There are a number of "usual suspects" administrators, but one of the latest trends is administrators randomly renaming themselves, and leaving a less-than-adequate trail to show what the old administrator name was (such as user:Gaillimh); this is a ploy to make it harder for old abusive actions to be followed up on.
CheckUser, despite policy being that a user accused has the right to request the data be made public, has never ONCE seen this happen; on the contrary, requests to make the data public are usually beaten down, talkpages locked by other admins.
Talk pages of blocked users are routinely locked by the blocking admin, requests for administrator intervention against corrupt admins doing blocking are routinely removed without comment or with insults by 3-4 users like Ryulong and Yamla.
In Wikipedia, remember, you're guilty until proven innocent, and even if proven innocent you're "guilty of wikilawyering" for trying to prove your innocence as long as some admin somewhere wants to say so and block you. Nobody's going to stand up against them, least of all the only ones with the power to do something about it, the other administrators.
However, when it comes to moderators and administrators, things are a little different. They break this concept of equality that is the foundation of the philosophy. They can exert influence over points of contention, and even more so, they can assert their authority by limiting the voice of a regular wikipedian. They are in a position of power. So the rules have to change for them.
The larger problem is that administrators, within their position of power, are in a position (despite the "rules" being against it) to use said powers to control content and "win" content disputes. Some of this happens singly, with honest edits being mislabeled "vandalism" by admins with a control fetish. Some of it happens with admins who support particular bias-oriented groups, helping them to maintain control of articles and enforce their own bias under the guise of "consensus."
It isn't intuitive, but ideally, it is the fact that they are in a position of power that lends credibility to their claimed credentials, as opposed to their credentials putting them in that position. Remember that credentials are ideally meaningless for a regular wikipedian.
But they weren't meaningless for Essjay. Part of the reason Essjay won content disputes was that he claimed those credentials, even before being made an admin, but part of the reason he was made an admin was that those credentials made him seem more "mature" and "qualified" to take on the admin role.
So no, it's not so much of a breakdown in the philosophy of wikipedia, as it is that the original system was imperfectly implemented.
Actually, no. The problems within wikipedia are entirely systemic; the problems are that nobody oversees the overseers, those who have the power to stop an admin from being abusive are the same people who are being abusive in the first place.
Or does that translate as "Who janitors the janitors?" I forget;)
Regardless, the overarching problem is just that: there is no "metamoderation." The same people who are the admins, are the people who an appeal has to go to, are the same people who are supposed to watch the actions of other admins. It's subverted from the get-go, and there is nothing to stop the abusive behavior; for even suggesting that an admin has misused their powers, you're likely to get slapped down as a "troll" by another administrator.
The arbitration committee - supposedly the "last resort" - is impossible to get to in practice, because to file a complaint you have to do one of two things:
- File a certified complaint signed by TWO users. - Get the arbcom to agree to hear it (they're all admins themselves)
If you're blocked/banned by an admin abusing THAT particular power, you have the technical "right" to appeal to arbcom by email - because creating a new account/going to a new computer to file the complaint is "block avoidance" - but never in history have they ever even admitted to receiving emails from users trying to appeal in this manner.
The system is designed, not to be fair and open, but to be as closed and corrupt as possible.
The more people know about Wikipedia, the more things like this are going to be exposed.
Eventually, the corruption will be too much, and Wikipedia as it now exists will cease to be. There may be something called wikipedia down the road, but the grand scheme - the idea of an encyclopedia in which errors are corrected by a horde of readers who see something wrong and fix it - can't function as long as those who have true editorial control, the administrators, are a hopelessly corrupt group of individuals led by another hopelessly corrupt individual.
Wikipedia's hordes of corrupt administrators already make more enemies than friends every day for the project. Actions they take like banning their critics, making the appeals processes that are supposed to hold the administrators a non-public affair (they recently "closed" membership of their unblock-en-l list for one example), and rigidly enforcing a group of shibboleths which if a user does not speak, they will not be given the time of day? Not going to work.
It is in the nature of power to corrupt; wikipedia's problem is that they gave power to already-corrupt people, and all the power has done is just made them even worse.
Yes, mods can abuse their power, but that's why you make all moderator actions public (e.g. tagged) so you can identify abusers and strip their powers.
This is where Wikipedia dies. In reality, mods are almost never stripped of power, no matter how badly they abuse them, because the other mods stand up for them, protect them, and they support each other's abusive actions.
What Wikipedia really needs is a third group; those who have no moderator powers, but stand in oversight of moderators/admins, observe their actions, are NOT their friends, and are ready to strip them of power for doing something wrong.
Instead, the way Wikipedia is constructed now, it's one big incestuous party: "admins" beget "bureaucrats" and "arbcom" members and "Checkusers" and "Oversight" users, and they all come from the same pool. If you don't drink the kool-aid and support abusive behavior by other admins, or worse yet you actually stand up and call out admins who do something that they shouldn't do, you'll be smacked down and banned by another admin for the "incivility" of daring to criticize an administrator.
