This user rarely connects now to areas of Wikipedia frequented by pompous asses, raving lunatics, goons, and stupids.
Honoring
I feel honored to have been banned by Smallbones and Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales from the co-founder’s talk page for raising issues to do with Kazakhstan, the UAE, China, and Wales. It might amuse you to check out some relevant history at Wales's talk page [1] ("Kazakhstan Firewall" section et seq.), [2] (“Some may find this interesting” section),
[3] (“Congratulations” section); also at mine [4],[5]; and also at WP:AN/I [6] ("Personal attack in user space") and WP:BLP/N [7] ("Jimmy Wales").
“If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand alongside tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justifications.” — JK Rowling (who says more interesting things than she writes, IMO)
Caution
“The Internet allows people to be the worst version of themselves . . . Resist the temptation to be a jerk.” — Borrowed from Buster7
Bullying
The estimable Tim Field made a study of bullying in the workplace. Characteristic behaviours he identified can include:
“Excusitis, makes excuses for everything; shows a lot of indignation, especially when challenged; lots of self-pity; feigns victimhood when held accountable . . . claiming they're the one being bullied and harassed; presents as a false victim when outwitted
"Denial: the bully denies everything
"Retaliation: the bully counterattacks
"Feigning victimhood: Variations include indulgent self-pity, feigning indignation, pretending to be 'devastated', claiming they're the one being bullied or harassed, claiming to be 'deeply offended', melodrama, martyrdom ('If it wasn't for me...') and a poor-me drama . . .
“Other tactics include manipulating people's perceptions to portray themselves as the injured party . . . [o]r presenting as a false victim. Sometimes the bully will suddenly claim to be suffering 'stress' and go off on long-term sick leave . . . Alleged ill-health can also be a useful vehicle for gaining attention and sympathy. By using this response, the bully is able to avoid answering the question and thus avoid accepting responsibility for what they have said or done. It is a pattern of behaviour learnt by about the age of 3; most children learn or are taught to grow out of this, but some are not and by adulthood, this avoidance technique has been practised to perfection.” †
"The more transparent the lie, the easier it is to see the liar's stupidity" — d'Artagnan Muldoon (notorious for the ability to defeat polygraphs; became a world authority on misrepresentation and dishonesty—there really should be an article on him)
The Thoughts of the Dear Leader
"Suffice to say, I disagree vehemently with Charlie Smith. As is common for him, his loud-mouthed rhetoric serves the interests of Chinese censorship perfectly. By attacking the only people who care enough to do something, he makes it much harder for progress to be made. If I listened to him - and I don't - I could just stay home and not go to China to lobby for change." 19 December 2015
"Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with one of my personal heroes, Charlie Smith, who is one of the key people behind GreatFire. We had a lovely chat about his work, which I strongly support." 15 April 2016
Logical fallacy
"Argumentum ad Jimbonem" is the logical fallacy that 'what Jimbo said' is The Truth" — WP:Argumentum ad Jimbonem.
Stupidity
The Fourth Law of Stupidity: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake. — Carlo M. Cipolla (Acknowledgments to MastCell, from whose user page I copied it.)
Narcissistic Personality Disorder
"Narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by an over-inflated sense of self-importance, as well as dramatic, emotional behavior that is in the same category as antisocial and borderline personality disorders." — Narcissistic personality disorder
“People with unrealistically inflated self-views, which may be especially unstable and highly vulnerable to negative information,...tend to have poor social skills." — Smith, E. R.; Mackie, D. M. (2007). Social Psychology (Third ed.). Hove: Psychology Press. ISBN978-1-84169-408-5.
If you view Wikipedia less as a democracy and more as a banana republic, you won't be surprised if you find yourself thinking it's run by a bunch of bananas. "Things are going to get unimaginably worse, and they are never, ever, going to get better again." Kurt Vonnegut
We at the NSA have learned that 500 writers (i.e. 500 people nobody's heard of) sent a petition to the United Nations demanding an international bill of digital rights. Yes, yes, the same United Nations whose resolutions against Israel the United States vetoed in 29 instances from 1972 to 1990; the same United Nations to whom Colin Powell solemnly declared (with a straight face, bless him, and a little vial of pretend chemical weaponry in his hand) that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction; etc., etc. Writers? United Nations? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaa haaaa! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa!
And from your cuddly comedians at the Central Intelligence Agency [8]
Also a big shout out to the creepy, deceitful stalker who so regularly rummages around in here and in my talk page while I'm out that I have to lock up the silver.
Visitors please note: I have an aversion to bloviating, lying, and self-righteous denial when called out; deliberate misrepresentation of policies and other users' comments; hypocrisy (e.g. acting as a self-appointed BLP enforcer yet also flouting the policy when it suits a personal agenda); tendentious arguing long after the argument has been lost; and to the tedious, repeated, and irrelevant trumpeting of claimed personal credentials in a pathetic, narcissistic effort to impress. I mean, look at me: even though I'm a brain surgeon, an Olympic athlete and a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, I've found time to read almost a million books, invent the jet engine and the Interweb, design Madonna's fabulous pointy bras, and teach Miley Cyrus to twerk. But I don't bang on about it.
Wikipedia editor
This is a Wikipediauser page. This is not an encyclopedia article or the talk page for an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user whom this page is about may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Writegeist.
WikiProject Palestine is looking for editors to help build and maintain comprehensive, informative, balanced articles related to Palestine on Wikipedia. Start by adding your name to the list of members at WikiProject Palestine. Ahlan wa Sahlan! (Welcome!)
ARBCOM 2014: Giano has hit the nails squarely on the head. The committee is "worse than useless . . . devious and incompetent . . . [and] its reluctance to support ordinary editors over admins is now clear for all to see."
ARBCOM 2015: As Carrite said on 24 October 2015, "There is nothing for ArbCom to do here other than maybe resign en bloc as a fitting conclusion to their catastrophically bad year. Of course, it's already October and it takes them more than two months to do anything..."
Wikipediocracy: I am a registered member at Wikipediocracy, where dysfunctional aspects of Wikipedia’s management, processes, and behaviours are investigated, brought to light, and discussed. To quote the great Scott, from 2014:
If you want to understand what's wrong with Wikipedia, start reading the Wikipediocracy forums. Put aside any ideas you have about the personalities you see there — even though you'll see everyone from banned editors, non-editors, editors in good standing, admins, to former and current members of ArbCom — and read. Keep reading, and reading, and reading, until it sinks in, and you realize that it's never going to stop, and the more you dig, the worse that it gets.
Wikištrajku
Ja sam u wikištrajku! Don't panic! Ja ću urediti, bez zaustavljanja, u ovom teškom trenutku. Smirite se i nastavite.
If Vlad sees you've quoted me out of context in your userspace and made wanky comments, you'll be skewered in mine.
Quotes of the day
"You wanna raise the tax on tobacco so kids don’t get cancer? OK. But let’s put one on Sunday school, so they don’t get stupid." — Bill Maher
“All I know is what’s on the Internet.” — Donald Trump
"Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest - and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure,it's not your fault."— Donald Trump
“When you believe in a talking snake, you can believe an orangutan will transform into a statesman.” Bill Maher
"With the invention of Wrongopedia this man [Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales] made people think it was okay not to be educated, because now anyone can pretend to know anything just by getting it off a website. Then, by ensuring that everything on it was wrong, he basically killed knowledge itself, which is quite a feat. Like something Lex Luthor would try to do." — Giles Coren
“Heck, naw, I ain’t gawn let my kids use no ‘cyclopedia! They kin walk to school like I did!”— George “Kingfish” Stevens (Freeman Gosden), Amos and Andy
"Anyone who says "Wikipedia is not censored" has never paid particularly close attention to the way talk pages are treated by third parties."— WP editor Carrite, 2012
"“In the last century—in the twentieth century—counting military deaths, both civilian and soldiers— counting civilian deaths sponsored by government activity—we sacrificed a hundred and ninety-six million people in this world. A hundred and ninety-six million people. And for us to worry about three thousand, or a hundred here, or five hundred there—I mean, if you have grief, fine, good inside; same with religion, keep it inside, keep it to yourself. If you want to share it a little with friends and family, fine. But don’t be coming and taking over things that are kind of public, and thrusting your grief on me.” — George Carlin
“The pain is shared by all of us, but a golden rule should apply: don’t capitalise on grief, don’t profit from it. Perhaps this is why big companies imposing their sympathy on the rest of us leaves a bitter taste in my mouth: it is hard for me to see these gestures as anything but profiteering. Companies are now posing as entities capable of compassion, never mind that they cannot possibly speak for all of its employees. This also brings us a step closer to endowing them with a human trait: the capacity to express emotions. They think they’re sentient.
If this sounds crazy, it’s because it is.” — Jessica Reed, on corporate affectation of compassion and grief [9]
"The easiness and redundancy of what we call “beauty” in modern photography is jading our souls and wrapping our hearts in honey. Not even real honey: we are drowning in honey substitute. All the glory of the world is being reduced, second by second, snap by snap, to instant, mechanical tropes of the picturesque. Amazing. Spectacular. Dazzling. Dead." — Jonathan Jones
"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. There is thus a flavor of the pathological in it; it goes beyond the normal intellectual process and passes into the murky domain of transcendental metaphysics. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass: he is actually ill. Worse, he is incurable, for disappointment, being essentially and objective phenomenon, cannot permanently affect his subjective infirmity. His faith takes on the virulence of a chronic infection. What he says, in substance, is this: 'Let us trust in God, Who has never fooled us in the past.' " — H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series, 1922
"My own personal theory is that Joseph build the pyramids in order to store grain. And all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs' graves." — Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson[10]
“Trump image straightened” — Edit summary at Wikipedia’s 2016 US presidential elections article
“He always talked about issues that had to do with fish.” — A neighbor of the Juneau, Alaska mayor Greg Fisk the day after Fisk was found dead
"The trial of a Turkish man accused of insulting the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, by comparing him to Gollum has been adjourned so that a group of experts can study JRR Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings character, Turkish media has reported." — News report
“We do not for any reason have permission from this community to repeatedly call people liars.” — A user at Jimbotalk, February 20, 2016
“Thank you. I’m used to it.” — Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales’s reply
“I am specifically checking with every board member to try to get some idea of what, if anything at all, this accusation could be based on, and I have so far come to a preliminary conclusion that it is a flat out lie.” — Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, Jimbotalk, February 10, 2016
“It's an interesting hypothetical which has not been part of any serious strategy proposal, nor even discussed at the board level, nor proposed to the board by staff, nor a part of any grant, etc. It's a total lie.” — Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, Jimbotalk, February 11, 2016
“XYZ [WP user's name redacted] has made a lot of noise about why he was dismissed which is utter and complete bullshit. He wrote a nice piece for the Signpost about transparency which implied that the Board got rid of him for wanting more transparency. Utter fucking bullshit." — Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, Jimbotalk, 25 January 2016
"If he [someone else] says that he's lying." — Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales. Jimbotalk, 17 December 2015
"Writegeist is spreading lies about me, and should be permanently blocked." — Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, Jimbotalk, 5 January 2016
Wales, the Kazakh dictatorship, and having kittens:
"Your clarification comes as very welcome news, not least in light of past connection to the Kazakh dictatorship, described by Human Rights Watch as implementing "a growing crackdown" on free speech, which came under scrutiny by the media [11] at the time." — Writegeist, Jimbotalk page, 14 December 2014
"Past connection to the Kazakh dictatorship" - total and utter and complete bullshit. I have no past connection of any kind to the Kazakh dictatorship. — Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, Jimbotalk, 14 December 2014
"I've been following the story of Kazakh Wikipedia [ … ] and I also I've been getting in touch with the government there. I've been talking to the Prime Minister there. [ …] I'm going in December and I'm gonna give the award in the presence of the Prime Minister [ …] I think that if we really try hard on this, instead of having sad puppies and sad kittens, we'll have happy puppies and kittens." — Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, 2011 closing ceremony speech at Wikimania 2011
‘ “I was given a prize by the leader of Dubai, which I couldn’t in good conscious [sic] accept, but I couldn’t give it back, because it’s very oppressive there,♦ so I started the Jimmy Wales Foundation for Freedom of Expression,” a foundation that promotes access to information in oppressive countries.
'Wales had no such compunctions about accepting the $1 million Dan David Prize that occasioned his current visit to Israel.’† — The Jerusalem Post, May 20 2015. The article does make it clear that Wales is a co-founder of Wikipedia. (Wales peddles a "founder" narrative.) It doesn't tackle the ludicrous non-sequitur in “I couldn’t give it back because it’s very oppressive there”.
♦Wales told the Middle East Monitor’s Alastair Sloan that he consulted with Israeli human rights lawyer Orit Kopel and asked her "If she would help me use the money to fuck with them," adding: "Yes, I could have declined the money, but why give money back to horrible people? So they can use it to pay for more jails?" Sloan commented: "Denying the UAE govt of $500,000 is not going to stop it 'building jails' or 'fucking with them.' The country's GDP is over half a trillion dollars, and government spending is over $100bn." [19] (See here for more on the UAE.)
†Alon Liel, former director-general of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, writing in 2012: “The military oppression of Palestinians is out of sight and out of mind for the average Israeli.” [Also, evidently, for at least one American.] “The Palestinian West Bank is being gobbled up by growing settlements, erasing the Green Line - the internationally recognised pre-1967 line…” Israel continues to build settlements on “occupied land outside Israel’s internationally recognized borders [and they are] illegal under international law.”
Number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories in 1993 at the time of the signing of the Oslo peace accord: approx. 250,000. In 2000: 390,000. In 2012: 550,000+.
Wales and toxicity:
"I have a longstanding view that . . . a fair number of toxic personalities need to be shown the door immediately. If anyone wants my personal list, I can give it.” Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, Jimbotalk, 15 August 2015. (Several editors then requested this “personal list” of “toxic personalities”. Wales welched on the promise.)
