Though he was only on Wikipedia for the month of July, 2004 as Marlais (aka Jon Schillaci), Wikipedia has been desperate to obfuscate that Schillaci edited the online encyclopedia because he was doing so while hiding from the US government in a small village in Michoacán, Mexico. He was running from a trial, his second time in court being accused of child molestation, and he was in the middle of a nearly nine year dissapearing act.
Before Wikipedia
Jon Savarino Schillaci (b. 1971) was a computer specialist, allegedly had a master's degree in the humanities and speaks Spanish, French, and German (fluency in each unknown). In 1989 he and another man had sex in Schillaci's home with twin 11-year-old boys to whom they had shown child pornography. As the disgusting icing on the cake, Schillaci videotaped the sex, then tried to sell the tape to a porno bookstore for five hundred dollars. They turned him in, and after a quick trial in 1990 he was sentenced to ten years. He was nineteen years old. Jon Schillaci left prison in 1999, and was "adopted" by a family in Deerfield, New Hampshire. They knew about his crime, but they thought he had reformed, and they were willing to let the twenty-eight year old live in their house. Big mistake; he molested their five-year-old son while giving him piano lessons in October 1999. To top that, the family computer was packed with images of child pornography. Jon Schillaci fled the country to avoid appearing in court, and a warrant was made for his arrest.
Online in Mexico
He was a hero to the online "boylover" community; when he made it down to San José de Garcia in the central Mexican estado (state) of Michoacán de Ocampo, they sent him money and "moral" support. He became the administrator of BoyChat, a pedophile hangout, in 2003; his handle was Dylan Thomas, a fact that makes me throw up a little in my mouth. He also allegedly ran an Internet radio show under that name. We have no information on what Schillaci did for money in Mexico, probably it was low-key and menial. He did use assumed names like "Jon Willis" and "Christopher Keegan", among others. In the summer of 2004 he became Marlais on Wikipedia but he first edited under the IPs 201.135.118.109 and 201.135.118.251; their edit histories are here and there. All of it revolved around pedophila and coming up with in-Wikipedia justifications for pedophile behavior. During that month in 2004, Schillaci as Marlais had a talkpage discussion on a "boylover"article with noted pedophile creeps Zanthalon and Moon light shadow.
Der Untergang
During all of his time in Mexico as he moved south to his final digs in San José de Garcia he was having sex with male children, but he was smart enough this time to not film it. He did, however, show up for an ABC News taping on a Michoacán beach as Dylan Thomas to comment on the then-upcoming 2005 Michael Jackson trial; ABC did not use the footage. In 2007 the FBI made Schillaci one of the Ten Most Wanted; a year later he was finally nailed by FBI agents and Mexican Federales in San José de Garcia. The evil-exposed.com website (now defunct) and Perverted-Justice group had begun hunting him in 2007 and they quickly tracked him down, giving the FBI their information. After a quick trial, Marlais-Dylan Thomas was once again behind bars, this time for the bulk of his life, and even if he is paroled in the 2020s he will be on a watchlist the rest of his mortal existence.
Some creepy sentiments Dylan Thomas made on BoyChat in 2008:
The fact of the matter is, we hold all the cards. We (speaking on the broad scale) have sex with their children. And when they arrest us and put us in jail, a zillion more of us are still having sex with their children. And when they get us in therapy and "cure" us and teach us how not to "offend," a zillion more of us still slip through the cracks and still have sex with their children.
And there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
For every pedophile they arrest and put in jail, ten more are fucking their children.
I love it when the bloggers say, "They want us to believe they're harmless, but look, so-and-so got arrested!" That just shows how clueless they are. We are not harmless. We never claim to be harmless. That's their own wishful thinking. The truth is, they will never be rid of us. Their children will never be "safe" (as they define "safe"). We are the most dangerous people in the world, and there isn't a damned thing they can do about it.
When the mental health professionals come to me asking for my help in dealing with society's problem, I will be at their disposal. But when they talk about trying to solve the "pedophile" problem, my only message is this: You can't. You've already lost. Ask Ernie Allen and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children: more of us are having sex with your kids than ever before. All your money, all your laws, all your daytime talk shows, and all your therapy: worthless. There are more of us than ever; you're fighting a hydra. Cut off one head and two more spring up in its place.
Wikipedia's Stonewalling
The website wants nothing to do with Jon Savarino Schillaci; members were far more concerned with the non-question of whether or not he considered himself gay than telling the truth about Marlais, who was finally blocked in 2009 by John Vandenberg. There is no mention of Schillaci-as-Marlais in the article on him, and if I didn't have the information I was provided I would not know about the connection at all, it is hidden that well. By doing this they have become his accomplice.
Marlais at trial in 2008.
"Schillaci's trail of molestation through Mexico will likely and unfortunately, never be accounted for fully." - Statement by Perverted-Justice
Monday, November 30, 2015
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Stuff That Has Nothing to do With Wikipedia: "China Uncensored" and "Russia!" magazine
This is one I've wanted to do for a long time....
China Uncensored
This one has something to do with Wikipedia, but only tangentially. China Uncensored is a YouTube series run by a Sinophile named Chris Chappell who may-or-may-not be fluent in Mandarin aka "Standard Chinese" (Pǔtōnghuà). His shtik is that he plays this Stephen Colbert-like anchorman who talks about mainland Chinese news stories, most of whom paint the Chinese Communist Party in a bad light. The only problem is that Chappell is aligned in a "open secret" way with New Tang Dynasty Television, which is the satellite network run by Falun Gong practitioners, but you would not know it from the "about us" page of the website.
Chris Chappell and the NDT.tv "bug" that came and went from his videos.
And what is "Falun Gong"? That's complicated; it's a form of "qigong" (pronounced "chee gung") exercises (think Tai Chi but with more meditating) founded by a man named Li Hongzhi in the early 1990s during a post-Tienanmen Square Massacre "back to the roots" national fad. Another name for it is "Falun Dafa". The CCP is not happy about the growth of folksy religions after they opened up the country in the 1980s, so they have banned Falun Gong. My problem with all of this is that Chappell is not open about his links to NTD.tv on YouTube, nor whether or not he is a Falun Gong user or in it to talk about the "house Christians" (Chinese Protestants or Catholics who won't attend the State-approved churches, so they have illegal masses/services in their homes.) We don't know, and nobody in the media is willing to talk to Chappell, even though China Uncensored has been on YouTube for three years and counting. The other thing that bugs us is that Chris uses The Epoch Times as a heavy source, and that newspaper was founded by the same group of people who founded New Tang Dynasty Television: Chinese-Americans who may or may not be Falun Gong practitioners. Here is Chris Chappell spending most of a video talking to an Epoch Times reporter about how China is running a secret economic war against America. Did I mention they also run a dance troupe? The Yelp reviews are fascinating. Something should be said about the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, the "anonymously written" anti-Communist screed that appeared in 2004; it has become the bulwark and lodestone of the Falun Gong press movement, to copy the sort of anti-Communist ranting of the John Birch Society and Christian Anti-Communist Crusade. Chris Chappell uses comedy to get that message across, and it works, mostly.