Remember, a "blocked" user has no right to speak in their own defense, while the admins and their toadies are free to keep slandering them. By the time they are unblocked, chances are their name has been completely trashed, and the rest of the admins are on alert waiting for an excuse to permanently ban them.
After all, the greatest threat to the power of an administrator is another administrator actually being held accountable for their actions, because it sets precedent that all administrators might one day be held accountable for their abuses.
One of the great fallacies: the idea that "Dan Everyman", as you put it, knows just as much as someone who has a doctorate.
Now, let it not be said that all professors are geniuses. There are a good many who are incredibly fucking brilliant in their area of research, but it's a wonder they can tie their shoes in the morning and I'm pretty sure couldn't figure out how to change a light bulb.
I'd trust Dan Everyman to work on my car's engine at a mechanic's shop, if that was his job. I wouldn't trust him to build a supercollider.
1. no anon edits. They're almost always just vandalism and frankly how can you trust information supplied without credentials?
Bullshit. I fix things all the time when I see them. I've become convinced it doesn't do shit for good, though. Anytime you get near anything that even hints of controversy, Wikipedia breaks because there are gangs of people who will try to control an article.
There's a great former admin who's written all about it, he describes it a hell of a lot better than I ever could. His blog's at http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com./
2. Lock articles once they're solid.
Wikipedia's admins do this all the time now; and they remain hopelessly inaccurate, with bad information or inaccuracies preserved for all to see.
What it really does is change it from wikipedia to elitopedia.
3. community == good, disorder == bad.
Corrupt community of admins = worst of all, and that's what wikipedia is now.
4. Derive clear policies concerning articles about commercial entities.
No shit. If a company wants to edit on the same basis as everyone else, and as long as they are putting in verifiable information that is factually accurate, why should they be reduced to a stub-page? Unfortunately, Wikipedia's got a bunch of freaks running it who go ape-shit the moment that the idea of someone being paid to edit particular pages is introduced.
The "problem" comes in when you get a vaporware/scam company like Infinium Labs or some shit, who start getting irate about their dirty laundry reaching the article. The proper response is "tough shit, if you didn't want it public, you shouldn't have done it in the first place." Unfortunately for wikipedia, the response from their userbase instead is "OMGWTFBBQ THEY BROUGHT IN A LAWYER BAN THEM FROM THE SITE" like a bunch of drooling morons, and so they get articles that are 25 pages long on a fucking pokemon that appeared in one episode back in 1996 and never anywhere else, but you can't have more than a 1-sentence stub on, say, a waterpark or amusement park or theater that's a national historic landmark / tourist attraction.
to support using other sources, to claim that other sources were not proper, and to push his own (anti-Catholic biased) agenda in editing.
That's why this is such a big deal.
He also claimed the credentials as "proof" of his maturity and trustworthiness to handle a lot of the business that went on. This despite his being one of Wikipedia's very corrupt administrators' circle and routinely granting support to obviously corrupt behavior by others.
- Deleted from the records his own statement that his birth certificate was incorrect, two years later, and then got pissy about people who were quoting that statement?
- Encourages wikipedia admins to ban anyone who disagrees with them on content as a "troll"?
- Called one of his detractors a "disease" in your IRC channels, then denied he said it (even though it was logged) and created an entire "biography" on the person devoted solely to libeling them, in violation of publication laws and wikipedia's own "standards" for biographical entries?
- Suggested in logged, publicly available email lists for the project that "lone wolves" should start filing dishonest "complaints" with the hosting ISP against a site critical of wikipedia admins' behavior?
- Does nothing when false reports are filed by admins using the "advanced" tools like CheckUser, or when admins engage in stalking behavior or worse?
- Claims now to be the "sole founder" of Wikipedia, even though years of Wikipedia's own press releases show otherwise, since they credited Larry Sanger as "co-founder" or "one of the founders" for years prior to his creating Citizendium out of disgust for the cronyism and corruption in Wikipedia?
- Makes tons of money "sharing" Wikipedia's content to sites like Answer.com for a cut of the advertising revenue, then fraudulently claims that the site needs more money to run?
Sorry. Wikipedia's doomed. Doesn't matter what kind of damage control Jimbo tries now, he's corrupt, the admins are corrupt, the system is corrupt, and that's that.
Instead of focusing so much on scholarships, Micro$hit could stop outsourcing everything to India. There are plenty of people in America who would be happy to have the work.
I'm not the only person who asked you how you think you know the boy so well. Onerous Coward said, "Explain to me precisely how you know this. Explain to me how you know that there is nothing anyone anywhere could have done differently to change the personality that eventually developed in this kid." You've dodged the question both times, of course, because stupid as you are, you're not so stupid as to think you can actually answer it and not look like an ass.
I've known enough kids like him. Dealt with them in areas where I grew up, seen them as neighbor's kids, spent time dealing with their crazier crap.
There are kids to whom literally NOTHING gets through. They do not have the mental linkages required for true remorse, for behavior correction, or anything of the sort. They will sometimes "act nice" if a reward is offered, and that's that. As soon as they decide that they can do something else or that they don't really want the reward? Forget it.
