This originally appeared as forum post over at http://wikipediasucks.boards.net/
by a member. Check out the board; interesting stuff happens there.
A Disturbing Damnation of Drmies
by "The Dark Knight", assisted by "Mutineer"
One piercing
example of Wikipediocracy's (WO's) ineffectiveness as a critic site of
Wikipedia (WP) is the damning and disturbing case of Drmies' handling of
Mighty Morphin Army Ranger (MMAR) and Brad Dryer. In short, it has
looked the other way, perhaps even aided, the rise of a corrupt and
belligerent administrator to the highest level on WP. This despite
knowing Drmies (hereafter "he," though he has varied his online gender
identification) was a proven liar and all-round scum bag. This article
is long, but well worth a read if you're a deeply embedded critic. He's
an admin and arbitrator on WP. A bad one. Many many people have their
own horror stories, and consequently, he hates critic sites, as they're
the only places where people can discuss his actions without being
blocked by him or one of his allies. He's well known for being a bit of
an ass, he has a poor sense of humour and very little dispute resolution
skills. He's the sledgehammer who cracks nuts, the vinegar spoiling the
honey, etc, etc. Basically, on WP, if he's your mate, you're doing OK,
but if he's your enemy, you're screwed. He is a great example of
Wikipedia's poorest admins - whether you are wrong or right in policy or
fact has very little effect on how long you will last if you go to the
mat with him.
This story begins with the tale of WP user
Mighty
Morphin Army Ranger - who was drawn to purported WP criticism website WO
after he was abused and taunted by
Drmies on WP. His main complaint was
that
Drmies lied about the nature of his edits, falsely claiming he had
inserted unverified information and indeed had misrepresented sources
(in WP, such logical contradictions in accusations are normal). This
falsehood was basically excused by AN/I because of the insider/outsider
phenomena -
MMAR was not an established editor, while
Drmies was a
trusted admin. Even though he's well aware of it,
Drmies has never even
acknowledged the falsehood, let alone apologised for it. Through the
various machinations which will be familiar to
Drmies' enemies,
MMAR's
career on WP was brought to a shuddering end by admins known to be close
allies of
Drmies, his talk page blocked and only allowed to appeal
through UTRS, which is WP-speak for being shipped to the USA's
Guantanamo Bay detention facility.
MMAR stuck around on WO, and
having remembered the awful way
Drmies had treated him, posted a
forensic analysis there about a subsequent
Drmies-related case of
character assassination - the alleged racist hounding of admin
Malik
Shabbaz off of Wikipedia by user
Brad Dryer (since renamed
Bad Dryer).
This incident evidently terribly upset
Drmies, and led him to make all
sorts of claims about how
Brad was a racist and
Malik was entirely
innocent. This narrative was all a load of crap, all debunked in a
thread in WO's private forum (evidently WO believes it's too
embarrassing for
Drmies to have his lies discussed out in the open
internet), but it has of course been accepted on Wikipedia as fact.
Wikipediocrats weren't even all that interested - it wasn't the sort of
easy sound-bite they like, it required lots of reading to figure out
just how false the whole thing was. They didn't even bat an eyelid when
Malik himself popped up in the thread to accuse
MMAR of talking rubbish
without actually pointing out a single thing he had said which was
untrue.
The plain truth of the incident was this. Having worked
tirelessly in the Israel-Palestine area,
Malik was a stressed out admin,
who had either been acting poorly for a while, or was gradually melting
down. Over a trivial edit dispute,
Malik launched an unprovoked and
arrogant attack on
Brad, oozing superiority and self-entitlement, in a
way that admins seem to get away with a lot (especially
Drmies). Brad
jabbed back, using a phrase, "sonny boy," which has two meanings, one
innocent, and one racist. Despite having no evidence
Brad intended the
racist usage,
Drmies constantly and loudly pronounced
Brad to be a
racist. Before anyone could blink,
Malik became outraged and committed
suicide by admin (resigned), and
Brad was reflexively blocked by another
notorious cowboy admin, because blood must have blood (
Brad had at no
point been allowed to even give his side of events). The fact that the
context and other factors made it obvious it was most likely the
innocent usage,
Brad was eventually unblocked, once other typically
Wikipedian bureaucratic stumbling blocks had been cleared.