The Wikipedia element only has to do with The Epoch Times and NTD.tv; they have SPAs dumping in pro-Falun Gong material and there is a lot of infighting. User OhConfucius had this to say about the situation last year: Falun Gong does not exist in a vacuum, as its leadership is at loggerheads with the PRC regime. Although Falun Gong claim the moral high ground, neither side has the gospel truth on its side although both claim it. FLG is certainly more of the victim in this game, but you can expect a violent reaction if you poke a wild animal enough times. Disliking both in equal measure, I edit without pro-Falun Gong nor pro-PRC government agenda....The Falun Gong have a formidable propaganda machine in New York under Gail Rachlin which grew out of the same Cultural Revolution mindset as the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China, otherwise known as the "Propaganda Department". In a small way, I'm happy to say Rachlin's operation now qualitatively surpasses the regime's – it's much more reactive, and imaginative on the attack, but it's still paranoid and highly sensitive to criticism, like its counterpart. Operating in exile [NTD.tv and The Epoch Times are based in New York City, as is China Uncensored] against a regime that is as brutal as it is opaque, there are no party lines to follow. Shen Yun becomes the vanguard, and propaganda gets dressed up deceptively as art. Li Hongzhi ordered followers to pick fights with the regime while he himself is safely in the US. His footsoldiers irritate the monster and add to their statistics. Ever imaginative, Falun Gong rides on the PRC's abysmal human rights record, their propaganda machine, in addition to hiding behind glossy silky dance performances, generates and spreads stories of Nazi-like atrocities that only a brutal totalitarian regime could conceivably commit. Like all smears, plausibility is key; never let the lack of evidence get into the way of a good story. One anonymous informant hiding behind dark glasses and waiting political asylum, without documentary or photographic proof.....Pointing to their motto but being cagey about the true and kooky nature of some of their teachings, Falun Gong hold themselves up as virtuous; anyone who dares to utter any criticism is labelled "evil". Their declared primary objective is the overthrow of the Communist Party of China – as can be seen from any issue of Epoch Times. Falun Gong hold themselves up as champions of human rights but actually only care about themselves; they are wary of other human rights defenders who are not Falun Gong. Anyone who dares to criticise them is thus a human rights abuser. Their proselytism is a defining trait, and they seek to discredit anyone who is not totally in support of them. Although the term "enemy" is usually reserved for the any observer who isn't completely on board is considered "the enemy" or a collaborator. They discredited cult-buster Rick Ross, vilified the sceptics He Zuoxiu and Sima Nan; poured scorn over the work of respectable academics like Margaret Singer, Heather Kavan by tarring with guilt by association to the regime. Initially welcoming him, they have scorned Harry Wu – probably the world's foremost authority on Chinese forced labour camps – since he declared that he found no evidence of the organ harvesting allegations. They spread rumours about Wu turning collaborator after his swift release from PRC arrest. Falun Gong editors quote extensively from texts written by "investigative journalist" Danny Schechter, whose discourse concerning Falun Gong is disconcertingly similar in tone and content to Falun Gong propaganda. Another favourite is Ethan Gutman, who writes for the neo-conservative Weekly Standard, and whose storyline repeating FLG allegations of live organ harvesting on FLG practitioners marries well with the journal's US-centric/anti-PRC agenda and rhetoric. Wikipedian Colipon discusses the issue of Falun Gong members editing Wikipedia here; the short version is that Wikipedia has seen waves of SPAs (single-purpose accounts) run by Falun Gong members trying to control Falun Gong articles since 2004; they were chased off twice, but now control the articles either because nobody gives a damn anymore or there are not enough people left smart enough/thick-skinned enough to deal with the problem.
David Owenby wrote a good book on the issue over a decade ago, Falun Gong and the Future of China; seek it out if you want to know how nutty they truly get.
Award given to people willing to call the Chief of Daqing City Police to release the mother-in-law of
Ben Hedges, host of the You Tube show "Lao Wai Kan Zhongguo" (A Foreigner's View of China.)
Russia! magazine
This one is less complicated; Russia! magazine is a website about the largest country on Earth that originally was kind of like Soviet Life during the perestroika period or it's successor Russian Life: focused on what was going on within the country while also discussing culture, art, etc. The only problem was that new websites began emerging in the last decade or so that did Russia!'s job better (Russia Beyond the Headlines, The Russian Reader, KinoKultura, etc.) so it switched over to more and more of an economic/political magazine, and after the Crimea-Donbass War started, it moved over to sounding more like a narrowly-focused defense issues blog. That written, I will never sass Jim Kovpak for going into the Ukrainian war zone to report on how it is (surreal, bombed out, and shitty for the elderly), my problem is with Mark Adomanis, who unlike Kovpak, does not live in Russia; he reminds me of Michael McFaul, the American Ambassador to Russia. He once wrote a column titled "Revenge of the Losers" slamming Soviet refrigerators and Igor Strelkov (the former insurgent leader of Novorossiya), a piece which has since vanished. If they could find a Russian writer who is as pro-markets as Adomanis without being as annoying, Russia! would probably drop-kick him to the curb.....not that it matters as he also writes for Forbes. If I had to pay for Russia! as a physical publication, I would rather read back issues in a college library. Rodina deserves better.
China Uncensored
This one has something to do with Wikipedia, but only tangentially. China Uncensored is a YouTube series run by a Sinophile named Chris Chappell who may-or-may-not be fluent in Mandarin aka "Standard Chinese" (Pǔtōnghuà). His shtik is that he plays this Stephen Colbert-like anchorman who talks about mainland Chinese news stories, most of whom paint the Chinese Communist Party in a bad light. The only problem is that Chappell is aligned in a "open secret" way with New Tang Dynasty Television, which is the satellite network run by Falun Gong practitioners, but you would not know it from the "about us" page of the website.
Chris Chappell and the NDT.tv "bug" that came and went from his videos.