These kids cannot be "behavior corrected." You can sit down and have a heart-to-heart with them, try to explain to them why it's important to follow society's rules, get along with people, etc. You can try again and again. You can try letting them do whatever the fuck they want, and that's what they'll do. You can try every gradiation of discipline between that and throwing them in a locked 8x10 cell, and they will STILL do whatever the fuck they want.
My brother is a social worker. One of these sort of kids he thought he was making REAL good progress with. Kid was getting better grades (in the subject he was interested in only, poetry... later they discovered the poetry he was writing at home and hiding, that was all about raping and murdering girls). Kid stopped getting into fights.
Kid showed up at his office for a counseling appointment and stabbed him in the chest with a steak knife, barely missed the heart. Just for fun. Thought it would be interesting to do.
NO remorse. No thought whatsoever for the consequence of doing it, or the fact that he was trying to kill someone. It was all about how it would be "interesting" to do.
Yeah. I know "kids" like this. You know what? Even my brother admits he can't fix some of these kids. The scariest, scariest part is you DO NOT KNOW which ones are being sincere or not. The real psychopathic ones, the ones with the disconnect, are the ones who can stare you right in the face, lie to you about whatever they feel like, and not a muscle is out of place, not a change in their voice, nothing. You can't tell them from the ones who are really remorseful, who realize they did something awful, who really want to change, except for the fact that the ones who are real psychopaths revert right back and do the same shit again the moment an authority is out of sight.
When they finally cross the line? When they are truly and well over the line, beating people up daily, completely showing absence of remorse? When you can finally tell you're being lied to?
It's a tough decision, but eventually they run out of chances and you need to protect society from them. The day someone kills someone else on a whim? I'd say the line is crossed.
Seriously, I can't stress this enough, you're an idiot.
Seriously, I can't stress this enough: you're a moron.
I'm "advocating killing kids"? Sure. When the "Kid" is over 6' tall, 200 lbs, and has proven that he has it in him to repeatedly beat people, commit violent crime, and tops it off by beating someone to death, smearing crap on him, and stuffing him into a grill then running around town bragging about it.
At that point, he no longer qualifies as "kid" in my book, he qualifies as a dangerous animal no different than a rabid dog. Maybe more dangerous than the rabid dog, because this one will look you in the eye, claim he never meant to do it, claim he is "cured" or "remorseful", and the minute you give him another opportunity to beat someone up or do something violent and he thinks he won't be caught, he's just going to do it again.
I do not agree that he was "born bad" and there is not enough evidence from that article to deduce that. I'm not saying he was born good, either, as there isn't evidence for that either, but It is likely that he was fiercely independent right from 2 to 4 years old and he was disciplined repeatedly (I'm sure you've seen the little hyperactive rugrats with the angry parents repeatedly and forcefully telling them all the things they shouldn't do).
Yeah, I've seen them. By my parents' accounts, I went through a phase like that too.
The difference between me and him? By the age of 5, that phase went as I developed a sense of empathy and a sense of right and wrong.
He never developed those. And those aren't "taught" things, you either figure them out or you don't.
And I most definitely did not say that a parent should let their child run wild. Not at all. There are plenty of ways to engage an intelligent and fiercely independent child in meaningful discussion. Instead of berating them and trying to control them, you can offer your knowledge and experience and lead by example.
And a kid whose brain has not developed the ability to differentiate between what they want to be doing, and what they should be doing? You can talk at him all day long, you can try whatever you want, some kids just are going to stare right back at you, cuss at you, and say "whatever."
A kid like that, society should have the right to protect itself from. This one has proven, by repeated violent crimes, that society should protect itself from him. Permanently.
I've known several kids like this - single parent mom due either to divorce or death, mom is inches shorter than they are and half or less their weight. Big men marry small women. Genetically, men are bigger than women to start with. It happens.
When a kid gets to be bigger than the parent (or big enough to cause physical harm to the parent), and they are an evil or just problem kid, it causes major problems. That's true whether they're a psychopathic manipulator like this murderous jerk, or just a retarded 20-year-old whose brain stopped developing at age 3 and who understands "ooh, I can reach the top shelf" and will manhandle anything that gets in his way on the way to the cereal box without knowing what he's really doing.
The difference between the two? The psychopathic manipulator is actually evil, because he fully comprehends what he's doing, he just doesn't care.
I feel sorry for you, but encourage you to have your parents call CPS again and again till you get control of those kids.
They deserve a better mother than your sister. Once you get the kids, you can boot her out the door. Might work, might not, but it's better than not trying at all.
And that's a terrible waste, but an inevitable consequence of spending a child's entire adolescence teaching them that they are accountable to someone other than themself, when ultimately, goodness comes from within and true goodness only comes out when you hold yourself accountable above all other people (i.e. Do you do right because you want to do what is right or because you are compelled to by real or implied force?)
The kid didn't care about "right." He did what he felt like doing, and that was that. He was a fucked up sociopath, completely self-centered, manipulative, and abusive. He was a kid born bad and that was that, and doing any less wouldn't have given him any reason to change that or be nicer to anyone else. He wasn't "acting out" to prove that they had no control over him, he already knew that they had no control over him, he could game the system any way he pleased, and that was that.