Wales and search:
“ I do not want to build a search engine.” — Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, Jimbotalk, 17 February 2016
“[Wikia Search is] something I care about deeply. I will return to again and again in my career to search, either as an investor, a contributor, a donor, or a cheerleader.” — Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, jimmywales.com, 31 March 2009
Pope Francis: "American Catholics are committed to building a society which is truly tolerant and inclusive to safeguarding the rights of individuals and communities and to rejecting every form of unjust discrimination."
American Catholic and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio: Marriage is "the most important institution in our society and should be between one man and one woman."
From WP:Reference desk/Science:
Can scratching athlete's foot be more enjoyable than sex?
How?
(Please provide references, if you can). The Transhumanist 10:50, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
First, in case you think I might be some Johnny- (or Joanna-) come-lately to the Computer Interweb, I'll have you know I started the first-ever blog in 1909: A Gentleman's Discourse on the Trouser Gusset, the Hobble Skirt, the Advisability of Thornproof Tweed Undergarments, and Sundry Other Sartorial Matters of Concern to the Aspiring Aviator. It was published in Compo-Serve (motto: Per Compostum ad Astra), which at that time was the premier organ for distinguished pensées on the twin arts of composting and aviating. R-e-s-p-e-c-t! (It's a little-known fact, which really deserves a Wikpedia article all to itself, that I inspired Mr. Redding's song.)
Nothing in Wikipedia should be relied on as fact (and the passive voice should be avoided wherever avoidance is found to be possible). Wikipedia is a humorous parody of Uncyclopedia[20] and Conservapedia[21], the only online encyclopedias that are edited with high regard for accuracy, verifiability and neutral point of view. If you find content in Wikipedia that you can corroborate as factually correct it's just coinkidink and you should edit it boldly, satirically and immediately.
And please remember: Wikipedia is actually written by "three people in a toilet." — Eddie Izzard, Washington Post (Mr. Izzard grew up "in Europe, where the history comes from." For additional interesting facts about history, refer to its encyclopedia entry: History.)
"Dear Sir,
It is a honor for us that the person like you is among us to bring innovation and knowledge through the fastest source.
I want to be part of this organization.
I want to ask that how can I be a part of your organization.
I am really looking for a job in wikimedia as I am a good writer and have passion to write just give me a platform to show me talent."
— A 2016 post to WP cofounder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales's talk page
Kazakhstan is a country south of Putinstan and north of Kyrgyzstan† and various other stans, some of which, like certain places in Wales, are suffering an acute shortage of vowels. Kazakhstan is quite well known for being ruled by a despotic regime, not at all well known for having co-opted the Kazakh Wikipedia as a propaganda tool of the regime, and very well known indeed as the birthplace of Borat Sagdiyev.
†Where incidentally a Scotsman has been arrested and faces up to five years in prison for comparing the national dish—a horse meat sausage—to a horse's dick. [22] Kyrgyz horses are demanding an apology as their dicks are much, much bigger.
Wales, which is a very small country on a small island, is easily confused with Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, who is a cofounder of Wikipedia. The other founder, whose idea of implementing a “wiki” led directly to the creation of Wikipedia, was Larry Sanger. He was its chief organizer and community leader, and he formulated many of the original policies. He also started Citizendium, and was a strategist for the Encyclopedia of Earth, which is written by experts. He says Wikipedia lacks credibility.
Speaking of credibility, here is some illuminating dialogue with Wales about Kazakhstan and the Kazakh Wikipedia which is controlled by the regime. It’s also about Wales’s award of “Wikipedian of the Year” to an operative of the regime, and about what led Wales to publicly announce a visit there to honor this gentleman even further with a gift of $5000, to be presented personally by Wales in the presence of “dignitaries” of the regime. In the end, the visit was canceled. The honored gentleman speaks English, by the way. On his “self made public figures” page of an official Kazakh government website titled “Kazakhstan 2050 Our power”, [23] he says: “It is necessary that any person could be realized wholly as the personality and as the professional, remaining in a bosom of the native language.” (Cultured readers will of course recognize that as a direct quote from Borat Sagdiyev.) The gentleman is currently “Deputy Governor at Administration of Kyzylorda region”. Which is nice.
Wikipedia contributor Dan Murphy, in the same thread, connects the dots between Kazakhstan, the Kazakh Wikipedia, and Kazakhstan’s Wikibilim organization: “Wikibilim runs the Kazakh Wikipedia. Wikibilim is entirely funded and run by the Kazkh government and senior Kazakh government bureaucrats. The vast majority of the Kazakh Wikipedia is articles imported from the government's official propaganda encyclopedia. The Kazakh government's academy of arts and sciences runs "fact checking and quality control" on the Kazakh Wikipedia.”
This subsection is of particular personal interest.
Also connected and of interest is this article in The Telegraph, headlined Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales restricts discussion of Tony Blair friendship.
The escape tunnel is now complete and ready for use. Contact the escape committee if you become a person of interest to the Wikicamp Totenkopfverbände or if you are, or think you soon will be, the subject of a Vorbeugungshaft order.
"Oh by the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising, kill yourself.
No joke there, I’m just planting the seed, see if it grows, who knows . But seriously, kill yourself . . . Now. No seriously, there’s no rationalization for what you do. You’re Satan’s little helpers. Kill yourself. OK, now back to the show.
Anyway. Seriously . . .
Anyway. You know what bugs me about doing stuff like that, is that I know every marketing person here is going: ‘Yep, Bill is trying to get that anti-marketing dollar, that’s a huge market.’ Not everything is a fucking market. Stop putting a dollar sign on every fucking thing in the world! ‘Ooh, the righteous indignation dollar, huge market. Very smart of Bill.’ "
Yes—for the most excruciatingly tedious articles on rock bands. Case in point: Manchester's The Courteeners. (Maybe you saw their 2015 Glastonbury gig?) Two of their best songs, incidentally, and worth a listen IMO: Small Bones and Sycophant.
Might you, dear reader, be up for next year’s Wikipedian of the year? It’s like a Nobel Prize, or a Miss World crown, for beautifully high-achieving Wikipedians, only without the money, the cachet, the implants, the leery old men, or The Donald, and with, until 2015 at least, a judging panel of one: Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales. (According to the Wikipedia article, which of course may or may not be correct: “At Wikimania 2014, Wales announced that from the following year there would be a community-wide process for nominating and deciding on the winner, at User:Jimbo Wales/Wikipedian of the Year 2015. At Wikimania 2015, Wales acknowledged that process has not come about yet, but reiterated the intent to create it.”)
First recipient, in 2011, was Kazakh Wikipedia’s Rauan Kenzhekhanuly, former First Secretary at Kazakhstan’s embassy in Moscow, and Moscow bureau chief for his government’s propagandist National TV Agency, founded by the daughter of authoritarian president Nursultan Nazarbayev. When Kenzhekhanuly received the award he was running WikiBilim, a wiki organization funded and controlled by the Kazakh government.† WikiBilim received financial support from Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation.
The identity of the 2015 winner, if indeed the glorious crown was awarded at all, is unknown. If you want to be in the running for 2016, you have just about a year to float that boat of bootiful achievements!
† More on international relations between Wales and Kazakhstan at Wales and Kazakhstan above.
Public Service Announcement from the Department of Baubles
Is your user page short of baubles? Here at the cheery Department of Baubles (motto: Happiness is a self-awarded bauble) we offer a multi-colored assortment of congratulatory templates to transform that arid wasteland into a verdant vista of pretty baubles guaranteed to amaze your friends!
One rather fun thing you can do is delete reliably sourced content from an article with half a million views, and just for shits and giggles needle the article’s main contributors on its talk page. Then, when one of them cleans up your mess and promotes the article to Good Article status, you can claim all the credit by adorning your page with the Half Million bauble. (Yes, it is really meant to be bestowed on you and not appropriated by you, but why wait? The bestowing may never happen! Here at the Department our global bauble procurement manager, who is also a stellar Wikipedia contributor, says that in 1923 her grandfather deleted half the content of a half-million-views article and added two commas the day before it was promoted to GA. He’s still waiting for his bauble because he’s not the sort of fellow to give himself an award and the Department of Baubles rules prevent his granddaughter bestowing one on a blood relative.)
As if that isn't already cooler than a celebrity orangutan running for president in a red tie made in China, you can add your own text, e.g.:
This editor won the Half Million Award for bringing Boris Gruntfuttock (vastly improved by deleting reliably sourced content and needling the main contributors, and I’ve racked up three million edits so I’m obviously more important and altogether more wonderful than the peasants who cleaned up after me and did all the work)]] to Good Article status.
It’s never too late to bauble-up your page! Start now by awarding yourself the Error-Spotter Extraordinaire bauble if you caught the deliberate mistake in the Half Million bauble text above. Or even if someone else did and you didn't! Or even if nobody did!
The Wikipedia Prudery Enforcement Police have recently affected horror and fury at a male editor’s use of the word to (but not at, although it’s been spun that way for reasons too depressing to recount here) a female editor. When it was pointed out that in England, where the pilloried editor lives, the word is really quite anodyne—and frequently bandied around, and thought nothing of—the naysayers affected disbelief. So it’s interesting to see the word used, in an interview in a respectable British newspaper, by the interviewee—in reference to herself. [24]
“ . . . some men in full possession of a penis are now identifying as women and demanding entry to women-only colleges, and the right to change in women’s dressing rooms . . . Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men.”[25] — Ian McEwan (but of course there's no mention of penises in his WP bio. There's a Transgender page but I haven't read it. Maybe it says something about women with penises.).
Easter is a festival commemorating the death and resurrection of a bunny from ancient times called Peter Rabbit. His life was chronicled by the scribe Beatrix Potter. Today he is widely known as the Easter Bunny, and people who believe in him are called Bunnians.
Peter was the son of Rodney Bunny, familiarly referred to today as Rod. Peter's mother's husband Joe Bunny had a reputation as a kindly, empathetic and rather simple rabbit, so when Peter's mother's pregnancy became visible and she admitted to Joe she had been "visited" by Rod, Joe was OK with it and he raised baby Peter as his own. People first knew there was something special about Peter when he started hopping around on water without falling in. He also did some other pretty cool stuff. Eventually he was killed by the evil Mr. McGregor. When Mr. McGregor wanted to boil Peter for dinner he discovered Peter had disappeared from the locked larder. It turned out he'd ascended to bunny Heaven. "Easter Bunny" is a corruption of the original "Feast o' Bunny." The bunny-boiling scene in the movie Fatal Attraction is a reference to the fate Peter miraculously escaped.
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught!
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a different shade,
You've got to be carefully taught!
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!
You've got to be carefully taught!
If you had been in the right place at the right time when the Bosnian capital was under siege by the Serbs in the 1990s, you would have heard a cello amid the percussion of shells and sniper fire.
The cellist was Vedran Smailović. Sometimes he positioned himself in the ruined National Library (one of 35,000 buildings destroyed).
Positioned in the hills around Sarajevo was an array of tanks, artillery, mortars, anti-aircraft guns, machine-guns and sniper rifles, manned by a force of 18,000 Serbs.
On July 22, 1993, the day when 3,777 shells hit Sarajevo, New York Yankee Don Mattingly hit his 200th home run, Australian TV soap opera series Home and Away hit its 1,284th episode, and a flood hit the town of Kaskaskia, Illinois's original capital, when its Mississippi River levee burst. (Kaskaskia's inhabitants were evacuated without injury.)
The siege of Sarajevo lasted almost four years. 85% of the city's casualties were civilians. Of the 12,000 killed or missing, 1,500 were children. Children also accounted for 15,000 of the 56,000 wounded. (A defence witness at Ratko Mladić's trial in the Hague has at last provided a credible explanation why 18,000 heavily armed Serbs killed 10,600 totally unarmed Sarajeli men, women, and children in cold blood: they had to—it was self-defence.[26]. Put yourself in the position of a Bosnian Serb sniper. When you squint through your telescopic sight what could be more terrifying and life-threatening than to see a child running away from your gunfire? Agreed, the shooting death of any child is tragic, but in this kill-or-be-killed situation, who could possibly blame the sniper?)
Shelling destroyed a quarter of the city's buildings. 100,000 apartments were damaged; 10,000 destroyed.
Some photographs I took during the siege might be of interest to you. Click to enlarge:
Bitter cold winter of 1992-1993, at the height of the siege.
Braving snipers, a man runs out from the cover of a destroyed building, its shattered glass lying in a frozen wave of glittering shards at its base.
One man gathers branches for firewood, another cradles precious loaves of bread.
Fetching water as a light snow falls.
Childen in the Baščaršija (old town) district delight in a fresh fall of show, in contrast to the anxiety visible on the faces of the adults walking behind.
Children pose with their dog outside their home in the Baščaršija (old town) district.
Children play with a wrecked car in the Baščaršija (old town) district.
UNPROFOR armoured personnel carrier passes the Presidency building.
Partially shielded from snipers by stacked shipping containers (left), pedestrians and a solitary car hurry across the lethal Skenderija junction on Maršala Tita (Marshal Tito Street), which becomes Vojvode Putnika, or ‘Sniper Alley’, the road to the airport. Ðure Ðakovića, the street at far right, soon climbs uphill, making it an easy sniper target above the containers.
Internationally renowned feature film director and screenwriter Mehmed Fehimović passes a concrete sniper screen whose Pink Floyd graffito reminds him that "all in all, you're just another brick in the wall."
From downtown, Mehmed Fehimović slowly makes his way up steep, dangerous streets to his home in the Breka district, which is in the northern sector of Novo Sarajevo. The attempt at camouflaging the van appears to have been unsuccessful.
Mother and child walk a sniped street.
Garbage, too dangerous to collect and anyway impossible to dispose of, accumulates and rots in the streets – this pile is in Kralja Tomislava, a dangerous north-south street parallel to Ðure Ðakovića. Eventually UNPROFOR alleviated the problem.
Crossing the Miljacka River in Sarajevo's Baščaršija (old town) district.