And what is "Falun Gong"? That's complicated; it's a form of "qigong" (pronounced "chee gung") exercises (think Tai Chi but with more meditating) founded by a man named Li Hongzhi in the early 1990s during a post-Tienanmen Square Massacre "back to the roots" national fad. Another name for it is "Falun Dafa". The CCP is not happy about the growth of folksy religions after they opened up the country in the 1980s, so they have banned Falun Gong. My problem with all of this is that Chappell is not open about his links to NTD.tv on YouTube, nor whether or not he is a Falun Gong user or in it to talk about the "house Christians" (Chinese Protestants or Catholics who won't attend the State-approved churches, so they have illegal masses/services in their homes.) We don't know, and nobody in the media is willing to talk to Chappell, even though China Uncensored has been on YouTube for three years and counting. The other thing that bugs us is that Chris uses The Epoch Times as a heavy source, and that newspaper was founded by the same group of people who founded New Tang Dynasty Television: Chinese-Americans who may or may not be Falun Gong practitioners. Here is Chris Chappell spending most of a video talking to an Epoch Times reporter about how China is running a secret economic war against America. Did I mention they also run a dance troupe? The Yelp reviews are fascinating. Something should be said about the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, the "anonymously written" anti-Communist screed that appeared in 2004; it has become the bulwark and lodestone of the Falun Gong press movement, to copy the sort of anti-Communist ranting of the John Birch Society and Christian Anti-Communist Crusade. Chris Chappell uses comedy to get that message across, and it works, mostly.
The Wikipedia element only has to do with The Epoch Times and NTD.tv; they have SPAs dumping in pro-Falun Gong material and there is a lot of infighting. User OhConfucius had this to say about the situation last year: Falun Gong does not exist in a vacuum, as its leadership is at loggerheads with the PRC regime. Although Falun Gong claim the moral high ground, neither side has the gospel truth on its side although both claim it. FLG is certainly more of the victim in this game, but you can expect a violent reaction if you poke a wild animal enough times. Disliking both in equal measure, I edit without pro-Falun Gong nor pro-PRC government agenda....The Falun Gong have a formidable propaganda machine in New York under Gail Rachlin which grew out of the same Cultural Revolution mindset as the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China, otherwise known as the "Propaganda Department". In a small way, I'm happy to say Rachlin's operation now qualitatively surpasses the regime's – it's much more reactive, and imaginative on the attack, but it's still paranoid and highly sensitive to criticism, like its counterpart. Operating in exile [NTD.tv and The Epoch Times are based in New York City, as is China Uncensored] against a regime that is as brutal as it is opaque, there are no party lines to follow. Shen Yun becomes the vanguard, and propaganda gets dressed up deceptively as art. Li Hongzhi ordered followers to pick fights with the regime while he himself is safely in the US. His footsoldiers irritate the monster and add to their statistics. Ever imaginative, Falun Gong rides on the PRC's abysmal human rights record, their propaganda machine, in addition to hiding behind glossy silky dance performances, generates and spreads stories of Nazi-like atrocities that only a brutal totalitarian regime could conceivably commit. Like all smears, plausibility is key; never let the lack of evidence get into the way of a good story. One anonymous informant hiding behind dark glasses and waiting political asylum, without documentary or photographic proof.....Pointing to their motto but being cagey about the true and kooky nature of some of their teachings, Falun Gong hold themselves up as virtuous; anyone who dares to utter any criticism is labelled "evil". Their declared primary objective is the overthrow of the Communist Party of China – as can be seen from any issue of Epoch Times. Falun Gong hold themselves up as champions of human rights but actually only care about themselves; they are wary of other human rights defenders who are not Falun Gong. Anyone who dares to criticise them is thus a human rights abuser. Their proselytism is a defining trait, and they seek to discredit anyone who is not totally in support of them. Although the term "enemy" is usually reserved for the any observer who isn't completely on board is considered "the enemy" or a collaborator. They discredited cult-buster Rick Ross, vilified the sceptics He Zuoxiu and Sima Nan; poured scorn over the work of respectable academics like Margaret Singer, Heather Kavan by tarring with guilt by association to the regime. Initially welcoming him, they have scorned Harry Wu – probably the world's foremost authority on Chinese forced labour camps – since he declared that he found no evidence of the organ harvesting allegations. They spread rumours about Wu turning collaborator after his swift release from PRC arrest. Falun Gong editors quote extensively from texts written by "investigative journalist" Danny Schechter, whose discourse concerning Falun Gong is disconcertingly similar in tone and content to Falun Gong propaganda. Another favourite is Ethan Gutman, who writes for the neo-conservative Weekly Standard, and whose storyline repeating FLG allegations of live organ harvesting on FLG practitioners marries well with the journal's US-centric/anti-PRC agenda and rhetoric. Wikipedian Colipon discusses the issue of Falun Gong members editing Wikipedia here; the short version is that Wikipedia has seen waves of SPAs (single-purpose accounts) run by Falun Gong members trying to control Falun Gong articles since 2004; they were chased off twice, but now control the articles either because nobody gives a damn anymore or there are not enough people left smart enough/thick-skinned enough to deal with the problem.
David Owenby wrote a good book on the issue over a decade ago, Falun Gong and the Future of China; seek it out if you want to know how nutty they truly get.
Award given to people willing to call the Chief of Daqing City Police to release the mother-in-law of
Ben Hedges, host of the You Tube show "Lao Wai Kan Zhongguo" (A Foreigner's View of China.)
Russia! magazine
This one is less complicated; Russia! magazine is a website about the largest country on Earth that originally was kind of like Soviet Life during the perestroika period or it's successor Russian Life: focused on what was going on within the country while also discussing culture, art, etc. The only problem was that new websites began emerging in the last decade or so that did Russia!'s job better (Russia Beyond the Headlines, The Russian Reader, KinoKultura, etc.) so it switched over to more and more of an economic/political magazine, and after the Crimea-Donbass War started, it moved over to sounding more like a narrowly-focused defense issues blog. That written, I will never sass Jim Kovpak for going into the Ukrainian war zone to report on how it is (surreal, bombed out, and shitty for the elderly), my problem is with Mark Adomanis, who unlike Kovpak, does not live in Russia; he reminds me of Michael McFaul, the American Ambassador to Russia. He once wrote a column titled "Revenge of the Losers" slamming Soviet refrigerators and Igor Strelkov (the former insurgent leader of Novorossiya), a piece which has since vanished. If they could find a Russian writer who is as pro-markets as Adomanis without being as annoying, Russia! would probably drop-kick him to the curb.....not that it matters as he also writes for Forbes. If I had to pay for Russia! as a physical publication, I would rather read back issues in a college library. Rodina deserves better.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Going Meta: Trying to Save Wikipedia From Itself
Because there is so much scandalous bullshit going on with Wikipedia, we've gotten away from the airy-fairy theorizing about Internet information theory I was doing in October last year. So let's play an extremely distaff version of Plato's Republic and try to design a better version of Wikipedia.