Maybe if he'd been chucked into juvie, it could have been different. I doubt it, but it could have.
Letting him run amok doing whatever? If you think that would do any good, you just go back to hitting the bong and being a good little moron.
A potential wasted teenager vs. a potential wasted old bum.
You know what? I don't think so.
And you're misstating what I said. Lib policies are always too soft on criminals. It's more about "understanding" them than safeguarding the rest of society.
I don't think all libs want OBL for president. I know plenty who really just hate the fuck out of America, but know goddamn well that if they went elsewhere in the world, they'd be killed for protesting. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
The worst problem with libs is that they only half-think things, then announce they've reached the "solution." They come up with bullshit policies in schools and that let criminals off easy, then congratulate themselves on lowering the prison population while at the same time wondering why the criminals are getting bolder.
What comes out of a prison is worse than what went in because of fucked up prisons in which criminals are given way too much freedom. Most prisons have 1 guard to about 200 inmates, so the inmates run the fucking asylum: no wonder it's the way it is, half their gang buddies or whatever else are right in there with them.
Between that and the just serious nutballs who are wastes of oxygen, yeah, prisons are fucked up. But it's the libs who don't want society to protect itself from fuckers like this.
Illegal immigration also produces high levels of crime nationwide. Small towns and large cities alike find themselves plagued by illegal drugs, violence and gang-related activity. Local law enforcement is simply overwhelmed. The percentage of noncitizens in Federal prisons has increased to more than a quarter of the Federal prison population. Most are illegal aliens, half of them convicted of drug dealing and drug trafficking. Either because of mismanagement or a lack of desire, our immigration laws are not being enforced as they should be.
The moment he started telling people they were "abusing" him, it stopped them from doing ANYTHING to try to punish him, because he'd claim it was "part of the abuse" and they would have to admit to doing it.
And the refusal to believe the parents on the part of government officials - especially the COPS who kept returning him after this shit - shows me an entire police dept that ought to be fired for incompetence.
Yeah, he probably did think he could get away with it. After all, the only people who tried to discipline him were his parents, and he figured out a way to go over their heads REAL fucking quick and had a bunch of incompetent, credulous fucktards in the school administration and police dept who'd back him up over his parents any day.
(Federal statistic) - 25%+ illegal aliens who came here to commit violent crime like rape. Many are repeat offenders who were merely deported back to Mexshitco the first time.
- People who did a DUI one too many times. - People who killed someone else. - People who were involved in violent drug crime. - People who were involved in major money crimes.
- People who were "beaten" when kids. - People who were not "beaten" when kids.
People from incredibly rich, what one would think of as advantageous, even loving families can develop into real psychopaths. The Mormons give us Warren Jeffs and his compound full of misogyny. Many "rich and powerful" people develop into serial rapists, murderers, etc.
And yes, some kids are just born "evil", in the sense that for whatever reason, their cognitive development skews towards manipulation and abuse rather than empathy and love. Some come from the same families as incredibly loving, caring people. I've known one family (neighbors up the street) who one of their kids grew up to be a social worker, despite the fact that he was smart enough to go into a lot of other fields and make a ton more money, because he wanted to help people. He sacrifices every day on the shit-salary he gets from the government, in order to try to help kids who are really disadvantaged.
His brother? Probably as objectively "smart", but his smarts he put towards manipulating people from day one. His parents didn't believe till they sent him to college, that his caring younger brother wasn't the one doing the shit around the house that the older brother was blaming on him. Now the older brother's been in and out of prison 4 times, has at least 6 illegitimate kids, and is currently whereabouts-unknown with half a dozen warrants for his arrest.
The older brother is pure evil, yes. Nobody on the street thinks he could have turned out any other way, he's just evil and manipulative. He's a pathological liar and manipulator. Parents a lot of time have blinders on with respect to their kids - and oh, when he was at home, this fucked up kid made it REAL easy for them to believe him over anything else - but even these parents have finally clued in on it.
The teachers who let the kids screw with your stuff? They're to blame. They're the retarded fucktards I was talking about.
I went through a system where if there was anything going on, each kid got punished equally. Why? Because the school organizers were retarded fucktards who couldn't be bothered to get to the bottom of what was going on, who started what, and thought "no kid is a bully."
What was the end result? Half the kids in 'detention' were otherwise honor students who were there because the bullies who didn't give two shits about their education would start a fight with those kids just for fun. Detention didn't mean shit to the bullies, but they knew it would fuck over the honor students, so they did it anyways.
I'm sure the school administrators and teachers at the kid's school, or at yours, were no different.
Slashdot Mirror
who's done more on exposing this than I could.
You might start at his blog: http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com/
There are a number of "usual suspects" administrators, but one of the latest trends is administrators randomly renaming themselves, and leaving a less-than-adequate trail to show what the old administrator name was (such as user:Gaillimh); this is a ploy to make it harder for old abusive actions to be followed up on.
