMAR.

In a private email, Mr. Barbour took exception to Auggie's claims. He pointed out the account AuggiePaoli, which had undergone a sockpuppet investigation. Not only was AuggiePaoli banned, but so was RockFanUK, IamVince, and Lily4613 as sockpuppets of AuggiePaoli. Interestingly, the clerk in that case was Rschen7754; I know that guy is actually Roy S. Chen, formerly of the University of California at San Diego, who has since vanished into a basement somewhere. As for "Encyc", he pointed out that it had been heavily edited by banned Wikipedians like Proabivouac (Timothy Usher) and Ottava, but that proof was being deleted by Auggie because the site had also been used to coordinate Wikipedia editwars. He also stated that he thought Tarantino was behind "Wiki-HELL."

Scientology

I do have a connection to the Valerie Aurora story; one of her detractors is Barbara Graham, aka Xenubarb on Disqus and the Ex-Scientologist Message Board. I have had written communications with this person on ESMB and Disqus; in 2008, before I ran across Xenubarb, Graham (who is one of Keith Henson's friends) got Aurora's university to take down her webpage, including all the child-molestation allegations. I have never met any of the people I wrote about, either in the Scientology or LaRouche movement posts.

 I should add that I found L. Ron. Hubbard's 1970 list of "squirrel groups" hilarious because this was a man who had told his followers that they were all fallen gods, and then he got unhappy that some of them were forward-thinking enough to leave and form their own groups. That has to be the mark of the fake guru, that they are unwilling to let people take their ideas and run with them.