Adam Hyland ("Proton-k", allegedly.)

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Adam Hyland

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Contents 1 background 2 WP history 3 Identity 4 Gets blocked 5 Twitter escapades 6 other

[edit] background

AKA Protonk (T-C-F-R-B) (supposedly pronounced proton - K). Evil edit-warrior, banned many people in disputes, seems to enjoy protecting their userpages. Lives in Chicago, former US Navy, recently graduated from economics school at University of Chicago. A regular Slashdot user. Basically a complete nobody--except on Wikipedia.

[edit] WP history

"One of the things you learn in anthropology is that if you see a seemingly bizarre cultural phenomenon then you really should be asking why that exists"

Oldest diff April 2008. Most of his article-writing has been about Navy subjects. He has been accused of plagiarizing an article, it may not be his only one. Although he started out as a gnome/contributor, he eventually became an extremely incivil and foul-mouthed deletionist and talkpage troll. Seems to enjoy the defamatory possibilities of WP BLPs.

RFA October 2008. Adam revealed that he had installed and used MediaWiki before coming to Wikipedia, thus explaining (to their satisfaction) why he showed up and promptly started voting on AFDs. This is likely to be a smokescreen, to cover up previous accounts.

There are few complaints in AN/I about him, this one is typical. He occasionally participates on SPI. Uses other admins for "cover" and is otherwise "sneaky", when he isn't directly abusing someone for a minor transgression. Tends to avoid Arbcom pages.

WR thread: [1]

Protonk was one of the administrators involved in the harassment of Clayton Olney, albeit unknowingly.

In 2014, after years of declining interest, Adam returned to "editing", which in his case consists mostly of deletions and voting. In August he was the administrator who killed off one of Wikipedia's most asinine "lists of" articles, "List of notable Ice Bucket Challenge participants". [2][3] As usual for current events, the primary article Ice Bucket Challenge was subjected to ugly editwars for weeks. It was created on 13 August by none other than Jinkinson (T-C-F-R-B) (see David Gorski).

In the midst of the Zoe Quinn/Gamergate argument on AN/I, Adam the "fucking loser" felt compelled to attack Gorski.

"It's an interesting moral quandary, isn't it? On the one hand, WP:OUTING is strongly forbidden by site policy, and it causes people significant distress. Some "outings" appear to have served no greater purpose than satisfying the sadism or vindictiveness of some obsessive grudge-bearer. On the other hand, Wikipediocracy contributors have also successfully identified several cases of serious abuse of Wikipedia, where repellent behavior would have continued indefinitely if not for Wikipediocracy's "outing" (the cases I have in mind are those of Qworty (talk · contribs) and Little green rosetta (talk · contribs), although the latter seems to be active again now with an alternate account). We actually owe Wikipediocracy a debt of gratitude for calling attention to those cases, because these "outings" served a constructive purpose and likely reduced the real-life harm these individuals had caused. So... like most real-life ethical questions, it's not as black-and-white as one would like to believe. MastCell Talk 17:17, 9 September 2014 (UTC)"

"As someone who got doxxed for "behaving badly" by having opinions about BLPs, you can fuck right off with that. The real world is the real world, but doxxing isn't some proportionate punishment meted out for sins, real or imagined. It's cowardly bullshit designed to chill speech and heap scorn on people from afar. Protonk (talk) 19:16, 9 September 2014 (UTC)"

"I'm not sure whether this is a response to me (based on the indenting, I'm guessing it's not), but in any case I'd put your "outing" firmly in the category of "served no greater purpose than satisfying the sadism or vindictiveness of some obsessive grudge-bearer." I'm sorry if I implied otherwise. MastCell Talk 19:42, 9 September 2014 (UTC)"

"It was not directed at you. I was torn between just indenting for threading or pinging, but I figured it was less justifiable to "ping" someone and tell them to fuck off than it would be to just say it. Protonk (talk) 19:49, 9 September 2014 (UTC)"

"To respond to your comments that it isn't always black and white, that is true but in a really unpelasant way. To the person doing the doxxing, it's often completely black and white. Back in the day BLP apostasy was exactly that in the eyes of folks at WR and other places. BLPs were a struggle for the heart of the project and represented a real potential damage to humans based on anonymous work. We can look at them and say that this manichean view was unfounded, but they don't feel that way. The folks at Wikipediocracy are likewise concerned over sexism and harassment getting "justified" in the encyclopedia. Their concern "looks" better to us (after all, the gamer gate stuff is disgusting, but that's a story for another time), so we might be more inclined to view the outing as a necessary journalistic evil. But I don't think we need to dig too far into the piece to see that characterization as strained. The run down on TD from that article is basically "look at this fucking loser", which is par for the course with outing articles. Protonk (talk) 19:58, 9 September 2014 (UTC) "

[edit] Identity

• This page is linked from, and links to his Wikipedia page. He introduces himself at a boring Wikimedia conference here.

[edit] Gets blocked

He was blocked in January 2015 for some weird violation of Arbitration Enforcement - by none other than Harry Mitchell. For those with the appetite, the ANI discussion is here. It stemmed from some of Hyland's activities in the Zoe Quinn/Gamergate battle.

"I have a newfound appreciation for how byzantine our processes are for getting unblocked and how helpless a blocked editor can feel. That is all. Protonk (talk) 03:26, 30 January 2015 (UTC)"

[edit] Twitter escapades

In July 2016 he defends his friend Robert Fernandez by forcing Slate writer David Auerback off Twitter. [4] "Auerbach sent his media inquiries on Friday (and received no answer), and Fernandez went after him on Saturday, tweeting (and possibly calling and/or emailing) Slate and New America, two publications Auerbach has worked for."

By this time, Adam had successfully found himself a job -- with the Wiki Education Foundation. [5] Working for Frank Schulenburg, next to Sage Ross and Ian Ramjohn.

[edit] other

• Slashdot account
• Huffington Post account
• Flickr account
• Daily Show account

Categories: 

• Wikipedians
• Administration
• Edit wars
• Trolls