CheckUser, despite policy being that a user accused has the right to request the data be made public, has never ONCE seen this happen; on the contrary, requests to make the data public are usually beaten down, talkpages locked by other admins.
Talk pages of blocked users are routinely locked by the blocking admin, requests for administrator intervention against corrupt admins doing blocking are routinely removed without comment or with insults by 3-4 users like Ryulong and Yamla.
In Wikipedia, remember, you're guilty until proven innocent, and even if proven innocent you're "guilty of wikilawyering" for trying to prove your innocence as long as some admin somewhere wants to say so and block you. Nobody's going to stand up against them, least of all the only ones with the power to do something about it, the other administrators.
However, when it comes to moderators and administrators, things are a little different. They break this concept of equality that is the foundation of the philosophy. They can exert influence over points of contention, and even more so, they can assert their authority by limiting the voice of a regular wikipedian. They are in a position of power. So the rules have to change for them.
The larger problem is that administrators, within their position of power, are in a position (despite the "rules" being against it) to use said powers to control content and "win" content disputes. Some of this happens singly, with honest edits being mislabeled "vandalism" by admins with a control fetish. Some of it happens with admins who support particular bias-oriented groups, helping them to maintain control of articles and enforce their own bias under the guise of "consensus."
It isn't intuitive, but ideally, it is the fact that they are in a position of power that lends credibility to their claimed credentials, as opposed to their credentials putting them in that position. Remember that credentials are ideally meaningless for a regular wikipedian.
But they weren't meaningless for Essjay. Part of the reason Essjay won content disputes was that he claimed those credentials, even before being made an admin, but part of the reason he was made an admin was that those credentials made him seem more "mature" and "qualified" to take on the admin role.
So no, it's not so much of a breakdown in the philosophy of wikipedia, as it is that the original system was imperfectly implemented.
Actually, no. The problems within wikipedia are entirely systemic; the problems are that nobody oversees the overseers, those who have the power to stop an admin from being abusive are the same people who are being abusive in the first place.
I can attest that YOU are the one full of shit.
Enjoy your kool-aid.
Or does that translate as "Who janitors the janitors?" I forget ;)
Regardless, the overarching problem is just that: there is no "metamoderation." The same people who are the admins, are the people who an appeal has to go to, are the same people who are supposed to watch the actions of other admins. It's subverted from the get-go, and there is nothing to stop the abusive behavior; for even suggesting that an admin has misused their powers, you're likely to get slapped down as a "troll" by another administrator.
The arbitration committee - supposedly the "last resort" - is impossible to get to in practice, because to file a complaint you have to do one of two things:
- File a certified complaint signed by TWO users.
- Get the arbcom to agree to hear it (they're all admins themselves)
If you're blocked/banned by an admin abusing THAT particular power, you have the technical "right" to appeal to arbcom by email - because creating a new account/going to a new computer to file the complaint is "block avoidance" - but never in history have they ever even admitted to receiving emails from users trying to appeal in this manner.
The system is designed, not to be fair and open, but to be as closed and corrupt as possible.
How's that wikipedia koolaid taste?
The more people know about Wikipedia, the more things like this are going to be exposed.
Eventually, the corruption will be too much, and Wikipedia as it now exists will cease to be. There may be something called wikipedia down the road, but the grand scheme - the idea of an encyclopedia in which errors are corrected by a horde of readers who see something wrong and fix it - can't function as long as those who have true editorial control, the administrators, are a hopelessly corrupt group of individuals led by another hopelessly corrupt individual.
Wikipedia's hordes of corrupt administrators already make more enemies than friends every day for the project. Actions they take like banning their critics, making the appeals processes that are supposed to hold the administrators a non-public affair (they recently "closed" membership of their unblock-en-l list for one example), and rigidly enforcing a group of shibboleths which if a user does not speak, they will not be given the time of day? Not going to work.
It is in the nature of power to corrupt; wikipedia's problem is that they gave power to already-corrupt people, and all the power has done is just made them even worse.
"male-oriented search engine."
Heh.
Yes, mods can abuse their power, but that's why you make all moderator actions public (e.g. tagged) so you can identify abusers and strip their powers.
This is where Wikipedia dies. In reality, mods are almost never stripped of power, no matter how badly they abuse them, because the other mods stand up for them, protect them, and they support each other's abusive actions.
What Wikipedia really needs is a third group; those who have no moderator powers, but stand in oversight of moderators/admins, observe their actions, are NOT their friends, and are ready to strip them of power for doing something wrong.
Instead, the way Wikipedia is constructed now, it's one big incestuous party: "admins" beget "bureaucrats" and "arbcom" members and "Checkusers" and "Oversight" users, and they all come from the same pool. If you don't drink the kool-aid and support abusive behavior by other admins, or worse yet you actually stand up and call out admins who do something that they shouldn't do, you'll be smacked down and banned by another admin for the "incivility" of daring to criticize an administrator.
