So, for all of you who weren't yet convinced that Jayjg and company use email to coordinate their actions, this email (to the WikiEN-l public mailing list) should leave very little doubt.... Jay acknowledges sending the email here. Inquiring minds want to know, Jay: what secret mailing list were you sending that to, and who was on it? Oh, wait. A little bird just tweeted in my ear to tell me that the other people were Avi <aviwiki@gmail.com>, Pinchas Cohen <PinchasC@gmail.com>, Beit Or <beitor06@gmail.com>, and Humus Sapiens <humus.sapiens@gmail.com>. And presumably, one other person, who is right next to "English Wikipedia" on your contact list, eh, Jay?
Anyone with any doubt that Jay is one of a "cabal" of editors who seek to control the content and tone of articles about Judaism needs to put that doubt to rest, now. Wikipedia's articles about Judaism are embarrassingly biased, and Jay's convenient little slip-up is just the smoking gun that proves it.
Jay, I reiterate my call from August: Please leave. When I recently wrote that Wikipedia should "get rid of people who are using Wikipedia as a battleground for their personal wars", you were one of the people I was thinking of.
Anyone with any doubt that Jay is one of a "cabal" of editors who seek to control the content and tone of articles about Judaism needs to put that doubt to rest, now. Wikipedia's articles about Judaism are embarrassingly biased, and Jay's convenient little slip-up is just the smoking gun that proves it.
Jay, I reiterate my call from August: Please leave. When I recently wrote that Wikipedia should "get rid of people who are using Wikipedia as a battleground for their personal wars", you were one of the people I was thinking of.
As an inactive en:wp admin, secret stuff like this is exactly why I'm not involved in the project anymore, it's just too frustrating to attempt to deal with when you're on the outside. There should not be any project-related discussions that are not public, and anyone found to be using such methods of communication should be banned for a sufficient length of time to get the point across.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a fundamental problem with positions of authority in the Wikipedia world. Adminship and other positions of power don't bring any rewards except for people whining and complaining about every action that you take, so in the pool of most active admins are a higher-than-average percentage of neurotics or sociopaths mainly concerned with pushing their own personal agendas instead of working for the good of Wikipedia. Wikipedia needs a better way of choosing people for positions of power.
Ditto the above caller. Jayjg seriously degraded the place with his insider posse, at his beck and call for any dispute he wished to win. He turned WP into a power game and sent many good faith editors away from the project. Either by putting them off, or by simply having them blocked. That he was supported by Arbcom and Jimbo in this was an outrage.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia should have cleaned up its act long ago to save everyone a lot of time. But with Jayjg's cronies controlling the dispute processes, that was not able to happen. Now Wikipedia looks doomed and we all know who to blame.
Another guy that needs to be removed from the project. Jayjg is a serial troll and single-purpose account, who is only on Wikipedia to advance very specific viewpoints.
ReplyDeleteThe elephant in the room is, why did Jimbo dole so much favor out to such an obvious agenda-pusher?
ReplyDeleteIf that could be answered, I think it would shed light on a lot of Wikipedia's core problems.
Jayjg:
ReplyDelete*checkuser
*oversight
*Administrator
*arbcom mailing list
"The elephant in the room is, why did Jimbo dole so much favor out to such an obvious agenda-pusher?"
ReplyDeleteI'd venture a guess that he invested capital in Wikia.
"I'd venture a guess that he invested capital in Wikia."
ReplyDeleteAnd if control of Wikipedia was for sale in this way, hasn't Jimbo Wales betrayed the trust of all of the honest Wikipedia editors, perhaps criminally so?
"...why did Jimbo dole so much favor out to such an obvious agenda-pusher?"
ReplyDelete1.A valid, but loaded, question
"a guess that he invested capital in Wikia."
2.A spectacular assumption of bad faith, without any evidence whatsoever - but hey it's a conspiracy!
"...betrayed the trust of all of the honest Wikipedia editors, perhaps criminally so?"
3.A downright mindless slander
Well, I guess some people are happy to donate their encyclopedia contributions to a project that is available for secret sale to people who want to use it to promote various agendas, but I suspect most people would be a little turned off by that.
ReplyDeleteSomeone should also learn what "slander" means; for he slandered me, but I slandered no one.
And the kooks come out needing larger conspiracy theories.
ReplyDeleteIts not like Jimbo has historically shown good judgement in which admins he gives extra support too or which he unduely chastises. Jimbo doesn't know the situation on the ground, which is why he's been tough on admins & editors who're really valuable to the project (examples should be obvious enough) and gives generous support to those who're big liabilities (roughly "The Old Guard", although I rather like Raul654). I've been lead to believe this is because they used to be assets, but I really don't know for sure. Nonetheless, Wikia conspiracy theories are realistically unsupported and invoking them is a needless violation of Occam's & Hanlon's razors.
Occam's razor tells us to conclude that Jimbo just hands out privileges to whomever, and is either incapable or too lazy to actually make a character judgment.
ReplyDeleteSo the conspiracy theorists here are probably wrong, but isn't it troubling that Wikipedia is so structurally broken that there is no way for us to refute the theories of outside influence (corporate or otherwise), except by the observation that it's much simpler to conclude that their glorious figurehead is a flaming moron?
And of course.. if Jimbo is to stupid or too lazy to even handle basic matters of trust and authority, how long until he manages to sell the whole sausage to someone offering him some magic beans?
I suspect that most of Jimbo's sins are due to gross negligence rather than malfeasance, but the treatment of Jayjg would have to be a many standard deviation event if it had happened just by chance. Out of the blue, he was personally appointed by Jimbo mid-term to fill a vacated ArbCom spot, by-passing people who had actually run for the position in the prior election, and after Jayjg had barely been participating in Wikipedia for a year. And his agenda even at that time could not have been much of a secret. And then checkuser, oversight, etc. How, out of all of Wikipedia's users, would Jayjg have been chosen to become the annointed one? Something is very likely going on; it may just be that Jayjg and Jimbo knew each other previously, but I have seen no mention of that.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Jayjg works with these fellows?
ReplyDeleteConspiracy theories are by their nature impossible to refute, and they all grow to include a Secret Jewish Cabal. The Jews-of-Wikipedia theory undermines legitimate criticism, and is tediously unoriginal.
ReplyDeleteI neither know nor care whether Jayjg's cabal is affiliated with some larger organization or not. There are heaping mounds of legitimate evidence that Jayjg and his friends (three of whom Jay has conveniently identified for us) are engaged in a concerted effort to control the content of a variety of articles. While it would be amusing to show that there's a broader conspiracy, it's simply unneeded to answer the question of whether or not Jay should be allowed to continue editing Wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteJayjg is Chabad from Thornhill Ontario....and is about as objective as Chaim Ben Pesach.
ReplyDelete