Structure
Wikipedia is built on the idea of human goodness and altruism, but as ninety percent of this blog has shown, it is easily gamed by assholes, especially assholes who form into tribes. The best way out would be to take the English-language Wikipedia (so we have a prototype) and split it up into separate sections based on broad topics. So there would be a Wikipedia of History, a Wikipedia of Philosophy, a Wikipedia of Science, a Wikipedia of Indigenous Cultures, a Wikipedia of Popular Culture, etc. There would be a Meta-page with a search engine to direct people to the articles they are looking for, and all the wikipedias would have links to each other (which would have to have those popup windows warning them that they are going from article A in Wikipedia B to article B in Wikipedia X.) The major purpose of breaking en-Wikipedia apart is to keep "brigading" from happening; I am not a fan of the "Guerrilla Skeptics" and all the drama Rome Viharo ran into. Jimbo Wales knows, but will not say that his project is a haven for jerkoffs, sperglords, the power-mad, and all the flavors of social media idiot - so we split the place up, give each separate wikipedia it's own administration (elected to two year terms with term limits after the fourth year so they can't serve another four year block, assuming anybody survives the second election) and task them to keeping the bullshit to a minimum. The next thing that would change is the markup language; the hardliners will never give it up, so you take it away and give them a more modern system to work with. I know people will be lost, but it will open up the place for users who were intimidated by the previous system. Paid editing should be allowed BUT paid editors need to register that they are paid editors, they will have a small superscript green "P" an the end of their handles. Any articles with paid editing will be marked with red-and-white barberpole striping at the top and bottom of the page to warn readers that paid edits happened. MastCell is a dickhead, but he is right about one thing: disclaimers on Wikipedia medical articles are a must and should be implemented on the presently-existing Wikipedia as well as this model we are building. God knows how many people were mangled following medical advice on the site.
There are claims that putting YouTube/Vimeo/Dailymotion links and hiding the hypertext links in the documents like I do will make Wikipedia friendly to the kids and I would be willing to experiment with that; it would also help to experiment with the layouts, because the standard Wikipedia page is ugly as hell now compared to corporate webpages or personal weblogs. The other, more important thing is that the science wikipedia, the philosophy wikipedia, the medical wikipedia, and (possibly) the architecture and fine art wikipedia must let experts in so that the articles can be checked for accuracy, comprehensibility, and complicated hoaxes/inside jokes. Why those? Because they aren't arguing about which episode of Steven Universe came first; they are trying to teach through writing/editing/cross-checking online encyclopedia articles, which is the true purpose of Wikipedia, not all the BLPs, news articles rewritten into "recent history" pages, etc.
Content
One of the long-buried bodies is the fact that Wikipedia in the early years was beefed up with articles from the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), the 1899 Encyclopaedica Biblica, and the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia. All of which were good examples of scholarship before World War One occurred, but are now so obsolete as to be laughable. And yes, I did steal that list of publications from myself. There is a book, The Myth of the Britannica by Harvey Einbinder (1964), which discusses the various problems with the 1958 and 1962 editions, the one most important to this post being obsolete material. The "great EB" reused material for years after it was rewritten in the late 19th century, and Einbinder found reams of the 1890s-1911 material still sitting inside the 1958 Britannica, a lot of it stylistically mutilated to fit size constraints. If the Wikipedians lied and used the 1911 EB but also later Britannicas, who knows how much of this obsolete, mangled junk was transcribed into Wikipedia? This is why the Wikimedia Foundation needs to hire copy editors; if they want to be the "sum total of human knowledge" or some other monomanical piffle, then it all needs to be sourced correctly, stylistically uniform, and encyclopedia-like. Right now it's lumpy, uneven, full of linkrot, (sometimes not so) hidden bias, and crappy stub articles.
Not a Conclusion
We know Wikipedia (including all the foreign language versions) is dying, the number of editors fading away to a pitiful remnant by 2020 or so. Changing the rules of the game might breathe new life into the project. Even if nothing like what I have roughly outlined ever happens at Jimbo's Jungle, something like it could be used in the next online encyclopedia project, assuming anybody gives a damn to try again. In either case, this subject will be brought up again in the future, because I know there are angles I'm missing.
Structure
Wikipedia is built on the idea of human goodness and altruism, but as ninety percent of this blog has shown, it is easily gamed by assholes, especially assholes who form into tribes. The best way out would be to take the English-language Wikipedia (so we have a prototype) and split it up into separate sections based on broad topics. So there would be a Wikipedia of History, a Wikipedia of Philosophy, a Wikipedia of Science, a Wikipedia of Indigenous Cultures, a Wikipedia of Popular Culture, etc. There would be a Meta-page with a search engine to direct people to the articles they are looking for, and all the wikipedias would have links to each other (which would have to have those popup windows warning them that they are going from article A in Wikipedia B to article B in Wikipedia X.) The major purpose of breaking en-Wikipedia apart is to keep "brigading" from happening; I am not a fan of the "Guerrilla Skeptics" and all the drama Rome Viharo ran into. Jimbo Wales knows, but will not say that his project is a haven for jerkoffs, sperglords, the power-mad, and all the flavors of social media idiot - so we split the place up, give each separate wikipedia it's own administration (elected to two year terms with term limits after the fourth year so they can't serve another four year block, assuming anybody survives the second election) and task them to keeping the bullshit to a minimum. The next thing that would change is the markup language; the hardliners will never give it up, so you take it away and give them a more modern system to work with. I know people will be lost, but it will open up the place for users who were intimidated by the previous system. Paid editing should be allowed BUT paid editors need to register that they are paid editors, they will have a small superscript green "P" an the end of their handles. Any articles with paid editing will be marked with red-and-white barberpole striping at the top and bottom of the page to warn readers that paid edits happened. MastCell is a dickhead, but he is right about one thing: disclaimers on Wikipedia medical articles are a must and should be implemented on the presently-existing Wikipedia as well as this model we are building. God knows how many people were mangled following medical advice on the site.