Remember, a "blocked" user has no right to speak in their own defense, while the admins and their toadies are free to keep slandering them. By the time they are unblocked, chances are their name has been completely trashed, and the rest of the admins are on alert waiting for an excuse to permanently ban them.
After all, the greatest threat to the power of an administrator is another administrator actually being held accountable for their actions, because it sets precedent that all administrators might one day be held accountable for their abuses.
One of the great fallacies: the idea that "Dan Everyman", as you put it, knows just as much as someone who has a doctorate.
Now, let it not be said that all professors are geniuses. There are a good many who are incredibly fucking brilliant in their area of research, but it's a wonder they can tie their shoes in the morning and I'm pretty sure couldn't figure out how to change a light bulb.
I'd trust Dan Everyman to work on my car's engine at a mechanic's shop, if that was his job. I wouldn't trust him to build a supercollider.
1. no anon edits. They're almost always just vandalism and frankly how can you trust information supplied without credentials?
Bullshit. I fix things all the time when I see them. I've become convinced it doesn't do shit for good, though. Anytime you get near anything that even hints of controversy, Wikipedia breaks because there are gangs of people who will try to control an article.
There's a great former admin who's written all about it, he describes it a hell of a lot better than I ever could. His blog's at http://parkerpeters.livejournal.com./
2. Lock articles once they're solid.
Wikipedia's admins do this all the time now; and they remain hopelessly inaccurate, with bad information or inaccuracies preserved for all to see.
What it really does is change it from wikipedia to elitopedia.
3. community == good, disorder == bad.
Corrupt community of admins = worst of all, and that's what wikipedia is now.
4. Derive clear policies concerning articles about commercial entities.
No shit. If a company wants to edit on the same basis as everyone else, and as long as they are putting in verifiable information that is factually accurate, why should they be reduced to a stub-page? Unfortunately, Wikipedia's got a bunch of freaks running it who go ape-shit the moment that the idea of someone being paid to edit particular pages is introduced.
The "problem" comes in when you get a vaporware/scam company like Infinium Labs or some shit, who start getting irate about their dirty laundry reaching the article. The proper response is "tough shit, if you didn't want it public, you shouldn't have done it in the first place." Unfortunately for wikipedia, the response from their userbase instead is "OMGWTFBBQ THEY BROUGHT IN A LAWYER BAN THEM FROM THE SITE" like a bunch of drooling morons, and so they get articles that are 25 pages long on a fucking pokemon that appeared in one episode back in 1996 and never anywhere else, but you can't have more than a 1-sentence stub on, say, a waterpark or amusement park or theater that's a national historic landmark / tourist attraction.
to support using other sources, to claim that other sources were not proper, and to push his own (anti-Catholic biased) agenda in editing.
That's why this is such a big deal.
He also claimed the credentials as "proof" of his maturity and trustworthiness to handle a lot of the business that went on. This despite his being one of Wikipedia's very corrupt administrators' circle and routinely granting support to obviously corrupt behavior by others.
- Used to run a porn site?
- Deleted from the records his own statement that his birth certificate was incorrect, two years later, and then got pissy about people who were quoting that statement?
- Encourages wikipedia admins to ban anyone who disagrees with them on content as a "troll"?
- Called one of his detractors a "disease" in your IRC channels, then denied he said it (even though it was logged) and created an entire "biography" on the person devoted solely to libeling them, in violation of publication laws and wikipedia's own "standards" for biographical entries?
- Suggested in logged, publicly available email lists for the project that "lone wolves" should start filing dishonest "complaints" with the hosting ISP against a site critical of wikipedia admins' behavior?
- Does nothing when false reports are filed by admins using the "advanced" tools like CheckUser, or when admins engage in stalking behavior or worse?
- Claims now to be the "sole founder" of Wikipedia, even though years of Wikipedia's own press releases show otherwise, since they credited Larry Sanger as "co-founder" or "one of the founders" for years prior to his creating Citizendium out of disgust for the cronyism and corruption in Wikipedia?
- Makes tons of money "sharing" Wikipedia's content to sites like Answer.com for a cut of the advertising revenue, then fraudulently claims that the site needs more money to run?
Sorry. Wikipedia's doomed. Doesn't matter what kind of damage control Jimbo tries now, he's corrupt, the admins are corrupt, the system is corrupt, and that's that.
Instead of focusing so much on scholarships, Micro$hit could stop outsourcing everything to India. There are plenty of people in America who would be happy to have the work.
I'm not the only person who asked you how you think you know the boy so well. Onerous Coward said, "Explain to me precisely how you know this. Explain to me how you know that there is nothing anyone anywhere could have done differently to change the personality that eventually developed in this kid." You've dodged the question both times, of course, because stupid as you are, you're not so stupid as to think you can actually answer it and not look like an ass.
I've known enough kids like him. Dealt with them in areas where I grew up, seen them as neighbor's kids, spent time dealing with their crazier crap.
There are kids to whom literally NOTHING gets through. They do not have the mental linkages required for true remorse, for behavior correction, or anything of the sort. They will sometimes "act nice" if a reward is offered, and that's that. As soon as they decide that they can do something else or that they don't really want the reward? Forget it.