Residents of Baščaršija wait to receive rations from a UNHCR humanitarian aid delivery, their first in 40 days: 1 K-ration meal per person, 1 kilo each of powdered milk, rice and flour, ½ kilo each of sugar, 2 200g cans of fish and meat, half a litre of rapeseed oil, 200g of detergent. Interval to next delivery: unknown.
Urbicide: one of 35,000 buildings destroyed by shells from Serb positions in the surrounding hills. By the end of 1993 most of the city's buildings had been hit.
Plastic sheeting trucked in by the UNHCR covers blown-out windows.
Typical street scene: garbage, shot-up cars, buildings pockmarked by bullets.
Gun holster makes an ironic fashion statement in the window display of an erstwhile shoe shop.
Cutting branches from Sarajevo's trees—often at risk of being sniped—as fuel for stoves to heat water and provide occasional meagre warmth. Winter brought freezing indoor temperatures, often even colder than outside.
Bosnian deputy prime minister Hakija Turajlić was murdered in an UNPROFOR armoured personnel carrier at a Serb roadblock on January 8, 1993. Photo shows Dutch journalist Robert Dulmers beside Turajlić's grave at the little Ali Pasha mosque located in central Sarajevo.
Crashed car; bullet holes in driver's door tell the story. Engine has been salvaged.
The Post Office on Obana Kulina, gutted by Serb incendiary shells.
At last, the long-awaited news: Radovan Karadžić will die behind bars. On Thursday March 24, 2016, the 70 year-old war criminal was sentenced to 40 years. Doviđenja Radovan!
Paco de Lucia. The brilliance of the light will never dim, much less die.
Alain Resnais. With gratitude for Last Year at Marienbad, and for putting my young self out of its misery by declaring the movie meaningless — just as, four or five years later, another hero would declare another object of bewilderment and adoration, The Magus, to be devoid of meaning except in the reader's mind. Resnais's passing also reminds me I was inspired to become unbeatable at the Nim game; and now I can't remember the winning strategy.
Rahed Taysir al-Hom, lifesaving leader of Gaza's only bomb disposal unit. After five years defusing Israeli ordnance his luck ran out at 10:30 a.m. on August 6 2014.
James Foley. Chose to work in the most dangerous place in the world; unflinchingly courageous even in the face of his own death at the hands of a barbarian. As of August 2014, some 20 journalists are missing in Syria.
Sergei Magnitsky, auditor, tortured and beaten to death in Butyrka prison
Terry Pratchett, author, creator of Discworld. Left dis world way too early, carried off by "the embuggerance" on March 12, 2015.
Viva-Verdi, opera buff and Wikipedia conributor, “Remembered as an inspiring person who shared his passionate love for Verdi's music.— Gerda Arendt
Maya Plisetskaya, flame-haired prima ballerina. Paragon of loyalty (“he who runs to the enemy's side is a traitor”), technical brilliance, and physical beauty; sleeping at last. “You set the stage on fire.”— Rudolf Nureyev
Mary Ellen Mark, documentary photographer; brilliant, compassionate, and real. The images will live forever.
James Salter, fighter pilot and novelist; one of the unsung greats.
Nicholas Winton, hero. Saved the lives of hundreds of children in World War II. (Note to American readers: the second, not the eleventh, so-called world war.)
Boyd K. Packer, president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka the Mormon church, or LDS. He said LDS historians shouldn't discuss history that doesn't promote faith. Random sartorial note: Muslims have their skullcaps; Orthodox Jews have their shawls; Buddhist monks have their robes; Catholic nuns have their habits; and Mormons have their underwear, which has to be worn day and night. It is not yet available at Victoria’s Secret.
Omar Sharif, occasional actor, constant gambler, inveterate womanizer, beautiful to behold. "People don’t have to be beautiful any more. We don’t have any Audrey Hepburns, Rita Hayworths or Ava Gardeners. When you look at Al Pacino and the greatest actors in Hollywood they’re all common-looking."
E.L. Doctorow. Eternal gratitude for the exotic fruits of a fevered imagination, such as Freud and Jung visiting Coney Island and floating together through the tunnel of love. “[A] visionary who seeks in time past occasions for poetry.” — John Updike
Ruben Espinosa, opposition photojournalist with Mexican investigative magazine Proceso, shot to death in Mexico city in July 2015 after fleeing Veracruz; the thirteenth Veracruz journalist killed since Javier Duarte de Ochoa, a lawyer, became the state's governor in 2011.
Some 140,000 civilians killed by America's bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945. (For comparison, the total number of civilians killed by Japanese bombing of US cities during the entire Second World War: 0 (zero)).
Some 80,000 civilians killed by America's bombing of the Japanese city of Nagasaki on the morning of August 9, 1945. (For comparison, the total number of civilians killed by Japanese bombing of US cities during the entire Second World War: 0 (zero)).
A total of some 475,000 civilians killed in Axis cities during World War II by aerial bombardments in which US Air Force planes participated. (For comparison, the total number of civilians killed in US cities by Axis bombing: 0 (zero)).
Six picnickers—five children and a pregnant woman—killed by a Japanese fire balloon in Oregon, USA, on 5 May 1945. Total number of people killed by enemy action on the American continent in the Second World War: 6 (six).
Justin Wilson, British racing driver, who suffered a fatal brain injury in a freak accident on August 23 2015. At 6’ 4”, he was the much-loved “gentle giant” of Formula One and IndyCars.
Oliver Sacks, who wrote of himself that he was "a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions,” but omitted to mention the achievements that were of such enormous benefit to humankind. All the great brains are leaving us, making way for the New Mediocrity.
Henning Mankell, author of 42 books, who said about living with his “incurable companion”: “I never have the feeling that I am living on what one might call ‘borrowed time’. There is no such thing. I have no doubt that my time is mine and mine alone.”
Mohammed Emwazi's poor mother and father, now that Little Mo ain't no mo. How's the 72 virgins thing working out for you Mo?
The Paris massacre of the innocents by the religious deranged, November 13 2015.
Marcus Klingberg, 97, Israeli scientist and Soviet spy. Conflicting loyalties, complicated life.
Pierre Boulez, composer, conductor, modernist, classicist, controversial and revered musical genius, whose “at my age and in my position I refuse to be dependent on the kind of nonentities who join committees” would serve as an apt coda for a departing WP user who holds the WMF board, and other users whose sole purpose here is to become administrators (I know of one but there must be others) in similar regard.
Wasil Ahmad, one of besieged Uruzgan's heroic defenders, targeted for cold-blooded murder by the Taliban, who shot him to death on his way to school. He was 10 years old.
The 8,000 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Zdravko Tolimir, one of its chief Bosnian Serb architects, died on the night of February 8 2016. In prison. No silence for him; just a celebratory jig.
Umberto Eco, philosopher, sage, writer, Renaissance man, owner of more than 50,000 books. He said he "developed a passion for the Middle Ages the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.”
Berta Cáceres, Honduran activist, leader of the Lencas, campaigner for indigenous and environmental rights, murdered after threats of rape and death for her opposition to the $50 million Rio Blanco dam project that includes forced displacement of hundreds of the indigenous population. Cáceres, one of 101 activists murdered in Honduras between 2010 and 2014, said in 2013: "The army has an assassination list of 18 wanted human rights fighters with my name at the top . . . in this country there is total impunity . . . when they want to kill me, they will do it." After the assassination, Naomi Klein said it was "part of a global wave of such attacks.”
Peter Maxwell-Davies, composer, conductor, and, serendipitously, Master of the Queen’s Music. The Queen (Elizabeth, that is) doesn’t like classical music. She and Philip often jive to 50s and 60s pop, though not to the Everly Brothers hit Cathy’s Clown, which Her Majesty reportedly likened to “two cats being strangled.”
Michael Herr, author and war reporter who loved peace and conveyed better than anyone else the realities of men caught in war. Often high. Always kept it real. Dispatched too soon. "I went to cover the war and the war covered me; an old story, unless of course you've never heard it."
The victims of Goran Hadžić, the convicted war criminal who died at last on 12 July 2016. Brain cancer. Zbogom, šupak.
“I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
“If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car, it'll be the last car he'll ever lay down in front of.”
— US presidential candidate George Wallace, 1963 and 1968
“You have people coming in and I’m not just saying Mexicans, I’m talking about people that are from all over that are killers and rapists and they’re coming into this country.”
"If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them . . . Just knock the hell — I promise you, I'll pay the legal fees."
“I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that [a protester] when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
“I’d like to punch him in the face.”
—US presidential candidate Donald Trump, 2016
After the Paris attacks, a staunch American ally goes on the offensive
In 2014 it was reported that beheading would probably soon cease in Saudi Arabia. Instead the condemned will be shot to death.
Harry Potter books are banned. (Hooray for that, at least.)
The religious police—“The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”—have an “Anti-Witchcraft Action Unit”. Its job is to arrest people suspected of witchcraft and undo their spells.
Homosexuality is illegal. It carries the death penalty.
"Sorcery" is illegal. It carries the death penalty.
Women having relationships without family consent is illegal. It carries the death penalty. In 1978 King Khaled’s grandneice Princess Mishaal was beheaded for secretly meeting her lover in a hotel. He was shot to death.
Non-Muslims are ineligible for Saudi citizenship.
Burying non-Muslims anywhere in Saudi Arabia is illegal.
Saudi women were not allowed to register to vote until 2015.
The United States regards Saudi Arabia as the world’s primary source of funding for Sunni terrorism.
"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." — Israel Koenig, internal Israeli government document The Koenig Memorandum.
In 2012 the Russell Tribunal on Palestine found that “Israel’s ongoing colonial settlement expansion, its racial separatist policies, as well as its violent militarism would not be possible without the US’s unequivocal support.”
Jews from any country can move to Israel. A Palestinian refugee with a valid claim to property in Israel cannot.
As of 2005, three times more money was invested in education of Jewish children than in that of Arab children.
The Bedouin infant mortality rate is the highest in Israel, and among the highest in the developed world. In the 2002 budget the Israeli health ministry allocated Arab communities less than 0.6% of its budget for healthcare facility development.
A 2010 report released by Israeli civil rights groups called the current Knesset "the most racist in Israeli history", with 21 bills proposed in 2008 and 2009 that would discriminate against the Arab minority.
Intermarriage is prohibited by the Jewish Halakha.
The joint document The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel, asserts: "Defining the Israeli State as a Jewish State and exploiting democracy in the service of its Jewishness excludes us, and creates tension between us and the nature and essence of the State." The document explains that by definition the "Jewish State" concept is based on ethnically preferential treatment towards Jews enshrined in immigration (the Law of Return) and land policy (the Jewish National Fund), and calls for the establishment of minority rights protections enforced by an independent anti-discrimination commission.
In its annual report for 2015, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that in 2014, a year it describes as “a traumatic one in the occupied Palestinian territory), Israel killed more Palestinian civilians than in any other year since 1967, when Israel first moved to occupy the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 2014, 2,314 Palestinians died and 17,125 were injured, compared with 39 killed and 3,964 injured in 2013.
Rachel Marsden. If only because the photograph is hilarious. Well, that and the content.
Dunning–Kruger effect: According to the WP article: "[A] cognitive bias manifesting in unskilled individuals suffering from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their own ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude." According to d'Artagnan Muldoon: "A condition what's a royal pain in the arse to other peeps what don't got it"—i.e. the Dunning-Kruger effect effect.
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,—
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
—King Richard II, Act 2 Scene 1
In fact England is a small, wet, densely overpopulated country on an island about twenty miles west of continental Europe. There is a Wikipedia article on it. Here's one important thing the article doesn't tell you:
"The primary hobby in England is getting absolutely fucked and getting into a fight, or dressing like a hooker and wandering the streets."
Ford Pinto: Recalled after 27 deaths
Tylenol: Recalled after 7 deaths
Guns: Still going strong after 32,000 deaths per year for decades — Text in a three-panel cartoon by Rob Rogers, who has somehow evaded capture by BLP raiding parties.
"Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
Depends what you mean by "free" and "brave". See Racism in the United States. "Discrimination permeates all aspects of life . . . and extends to all communities of color." — U.S. Human Rights Network.
In 2015, if you're a hijab-wearing black Muslim in the Georgia township of Douglasville (motto: "New growth, old charm, always home") and you decline the charming Judge Rollins' invitation to remove your hijab in his courtroom, he'll show you some old-fashioned Southern hospitality in the town jail. But hey. Let us not forget what happened to black man Peter Stamps in Douglasville 130 years ago. Or what happened 20 miles down the road, in Marietta, to Jewish factory worker Leo M. Frank just 85 years ago. Progress, huh?
By the way, this is the proper way to hang a Confederate flag.
And speaking of America's ugly side: having fact-checked Donald Trump’s assertion that he saw “thousands and thousands” of Arabs in New Jersey cheering the destruction of the WTC's twin towers, Politifact—recipient of a Pulitzer for fact-checking—rated Trump’s statement as “Pants on fire.”
GG: I think that a very great many women don’t think that, um, post-operative or even non post-operative transexual M-to-F transexual people look like, sound like, or behave like women. They daren’t say so.
Interviewer: If a man who is gender reassigned, and outwardly — and he feels, inwardly, is a woman — in your view can he be a woman or not?
GG: No.
Interviewer: Do you understand how some people feel that’s insulting?
GG: I don’t care. People get insulted all the time. Australians get insulted every day of the week.
Frequency of rape: one woman every four minutes♦
Frequency of child sexual assault: one every three minutes♦
Frequency of female homicide by intimate partner: one every six hours♦
♦Source: Western Cape Government
Number of South African men surveyed in 2010 who admitted having committed rape: one in three♠
Number of South African men who admitted other acts of violence against women: 75%♠
♠(Source: 2010 Medical Research Council survey)
Consumer product whose price is equivalent to the average daily income of 33% of the SA population♣: a cup of coffee
♣Measured by the World Bank at less than $2 per day or less
World ranking of South Africa’s income inequality: third; SA's inequality exceeded only by Namibia and Botswana.♥
♥Source: World Bank
It’s official: the country that endured the most intense carpet-bombing campaign in history (Kissinger’s B52s used up the entire inventory at Carpets R Us in Bethesda) is safe at last. You might trip over a moldy rug and get a Pott's facture, and some of the swirly patterns that still overlay Angkor Wat will probably turn your stomach, but you can rest assured you won’t be a tiger’s lunch.