There are claims that putting YouTube/Vimeo/Dailymotion links and hiding the hypertext links in the documents like I do will make Wikipedia friendly to the kids and I would be willing to experiment with that; it would also help to experiment with the layouts, because the standard Wikipedia page is ugly as hell now compared to corporate webpages or personal weblogs. The other, more important thing is that the science wikipedia, the philosophy wikipedia, the medical wikipedia, and (possibly) the architecture and fine art wikipedia must let experts in so that the articles can be checked for accuracy, comprehensibility, and complicated hoaxes/inside jokes. Why those? Because they aren't arguing about which episode of Steven Universe came first; they are trying to teach through writing/editing/cross-checking online encyclopedia articles, which is the true purpose of Wikipedia, not all the BLPs, news articles rewritten into "recent history" pages, etc.
Content
One of the long-buried bodies is the fact that Wikipedia in the early years was beefed up with articles from the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), the 1899 Encyclopaedica Biblica, and the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia. All of which were good examples of scholarship before World War One occurred, but are now so obsolete as to be laughable. And yes, I did steal that list of publications from myself. There is a book, The Myth of the Britannica by Harvey Einbinder (1964), which discusses the various problems with the 1958 and 1962 editions, the one most important to this post being obsolete material. The "great EB" reused material for years after it was rewritten in the late 19th century, and Einbinder found reams of the 1890s-1911 material still sitting inside the 1958 Britannica, a lot of it stylistically mutilated to fit size constraints. If the Wikipedians lied and used the 1911 EB but also later Britannicas, who knows how much of this obsolete, mangled junk was transcribed into Wikipedia? This is why the Wikimedia Foundation needs to hire copy editors; if they want to be the "sum total of human knowledge" or some other monomanical piffle, then it all needs to be sourced correctly, stylistically uniform, and encyclopedia-like. Right now it's lumpy, uneven, full of linkrot, (sometimes not so) hidden bias, and crappy stub articles.
Not a Conclusion
We know Wikipedia (including all the foreign language versions) is dying, the number of editors fading away to a pitiful remnant by 2020 or so. Changing the rules of the game might breathe new life into the project. Even if nothing like what I have roughly outlined ever happens at Jimbo's Jungle, something like it could be used in the next online encyclopedia project, assuming anybody gives a damn to try again. In either case, this subject will be brought up again in the future, because I know there are angles I'm missing.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Mathsci and MastCell
We could also call this one "Skeptics on Wikipedia" or "The Science Police"; both of these (academic or medical) clowns should be using their brains and skills within their own fields, but instead they are wasting time arguing with non-scientists and non-doctors on Wikipedia, though we are beginning to understand that the doctor actually gets off on arguing/ganging up on dissenters/banning people. The fight is why these two remain on Wikipedia; if they were actually interested in presenting skeptical views of the "pseudoscience", both Mathsci and MastCell would have decamped to RationalWiki long ago.
The Mathematician: Antony John Wassermann
Wassermann (b. 1957) is a British mathematician who lives in Cambridge, England. He is the son of Gerhard Dietrich Wassermann, a mathematician and parapsychologist; his mother is Bertha Edith Weiss, whom G.D. Wassermann married in 1948. Antony Wassermann went to Royal Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne for his elementary education, and received his Ph.D at the University of Pennsylvania in 1981, studying under Jonathan Micah Rosenberg. All that I just wrote was found out by Captain Occam (Jonathan Kane); according to him, A.J. Wassermann hasn't published since 1998 which Kane didn't understand. An unspoken rule of thumb of mathematicians is that you see fewer and fewer papers from them as they get older; the flame of genius burns out, and they just teach the shiny new things. The great irony of Wassermann being Mathsci on Wikipedia is that there isn't even a stub article on Antony John Wassermann, even though he was a Miller Research Fellowship recipient in 1986-88, winner of the Whitehead Prize in 1990, and allegedly an expert on the Baum-Connes conjecture, but nothing he wrote on it was mentioned in the Wikipedia article.
Wassermann became Mathsci in 2006, though his early history (like most of the real pissants of Wikipedia) was retroactively screwed with by his friends. And his friends are such august figures as Herr Doktor Lukas Pietsch (Future Perfect at Sunrise), Charles Matthews of Wikimedia UK, and MastCell, who protected him like the Turkish heavy artillery did Aqaba harbor in 1917, because Mathsci was endlessly useful as a "meatpuppet." A quote from Cla68 (Charles Ainsworth), March 2013: "One interesting aspect of the Mathsci Steamroller is the protection he gets from a select group of admins. Future Perfect and MastCell are academics like he is. If you can find some real-life connection between them, even if it's just social such as being friends on Google+, then that will make the narrative more compelling. The deeper, core problem that the Mathsci Steamroller hits on, IMO, is the use of Wikipedia by activist, agenda-driven editors. Future, MastCell, Mathsci, the global warming gang (not cabal:)), etc are mostly minor academic types or wannabees who apparently feel compelled to use Wikipedia to spread their message because they feel their opinions have not been sufficiently heeded by the general public." The name Mathsci came from AMS Mathscinet, a search system for academic publications that is subscription-only. It would be like if an archaeologist used the Wikipedia handle JSTOR_Jones. The one truly decent thing about Wassermann on Wikipedia (beyond his math and classical music articles) is that he never ran for administrator.
The major dogfight Mathsci was involved in was the Race and Intelligence clusterfuck aka "Japanese People are the Master Race." As the reader can tell, I am neither interested nor offended by this quasi-scientific, quasi-racist timewaster, but Mathsci was, so we have to write about it, dammit. The Wikipedians who were pro-heredity were: Captain Occam, Varoon Arya aka Aryman, David.Kane aka Ephery, Mikemikev, and Mirade aka Acadēmica Orientālis. Opposing them and supporting the "environmental" position were: Ramdrake, Mathsci, Hipocrite (Robert Djurdjevic), WeijiBaikeBianji, ArtifexMayhem, and Volunteer Marek. Then there were the intermediate people who thought the environmentalists were bullying the hereditarians, but mostly backed the environmental position: Ludwigs2, Vecrumba, Maunus, and VsevolodKrolikov. Mathsci was accused of numerous underhanded dealings during five years Race and Intelligence was in Arbitration and before that; when it first went up to Arbitration in 2009, Mathsci threw a fit claiming that Reubzz, the mediator "wasn't professional enough." Reubzz quit. In 2011 he followed Mirade around undoing everything he wrote, then claimed Mirade had a "real name" account on Deviant Art, never mind that he was gunning after the wrong target. In 2010, Rvcx quit Wikipedia after the Race and Intelligence Arbitration ended with Mathsci not being thrown out on his ear; Rvcx told Captain Occam this in a private email: "My reason for requesting the arbitration was to try to find *someone* with admin privileges who was willing to stand up for Wikipedia's professed principles, and the general notion of collaborative editing. In fact the ruling has made abundantly clear that ArbCom endorses Wikipedia as not an encyclopedia project, but a reputation economy: Mathsci has purchased the right to abuse other editors—and in fact rewrite ArbCom findings at the last minute when it's clear which way the votes are swinging—by spending so much of his time editing. As has been said about Wikipedia so many times by so many others, it's game where the most persistent editors with the most time to invest inevitably win.....Like several others have made clear through this case, I have more important things to do in life than play such a game. I have an academic career to pursue (with, quite frankly, far more significance than Mathsci's mathematical hobbies; we have names for faculty who exploit tenure without significant research contributions) and have no interest in a version of Farmville in which mainspace edits take the place of crop-watering." So that made Reubzz, Rvcx, and Distributivejustice the three editors Mathsci chased off in three-four years; that has to be some kind of record. As for the 2011 Mirade stalking the following exchange occurred:
Miradre: Talk: Cultural_anthropology "Please respect my privacy."