These
things all happened months ago, but at the time, with one one or two
noted exceptions, they were largely ignored by WO's membership, either
because it was all a bit too "inside baseball," but also because of how
far down the line WO has gone as far as cosying up to WP and letting
die-hard Wikipedians defend their own on their forum by taunting and
trolling editors like
MMAR.
Consequently, in the subsequent Arbcom elections,
Drmies was unbelievably elevated to the high position
of an arbitrator, essentially Wikipedia Supreme Court Judge. Not once
did anyone from WO think to challenge him on his false statements
against
MMAR, which spoke to the very heart of his character, even
though many of WO's members are WP users in good standing and would be
perfectly allowed to ask him such questions. No, their interest in the
elections was largely focused on fighting other battles, and weirdly,
because a lot of disgruntled Wikipedians are WO members, this manifested
on WO in actively drumming up support for
Drmies (because he's seen as
someone who could bring it back to the good old days of machismo,
bullying and tribalism). Now, you could argue this is the evident
triumph of a devious hasten-the-day strategy, but in reality, you'd be
wrong - the hasten-the-day camp is all but non-existent on WO now.
And
then
Drmies blocked
Brad for personal attacks and harassment over an
unrelated dispute, having presumably see his name pop up in lights in an administrators noticeboard report. There's not been a word from
Drmies
about his obvious INVOLVEMENT withe respect to
Brad, before or after
the block (honestly, his prior statements alone are so strong, no
reasonable person would sign off on the idea he was not compromised as
far as acting as an admin on
Brad in any future incident). He had
"invited" people to discuss this block , but now that he is an
arbitrator, even if he suspected anyone was about to take him to task
over it, he must be confident in his standing now that he can pretty
much connive his way out of the situation, knowing that the prior
incidents happened months ago, and require a hell of a lot of reading to
digest.
This will all most likely be quickly forgotten on
Wikipedia as an open and shut case - even before the first block,
Brad
had been painted by some as a POV pusher and likely sock, and the same
is being alleged now, so even if the block is INVOLVED and horribly
abusive and shows an arbitrator to be a real nasty piece of work, it
will likely stand, under the well established Wikipedia doctrine of "the
ends justify the means."
The lack of notice taken by Wikipedians
to these things is to be expected, but you would expect a so called
critic site like WO to at least make sure people are aware of these
things? Their role is to inform the outside world that these sorts of
abuses are allowed to happen on WP even after Wikipedians have been
informed of them. As of right now, there's been no mention of it on WO's
public forum. It may have been mentioned in the secret forum, but you
can see how much impact that had from the way
Drmies was able to ignore
it before. Just to remind you - this is an ARBITRATOR getting away with
an involved block on someone he clearly hates, and has wanted to block
for a while now. While the "inside baseball" characterisation could at
least have been forgiven when
Drmies was just an admin, now that he is
an arbitrator, evidence of blatant abuse like this by one of Wikipedia's
most trusted and powerful users, is just an open goal, begging to be
put away.
This case will definitely be forgotten now - the same
admin which declined
Brad's unblock request, has also just closed the
case on AN/I, so discussion of
Drmies' pretty obvious motive for the
block will now not be possible without much wailing about the picking up
of dropped sticks. A final attempt at having the block reviewed was
subsequently filed on AN, but this just led to more lies - a second
admin denying
Brad's unblock request claimed he had been "indeffed in
the past for making racial comments at another editor. They were
unblocked after apologies and promises." Someone who was there (which
this admin was) would know that's a lie -
Brad specifically denied it
was meant as a racially-charged comment. All this was documented in the
thread on WO, as well as all being public record in WP's history logs.
In
an amusing post-script,
Malik Shabazz has just recently made his way
back onto Wikipedia, having previously made all sorts of loud noises
about never setting foot in the place until justice was done. You can
see from his talk page all the people who were ecstatic to see his
return. Including, hilariously, the admin who has also just declined
Brad's unblock request.
Drmies: The smile says it all.