2001 Same-sex marriage becomes legal in the Netherlands
2001 Slobodan Milošević surrenders to police
2006 The Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) is inaugurated in the UK
2009 Croatia and Albania join NATO
2011 After numerous outages render its public information website useless, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) is renamed the Seriously Disorganized Crime Agency (SDCA)
From the talk page of Larry Sanger's Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales:
What's the extent of our ethical duty to our readers re. political articles?
This is addressed to you personally, Mr. Wales. It is a request for you to express your personal views in this public forum. I respectfully request others here to resist the urge to preëmpt your reply - even though it has been said that your talk page is the equivalent of the Village Pump - and to engage in discussion only after you have made your comments, if any. [Emphasis added.]
As you know, Joe DeSantis - paid by Newt Gingrich to direct communications on his behalf - has ceased editing Gingrich-related articles here directly and now posts his desired inclusions and deletions at the article talk pages and at the talk pages of editors he selects to act as his proxy. As you appreciate, this is entirely within policy and guidelines. Furthermore DeSantis voluntarily appends Communications Director, Gingrich 2012 to his WP signature. You have applauded him for the transparency of these practices and cited him as an example to other paid political operatives.
My concern now is more for our readers than our editors. Readers who don't check out the talk pages will be unaware that the Gingrich articles are edited (now indirectly) by a communications professional employed by Gingrich to help persuade Americans that he should be their next president. (Templated notices of DeSantis's engagement with the articles are confined to the articles' talk pages; and a warning of "increased risk of biased editing" during Gingrich's run for office is only displayed on his personal article's talk page.)
Information - its persuasive presentation, control, manipulation and interpretation - is arguably the most powerful weapon in the armory of a political campaign. It goes almost without saying that there will be other paid political operatives who, unlike DeSantis, assiduously attend to their paymasters' articles without disclosing their affiliation. We know you would like to see them emulate DeSantis's transparency. Do you think the ethical duty of transparency extends to informing our readers that all articles that have to do with politicians running for office, and with their campaigns, are very likely to be edited, both directly and indirectly (where editors act as proxies), by users who are employed to do so by the individuals and entities concerned?
Is your concern limited entirely to WP:COI? Or do you feel we have a duty of transparency and disclosure to our readers that goes beyond COI, and also beyond templated notices on articles talk pages (which many readers may never see)? If the latter, what do you think about including notices on the article pages? Or do you have any other suggestions? Writegeist (talk) 20:22, 20 February 2012 (UTC) Adding: So Messrs. Collect, Vecrumba and Maelefique (below) couldn't honour my simple request to wait for Mr. Wales's comments before they chimed in. Perhaps I was naive to hope for that modicum of consideration - willfully inconsiderate behaviour is widespread throughout the project. No less predictable, perhaps, is the ploy to shut down discussion before it's even begun by confounding the particular issue raised here with other issues in other discussions about paid operatives. Writegeist (talk) 05:43, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Um -- this how now been on this page quite a few times already - with the same result every time. I wonder if this time you will get a different answer than has been the prior result? Somehow I doubt it. See WP:DEADHORSE. Cheers. Collect (talk) 21:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
I second that emotion. Moreover, if readers can't make out political propaganda, then they believe the propaganda, in which case any disclaimers or notices are a moot point. VєсrumЬа ►TALK 22:00, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
+1. -- Maelefique(and Charles!)(talk) 00:23, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
The denigrating misrepresentation in the first response (dealt with in the addendum to the original post) may or may not be connected to the fact that Wales didn't see fit to reply.
Although not posted in direct relation to the very specific issue raised in the original post above, this January 2012 comment from Wales at Blog.philgomes.com is of interest for its take on what paid advocates are paid to do:
"[P]eople who are acting as paid advocates do not make good editors. They insert puffery and spin. That's what they do because that it is what paid advocates do."
So should articles (i.e. not just talk pages) that have to do with politicians running for office alert readers to the almost certain involvement of paid political operatives in their editing? The question remains unanswered. Writegeist (talk) 02:21, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
It's a little-known fact that Julius Caesar started the first crowd-sourced online encyclopedia, or officinas salsiciarum, in the early days of the mule-powered Internet. His Latin wiki, Caesarpedia, is still going.
As of September 2014 ISIS had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters. In July 2015 US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter informed the Senate Armed Services Committee that Americky has trained approximately 60 Syrian rebel fighters. That's not a typo.
Number of dogs in America: about 83 million. Amount of poop they produce per year: about 11 million tons. Proportion of bacteria in samples from urban watersheds that comes from dog poop: 20-30%. Proportion of dog poop bacteria in air samples from Cleveland, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan: 10-50%. Reason dog ownership was banned in China under Mao Tse-tung: he said it was bourgeois.
Wikipedia, the reality: four experienced editors' observations
"Do not believe that the hierarchy here has no agenda. That hierarchy welcomes and relies upon malicious slander, especially from administrators who stalk & push their POV with impunity. If the hierarchy does not like you, then even your slightest garden-variety inadvertent editing error becomes deliberate "misrepresentation" and "manipulation". The hierarchy makes rules and then punishes people who follow them, by allowing others to break those very same rules. Upset about this? The hierarchy will smack you around for that too. The list goes on and on. These people may well have good intentions, but so does the pavement along the road to hell. Power over individual editors is extremely centralized at Wikipedia, because any sort of jury system would necessitate clear rules that can be applied equally, and because, hey, otherwise power would not be centralized. Wikipedia should scrap its bureaucracy and start over." Anythingyouwant
“Wikipedia is changing. It is going/has become an online game. The days of creating Winter Palace, Ticklecock Bridge, or Pitfour estateare being replaced with a generation of "gotcha", and defining "winners". It often starts with snide comments, snark, and pestering. As soon as one can find a civility "gotcha" - a block gets slapped down. Now a person has been "labeled". Right and wrong doesn't matter - it's a matter of demoralizing, frustrating, and irritating a perceived "opponent". If anyone defends said "opponent", then they are targeted as the next undesirable - and the process repeats.” Ched
“Personally, so long as no one is being profane and alluding to sex, gender or religion, I am really not interested in what is considered a personal attack by a few over sensitive Wikipedians. If someone behaves in a idiotic fashion then they are an idiot. If someone launches a personal crusade and stalks another editor all over the project in the hope of banning them or making their life difficult, then there's probably another word for them, but my English is not good enough to know it, and I have better things to do in my life than bother to have it translated.” Giano
“I think if I knew someone who was joining WP now, my advice to them would be to "pretend you're female", or at least come across that you are. That way you'll have the GGTF and every other liberal do-gooder falling at your feet and watching your back. All of the females I know on here couldn't give a shit for how gender-divided (apparently) it is on here; they are here to write, and bloody good at it they are too. The likes of J3Mrs, Sagaciousphil and Montanabw, all of whom I respect unreservedly and would consider to be some of the best editors we have, are unfortunately not looked after in the same way as someone who creates little or no content for the project. I find that to be quite odd.” Cassianto
"The fantasy has always been that with the right set of rules the encyclopedia would write itself, with optimal versions of articles just coming to exist naturally as a consequence of the self-evident rules about citation and secondary sources. The reality has always been that instead of actually thinking critically about content decisions people just think critically about how to manipulate and play with the rules." -- Extract from blog post by writer (and now indefinitely wikibanned and desysopped) admin Phil Sandifer
The reality Mr. Sandifer describes is corroborated by my own observations and experience here. Users who exhibit incompetence in their critical thinking about content and content decisions, and focus instead on wikilawyering, twisting and misrepresenting (oops, my tautology alarm just went off) policies and other users' comments, lying flat-out about sources, using article talk pages to pursue a personal agenda of dominance (i.e. feeding an unwarranted self-regard), and arguing others into exhausted capitulation, grievously diminish the value (ha, ha) of the encyclopedia.
" . . . hidden grudges have undermined progress here. Now most folks in the latter category are articulate and would be able to explain any of their subsequent actions in terms of policy or something that will obfuscate any clear evidence. Even better, they can write an Arbcom Election Guide! This behaviour is a real barrier to big-time change as it can defuse or short-circuit consensus pretty quickly." (Emphasis added.) Cas Liber
Wikipedia, the reality: yet another admin writes (twice)...:
On June 17 2015 an encounter in a South Carolina church led to nine mysterious deaths, all apparently from gunshot wounds. Therein lies the mystery, because we know from the NRA that guns don’t kill people. And in the words of Michael Moore, “Guns don’t kill people. Americans kill people.” On June 19, an NRA board member blamed an American for the deaths, namely a pastor who was one of the dead. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry said the deaths were an accident, and that President Obama is trying to take away Americans' guns. Which of course would only serve to perplex their owners—guns being harmless and all.
" . . . straight-arrow admins who are mature, modest, fair-minded, honest and helpful; who aren't pompous asses, arrogant pricks, aggressive little twerps or clueless infants; who display good humor; and who, most importantly, value service above power." — Brilliantly and succinctly put by moi, at a wikifriend's RfA. Where are they, these admins?
"It is sad that a few bullies were allowed to throw a devoted editor out of the project, just to send a message to the community not to question admins and the arbs no matter how abusive and corrupt they are. Most people are reluctant to speak now, because they are either the corrupt and abusive group that I have been talking about or they are afraid to speak for fear of retaliation." — Banned user Kumioko
After reading the really quite good WP article on 3D printers I was able to make a serviceable one after dinner last night using a derelict Isetta bubble car, my mother-in-law's sewing machine, my neighbour's child's water pistol, and some goo. Admittedly it's large and slow but one day these brilliant gadgets will be miniaturized and we’ll always have one at the ready to make whatever takes our fancy, from flowers for a blind date (“I wish you could see them, they’re so lovely”) to
shoe-fetish jewellery, cars, and
Donald Trump butt plugs.
Veterans Day
Veteran car designed by Edmund Rumpler and made in 1897 by Nesselsdorfer Wagenbau-Fabriks-Gesellschaft Präsident. Super-economical four-seat roadster with snuggly bench seats, a stylin' beach buggy look, and space to stow your board. No wonder surfer bums stole all the examples exported to California.
Dave's another common name. Awfully common, come to think of it. But not peculiar. Which is why Dave's not here, man.
You don't get many Ælfrics in the pub these days. Ælfric used to be common, but now it's just peculiar. Will the same happen to Dick?
God is such a peculiar name that I don't know any parents who have bestowed it on any of their children.
Wikipedia is more fun when you stop thinking of it as a vast repository of unreliable information and start noticing that it is a vast repository of peculiar names. And that's a fact.
If only all administrators used their own names. If one of them interacted with a Wikiprole in a way that combined juvenile gormlessness with a dash of assholery and a sprinkling of fatuous arrogance you could google to see if the gormlessness etc. is displayed elsewhere or if it's peculiarly reserved to the encyclopedia that any juvenile, gormless, fatuously arrogant asshole can edit—and administrate.
Fans
Keep a pair close to hand, or rather foot, if your fans are excitable
I treasure all communications from my devoted fans. Some samples:
Gratitude
"Let me tell you something...with the amount of time I spend making some of these car articles worthy of this site with no gratitude whatsoever, the last thing I need is to waste time reading your comments." — User:Vegavairbob
Hopeful
"I'm gonna tell you something mister. I can't wait to get to the [Wikipedia] conference. Hopefully there's gonna be some changes. YOU are hurting this site. Just wait." — User:71.167.61.206
Honest
"Learn to not be such a snot to other people. And one more thing ... Oops, I'm sorry, I farted in your general direction", and ". . . in the past day I will be honest that I have a profound dislike of you with your clearly patronizing remark to [another user]-, and in all honesty I think that you are behaving cynically and and being snotty, I mean you are just an average joe like me, we belch and fart and do stupid crap - don't pretend you are better than me [. . .] To cut short my response, if I ever saw you in person I would let out my excess liquids from my kindneys onto your feet." — User:R-41
And now that the level of discourse has risen to these giddy heights . . . Oh my! How brilliantly the wit illuminates the social skills of one of my most adoring fans: “Urinal editor” [36], “Writeshit” [37] — User: Collect
Love
"Fuck you! [. . .] If I ever saw you in person I would love to beat the living shit out of you, I would only not do so because it is against the law." — 184.145.67.28 (aka R-41)
Thrill
"Ban me, I don't give a shit anymore [. . .] assholes like User:Writegeist [. . .] That scumbag [. . .] doesn't give a shit about anything [. . .] trolls like Writegeist who don't give a shit about anything are on Wikipedia for a thrill ride. In fact, to be openly honest and completely uncivil that I don't care about violating anymore, It's too bad for the world that that Writegeist wasn't aborted before birth, he's a waste of sperm [. . .] wastes-of-sperm like Writegeist . . . are just here to enjoy trolling." — User:R-41
Cheers
Another user To R-41: "IMHO you have a great deal to offer Wikipedia - and remember "Illegitimi non carborundum" still applies. Cheers and take care." This same user, deploying the wickedly deadpan humour that makes so many of their comments a delight to read, went on to assert that R-41 "is not one who goes around posting how nasty any editor is."
Inspire
"I think the problem here may be Writegeist needs some assistance in getting along with other people. I note that he makes use of words like dishonest, infantile and fuck in a manner that may not inspire other people to leap to his assistance with great zealousy." User:Penyulap, at Commons.
"Zealousy"! Oh joy! This glorious word was coined by one Pastor Andy (google him), as he tells us in his must-read blog: 'I have invented a new term this week - “zealousy”. It’s not a real word, but I want it to define how, with great zeal, we must share God’s jealousy for those people and things that are allowed to rival his love and glory.' We really must stop using words like "dishonest", "infantile" and "fuck" so that Pastor Andy and Wikipedia users can, with great zeal, share God's jealousy for people like us who are allowed to rival his love and glory.
