You may be right—after looking into it some more, I'm willing to accept I conflated the specific details of Essjay's behavior with those of some other administrators. My mistake. Nevertheless, much of the stuff he's deleted (not just blanked) from his user space, sometimes by asking others to delete it for him, was clearly an attempt to cover up his fraud. The letter to a university professor in which he defended Wikipedia using his fake credentials, for example. And other stuff going back to January. Check out the rest of that thread.
Sure. It's mentioned in the first post at the top of this page how he uses his powers of deletion to remove unflattering edits from page history. And sadly, this fits right in with the behavior of many other higher-ups at Wikipedia, including, it would seem, Jimbo himself. I see no reason to disbelieve these accounts. And it's very disappointing.
Indeed. This says less about Wikipedia's unreliability than it does about the culture of venality and self-importance surrounding Wikipedia and its administration. It's a big reason Wikipedia can't attract more (and more diverse) contributors.
What "good" has he done? Administrators exactly like him use their powers all the time to block people they dislike from editing the Wikipedia. Those with special powers, including Essjay, alter the database to remove edits they dislike, whether those be slander and personal information or, less justifiably, information pointing out the hypocrisy that permeates the project.
Admins like Essjay are the reason Wikipedia can't attract any more contributors. Any potential new editors get disgusted and leave.
Heh. More like Wales should be kicked and fired—not that anyone at the Wikimedia Foundation has the decency to do so. I'm already regretting my donation this past winter—the more I learn about the Foundation, the more it seems they're just "meatpuppets" for Jimbo.
Technically true, but a forest of new growth--fifteen years on average, to use your figure--is a very different habitat, able to support a very different ecosystem, than a forest hundreds of years old.
You gotta be kidding. Firefox on OS X fucking sucks. It might seem passable to a PC user, perhaps even preferable, but Firefox is just so out of place on the Mac platform that it's hardly even worth mentioning as a port. Here's an Apple developer article that explores the issue more closely.
No. You can flash your iPod's firmware, but the people who write alternative firmware for iPods tend not to "get it" the way Apple gets it and the result is an interface made of major shit. If you've got a library full of Oggs, my guess is you're probably not a good fit for an iPod anyway.
Jesus fucking Christ. When will we move past the myth that a computer is nothing but its operating system? What are you going to do when you realize you don't have an Alt key or whatever other fucktarded geegaws you PC users take for granted, but an option key and a Command key instead? Aren't you going to complain about the missing second button, or the trackpad designed for two-finger dragging but for which PC drivers don't exist? What are you going to do when Macs move to high-DPI displays, leaving Windows unable to cope and your users squinting to make out 1.5-point type?
The hardware and software of a Mac are as inseparable, in practice, as body and soul. The sooner you realize this, the better off you'll be.
He spoke out against DRM back when the iTunes Music Store was first introduced. Can't find the exact quote right now (since Google's polluted with detritus about the latest brouhaha), but he basically acknowledged that some of the smartest people on the planet knew that DRM was a futile effort and that the record companies were too shortsighted to give a damn about the end-user experience. Can't let that get in the way of a good anti-Apple rant, though, can we?
You cannot seriously believe more innocent Israeli lives are taken by Palestinians than vice versa. No one's actually that ignorant, are they? So quit trolling.
Israel deserves the land? Because it kills more civilians than Palestinians do? Because its foundations are based on religious exclusion, unlike the constitution of the PA?
If you're going to profess ignorance, then at least do others the courtesy of refraining from commenting at all.
"If we don't stop Iran now, there's a big chance Israel will lose its control over the region."
Would that really be such a bad thing? Iran isn't some country of kooks and crazies. Its leaders aren't idiots. Iran isn't about to start dropping nukes or smuggling them out of the country for underground militias to use. Frankly, after all the unbridled aggression Israel's shown in the last thirty years, maybe we should welcome a little bit of nuclear détente in the Middle East.
No thanks—I appreciate the gesture, but it was long ago and I've built up a good enough edit history that I don't think my current account is in danger of being blocked so casually. If you're serious about undoing the damage, a few regexps on this page yields the following:
Oh, please. Howard Dean was a tool, and still is. Barack is a smart guy who knows how to inspire people beyond the frothing-at-the-mouth grassroots malcontents.
That's not my account. I haven't posted my old account in this discussion. I found that username here. As you can see, I'm far from the only one affected by this borderline xenophobic tendency of many admins acting counter to policy.
I wasn't asking "where is the policy?" just to be annoying—I really would like to know where the policy is, because I've spent a good deal of time looking for it. I'd like to believe Wikipedia lives up to its ideals. But if in fact no such policy exists, it's very disturbing that the admin who replied to me has presumably been blocking people based on a policy that he made up out of thin air.
"in America we generally are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, though at this point a vote for Cthulu is beginning to look somewhat promising."
Are you one of those who voted for Nader in 2000 because "there was no difference between Bush and Gore"?
Guess what? You were dead fucking wrong. Working families, multiple sclerosis sufferers, teachers, and brown people speaking in funny tongues worldwide (including several hundreds of thousands of Iraqis) say: FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.
Slashdot Mirror
You may be right—after looking into it some more, I'm willing to accept I conflated the specific details of Essjay's behavior with those of some other administrators. My mistake. Nevertheless, much of the stuff he's deleted (not just blanked) from his user space, sometimes by asking others to delete it for him, was clearly an attempt to cover up his fraud. The letter to a university professor in which he defended Wikipedia using his fake credentials, for example. And other stuff going back to January. Check out the rest of that thread.