Mathsci: Talk: Cultural_anthropology "Ha, ha, ha, ha."
Miradre: Talk: Cultural_anthropology "You have already been cautioned against such incivil remarks."
Mathsci: Talk: Cultural_anthropology "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha."
The problem with explaining Mathsci's horrible behavior is that there is so much of it; my source had forty pages of material with links.....he was abusive from day one with Syrran (Gianni Giachetta) whom he chased off and then openly named on the 26th of August, 2006. So that actually makes four editors he chased off. And we haven't even gotten to the sockpuppets; he both investigated other people for sockpuppets while running his own socks, Aixoise and P0CF1A, of which most of the information about them was deleted; notice the name of the first, a French term for an inhabitant of Aix, a commune in Southern France. Guess who has a residence in Aix-en-Provance, the university city? Luckily for us he finally smashed too many toes with a sledgehammer because they blocked him at the end of 2013, then banned him outright in October 2014.....during the ban period, he actually had the chutzpah to send Rschweib unsolicited emails on the algebraic mutation article! He also edited his own talk page under the ban. A textbook Wiki-junkie if there ever was one.
A long comment from my source's material:
The Doctor: David H. Gorski, M.D., Ph.D.
This guy is well-known in the "anti-vaccination" crowd (i.e, the parents of young children terrified that their vaccinated children will become autistic); he used the name Orac online for years, in fact he still uses it to blog. He runs a website called Science-Based Medicine where he and other medical doctors rant about what a threat not-immunizing children is; his personal page on that site is shot through with disclaimers and flimsy financial statements (but he will admit to writing for pay), but the bottom is an overblown "the people on Google are trying to destroy me" rant complete with hidden links making himself out to be the aggrieved party, even though a few paragraphs above he said he got involved in "refuting pseudoscience" on a lark; he has been on the Internet since the 1990s, and yet he has never figured out that people will act like crazed Berserker Vikings online if their precious personal beliefs are attacked, especially if it has to do with their young children. It should be noted that his personal page hasn't changed a lick since 2011.
As with Mathsci, Dr. Gorski became MastCell in 2006, the year before Wikipedia began imploding thanks to the Essjay scandal and Durova's (Lise Broer) "cyberstalking" secret email list, among other fiascoes. He wrote about cancer drugs like desatnib (aka BMS-354825 and "Sprycel") and vinblastine ("Velban"), which gave many the suspicion that MastCell was doing paid editing on Wikipedia for the drug companies, which is an accusation made by his many anti-vaxxer enemies. One of his first edits was to the article on Matthias Rath, a German doctor whose "cancer cure" uses "micronutrients"; MastCell accused him of being an AIDS denialist on top of slamming his system. As with Mathsci, MastCell has his own sockpuppet Jinkinson (popped into being, January 2013) who wrote a BLP of Dr. Gorski in March 2013 using hard-to-find references. He was made an Administrator in 2007, the RfA begun by Durova. Notice that the only dissenter, Wooyi, was browbeaten into supporting Dr. Gorski's appointment. Following in the golem-like footsteps of Mathsci, MastCell has one true redeeming feature: he wants disclaimers at the top of medical articles at Wikipedia. Nobody else at Wikiproject Medicine agrees, so any gibberish can be passed off as medical knowledge on medical pages. Aside from that, he supports all the scumbags Mathsci hung out with so it's like replacing the White Spy with the Black Spy from Antonio Prohías' Spy vs. Spy cartoons, except that he isn't as much of a thuggish goon like Ernst Kaltenbrunner-like Mathsci. It doesn't hurt that he's getting tired of the whole thing:
"I'm sure you're right. I dunno. Wikipedia forces us to choose between playing a primarily "editorial" role or a primarily "administrative" role. It takes a lot of effort to do either one well, and I certainly don't have the time, energy, or interest to try actively fill both roles anymore. And I feel like I have a more important role to play on the administrative side. I've been sort of appalled at the level of attrition among clueful, mature, reality-based people here. I'm even more appalled at what passes for serious discussion of meta-issues and project-level dilemmas.
"And finally, I've dealt with a lot of tendentious axe-grinders and nonsense-peddlers here, and I recognize the corrosive effect that such people have on the time and goodwill of well-meaning editors. I feel an obligation to deal with problem editors in order to preserve the editing environment for people who actually care about creating a reputable online reference work. And because I've got an admin bit (and a lot of hit points, and a solid armor class) I feel especially responsible for taking on these kinds of cases, because not a lot of other admins can or do. After all, anyone can join and edit, but not many people are in a position to deal with problematic situations from an administrative perspective.
"There used to be a group of admins who were smart and had good judgement and could wade into these situations, but their numbers have dwindled to the point that I feel pretty alone in that regard. There really isn't any roadmap for someone like me - I honestly don't know of anyone who's been active as long as I have in editing and adminning primarily controversial topic areas. I've outlived my natural wiki-lifespan.:) I don't think it's as simple as going back to editing articles more, because that's not as fulfilling as it used to be. The people who made this place fun for me are mostly gone, or else they're still here but burnt-out shells of their former wiki-selves. (Present company excluded, of course).:)
"That said, I'd be happy to work on the esophageal cancer article. I'm not sure I'll be able to work on it in a timely fashion; I've been contributing fairly little for a while now because of real-life demands. Anthony, I'll follow up with you by email. Thank you both for the notes—they are genuinely appreciated, and it's always good to hear from both of you. MastCell Talk 04:13, 26 September 2014 (UTC)"
The Mathematician: Antony John Wassermann
Wassermann (b. 1957) is a British mathematician who lives in Cambridge, England. He is the son of Gerhard Dietrich Wassermann, a mathematician and parapsychologist; his mother is Bertha Edith Weiss, whom G.D. Wassermann married in 1948. Antony Wassermann went to Royal Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne for his elementary education, and received his Ph.D at the University of Pennsylvania in 1981, studying under Jonathan Micah Rosenberg. All that I just wrote was found out by Captain Occam (Jonathan Kane); according to him, A.J. Wassermann hasn't published since 1998 which Kane didn't understand. An unspoken rule of thumb of mathematicians is that you see fewer and fewer papers from them as they get older; the flame of genius burns out, and they just teach the shiny new things. The great irony of Wassermann being Mathsci on Wikipedia is that there isn't even a stub article on Antony John Wassermann, even though he was a Miller Research Fellowship recipient in 1986-88, winner of the Whitehead Prize in 1990, and allegedly an expert on the Baum-Connes conjecture, but nothing he wrote on it was mentioned in the Wikipedia article.