Note: Vegavairbob (aka IP user 71.167.61.206), R-41 (aka IP user 184.145.67.28), and Penyulap are indefinitely blocked, so at present they are unable to provide additional gems.
Wit
"Quote of the day from an editor who 'seems' to regard his own screeds as the epitome of 'wit':
Twain is the perennial favorite of intellectual pygmies who believe a trite quote has the power to increase their stature.
I rather think his 'wit' speaks for itself pretty clearly." Isn't that just absolutely darling? It's a UTP eulogy from a fan of such legendary modesty that my loving human kindness leads me to conceal his identity behind this very small (yet more than adequate) fig leaf of anonymity :~) .
Faith
"[A]ll of you taking his side should feel like fucking gobs of shit because that is what you fucking are when you enable this kind of abusive treatment. There is a difference between assuming good faith and being an ignorant jerkoff." — The Devil's Advocate, at AN/I
Retirees etc.
Users regularly declare their "retirement" from the project yet continue editing or resume after a short break. Do not ascribe any comparable economy with the actualiité to users who bang on about being "on wikistrike" yet continue editing. They almost certainly mean they are to be found on this wikistrike (motto: "Rien ni personne n'est supérieur à la vérité").
Socks
Long ago a user tried to discredit me with a fabricated accusation of meatpuppetry (which sounds rather naughty, and is, but not in a fun sense). Or maybe it was sockpuppetry. It may have been both. It was a long time ago, long before this Interweb thingy, when Wikipedia was still hand-cranked by one of the founders and the other printed the articles and sent them off to interested parties by pony express. Anyway I'm grateful to my accuser, as some good came of his curiously malign act. It sparked an interest in sockpuppet investigations, and the interest has endured to this day. I tend to visit the public gallery (if I can find a parking spot anywhere within walking distance) to while away an idle moment or two on a rainy afternoon.
Amusing sock story: A puppetmaster (now blocked) created a sock and put it to work spamming user talk pages with barnstars—a rather ingenious form of fraudulent vandalism. The sock was taken down by a marksman in the Sysop SWAT Squad, but not before the perp had peppered 95 pages. The sysop who'd conducted the SPI then went from user to user removing the spam barnstars. One recipient, by a happy coincidence the very same gentleman who'd ignited my interest in SPIs, objected to losing his authentic-looking award and put it back. Wikipedia can be fun!
Leech
Monty Python
Seen at the Conservatism talk page: 'I came here from the NPOV board.'
And at another: '...most PR professionals are humans who are not out to "bamboozle" at all.' And at another: 'Just because some character decided to name his own bodily fluid after a public figure doesn't actually connect that public figure to it.'
Seen at a user's talk page and reproduced verbatim: '[T]oo bad so many people have become so dumb downed they don't see the significance in this removal of knowledge and how it is fostering a master/slave culture and economy through out the western world at warp speed.'
South Park
WalesScotland
The more high-profile of the two Wikipedia co-founders goes all motherfuckyfucky at his talk page in a comment about South Park: "I fucking love motherfucking South Park." Then comments that it's a "really lame thing to put on the front page of Wikipedia" from time to time. When asked whether front-paging it "isn't a demonstration that Wikipedia (where appropriate) can educate and inform about popular culture in fact likely to attract new editors?" the co-founder replies: "I'm sure it will attract new editors. Not the kind we want, though."
Soda jerk Reality School for Clowns 2016 clown car Anarchist rat Pygmy
Rick Santorum as Frothy Jr. soda jerk by DonkeyHotey, who also did the clowns. Rat by Banksy. DH and Banksy keep their real identities secret---or try to. DH is a skilled cartoonist/Photoshopper, and Banksy's facile stencils are hyped as art. Long may DH be spared the indignity of a tedious BLP like this one.
DH's caricature of "Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, American author and humorist, on the occasion of the publication of his complete autobiography after a one hundred year delay", in which the chinless Twain appears to be 40% gerbil and 60% moustache, is good for a giggle.
Twain is the perennial favorite of intellectual pygmies who believe a trite quote ("The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with your mustache") has the power to increase their stature. When I hear the creaky wheels of a tired old Twainism being wheeled into a conversation my first thought is always "uh-oh, another witless pygmy."
One WP contributor, conserving adjectives because of the global shortage, managed to use just one - "awesome" - to describe Led Zeppelin, Sonic the Hedgehog, the film of The Lord of the Rings and Hamlet. Shortly afterwards the Worldwide Conservation Organization for Meaningless Adjectives announced that the supply of awesomes had almost entirely dried up in California.
Christopher Hitchens's Letters to a Young Wikipedian has dissuaded thousands of children from joining the ones who are already administrators. See, there IS a God. In Chapter III (note to American readers: no, not the one hundred and eleventh chapter) he observes that "there is something idiotic about those who believe that consensus (to give the hydra-headed beast just one of its names) is the highest good."
When you're involved in a discussion at an article's talk page and you want to recruit additional editors to participate, make sure the invitation you post to other users' talk pages doesn't fall foul of the guideline WP:CANVASS. The simplest and safest solution is to post it to WP co-founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales's talk page. He has decreed it exempt from the guideline. If you know he shares your opinion, feel free to say so in your post, and to cite that as the reason you're asking him to join in. On anyone else's talk page a non-neutral post like that would be "inappropriate" under the terms of the guideline, but it's OK at JW's. The page may be exempt from other guidelines and policies. I asked there, but nobody answered; so I don't know. As always, Caveat editor.
NEWS FLASH! July 2012: Co-founder declares Jimbotalk a forum-shopping-free zone! See next section
Forum shopping
A Wikipedia administrator confiscates evidence of forum shopping (in a forum other than Jimbotalk)
July 2012: In addition to its existing exemption from prohibitions on canvassing (see above), Jimbotalk is now also decreed exempt from prohibitions on forum shopping. So although there are wikipolice hiding behind almost every pillar there, they can't arrest you for forum shopping: "It is never forum shopping to post on this page. Ever." -- Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales
Knowing
There's knowing, and there's googling and pretending you knew all along.
You may think you know that a picture captioned as a 1929 Bentley is actually of a 1928 Austin 7 with a body by celebrated coachbuilder Thrush & Maybelline. Or you may think you know it is a peanut butter and banana sandwich. But unless the information is verifiable in a reliable source, it has no place in the article about the car.
"If Ted Kennedy drove a Volkswagen, he'd be President today." Headline of spoof VW Beetle ad. (One of the famous Doyle Dane Bernbach ads said the car was so airtight that it would float.)
Resuscitating
"Worst BLP not dominated by 'current political POV arguments' is likely Charles Lindbergh at this point..." — posted at WP:Village pump. Lindbergh has not been a living person for 42 years.
Enforcing
"...how cynical and opportunistic 'BLP enforcement' is. It's a 'BLP violation' to use an insufficiently flattering photo of Rush Limbaugh in his article. It's also a 'BLP violation' to describe a retired physicist as a 'retired physicist'. But when it comes to an unarmed teenager shot to death on his way home from the store, it's apparently just fine to include every school suspension and self-aggrandizing tweet in that person's history. I don't think one needs to be particularly sophisticated to postulate ideas about why these cases are handled so differently." — User:MastCell
"It doesn't matter how loudly you scream BLP, you also have to actually back it up with some reasoning." — User:The Blade of the Northern Lights
"It happens more and more that some loudmouth jackass causes enough trouble that it seems easier to accommodate him. This is short-sighted, and is why the fraction of jerks here is growing." — User:Tom Harrison
I have learned to have absolutely no respect for the "contributions" of wikilawyers who constantly run bleating to the noticeboards (e.g. WQA, ANI and BLP) and the Wales talk page to try to enforce their own versions in content disputes.
Can you tell a gasbag from a douchebag? Some useful definitions from the Urban Dictionary:
Windbag A pompous person who talks too much, a braggart.
Know-it-all A person who acts as though he/she knows everything and [dismisses] the ideas, opinions, comments and/or suggestions of others.
Gasbag One who bloviates . . . Many of these folks like the sound of their own voice - often unaware of those around them who are often laughing at them behind their backs. These folks are often very vain and conceited - impressed by their own self importance.
Douchebag Someone who has surpassed the levels of jerk and asshole, however not yet reached fucker or motherfucker.
Mathematics
Actual dialogue between an admin and a user:
Admin: . . . he's only reverted 3 times.
User: And my count has him at 4 -- seems that I should be able to count that high with a minor in Applied Math ...
Admin: What!?!? A minor in math?? Why didn't you say so sooner? I'm just a poor innumerate humanities major, so I would never have presumed to count reverts if I knew I was dealing with someone so impressively credentialed.
User: Count [diff 1, diff 2, diff 3, diff 4, listed as proof of the other user's 4RR], and tell me how many that comes to. Cheers -- but maths counts.
Admin: Your first diff links to an edit by you, not by [name redacted]. Thanks for the lecture on counting, though.
User: Thanks for pointing out that Windows 8 is a pain-- the correct link is now in position, and I trust you will quickly note that it is indeed not by me. My count is quite correct here. Cheers.
Admin: I don't see how the first edit is a revert; it looks like [name redacted] was providing a citation where someone had requested one. But I also don't feel like arguing this any further with you, so I'll concede whatever it is I'm supposed to concede here.
User: YMMV but the edit was not "providing a citation" it was and obscene materials, and in shrill and alarmist tones (asserted that) pornography led to moral decay and opened the door for Communism which appears to me to be a substantive edit and not simply giving a cite. Now if that material is simply a "citation" then I shall cheerfully concede your correctness.
Admin: This is why I find it difficult to have a serious conversation with you: you triumphantly "prove" an irrelevant point that no one is actually disputing, while completely ignoring the substance of my comment. For the record, I didn't say the edit was insubstantial; I said it wasn't a revert. We're talking about the 3-revert rule, not the 3-substantive-edit rule. Can you show me how the first edit undoes another editor's actions? I'm not seeing it, but I'm open to reviewing any diffs you can show me to demonstrate that it was a revert.
User: Actually you wrote it looks like Wasted [name redacted] was providing a citation where someone had requested one and you indeed regarded it as not substantial. Your definition of "substantial" and mine differ. Your post (This is why I find it difficult to have a serious conversation with you: you triumphantly "prove" an irrelevant point that no one is actually disputing) is unhelpful if you wish to act as an admin with regard to any of my actions. Cheers and kindly do not pursue your interesting view of "providing a citation" here in future. Apparently your mileage varies substantially.
Admin: Should I assume that you're just not going to answer my question about how the edit was a revert?
User now deletes admin's question, saying admin has argued enough and should have a cup of tea.
No comment . . .
Annoying
"Both of them should at a minimum be topic banned for being annoying to the subject." — User:Jimbo Wales
"I'd be interested to know the policy basis for topic baning someone because the subject of an article says they are "annoyed"; I'd imagine that would apply to a considerable number of editors. I find your stance here extremely annoying; will you be banned from making posts relating to me?" — User:Pigsonthewing
Baffling
At WP:WQA User A alleged "combative and uncivil" conduct by User B against User C. He requested specific assistance as follows: "...I suggest that that third-party users take a more positive approach here by reviewing the issue and provide constructive advice to B and C on how to better respond to disagreements in order to help both of them avoid getting into uncivil entanglements."
I was the sole user to step up to the plate with the requested assistance: "Let's cut to the chase. You're at WQA because you want 'third-party users' to 'provide constructive advice to B and C on how to better respond to disagreements in order to help both of them avoid getting into uncivil entanglements.' May I? If B and C want to avoid getting into 'uncivil entanglements', my advice is to respond agreeably to disagreements. Advice duly dispensed, and B and C shown the smooth path to a future of blissfully congenial collaboration, would it be OK to put this to bed now?"
User A, having received from me, and me alone, the precise assistance he'd requested, later charged that I "cannot assist users at an assistance board"; and that I am "not serious . . . about assisting users".
The WQA was dragged into ANI, where User D posted: "...the only constructive input at The WP:WQA was provided by Editor:Writegeist." To which User A replied: "Sorry but that is total nonsense"; adding "you . . . have had long-term relations with Writegeist".
It's best to stay away from the dramaboards. They're awash with rather queer untruths and innuendos.
Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign slogan: "Hope we can believe in."
"I frankly don't give a fuck how it all turns out in this country - or anywhere else, for that matter. I think the human game was up a long time ago (when the high priests and traders took over), and now we're just playing out the string. And that is, of course, precisely what I find so amusing: the slow circling of the drain by a once promising species, and the sappy, ever-more-desperate belief in this country that there is actually some sort of "American Dream," which has merely been misplaced. The decay and disintegration of this culture is astonishingly amusing if you are emotionally detached from it. I have always viewed it from a safe distance, knowing I don't belong; it doesn't include me, and it never has. No matter how you care to define it, I do not identify with the local group. Planet, species, race, nation, state, religion, party, union, club, association, neighborhood, improvement committee; I have no interest in any of it. I love and treasure individuals as I meet them, I loathe and despise the groups they identify with and belong to. My interest in "issues" is merely to point out how badly we're doing, not to suggest a way we might do better. Don't confuse me with those who cling to hope. I enjoy describing how things are, I have no interest in how they "ought to be." And I certainly have no interest in fixing them. I sincerely believe that if you think there's a solution, you're part of the problem. My motto: Fuck Hope!" — George Carlin
History of violence by American forces on prisoners and civilians overseas
Number of American POW’s who died in North Vietnamese captivity during the entire eleven-year Vietnam War: 114. — The Oxford Companion to American Military History
Number of prisoners who died in American captivity during the first four years of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: 108. “Some are known to have been tortured to death.” — Human Rights Watch
“The cases also include that of Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death. In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.” — Human Rights First
The idea of listening to Britney sing while dogs attack naked men—well, it’s just not my idea of a fun evening out.” — Rush Limbaugh, May 4, 2004
“This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin lives over it, and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we’re going to really hammer ‘em because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day—I’m talking about the people having a good time. You ever hear of emotional release? You ever hear of “need to blow some steam off?” — Rush Limbaugh, May 5, 2004
("Blowing off steam" at Abu Ghraib included sodomizing prisoners with a glow stick, one of the tortures noted in the Taguba Report.)