These kids cannot be "behavior corrected." You can sit down and have a heart-to-heart with them, try to explain to them why it's important to follow society's rules, get along with people, etc. You can try again and again. You can try letting them do whatever the fuck they want, and that's what they'll do. You can try every gradiation of discipline between that and throwing them in a locked 8x10 cell, and they will STILL do whatever the fuck they want.
My brother is a social worker. One of these sort of kids he thought he was making REAL good progress with. Kid was getting better grades (in the subject he was interested in only, poetry... later they discovered the poetry he was writing at home and hiding, that was all about raping and murdering girls). Kid stopped getting into fights.
Kid showed up at his office for a counseling appointment and stabbed him in the chest with a steak knife, barely missed the heart. Just for fun. Thought it would be interesting to do.
NO remorse. No thought whatsoever for the consequence of doing it, or the fact that he was trying to kill someone. It was all about how it would be "interesting" to do.
Yeah. I know "kids" like this. You know what? Even my brother admits he can't fix some of these kids. The scariest, scariest part is you DO NOT KNOW which ones are being sincere or not. The real psychopathic ones, the ones with the disconnect, are the ones who can stare you right in the face, lie to you about whatever they feel like, and not a muscle is out of place, not a change in their voice, nothing. You can't tell them from the ones who are really remorseful, who realize they did something awful, who really want to change, except for the fact that the ones who are real psychopaths revert right back and do the same shit again the moment an authority is out of sight.
When they finally cross the line? When they are truly and well over the line, beating people up daily, completely showing absence of remorse? When you can finally tell you're being lied to?
It's a tough decision, but eventually they run out of chances and you need to protect society from them. The day someone kills someone else on a whim? I'd say the line is crossed.
Seriously, I can't stress this enough, you're an idiot.
Seriously, I can't stress this enough: you're a moron.
I'm "advocating killing kids"? Sure. When the "Kid" is over 6' tall, 200 lbs, and has proven that he has it in him to repeatedly beat people, commit violent crime, and tops it off by beating someone to death, smearing crap on him, and stuffing him into a grill then running around town bragging about it.
At that point, he no longer qualifies as "kid" in my book, he qualifies as a dangerous animal no different than a rabid dog. Maybe more dangerous than the rabid dog, because this one will look you in the eye, claim he never meant to do it, claim he is "cured" or "remorseful", and the minute you give him another opportunity to beat someone up or do something violent and he thinks he won't be caught, he's just going to do it again.
I do not agree that he was "born bad" and there is not enough evidence from that article to deduce that. I'm not saying he was born good, either, as there isn't evidence for that either, but It is likely that he was fiercely independent right from 2 to 4 years old and he was disciplined repeatedly (I'm sure you've seen the little hyperactive rugrats with the angry parents repeatedly and forcefully telling them all the things they shouldn't do).
Yeah, I've seen them. By my parents' accounts, I went through a phase like that too.
The difference between me and him? By the age of 5, that phase went as I developed a sense of empathy and a sense of right and wrong.
He never developed those. And those aren't "taught" things, you either figure them out or you don't.
And I most definitely did not say that a parent should let their child run wild. Not at all. There are plenty of ways to engage an intelligent and fiercely independent child in meaningful discussion. Instead of berating them and trying to control them, you can offer your knowledge and experience and lead by example.
And a kid whose brain has not developed the ability to differentiate between what they want to be doing, and what they should be doing? You can talk at him all day long, you can try whatever you want, some kids just are going to stare right back at you, cuss at you, and say "whatever."
A kid like that, society should have the right to protect itself from. This one has proven, by repeated violent crimes, that society should protect itself from him. Permanently.
by recognizing when someone is a waste of oxygen, and revoking their breathing privileges.
I think this kid fits that.
I've known several kids like this - single parent mom due either to divorce or death, mom is inches shorter than they are and half or less their weight. Big men marry small women. Genetically, men are bigger than women to start with. It happens.
When a kid gets to be bigger than the parent (or big enough to cause physical harm to the parent), and they are an evil or just problem kid, it causes major problems. That's true whether they're a psychopathic manipulator like this murderous jerk, or just a retarded 20-year-old whose brain stopped developing at age 3 and who understands "ooh, I can reach the top shelf" and will manhandle anything that gets in his way on the way to the cereal box without knowing what he's really doing.
The difference between the two? The psychopathic manipulator is actually evil, because he fully comprehends what he's doing, he just doesn't care.
I feel sorry for you, but encourage you to have your parents call CPS again and again till you get control of those kids.
They deserve a better mother than your sister. Once you get the kids, you can boot her out the door. Might work, might not, but it's better than not trying at all.
His mother couldn't do jack shit.
He figured out a way around everything.
And that's a terrible waste, but an inevitable consequence of spending a child's entire adolescence teaching them that they are accountable to someone other than themself, when ultimately, goodness comes from within and true goodness only comes out when you hold yourself accountable above all other people (i.e. Do you do right because you want to do what is right or because you are compelled to by real or implied force?)
