I haven't written much about Wikipediocracy, nor it's messageboard, for months. My reasons are pretty simple: without a source, especially someone in the "sekret klubhouse" of the administration, I can't write anything worth the reader's time. I have no sources, and I am unwilling to join as "Herbie Hind" or "Uncle Slippyfist" to monitor Wikipediocracy's cast of Wikipedia has-beens, exiles, and basement dwellers. However that alleged quotation by Leon Trotsky, "You may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested in you" comes into to play with Wikipediocracy.
Tippi Hadron reappears
Two years ago we published a list of "banned users", Tippi Hadron was on the list, wanted us to remove her, and we said "no." During that period I had long discussions with Eric Barbour; he gave me some background about her, her husband, etc. The middle of May 2016 rolls around, and on the Wikipedia Sucks! messageboard we have this long thread about Greg Kohs and out of nowhere there's Tippi as a guest poster ranting* about yours truly, using my real name. Where did she get that? Tarantino, last winter, decided to be a turd and gave out my name, a partial email address, and some other handles I use on other websites in a thread on WO-MB. Completely unbidden, he just farted it out there. Why? I have no clue. Beyond that, Tippi told me to kill myself, denigrated my journalistic skills, and generally played the fool, because I think she was loaded or high on something. After a nearly a week of this nonsense she vanished - I'm expecting her to show up in the comments to "doxx" me again and be deleted. Again.
Bruised egos
What this shows to me is that Wikipediocracy hasn't moved very far from Wikipedia; get criticized slightly by myself and E.A. Barbour, and the hatchets come out. Also, that they think they are the one and only source for Wikipedia criticism, and the only group worthy of a forum to rant about Wikipedia - everybody else I guess can use badly-mimeographed newsletters and phone boards to talk about how Wikipedia is imploding. This bizarro snobbishness feeds the unwillingness to criticize Wikipedia from ex-members and the general public, which means that walls that would be kicked down in other situations remain up. Without changes on Wikipediocracy (they are getting too comfortable with Wikipedia, and their board culture seems to be getting more and more insular), it's really not worth talking about for me, and being involved with for the reader.
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* Her point was that, by saying that Tippi Hadron was the wife of HRIP7, that I had exposed her because Andreas Kolbe's name is listed under his avatar on the board, which is a photo of the man. She has never told me how much damage "revealing" that she is married to that person has caused her.
This needed saying.
ReplyDeleteThanks to Strelnikov, Barbour, and Mutineer for all their hard work.
Ha ha...."hard work"? The hard work I did was on a book about Wikipedia. Everything to do with Wikipediocracy eventually came to resemble either a blind accident or a trivial/stupid sideshow. WO served me occasionally when I needed to scrape up bits of info, but most of the time it was just another deranged "wahh I was blocked" whinefest. It seems to be getting WORSE as well.
ReplyDeleteI still think that putting up a public website to criticize Wikipedia is a hopeless task and doomed to failure before it starts. Especially a public forum. Too many crazy, obsessed bastards out there.
Yes but you are involved with one, the board that is attached-but-not-attached-physically to this blog. I always thought that you tried to take the mentality of the intelligence agent, and tried to ferret out sources high and low, so that tolerating the snivelfests of WO-MB was just a side-annoyance of the job.
DeleteLook who's butthurt still? Tippi pwnd you good and hard. Gal was put on this earth to troll. You Sir, otoh, are a lolcow.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you, Tippi.
DeleteYou prove that Wikipedia people have less than a one track mind.
Tippi pwned herself. She entered with somewhat of a decent reputation as a Wikipedia critic, and she left with a quite different one. With me anyway, and I've got zero reason to feel any loyalty to the site admin here, save him allowing me to post on the forum for a few months.
ReplyDeleteTo the other issue though, Wikipediocracy is every bit the private member's club, even more so than Wikipedia. Quite why they think that is the right way to manage a critic site is beyond me, but they have repeatedly insisted they stand by this approach, and will not be changing it for love or money.
I keep waiting to see some indication that it is producing results, but all the signs point to their influence on the outside world, which was never that big in the first place, waning even further.
While they are still watched closely by Wikipedians, it's no longer because they fear who/what they're going to expose next, it's because WO more often than not now simply assists the Wikipedians in cleaning their own house, getting rid of common enemies who are causing trouble if necessary.
If readers have dirt to dish on Wikipedia, Wikipediocracy is no longer the place to go. Far better results can be obtained by going directly to people in the outside world who have a decent track record of publishing critical works, and who cannot be so easily influenced by those on Wikipedia who inevitably attempt to trash the message/messenger.
It's no coincidence that their blog posts these days are often behind the curve, and even then are being rushed out so quickly that they contain no real analysis. It's not the sort of in depth context you would expect to see from the supposed Wikipedia investigators. It's no wonder that the author's don't even wish to attach their forum names to these rush jobs, let alone their real names.
...............
These days, on their forum they're not so much investigating Wikipedia's dark corners, as having parallel discussions as those had on Wikipedia on its well known faults and how to fix it. Little to nothing is said on serious issues, like why they can't protect users from child predators, or why they drive users to suicidal thoughts.
ReplyDeleteAnd actually, they're not all that interested in the complaints of people recently screwed over by Wikipedia in mundane ways, they consider any kind of discussion of that to be a waste of their time. Which it largely is, but properly managed, it can keep the supply of decent critics up and so keep the site fresh and active.
When was the last time you noticed a new critic with real skills emerge on Wikipediocracy? I've not seen one in months. It's just the same few faces saying the same old shit. It's not hard to see why - most newcomers to Wikipediocracy are usually either ignored, or replied to by some Wikipedia addicted moron who just spouts long debunked Wikipedia propaganda at them like they're idiots.
Worse, they have even adopted that fake Wikipedia practice of "welcoming" people without actually doing anything else besides. Chances are, their next encounter with a Wikipediocrat is negative, or nasty, or just a complete waste of their time/energy/soul. Just like how it goes down on Wikipedia. Except at least on Wikipedia Jimbo isn't chiming in to discussions just to pick people up on their grammer.
And ironically, most of the really effective disenchanted Wikipedians who used to frequent the place are now choosing to take their criticism in house rather than avail themselves of Wikipidiocracy's supposedly independent platform. Perhaps they figured out that it's not really all that independent after all? Or that the place offered them no advantage, now nobody in the real world is watching anymore?
Such is the magnitude of their failings, such is the size of their sellout, that all they have left now real alternatives like this place are on the scene is to pretend they've never been healthier, and jealously protect their status as the only show in town. Ironically, even Tippi tried to feed us this bullshit, and she's banned from there because Greg is such a massive douche. She really must have been as high as a kite.
The Dark Knight (forum member).
Wikipediocracy re-banned Lightbreather.
ReplyDeleteCould Tippi be on Wikipediocracy with a different name? She was never banned according to Greg.