“The record could not be clearer regarding the fact that we caused numerous detainee deaths, many of which have gone completely uninvestigated and thus unpunished. Instead, the media and political class have misleadingly caused the debate to consist of the myth that these tactics were limited and confined.” — Glenn Greenwald, 2009
As a student of the conduct of American foreign policy I have also found these articles about American torture and war crimes usefully informative:
[41], [42], and [43]. Also this article about America’s human rights record and this article on allegations of American state terrorism.
There are some interesting notes on CIA Torture in Vietnam, Latin America, and Iraq
here.
“
...[S]ome people -- most, it seems -- will, under some circumstances, do anything someone in authority tells them to.... Government institutions, like most humans, have a reflexive reaction to the exposure of internal corruption and wrongdoing: No matter how transparent the effort, their first response is to lie, conceal and cover up. Also like human beings, once an institution has embraced a particular lie in support of a particular coverup, it will forever proclaim its innocence.
”
--Ron Ridenhour, the American serviceman who collected and exposed the evidence of his compatriots' massacre of villagers at My Lai in March, 1968, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1993.
Nick Davies, writing in The Guardian on April 22 2015, says that British foreign correspondent James Cameron described US actions in Vietnam as “an offense to international decency, both disgusting and absurd”. Davies notes that the My Lai massacre was far from unique: American journalist Nick Turse, searching the US National Archives in June 2001, “discovered files that recorded the findings of a secret US task force, the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group. They showed that the army had substantiated more than 300 claims of massacre, murder, rape and torture by American soldiers.” (See the WP article on the VWCWG here.)
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that in 2004 a CIA rendition team tortured a German citizen in Macedonia. The torture included beating and sodomising him. [44] The UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism characterized the ruling as "a key milestone in the long struggle to secure accountability of public officials implicated in human rights violations committed by the Bush administration CIA in its policy of secret detention, rendition and torture".
Not to mention the Obama administration's use of drones. Or what goes on in Gitmo. Or what an independent Washington think-tank concluded about the responsibility of senior American officials for torture under the rendition programme.
America’s history of violence against its own people
In the course of the white settlement of America, the indigenous Indian people were slaughtered in their ancestral homelands and the survivors driven out. After the physical destruction came cultural genocide. Navajo children, for example, were forced into white-run schools. Top of the curriculum was educating the children — called "savages" by white Americans — not to speak Navajo. This was accomplished by savagely beating them when they did so.
Democrats suppressed African American suffrage and civil rights to win the 1876 election. Militias informally affiliated to the party murdered political leaders, hunted down community members and intimidated voters.
After the Democrats regained power throughout the South, between 1880 and 1951 the Tuskegee Institute recorded lynchings of 3,437 blacks and 1,293 whites.
Lynching was a popular photographic subject for Americans, who sent picture postcards of those they had witnessed. Time noted that even the Nazis "did not stoop to selling souvenirs of Auschwitz, but lynching scenes became a burgeoning subdepartment of the postcard industry. By 1908, the trade had grown so large, and the practice of sending postcards featuring the victims of mob murderers was so repugnant, that the U.S. Postmaster General banned the cards from the mails." — Richard Lacayo, Time, April 02, 2000
Between 1882 and 1968, at least 4,742 African Americans were murdered by lynching. — Leon F. Litwack, Without Sanctuary
"The world knows of Rosa Parks because of a single simple act of dignity and courage that struck a lethal blow to the foundations of legal bigotry." — William Jefferson Clinton, 2005
Fortunately for the United States, the policies of cultural genocide that the white Americans enacted against the Indian nations were not entirely successful. In World War II, the Japanese easily broke American communication codes in the South Pacific. To avoid defeat the Americans needed an unbreakable code. They found it in the still-living Navajo language, spoken by specially-recruited Navajo marines.
Iwo Jima is a Pacific island with an area of eight square miles. Thanks to Navajo code-talkers, the Americans were able to kill 20,000 of its 22,000 Japanese defenders.
The article on capital punishment by the United States military tells us that America executed 21 of its military personnel in the Pacific in World War II. It does not tell us that 20 were black.
In the first five months of 2015, police in America shot 19 unarmed black men to death. California alone had 72 fatal police shootings, and 19 people killed there by police were unarmed. In Stockton, California (population 298,118), police killed three people. For comparison, Iceland (population 323,764) has had one fatal police shooting in its 73-year history [45]
Japanese contribution to American research
During the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945, in Manchuria, the Japanese killed up to a quarter of a million men, women, and children in experiments—including vivisection without anaesthetic—at the euphemistically named Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army, aka Unit 731. Local authorities were told it was a lumber mill. The Japanese staff referred to the prisoners as “logs”. (For more information about Unit 731, read Terese Svoboda’s Black Glasses Like Clark Kent.)
General Douglas MacArthur granted Unit 731’s “physicians” immunity in exchange for exclusive American access to the accumulated data on biological warfare and human experimentation.
Thomas Jefferson, George Monbiot and Edward Said
Thomas Jefferson
"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government." — Thomas Jefferson, 1809
"Much of the rhetoric of the 'New World Order' promulgated by the American government since the end of the Cold War—with its redolent self-congratulation, its unconcealed triumphalism, its grave proclamations of responsibility—might have been scripted by Conrad's Holroyd: we are number one, we are bound to lead, we stand for freedom and order, and so on. No American has been immune from this structure of feeling...." — Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
Conrad's Holroyd: "Time itself has got to wait on the greatest country in the whole of God’s universe. We shall be giving the word for everything—industry, trade, law, journalism, art, politics, and religion, from Cape Horn clear over to Smith’s Sound, and beyond it, too, if anything worth taking hold of turns up at the North Pole. And then we shall have the leisure to take in hand the outlying islands and continents of the earth. We shall run the world’s business whether the world likes it or not."
"The founding fathers were great thinkers. How did their project degenerate into George Bush and Sarah Palin?" — George Monbiot, "How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington", The Guardian October 28 2008.
The degeneration of the Founding Fathers' great project regained momentum postwar. By 1998, one in four Texas state school biology teachers believed that humans and dinosaurs existed simultaneously.
Christian fundamentalism and creationism/intelligent design
"One [American] adult in five believes the sun revolves round the earth; only 26% accept that evolution takes place by means of natural selection; two-thirds of young adults are unable to find Iraq on a map: two-thirds of US voters cannot name the three branches of government; the maths skills of 15-year-olds in the US are ranked 24th out of the 29 countries of the OECD...Religion — in particular fundamentalist religion — makes you stupid.Self-declared non-believer: Congressman Pete Stark The US is the only rich country in which Christian fundamentalism is vast and growing." — George Monbiot
"The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win – it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition." — Christopher Hitchens
"One of the joys of living in a world filled with stupidity and hypocrisy was to see Hitch respond." — Sam Harris
Almost two-thirds of Americans want creationism taught in school beside evolution.
Creationists argue that their particular religiously-based origin belief is superior to those of other belief systems, in particular those made through secular or scientific rationale.
Young Earth creationists believe the Earth was created by God within the last ten thousand years, literally as described in Genesis.
An estimated 47% of Americans hold the Young Earth creationist view. Almost 10% of American Christian colleges teach it. American Christian organizations Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society both promote it. An Answers in Genesis Ministries Creation Museum promotes it.
Gratuitous pawn
45% of Americans believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.
For Americans, belief in creationism is inversely correlated to education. 74% of Americans with postgraduate degrees accept evolution.
20 percent of U.S. doctors believe God can cure a fatally injured patient. – Lenworth Jacobs, Lenworth Hospital, Hartford, Conn.
Only one member of Congress openly declares himself an atheist: Pete Stark ((D) California). Stark founded Security National Bank, which grew into a $100 million company in its first ten years.
A 1975 study based on 234 US college undergraduates found that "Religious Believers as a group were found to be significantly less intelligent and more authoritarian than religious Skeptics."
IQ
"A recent USA study connecting political views and intelligence has shown that the mean adolescent intelligence of young adults who identify themselves as "very liberal" is 106.4, while that of those who identify themselves as "very conservative" is 94.8. Two other studies conducted in the UK reached similar conclusions." Wikipedia Hey, if you're a very conservative adolescent you can safely disregard that. You read it in Wikipedia, right? Chances are, a very liberal adolescent editor made it up.
Unrestored version: mislabeled scattered debris of camp in Library of Congress bibliograhic notes.
Restored version: four human remains in foreground partially wrapped in blankets.
Detail from restored version: a face in profile, hand at right.
Tour de France
A collection of early Tour de France racing velocipedes from the Formule Libre era when there were no restrictions on the number of riders or wheels per bike. Of particular interest and historic significance is the unusually small example (bottom right) ridden in 1907 by Alphonse "Petit" Legrand, a midget. Confounding the pundits Legrand won at record speed, only to be disqualified when an alert official discovered in post-race scrutineering that the accessory described by Legrand as a chain-driven refrigerator to cool his on-board refreshments was in fact an internal combustion engine to power the bicycle. Eight years later, soon after the outbreak of the Great War, Legrand masterminded the famous ill-fated attempt, using a Frot-Laffly tank disguised as a baby carriage, on the lives of the German Chief of Staff Alfred von Schlieffen and other senior officers of the German High Command attending the christening of von Schlieffen's niece.
I collect
Italian road-racing bicycles made by Masi and Pinarello from 1974 to 1994
Vintage photographic postcards, signed by pioneer aviators, of early European aviation meets and air races from 1909 to 1912
Early aviation books
Pictorial and written material relating to Raymonde de Laroche and Bessie Coleman
Signed first-edition books, particularly by Martin Amis
Art
Music
Too much loose change
Really bad jokes
Examples of the more manipulative, self-serving, malevolent and asinine "contributions" to WP, not least the deeply stupid comments at the notice boards.
Examples of WP users' disillusionment, such as this resignation statement from a disillusioned admin who was soon, er, illusioned again and came skipping back as an admin under a new user name:
Wikipedia is no longer the Wikipedia I signed up for in 2005, nor is it the Wikipedia I decided to become an administrator for in 2008. I naively expected that Wikipedia would one day become a valuable, well-respected, very useful online encyclopedia, full of notable information. I thought that the articles would be edited by people with knowledge about the subjects and who could provide quality links and references. I expected that, as the project has a worldwide audience, neutrality would be one of the highest priorities. Well, I was wrong. The vast majority of the “information” on Wikipedia is either non-notable crap, fancruft, or other useless trivia that would never be accepted by a traditional encyclopedia. If I want to read about, for example, Star Trek, I can go to a wiki devoted to everything about the franchise, so why is that crap here?
And this one:
I had planned on retiring once before after my first complaint relating to abuse of tools by admins and problem editors who engage in politics, grudge-holding tactics, make decisions on basis of their friends, and vendettas against other editors, etc. The place has long been haunted by issues like this and I was ready to live the first time around. However, after sweet comments from various editors to stay and that my contributions were valuable, such as shown here [46]. I decided to hold out hope for Wikipedia and stomach the aforementioned behaviors. But these behaviors are simply to problematic on this website. On July 1 as soon as I realized I had to make a complaint against admin Bbb23 for stalking, harassment, and abuse of tools, I knew that it was time to retire and had prepared myself for a poorly handled complaint. On top of that, I was told that my complaint had to be handled over at ANI where friends of the admin would likely be found at, so I was doubly prepared for a poor complaint. As predicted, the admin's friends went on the attack mere minutes after I posted the complaint calling me names and everything else, all as shown here [47], here [48]; here [49]. As the amount of bias for the admin was immediately evident and numbers were mounting in Bbb23's favor without even reviewing my complaint in question or even remarking on it, I responded with this retirement speech shortly thereafter [50], essentially thanking the users for confirming my suspicions that the complaint would be handled poorly and in exact accordance with the manny complaints that swarm the Internet about this website. I knew the moment I had an issue with an admin it was time to retire but just wanted to make 100% I was right and they proved it. This is precisely why so many retire from this website and never come back. I am now a member of those retired users who never come back. I will spread word of my many complaints against the website, move on, and be done with it. AmericanDad86
Just some of the many websites that touch upon Wikipedia's steadily decreasing population, largely due to the complaints I've just alluded to above: here [51]; here [52], and here [53].AmericanDad86
Qui vive
Wikipedia is open to all. That includes people with personality disorders (see e.g. paranoia, narcissism, sociopathy) who are free to roam the articles and talk pages exhibiting behaviour that would be remedied in the real world by medication or a smack in the mouth. Fortunately there may be fewer than in 2007, as the number of active Wikipedia editors has steadily declined in the interim. Unfortunately they may constitute a steadily increasing percentage of the dwindling total if encounters with them play a part in the exodus of more collaboratively-minded editors. So if the trend continues, WP could end up being edited and administered solely by a collection of pompous, egotistical, wikilawyering asshats.
Gratuitous prawn
You may cross paths with users who habitually talk down to others. If you also cross swords, their arguments may exhibit a persistent casuistry in distorting and misrepresentating policy to browbeat you into submission. These users are pompous, egotistical, wikilawyering, asshat bullies. Bullies don't collaborate, they game the system. So a wikibully, thwarted in some piddling content dispute, tends to haul it to the nearest notice boards in the hope of getting his own way. The more sour and disparaging a bully's behaviour, the more shrill the shrieks of righteous indignation when he or she is called on it. This—the VEB strategy for getting one's own way ("I'll thcream and thcream until I'm thick. I can!")—sometimes actually works. After all, GBS's view on wrestling with pigs is quite well known. Cyril Connolly observed that bullies have "a sense of inferiority deepened perhaps by sexual ignorance" (Enemies of Promise). So spare a little pity for the wikibully when you push back. And bear in mind that when you do, he may squeal self-pityingly about you bullying him. Bullies don't get irony.