The kid didn't care about "right." He did what he felt like doing, and that was that. He was a fucked up sociopath, completely self-centered, manipulative, and abusive. He was a kid born bad and that was that, and doing any less wouldn't have given him any reason to change that or be nicer to anyone else. He wasn't "acting out" to prove that they had no control over him, he already knew that they had no control over him, he could game the system any way he pleased, and that was that.
Maybe if he'd been chucked into juvie, it could have been different. I doubt it, but it could have.
Letting him run amok doing whatever? If you think that would do any good, you just go back to hitting the bong and being a good little moron.
I mean, with comments like this...
A potential wasted teenager vs. a potential wasted old bum.
You know what? I don't think so.
And you're misstating what I said. Lib policies are always too soft on criminals. It's more about "understanding" them than safeguarding the rest of society.
I don't think all libs want OBL for president. I know plenty who really just hate the fuck out of America, but know goddamn well that if they went elsewhere in the world, they'd be killed for protesting. They want to have their cake and eat it too.
The worst problem with libs is that they only half-think things, then announce they've reached the "solution." They come up with bullshit policies in schools and that let criminals off easy, then congratulate themselves on lowering the prison population while at the same time wondering why the criminals are getting bolder.
What comes out of a prison is worse than what went in because of fucked up prisons in which criminals are given way too much freedom. Most prisons have 1 guard to about 200 inmates, so the inmates run the fucking asylum: no wonder it's the way it is, half their gang buddies or whatever else are right in there with them.
Between that and the just serious nutballs who are wastes of oxygen, yeah, prisons are fucked up. But it's the libs who don't want society to protect itself from fuckers like this.
Read 'em and weep.
Illegal immigration also produces high levels of crime nationwide. Small towns and large cities alike find themselves plagued by illegal drugs, violence and gang-related activity. Local law enforcement is simply overwhelmed. The percentage of noncitizens in Federal prisons has increased to more than a quarter of the Federal prison population. Most are illegal aliens, half of them convicted of drug dealing and drug trafficking. Either because of mismanagement or a lack of desire, our immigration laws are not being enforced as they should be.
Mexshitco can go to fucking hell.
The moment he started telling people they were "abusing" him, it stopped them from doing ANYTHING to try to punish him, because he'd claim it was "part of the abuse" and they would have to admit to doing it.
And the refusal to believe the parents on the part of government officials - especially the COPS who kept returning him after this shit - shows me an entire police dept that ought to be fired for incompetence.
Yeah, he probably did think he could get away with it. After all, the only people who tried to discipline him were his parents, and he figured out a way to go over their heads REAL fucking quick and had a bunch of incompetent, credulous fucktards in the school administration and police dept who'd back him up over his parents any day.
People who are in prison:
(Federal statistic) - 25%+ illegal aliens who came here to commit violent crime like rape. Many are repeat offenders who were merely deported back to Mexshitco the first time.
- People who did a DUI one too many times.
- People who killed someone else.
- People who were involved in violent drug crime.
- People who were involved in major money crimes.
- People who were "beaten" when kids.
- People who were not "beaten" when kids.
People from incredibly rich, what one would think of as advantageous, even loving families can develop into real psychopaths. The Mormons give us Warren Jeffs and his compound full of misogyny. Many "rich and powerful" people develop into serial rapists, murderers, etc.
And yes, some kids are just born "evil", in the sense that for whatever reason, their cognitive development skews towards manipulation and abuse rather than empathy and love. Some come from the same families as incredibly loving, caring people. I've known one family (neighbors up the street) who one of their kids grew up to be a social worker, despite the fact that he was smart enough to go into a lot of other fields and make a ton more money, because he wanted to help people. He sacrifices every day on the shit-salary he gets from the government, in order to try to help kids who are really disadvantaged.
His brother? Probably as objectively "smart", but his smarts he put towards manipulating people from day one. His parents didn't believe till they sent him to college, that his caring younger brother wasn't the one doing the shit around the house that the older brother was blaming on him. Now the older brother's been in and out of prison 4 times, has at least 6 illegitimate kids, and is currently whereabouts-unknown with half a dozen warrants for his arrest.
The older brother is pure evil, yes. Nobody on the street thinks he could have turned out any other way, he's just evil and manipulative. He's a pathological liar and manipulator. Parents a lot of time have blinders on with respect to their kids - and oh, when he was at home, this fucked up kid made it REAL easy for them to believe him over anything else - but even these parents have finally clued in on it.
The teachers who let the kids screw with your stuff? They're to blame. They're the retarded fucktards I was talking about.
I went through a system where if there was anything going on, each kid got punished equally. Why? Because the school organizers were retarded fucktards who couldn't be bothered to get to the bottom of what was going on, who started what, and thought "no kid is a bully."
What was the end result? Half the kids in 'detention' were otherwise honor students who were there because the bullies who didn't give two shits about their education would start a fight with those kids just for fun. Detention didn't mean shit to the bullies, but they knew it would fuck over the honor students, so they did it anyways.
I'm sure the school administrators and teachers at the kid's school, or at yours, were no different.