Wassermann became Mathsci in 2006, though his early history (like most of the real pissants of Wikipedia) was retroactively screwed with by his friends. And his friends are such august figures as Herr Doktor Lukas Pietsch (Future Perfect at Sunrise), Charles Matthews of Wikimedia UK, and MastCell, who protected him like the Turkish heavy artillery did Aqaba harbor in 1917, because Mathsci was endlessly useful as a "meatpuppet." A quote from Cla68 (Charles Ainsworth), March 2013: "One interesting aspect of the Mathsci Steamroller is the protection he gets from a select group of admins. Future Perfect and MastCell are academics like he is. If you can find some real-life connection between them, even if it's just social such as being friends on Google+, then that will make the narrative more compelling. The deeper, core problem that the Mathsci Steamroller hits on, IMO, is the use of Wikipedia by activist, agenda-driven editors. Future, MastCell, Mathsci, the global warming gang (not cabal:)), etc are mostly minor academic types or wannabees who apparently feel compelled to use Wikipedia to spread their message because they feel their opinions have not been sufficiently heeded by the general public." The name Mathsci came from AMS Mathscinet, a search system for academic publications that is subscription-only. It would be like if an archaeologist used the Wikipedia handle JSTOR_Jones. The one truly decent thing about Wassermann on Wikipedia (beyond his math and classical music articles) is that he never ran for administrator.
The major dogfight Mathsci was involved in was the Race and Intelligence clusterfuck aka "Japanese People are the Master Race." As the reader can tell, I am neither interested nor offended by this quasi-scientific, quasi-racist timewaster, but Mathsci was, so we have to write about it, dammit. The Wikipedians who were pro-heredity were: Captain Occam, Varoon Arya aka Aryman, David.Kane aka Ephery, Mikemikev, and Mirade aka Acadēmica Orientālis. Opposing them and supporting the "environmental" position were: Ramdrake, Mathsci, Hipocrite (Robert Djurdjevic), WeijiBaikeBianji, ArtifexMayhem, and Volunteer Marek. Then there were the intermediate people who thought the environmentalists were bullying the hereditarians, but mostly backed the environmental position: Ludwigs2, Vecrumba, Maunus, and VsevolodKrolikov. Mathsci was accused of numerous underhanded dealings during five years Race and Intelligence was in Arbitration and before that; when it first went up to Arbitration in 2009, Mathsci threw a fit claiming that Reubzz, the mediator "wasn't professional enough." Reubzz quit. In 2011 he followed Mirade around undoing everything he wrote, then claimed Mirade had a "real name" account on Deviant Art, never mind that he was gunning after the wrong target. In 2010, Rvcx quit Wikipedia after the Race and Intelligence Arbitration ended with Mathsci not being thrown out on his ear; Rvcx told Captain Occam this in a private email: "My reason for requesting the arbitration was to try to find *someone* with admin privileges who was willing to stand up for Wikipedia's professed principles, and the general notion of collaborative editing. In fact the ruling has made abundantly clear that ArbCom endorses Wikipedia as not an encyclopedia project, but a reputation economy: Mathsci has purchased the right to abuse other editors—and in fact rewrite ArbCom findings at the last minute when it's clear which way the votes are swinging—by spending so much of his time editing. As has been said about Wikipedia so many times by so many others, it's game where the most persistent editors with the most time to invest inevitably win.....Like several others have made clear through this case, I have more important things to do in life than play such a game. I have an academic career to pursue (with, quite frankly, far more significance than Mathsci's mathematical hobbies; we have names for faculty who exploit tenure without significant research contributions) and have no interest in a version of Farmville in which mainspace edits take the place of crop-watering." So that made Reubzz, Rvcx, and Distributivejustice the three editors Mathsci chased off in three-four years; that has to be some kind of record. As for the 2011 Mirade stalking the following exchange occurred:
Miradre: Talk: Cultural_anthropology "Please respect my privacy."
Mathsci: Talk: Cultural_anthropology "Ha, ha, ha, ha."
Miradre: Talk: Cultural_anthropology "You have already been cautioned against such incivil remarks."
Mathsci: Talk: Cultural_anthropology "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha."
The problem with explaining Mathsci's horrible behavior is that there is so much of it; my source had forty pages of material with links.....he was abusive from day one with Syrran (Gianni Giachetta) whom he chased off and then openly named on the 26th of August, 2006. So that actually makes four editors he chased off. And we haven't even gotten to the sockpuppets; he both investigated other people for sockpuppets while running his own socks, Aixoise and P0CF1A, of which most of the information about them was deleted; notice the name of the first, a French term for an inhabitant of Aix, a commune in Southern France. Guess who has a residence in Aix-en-Provance, the university city? Luckily for us he finally smashed too many toes with a sledgehammer because they blocked him at the end of 2013, then banned him outright in October 2014.....during the ban period, he actually had the chutzpah to send Rschweib unsolicited emails on the algebraic mutation article! He also edited his own talk page under the ban. A textbook Wiki-junkie if there ever was one.
