I think this article would benefit from having a summary, and I tried to write some, but too much time has passed and I am not finished anyway, so here are some notes, approximately about the first half of the article:
.
David Gerard is an important person at Wikipedia:
Wikipedia administrator since 2004
Wikipedia’s UK spokesman
old boys’ network: if you criticize David’s edits, other admins will propose to ban you
some names are associated with David very often (Sandstein, Aquillion, XOR’Easter, NorthBySouthBaranof)
first editor able to see other editors’ IP addresses
The meta-game of Wikipedia edit wars:
started by summary ban of citations from Daily Mail in 2017 (as opposed to editors using their own judgment)
allows you to win tribal battles before they even started
voting is insincere: David criticized Huffington Post as liars at RationalWiki, but defended them as a reliable source at Wikipedia
publishing a few false stories may either be a reason for a summary ban, or excused as business as usual, depending on politics of the source
if you redefine Wikipedia to be a summary of opinions expressed by sources written by your political tribe, your tribe wins Wikipedia
David Gerard’s personality:
most of his social media activity is in groups dedicated to hating some group or concept
David Gerard has a long history of… behavior that is bad, but difficult to explain, and can be successfully defended on a technicality:
he got the “checkuser” right on Wikipedia, and pretended to be abusing it without actually doing so; this allowed him to threaten his opponents online, but also to threaten legal action against Wikipedia for defamation (i.e. towards outsiders it was like “here is a not-so-subtle hint that I am abusing my powers against you”, and towards insiders it was like “if you dare suggest that I am doing or pretending to do anything improper with my powers, my lawyer would like to have a chat with you”)
he explained in a popular Wikipedia essay why a person should not blindly delete everything just because it comes from a source that was not blessed by Wikipedia as reliable; and then he went and did exactly that, and people who pointed it out got in trouble with him and his admin friends
I think this article would benefit from having a summary, and I tried to write some, but too much time has passed and I am not finished anyway, so here are some notes, approximately about the first half of the article:
.
David Gerard is an important person at Wikipedia:
Wikipedia administrator since 2004
Wikipedia’s UK spokesman
old boys’ network: if you criticize David’s edits, other admins will propose to ban you
some names are associated with David very often (Sandstein, Aquillion, XOR’Easter, NorthBySouthBaranof)
first editor able to see other editors’ IP addresses
The meta-game of Wikipedia edit wars:
started by summary ban of citations from Daily Mail in 2017 (as opposed to editors using their own judgment)
allows you to win tribal battles before they even started
voting is insincere: David criticized Huffington Post as liars at RationalWiki, but defended them as a reliable source at Wikipedia
publishing a few false stories may either be a reason for a summary ban, or excused as business as usual, depending on politics of the source
if you redefine Wikipedia to be a summary of opinions expressed by sources written by your political tribe, your tribe wins Wikipedia
David Gerard’s personality:
most of his social media activity is in groups dedicated to hating some group or concept
David Gerard has a long history of… behavior that is bad, but difficult to explain, and can be successfully defended on a technicality:
he got the “checkuser” right on Wikipedia, and pretended to be abusing it without actually doing so; this allowed him to threaten his opponents online, but also to threaten legal action against Wikipedia for defamation (i.e. towards outsiders it was like “here is a not-so-subtle hint that I am abusing my powers against you”, and towards insiders it was like “if you dare suggest that I am doing or pretending to do anything improper with my powers, my lawyer would like to have a chat with you”)
he explained in a popular Wikipedia essay why a person should not blindly delete everything just because it comes from a source that was not blessed by Wikipedia as reliable; and then he went and did exactly that, and people who pointed it out got in trouble with him and his admin friends