"...having now spent more than 8 years on Wikipedia, my patience with hypocrisy is pretty much depleted and I find it difficult to ignore." WP editor MastCell in 2014.
"See, it'd be so much simpler if we could block for simple douchebaggery." WP editor UltraExactZZ
"In my many years on Wikipedia, there have been many people who have . . . abused the rules & process, ignored or talked over what other contributors add to a discussion, & resorted to all sorts of other objectionable tactics with the goal of simply getting their preferred version of an article accepted." WP editor Llyrwrch
Misrepresentation and misinterpretation are common tactics. For example, an editor observes of user A, 'It should be clear by now that you can argue until you are blue in the face and [user A] will misconstrue your words, often to mean the exact opposite of what you said'; another notes that user A 'has a long history of misinterpreting policies, sources and other editors' comments, then entering into extensive pointless discussions'; and an administrator tells him directly: 'I don't understand why, after I explained everything, you continue to misinterpret me or misrepresent me.'
Sometimes users just make stuff up to push a pov. Keeping a cool head is always the best response. E.g., an editor tells user A, 'I'm simply asking you not to repeat things that aren't true. You said that the [...] source was "not a medical article, and is not peer-reviewed". But of course, it is a medical article, and it is peer-reviewed.'
Exercising restraint and sticking resolutely to the facts is also an excellent way to respond to a user who deploys the infantile tactic of malevolent untruth to smear another user in a talk page discussion. A little cool intelligence goes a long way towards halting the rank stupidity of an inept attacker's tactics.
"The amount of verbal pomposity, elaboration of the obvious, repetition, trivia, low-grade statistics, tedious factification, drudging recapitulations of the half-comprehended, and generally inane and laborious junk that one encounters..." Dwight Macdonald
91% of Wikipedia editors are male. Which explains a lot.
The smaller the mind, the greater the conceit.
"Don't bother arguing the toss with a tosser." d'Artagnan Muldoon
Personal attack or ad hominem?
Borrowed from another editor's UTP:
Note that ad hominem and personal attack are logically distinct, because you can have a personal attack which is not an ad hominem, and you can have an ad hominem which is not a personal attack.
For an example of the first, suppose you say that your argument is not feeble, therefore you are not an idiot. I reply that you are an idiot, therefore your argument is feeble. This is not an ad hominem, because I have addressed your argument, by modus tollens. But it is clearly a personal attack on you. Conversely, if I reply 'you are a great guy, therefore what you say is correct', that is an ad hominem because it addresses your personal qualities rather than your argument itself. But it is a compliment, not an attack.
Arguments that someone is from Wikipedia Review therefore their arguments are unsound or invalid are clearly ad hominem. Even to say an argument is biased is ad hominem. Ad hominem is any form of words that fails to engage with the content of what the speaker is saying, and engages with personal qualities or motives or reasons or whatever. Hope that helps. 86.183.162.176 (talk) 14:02, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
I think you are right. An ad hominem argument is not always a personal attack. Thank you. Cla68 (talk) 22:08, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
I'd go even further and say that the permissibility of an ad hominem should be determined by the contribution to the discourse, by whether it raises or lowers the level of intellectual honesty. Pointing out e.g. a clearcut conflict of interest which the editor in question decided to keep out of the debate and which cannot reasonably be assumed to be common knowledge does technically constitute an ad hominem. But imho it is not only permissible, but mandatory for anyone to try and give everyone involved and particularly less-intimately-knowledgeable onlookers a chance to gauge the arguments by their actual merits. Which brings me to my current major pet peeve in WP policy: There's a widely-quoted policy called "Assume good faith", but there is no policy "Act in good faith". And the meaning of this status quo is that some of our policies are geared towards protecting some of the worst, longest-term and most well-established miscreants among WP editors. Cla, I admire your attempts at improving Wikipedia, but this crowd does not want change. They love their fallacies, they love this dysfunction, and that's why any intelligent person should give up on Wikipedia sooner rather than later. --87.79.225.165 (talk) 13:07, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree with the IP; ad hominem comments are not always illogical or a fallacy. The most obvious example is pointing out a conflict of interest, which the IP editor already outlined. If someone publishes an article claiming that secondhand smoke does not cause cancer, then it is entirely reasonable to point out that person's employment by a tobacco company. Far from being a logical fallacy, providing such information is considered essential in any ethical scholarly enterprise, even though it could be considered a form of ad hominem.
A second situation in which ad hominem arguments are reasonable is in pointing out apparent hypocrisy. If you make a vigorous moral argument against behavior X, but in fact you routinely engage in behavior X, then it is reasonable to point out that your personal behavior calls into question the sincerity of your moral argument. Technically, that's an ad hominem approach, but it's neither illogical nor a fallacy. MastCellTalk 23:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
Sound advice
User A to User B: Your proclivity to circuitously argue points until the heat death of the universe and make serial assertions that amount to “black is white and up is down” does not make it incumbent on others to refute your assertions one by one. Furthermore, your quoting Wikipedia policy and highlighting key passages as if you wrote it, patented the concept, and teach it at Harvard does not impress. I suggest you take sufficient time off to give some thought to ‘cause & effect’ before still more things happen on Wikipedia that make you sad.
User C to User B: You would learn a lot by observing more, assuming you're right less, listening more, and saying a good deal less.
Always show consideration for other users. For example, if all you need to communicate on a talk page or in an edit summary is a fatuous self-regard, be sure to use plenty of bellowing boldface and/or CRASS CAPITALS. They serve as a handy indicator to other editors that a post isn't worth reading.
User A: I am not surprised that you mis-posted the "rules" here, and happened upon this thread. Cheers.
User B: Thank you. Might the inanity of a comment be missed, shouting in boldface is an effective way to amplify it. Beers.
Unless you actually know what you're talking about, it might be inadvisable to post a condescending talk page reply to an experienced user that misrepresents them as being ignorant of a key policy by telling them to read it. Attempts to discredit others' comments this way can backfire, especially when it's crystal clear that no such ignorance has been demonstrated. Here, for example, User A's super-polite response to User B's condescending misrepresentation quietly but effectively delivers the coup de grâce:
User A: There's two editors disagree with you [blah blah blah]. For the time being, let's discuss the issue until we have a consensus. [Blah blah blah.]
User B: Read WP:CONSENSUS please before insisting that 2 editors make up a consensus.
User A: I don't believe that I used the word "consensus" at all, let alone insist on anything.
(Of course, User A did use the word 'consensus', but solely to suggest working towards it—in accordance with policy—and not to insist two editors constitute it.)
If you do get caught misrepresenting another user like this, it's best to apologize and declare you behaved like an ass. Nobody does. Welcome to Wikipedia!
Mind your Ps and Qs, and don't forget your commas.
Let's eat, Grandma!
Let's eat Grandma!
The advice on commas may be disregarded if you're from Tierra del Fuego, whose people tended to eat their old woman (preferring them to their dogs) when food ran short.
Reasons to be fearful: #1
"Wikipedia...has become the internet's default research resource." The Guardian
Reasons to be fearful: #2
Extracts of conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt’s interview of businessman Donald Trump:
On Kurds and Quds:
HH: Are you familiar with General Soleimani?
DT: Yes, but go ahead, give me a little, go ahead, tell me.
HH: He runs the Quds Forces.
DT: Yes, OK, right.
HH: Do you expect his behaviour …
DT: The Kurds, by the way, have been horribly mistreated by …
HH: No, not the Kurds, the Quds Forces, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Forces.
DT: Yes, yes.
HH: … is the bad guys.
DT: Right.
HH: Do you expect his behaviour to change as a result …
DT: Oh, I thought you said Kurds, Kurds.
HH: No, Quds.
On Islamic terrorist group leadership:
HH: But on the front of Islamist terrorism, I’m looking for the next commander-in-chief to know who Hassan Nasrallah is, and al-Zawahiri, and al-Julani, and al-Baghdadi. Do you know the players without a scorecard, yet, Donald Trump?
DT: No, you know, I’ll tell you honestly, I think by the time we get to office, they’ll all be changed. They’ll be all gone. I knew you were going to ask me things like this, and there’s no reason, because number one, I’ll find, I will hopefully find General Douglas MacArthur in the pack. I will find whoever it is that I’ll find, and we’ll, but they’re all changing, Hugh.
On military strategy:
HH: Looking to Asia, if China were to either accidentally or intentionally sink a Filipino or Japanese ship, what would commander-in-chief Donald Trump do in response?
DT: I wouldn’t want to tell you, because frankly, they have to, you know, somebody wrote a very good story about me recently, and they said there’s a certain unpredictable, and it was actually another businessman, said there’s a certain unpredictability about Trump that’s great, and it’s what made him a lot of money and a lot of success. You don’t want to put, and you don’t want to let people know what you’re going to do with respect to certain things that happen. You don’t want the other side to know. I don’t want to give you an answer to that. If I win, and I’m leading in every single poll, if I win, I don’t want people to know exactly what I’m going to be doing.
He who is attached to notability criteria and NPOV will suffer much. The man who expects only self-promotion and POV-pushing will never be disappointed.
The Fourth Law of Stupidity: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular, non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places, and under any circumstances, to deal with stupid people always turns out to be costly mistake.[1]
If you wrestle with a pig, both of you will get muddy. And the pig will enjoy it.
Ignorance is infinite, while patience is not. Ultimately, you will lose patience with the unchecked flow of ignorance, at which point you'll be blocked for incivility. The goal is to accomplish as much as possible before that inevitability comes to pass.
If a person edits Wikipedia largely or solely to promote one side of a contentious issue, then the project is almost certainly better off without them.
On Wikipedia, any form of real-life expertise is a serious handicap. If you have real-life expertise on a subject, do not under any circumstances mention it here.[2]
If your edit sticks close to the original source, you will be accused of plagiarism. If your edit is paraphrased to avoid plagiarism, you will be accused of straying from the original source. Rinse and repeat.
If you hand an olive branch to a Wikipedian, he will likely try to beat you to death with it.
Anyone who edits policy pages to favor their position in a specific dispute has no business editing policy pages. Corollary: these are the only people who edit policy pages.
The more abusive an editor is toward others, the more thin-skinned they are about "personal attacks" directed at themselves.
The more a viewpoint is odious, ignorant, wrong-headed, or obscure, the more likely its adherents will perceive Wikipedia as their best opportunity to promote it.
The most challenging, nuanced problems facing Wikipedia tend to attract the editors least capable of handling complexity or nuance.
Anyone who defends their edits by citing WP:NOTCENSORED doesn't have the first clue.
When a Wikipedian uses Latin, you can be sure they are up to no good.
if $username =~ m/truth|justice|freedom|neutrality/i, then the account should probably be blocked preëmptively, because nothing constructive will ever come from it.
Being blocked has never made anyone more civil. On many occasions, it has made people less civil. Nonetheless, our default approach to increasing the general level of civility is to block people.
Forced apologies are worse than meaningless; they're demeaning both to the apologizer and to the recipient. Nonetheless, Wikipedians are obsessed with demanding forced apologies from people who clearly aren't sorry.
When someone complains that Wikipedia is biased, it usually means that their ideas have failed to gain traction because they've misunderstood this site's goals. For example, to a committed flat-Earther, Wikipedia will appear to have a systemic round-Earth bias which stymies their efforts to contribute.
The more an editor is incapable of assuming good faith, the more prone they will be to cite WP:AGF at others.
Wikipedia's processes favor pathological obsessiveness over rationality. A reasonable person will, at some point, decide that they have better things to do than argue with a pathological obsessive.[3] Wikipedia's content reflects this reality, most acutely in its coverage of topics favored by pathological obsessives.
The more often someone cites WP:CIVIL, the less likely s/he has any idea of what actual civility entails.
You can tell everything you need to know about an editor's understanding of Wikipedia's sourcing guidelines by their approach to the Daily Mail.
The amount of fuss that an editor makes over retiring is inversely proportional to the likelihood that s/he will actually retire.
^For example: Alfred Russell Wallace once accepted a challenge from a Flat-Earther who offered him ₤500 if he could prove that the Earth was round. Wallace demonstrated the curvature of the Earth in a simple, elegant, and irrefutable manner. But instead of paying up the wager, the Flat-Earther launched a years-long campaign of defamation and harassment against Wallace.
In the end, Wallace won a libel suit and put an end to the nonsense, but it had cost him years of his life and well more money than the wager was worth in the first place. A more elegant demonstration of the Fourth Law Of Stupidity would be hard to invent. The moral of the story: you cannot reason someone out of a fundamentally irrational belief.
^
You might naïvely think that a project attempting to summarize human knowledge would value people who actually know things. You would be badly mistaken, for two reasons. First of all, Wikipedia tends to attract obsessive amateurs—people who are deeply interested in arcane topics but who lack academic qualifications or recognition and thus view such things as suspect. Secondly, Wikipedians have really strange ideas about "conflicts of interest". It's been seriously suggested, for instance, that a physician has a conflict of interest in writing about medical topics, by virtue of actually knowing something about them.
Wikipedia's hostility toward real-life expertise is usually externalized and blamed on the experts, who are portrayed as too arrogant and entitled to thrive in this democratic marketplace of ideas. But that's bullshit. Experts get frustrated because Wikipedia lacks any mechanism to ensure that sane people triumph over pathological obsessives. (If anything, our existing processes reward pathological obsessiveness much more than sane, reasonable approaches).
^Or, as my father told me when I was young, "Only a dumb-ass argues with a dumb-ass."
"The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.' " — George Carlin
Thank you Buster! I'll pass it on to my mother, she's a great Carlin fan. Belated thanks also for that gorgeous red barn star and the kind thoughts. Back at ya! (Careful, we're in danger of High Fives now.) I just heard news that SP is resigning from her hugely important job of looking out of the window to warn the Amairkins of any clapped-out old Russian bombers trying to trundle in over the tundra and under the radar. Apparently she wants to make a play for the even more important post (yes, it seems there is one) of 'Great Republican Decider You Betcha' in 2012. Not being a great decider myself I'm not sure whether this move is extremely funny or deeply scary. Both? Some of our old friends at the article will already be in danger of stroking out from excitement at the prospect of the sainted, unblinking Sarah buying a few truckloads of cheesy new Neiman Marcus outfits, reopening Gitmo and sending Katie Curic there. Take care. Writegeist (talk) 22:16, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Will coincidences never cease!!!! [55] I once owned a Chevy Vega (hot little #)...and, then, LessVHTY, a great admin shows up.