A long comment from my source's material:
"Apart from the group of admins
who've used their tools in unusual ways to protect Mathsci, there are a few
long-term patterns which are worth noting here. The first is how his misconduct
has been basically constant for the past four years, despite all of the
warnings he's received, the times that arbitrators expressed certainty that his
conduct would improve, and the times he promised this himself. During this
period he's twice promised to disengage from RI disputes (once in December 2010
and once in April 2012), and broken that promise shortly afterward; he's twice
been sanctioned or admonished by ArbCom (once in August 2010 and once in May
2012); he's been warned three times by individual arbitrators (Risker in April
2011, Jclemens in December 2011, and SilkTork in May 2012), and arbitrators
have twice decided against taking action about him because they were confident
his conduct was going to improve (Cool Hand Luke in September 2011 and
Newyorkbrad in December 2012), only to have him return to the same conduct a
few months later. This is apart from all of the numerous uninvolved editors and
admins who've asked him to stop or registered their disapproval with him at
various points. The second is the number of
editors who he has one way or another driven away from the project. If we
exclude editors who Mathsci believed to be socks, we have observed nine
examples of this: Reubzz, DistributiveJustice, Rvcx, Varoon Arya, Ludwigs2,
Captain Occam, Ferahgo the Assassin, TrevelyanL85A2, and Deltahedron. With the
possible exception of DistributiveJustice, none of these were single-purpose
accounts, and all but the the first three had nothing to do with Race and Intelligence articles when Mathsci got rid of them. (Deltahedron never edited
in the RI area, at all.) The actual number of people he's
eliminated is probably much higher than nine, because this number doesn't
include editors he got rid of because he thought they were socks, or editors
where this happened without anyone noting it. It also doesn't include editors
who quit the project after being attacked by Mathsci but who never explicitly
stated that he was a reason for their leaving. One example of someone like that
was HPotato, a newbie who disappeared after having an argument with Mathsci in
January 2013:Link.
And the last thing of importance, a large portion of the community seems to be aware of this problem, or at least of some part of it. ArbCom has come very close to doing something about Mathsci on several occasions, and would have done so if not for the lengths gone to by his supporters. In November a majority of arbitrators supported turning the one-way interaction bans into mutual bans, but changed their minds because of Timotheus Canens' threat. In December, at least four arbitrators felt that a full case was needed if someone were to request one in 2013, and ErrantX was planning to request it himself, until (according to ErrantX) Mathsci's supporters forced him out of Wikipedia with their threats against him. In the past year, at least twelve uninvolved editors have urged ArbCom to take some action about Mathsci in the various arbitration threads about him: Silver Seren, Penwhale, Vecrumba, Only in Death, A Quest for Knoweldge, Collect, SB_Johnny, NE Ent, ErrantX, Seraphimblade, Youreallycan, and D. Lazard."
Marta Aseda, Antony Wassermann on piano
or computer,Vaughn Jones in background.
Cropped photo from Los Angeles, 2004.
The Doctor: David H. Gorski, M.D., Ph.D.
This guy is well-known in the "anti-vaccination" crowd (i.e, the parents of young children terrified that their vaccinated children will become autistic); he used the name Orac online for years, in fact he still uses it to blog. He runs a website called Science-Based Medicine where he and other medical doctors rant about what a threat not-immunizing children is; his personal page on that site is shot through with disclaimers and flimsy financial statements (but he will admit to writing for pay), but the bottom is an overblown "the people on Google are trying to destroy me" rant complete with hidden links making himself out to be the aggrieved party, even though a few paragraphs above he said he got involved in "refuting pseudoscience" on a lark; he has been on the Internet since the 1990s, and yet he has never figured out that people will act like crazed Berserker Vikings online if their precious personal beliefs are attacked, especially if it has to do with their young children. It should be noted that his personal page hasn't changed a lick since 2011.
As with Mathsci, Dr. Gorski became MastCell in 2006, the year before Wikipedia began imploding thanks to the Essjay scandal and Durova's (Lise Broer) "cyberstalking" secret email list, among other fiascoes. He wrote about cancer drugs like desatnib (aka BMS-354825 and "Sprycel") and vinblastine ("Velban"), which gave many the suspicion that MastCell was doing paid editing on Wikipedia for the drug companies, which is an accusation made by his many anti-vaxxer enemies. One of his first edits was to the article on Matthias Rath, a German doctor whose "cancer cure" uses "micronutrients"; MastCell accused him of being an AIDS denialist on top of slamming his system. As with Mathsci, MastCell has his own sockpuppet Jinkinson (popped into being, January 2013) who wrote a BLP of Dr. Gorski in March 2013 using hard-to-find references. He was made an Administrator in 2007, the RfA begun by Durova. Notice that the only dissenter, Wooyi, was browbeaten into supporting Dr. Gorski's appointment. Following in the golem-like footsteps of Mathsci, MastCell has one true redeeming feature: he wants disclaimers at the top of medical articles at Wikipedia. Nobody else at Wikiproject Medicine agrees, so any gibberish can be passed off as medical knowledge on medical pages. Aside from that, he supports all the scumbags Mathsci hung out with so it's like replacing the White Spy with the Black Spy from Antonio Prohías' Spy vs. Spy cartoons, except that he isn't as much of a thuggish goon like Ernst Kaltenbrunner-like Mathsci. It doesn't hurt that he's getting tired of the whole thing:
"I'm sure you're right. I dunno. Wikipedia forces us to choose between playing a primarily "editorial" role or a primarily "administrative" role. It takes a lot of effort to do either one well, and I certainly don't have the time, energy, or interest to try actively fill both roles anymore. And I feel like I have a more important role to play on the administrative side. I've been sort of appalled at the level of attrition among clueful, mature, reality-based people here. I'm even more appalled at what passes for serious discussion of meta-issues and project-level dilemmas.
"And finally, I've dealt with a lot of tendentious axe-grinders and nonsense-peddlers here, and I recognize the corrosive effect that such people have on the time and goodwill of well-meaning editors. I feel an obligation to deal with problem editors in order to preserve the editing environment for people who actually care about creating a reputable online reference work. And because I've got an admin bit (and a lot of hit points, and a solid armor class) I feel especially responsible for taking on these kinds of cases, because not a lot of other admins can or do. After all, anyone can join and edit, but not many people are in a position to deal with problematic situations from an administrative perspective.
"There used to be a group of admins who were smart and had good judgement and could wade into these situations, but their numbers have dwindled to the point that I feel pretty alone in that regard. There really isn't any roadmap for someone like me - I honestly don't know of anyone who's been active as long as I have in editing and adminning primarily controversial topic areas. I've outlived my natural wiki-lifespan.:) I don't think it's as simple as going back to editing articles more, because that's not as fulfilling as it used to be. The people who made this place fun for me are mostly gone, or else they're still here but burnt-out shells of their former wiki-selves. (Present company excluded, of course).:)
"That said, I'd be happy to work on the esophageal cancer article. I'm not sure I'll be able to work on it in a timely fashion; I've been contributing fairly little for a while now because of real-life demands. Anthony, I'll follow up with you by email. Thank you both for the notes—they are genuinely appreciated, and it's always good to hear from both of you. MastCell Talk 04:13, 26 September 2014 (UTC)"
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