Sure. It's mentioned in the first post at the top of this page how he uses his powers of deletion to remove unflattering edits from page history. And sadly, this fits right in with the behavior of many other higher-ups at Wikipedia, including, it would seem, Jimbo himself. I see no reason to disbelieve these accounts. And it's very disappointing.
I agree with Larry and the AC, in case you suspect the AC and Larry are one and the same—oh, but what's a name but just another credential?
Anyway, just sayin'.
Indeed. This says less about Wikipedia's unreliability than it does about the culture of venality and self-importance surrounding Wikipedia and its administration. It's a big reason Wikipedia can't attract more (and more diverse) contributors.
What "good" has he done? Administrators exactly like him use their powers all the time to block people they dislike from editing the Wikipedia. Those with special powers, including Essjay, alter the database to remove edits they dislike, whether those be slander and personal information or, less justifiably, information pointing out the hypocrisy that permeates the project.
Admins like Essjay are the reason Wikipedia can't attract any more contributors. Any potential new editors get disgusted and leave.
Heh. More like Wales should be kicked and fired—not that anyone at the Wikimedia Foundation has the decency to do so. I'm already regretting my donation this past winter—the more I learn about the Foundation, the more it seems they're just "meatpuppets" for Jimbo.
Technically true, but a forest of new growth--fifteen years on average, to use your figure--is a very different habitat, able to support a very different ecosystem, than a forest hundreds of years old.
You gotta be kidding. Firefox on OS X fucking sucks. It might seem passable to a PC user, perhaps even preferable, but Firefox is just so out of place on the Mac platform that it's hardly even worth mentioning as a port. Here's an Apple developer article that explores the issue more closely.
Apple doesn't strike me as the sort of company to care what "PC dorks" think.
No. You can flash your iPod's firmware, but the people who write alternative firmware for iPods tend not to "get it" the way Apple gets it and the result is an interface made of major shit. If you've got a library full of Oggs, my guess is you're probably not a good fit for an iPod anyway.
"- Mostly WASP population"
Yeah, I hate diversity too! Seriously, how is that a selling point?
Jesus fucking Christ. When will we move past the myth that a computer is nothing but its operating system? What are you going to do when you realize you don't have an Alt key or whatever other fucktarded geegaws you PC users take for granted, but an option key and a Command key instead? Aren't you going to complain about the missing second button, or the trackpad designed for two-finger dragging but for which PC drivers don't exist? What are you going to do when Macs move to high-DPI displays, leaving Windows unable to cope and your users squinting to make out 1.5-point type?
The hardware and software of a Mac are as inseparable, in practice, as body and soul. The sooner you realize this, the better off you'll be.
He spoke out against DRM back when the iTunes Music Store was first introduced. Can't find the exact quote right now (since Google's polluted with detritus about the latest brouhaha), but he basically acknowledged that some of the smartest people on the planet knew that DRM was a futile effort and that the record companies were too shortsighted to give a damn about the end-user experience. Can't let that get in the way of a good anti-Apple rant, though, can we?
You cannot seriously believe more innocent Israeli lives are taken by Palestinians than vice versa. No one's actually that ignorant, are they? So quit trolling.
Israel deserves the land? Because it kills more civilians than Palestinians do? Because its foundations are based on religious exclusion, unlike the constitution of the PA?
If you're going to profess ignorance, then at least do others the courtesy of refraining from commenting at all.
"If we don't stop Iran now, there's a big chance Israel will lose its control over the region."
Would that really be such a bad thing? Iran isn't some country of kooks and crazies. Its leaders aren't idiots. Iran isn't about to start dropping nukes or smuggling them out of the country for underground militias to use. Frankly, after all the unbridled aggression Israel's shown in the last thirty years, maybe we should welcome a little bit of nuclear détente in the Middle East.
Why don't you move over? Bikes have as much legal right to the roadway as automobiles. In civilized places, anyway.
Maybe I'm out of line here, but welcome to the platform. Don't let the overzealous Johnnies-come-lately scare you off.
That statistic doesn't include the vast number of soldiers from Poland.
No thanks—I appreciate the gesture, but it was long ago and I've built up a good enough edit history that I don't think my current account is in danger of being blocked so casually. If you're serious about undoing the damage, a few regexps on this page yields the following:
Oh, please. Howard Dean was a tool, and still is. Barack is a smart guy who knows how to inspire people beyond the frothing-at-the-mouth grassroots malcontents.
That's not my account. I haven't posted my old account in this discussion. I found that username here. As you can see, I'm far from the only one affected by this borderline xenophobic tendency of many admins acting counter to policy.
I wasn't asking "where is the policy?" just to be annoying—I really would like to know where the policy is, because I've spent a good deal of time looking for it. I'd like to believe Wikipedia lives up to its ideals. But if in fact no such policy exists, it's very disturbing that the admin who replied to me has presumably been blocking people based on a policy that he made up out of thin air.
That wasn't my account. That was the first of literally hundreds that I found by clicking "What links here" on the block template.
"in America we generally are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, though at this point a vote for Cthulu is beginning to look somewhat promising."
Are you one of those who voted for Nader in 2000 because "there was no difference between Bush and Gore"?
Guess what? You were dead fucking wrong. Working families, multiple sclerosis sufferers, teachers, and brown people speaking in funny tongues worldwide (including several hundreds of thousands of Iraqis) say: FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.