Haha, you're a brave man to make a public admission of ever owning a Chevy Vega :~) . But hey, I had two Trabants . . . I will check out your Incivility thoughts; also the poll. Been away and just got back, so catching up. Apropos of nothing: Owner to dog: "Sit!" Dog to owner: "Oh - bad news?" Writegeist (talk) 09:28, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for signing up for the Great Wikipedia Dramaout. Wikipedia stands to benefit from the improvements in the article space as a result of this campaign. This is a double reminder. First, the campaign begins on July 18, 2009 at 00:00 (UTC). Second, please remember to log any articles you have worked on during the campaign at Wikipedia:The Great Wikipedia Dramaout/Log. Thanks again for your participation! --Jayron32.talk.say no to drama 21:40, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
Sorry to disappoint, but I had second thoughts and withdrew. I found I just didn't feel comfortable as part of something quite so, well, worthy. (And I have a deeply ingrained Groucho Marxist aversion to clubs.) But I appreciate the worthiness of those who are made of sterner stuff. Needless to say I dread the question from my future grandchildren: "What did you do in the Great Wikipedia Dramaout, gramps?" Writegeist (talk) 02:18, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Just wanted you to know that I think yours is awesome.--~TPW 19:41, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
How kind. Thank you, it feels good to be appreciated. But I have to say, usernames don't come any more awesome than True Pagan Warrior! Writegeist (talk) 18:11, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Tee hee. A username is a combination of inspiration and availability, and this one took some balancing to get right!--~TPW 19:32, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
Refined humor is hard to come by. Thank you, – Lionel(talk) 23:05, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Back at you Sir with knobs on, as they so nearly say here in the colonies where I reside. The award is much appreciated. As soon as I find my Mappin & Webb bone-handled Jungle Chum pocket knife in the heirloom clutter of my, ahem, "condo" (sincere apologies for the vulgar American vernacular, and by the way please note: no "m") I shall slice the handsome bronze star out of the screen and wear it with pride on the lapel of my finest Cholmondeley and Ramsbotham Number 2 Thornproof Tweed hacking jacket. Writegeist (talk) 02:05, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
In the 14th Century, one of my ancestors was a famously notorious Pirate. He was the first to place catapults on board ships to facilitate easier maurauding. My image of him is File:Jack Sparrow In Pirates of the Caribbean- At World's End.JPG. This may not be far from the truth if one considerd that my relatives surname is also the name of a living creature. Did the authors of the Pirates franchise use my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather as the basis for their character? I think they did!!!!! Someday I'll write an article and take it to FA. ```Buster Seven Talk 16:17, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
My great-great etc. grandfather was Terence Trebuchet so they may have known each other! It's an interesting story. Terry had acquired a very early Sopwith Plummet aeroplane:
The wings were somewhat lacking in lift, but Terry realized the contraption had potential for weekend marauders to throw rocks and rotten vegetables at people whose stuff they wanted for themselves, and he deftly adapted it to the new purpose. Then full-time professional maurauders took it up, and the rest is history. Without Terry, WW2 would almost certainly never have been brought to an end by America's development of those giant trebuchets that could lob multiple grand pianos over distances of hundreds of miles. Europe owes its freedom to Terry, the Sopwith Plummet and the Underwood Corps! I think you should sue the studio for ripping off your pirate ancestor's story. Writegeist (talk) 17:05, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
I agree; a lawsuit is in order. Do you know a good Personal Injury lawyer? I know someone of questionable integrity and character who is tremendous at obfuscation. Problem is he is not a lawyer: he is an Oldenwoordenboekenmaker.```Buster Seven Talk 13:31, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
May I recommend my personal injury lawyer Sammy "Batman" Malignanti? His lawyering credentials (certification from the Gambino School of Law) may not be of the highest order but he comes from a good family and his ability to inflict personal injury with a baseball bat is unrivaled. Writegeist (talk) 18:13, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Sammy's reputation preceeds him. If it's the same Sammy Malignanti from Taylor Street in Chicago? I didn't know that a felon could become a lawyer. But...hey...who cares. Does a hi-jacker need a drivers license?? Does a "vulture" capitalist need a heart to do business? Is a baseball bat just used to hit baseballs???? Chores! ```Buster Seven Talk 12:22, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello. I was led here to your userspace by the illustrious B7. I hope you don't mind if I take my shoes off and make myself at home. Wateresque (talk) 20:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Greetings, Wateresque, and welcome to my humble abode. Any friend of Buster's is a friend of mine, and I hope you'll swing by whenever you have a mind to. Thank you for taking off your shoes. The cleaning lady has just been -- the place isn't always this clean and tidy. Don't trip over the cat, it won't move out of the way, it's stuffed. Feel free to browse the books. And yes, it's a real Hockney and the insurance is killing me. Are you a firefighter? If so, you'll have plenty to do on Wikipedia. Writegeist (talk) 21:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Well a fake cat is better than no cat, as I always say. No, unfortunately I'm not a firefighter, just an engineer who hastily found the best picture of casually removed shoes on W.Commons. Although I imagine that if I tried I could fight a few wikifires. Wateresque (talk) 14:08, 29 November 2012 (UTC)
Your unique blend of kind-heartedness, generosity of spirit, patience and good humour, not to mention the monogrammed speedo you wear over your tights, are unique assets to ye olde pedia, and your friendship is a blessing to me. I greatly appreciate your support. I shall always wear it. We are all well, and hope the same applies in the Buster family. Our friend Cartier-Bresson sends his regards. Herewith also mine (in black and white, like C-B's!). Visit again soon. Make yourself at home—push the (stuffed) cat off the (overstuffed) arm chair; help yourself from the drinks cupboard. Feel free to check out the Cézanne in the downstairs toilet and compare it with yours (the Cézanne, not the toilet). Writegeist (talk) 16:33, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
Your mention of cat and toilet reminds me. We have adopted a cat, unstuffed. He arrived at out backdoor Christmas morning. I think Santa was over "cookie and milk"ed and just started to leave stuff willy-nilly. We named him Star as in "Christmas Star". He is black with a white medallion star on his chest. We got him a litter box and the best cat food a fixed income could buy. He has been neutered (ouch!) and had shots. Also... He has shit and pissed in every corner of the house which, BTW, began to smell like the Lincoln Park Zoo. We love him. He currently lives in the basement until he learns how to flush the toilet. We have re-named him. His new name is Star-R, Starr...after Ringo. Buster Seven Talk
Good to hear of the Christmas addition to the Buster family. Aptly renamed. Years ago, when God was a boy, Ringo came to visit for a weekend and I had to lock him in the basement for the same reasons. Well, that and he kept drumming with his knife and fork on the Louis XVI dining table. He asked to borrow ten shillings and promised ten percent of all his future earnings in return, but I could see he'd never make it as a drummer and turned him down. Writegeist (talk) 16:45, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
Dogs are stupid while Cats, on the other hand, are cunning. Starr has convinced Sadie to start sleeping on the outdoor grill instead of her comfortable doggie pillow. ```Buster Seven Talk 13:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
Please don't tell Mrs. Writegeist about these sleeping arrangements. Writegeist (talk) 15:36, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
I see you have updated the security system. Nice. Is it a McAfee 2000?. Just dropped by to relate a little story I uncovered as I wandered here and there...
There once was a little boy named Johnny who had a wonderful dog named Laddie. Johnny was prone to emotional outbursts, and his mother was concerned by his overreactions. One day while Johnny was at school, Laddie was killed in an unfortunate accident. The mother took Laddie's body and put it in the backyard. She was very worried how Johnny would react to the news of his dog's death. When Johnny returned from school, his mother said to him, "I'm really sorry, Johnny, but Laddie died in an accident." Johnny responded "Okay" and went upstairs to change his clothers. The mother was quite surprised at the calm reaction. After Johnny put on his play clothes, he went out to the backyard. All of a sudden, the mother heard Johnny screaming. She rushed out to the backyard and saw Johnny prostrate over the dog's body and wailing. The mother said, "But, Johnny, I told you Laddie died." In between sobs, Johnny sputtered, "I thought you said Daddy."
Which reminds me of Les Dawson, who said: "In 1846, my great great-uncle, Peregrine Cattermole Dawson, found the secret of eternal life in a disused cobbler's in Rhyl. In 1895, the entire forces of the now despised Eurasian despot Wahong Chang Arkwright caused a minor diplomatic affrontage when they invaded a bring and buy sale in Ormskirk. And in 1914, there occurred a nasty outbreak of sporran rash among the 37th Foot and Mouth Highland Regiment." Dawson, who liked a bottle of whisky and 50 cigarettes a day, died not as one might expect from cirrhosis of the liver or lung cancer but from a heart attack just after a health check for insurance. There were many nice things about him. Not least, he never took himself seriously or stooped to seeking sympathy for his physical infirmities. Writegeist (talk) 19:27, 18 April 2013 (UTC)
Zeitgeist
Thank you for capturing the movement of the Zeitgeist in precise wording, realising that "Wikipedia is a humorous parody of Uncyclopedia and Conservapedia" to be edited "boldly, satirically and immediately", for doing so, for knowing about Fucking and Socks, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!
I am glad someone else noticed how truly precious you are. ```Buster Seven Talk 12:49, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
Thank you both for the kind words, which give me a lovely shot of dopamine each time I read them. Also, Gerda, for the marvellous sapphire. I have cut it out of my laptop monitor* and wear it on a silver chain around my neck on special occasions. In fact it was much admired yesterday when I had a pint or three of Old Ferret Royal Reserve Dark Ale with my friends William and Kate in celebration of the arrival of George, their new Shar Pei puppy. *Please be assured I remembered to put duct tape over the hole in the screen to stop the Internet leaking out. Writegeist (talk) 16:45, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
And here is a photo I took of Willie and Kate's little new bundle of joy: Liz was so smitten by her great grandpuppy that she totally lost interest in the corgis, which have now been donated to a very nice family from Korea.
. . . I regret spurning your advances all those years ago, when you made the tragically mistaken assumption that we were brothers in arms fighting in the same noble cause. (I treasure the note.) I can see you're still troubled. I've thought it over. Let's get a room. What say you? (Please don't email. My wife may see it.)
Hi, when you wrote to the project talk page were you referring to Bentley Speed Six or to another article? Regards, Eddaido (talk) 23:50, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
Hm. I could have sworn that my post to the project talk page was titled "Bentley Speed Six" and wikilinked to the article titled, um, Bentley Speed Six. Writegeist (talk) 03:03, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
A rather fun example (names etc. redacted, sorry!) of a discussion at an (unnamed) article talk page where User A argues for describing a living person (a journalist as it happens) in the article as 'notorious', which editors B, C, and D oppose (ellipses indicate where I've omitted the more tedious and/or irrelevant bits):
[Stack of 11 diffs.]
In short -- "notorious" appears to be super-glued to the name XYZ. — User A
[...]
At this time, 5 editors have responded there [i.e. a noticeboard where User A has pressed the "case" for describing the BLP subject as "notorious", exploiting the same 11 diffs]. All 5 have disagreed with A. — User B
At this time, only one editor ignores the Talk Page guidelines about making personal comments about other editors. And five have stated the sources are reliable (one demurs on a post by what appears to be a pseudonymous author) -- making your snark here rather silly. The disagreement there is whether the word is supported as one to be cited in the middle of a phrase in this article, etc. Not as to the overall reliability of the sources, again - other than one where a post is signed by its author, but apparently pseudonymously. — User A
This is wildly misleading. Some of those sources don't ascribe "notoriety" to the man, some don't ascribe it to his criticism, some don't use the word notoriety. It is a dog's breakfast of sources that don't always directly support the claim you are trying to make. In more than one of the sources, you cite unconfirmed-user internet forum message boards that are not reliable sources for anything. I wasn't "demurring" on a single point or a single source, and I don't see anyone who supported your view in that thread. (And a person who intentionally uses a completely untraceable pseudonym on an internet comment thread is maintaining their anonymity, that shouldn't be a point you waste time arguing about). — User C
[...]
The original wording before I came in on this was "outspoken" which I considered as unsourced, and feel now that "notorious critic" (not just "notorious" with criminal implications) applies. I do doubt whether XYZ's credentials extend to being a valid [article subject] critic, moreover, and this is a long distance from the ideal source of a peer-reviewed journal. — User A
[...]
Here are Google search results for XYZ and "brilliant": [diff]. And for [the name of another person mentioned in the article] and "notorious": [diff]. It appears that search and you will find. But finding it doesn't make it encyclopedic, nor compliant with BLP. — User B
XYZ and brilliant yields 458 actual results -- almost none of which use the adjective about XYZ at all... [diffs here of sources not applying "brilliant" to XYZ.] I suggest you put quotes around "XYZ" by the way -- it does affect results for the "initial estimate" and again that "initial value" is generally a tad misleading. Cheers. — User A
[...]
User A asserts "notorious" appears to be super-glued to the name XYZ.[diff] and "notorious critic" applies.[diff]. Google, while not definitive, does at least provide a rough guide. A search for "XYZ" and "notorious critic" returns a total of five hits, of which two appear RS. (Super glue? Really?) For comparison, XYZ's name with "outspoken" returns 5,320; with "journalist", 371,000; "journalist XYZ", 38,800; the name with "critic", 389,000; and the name with "[publication name] contributing editor", 25,900. (I think I've got the numbers right; correct me if I'm wrong.) User D [Adding] Yikes, spectacular mismatch of "journalist" and "371,000", hilarious and accidental, no idea where that came from; striking. — User D
Add "notorious [specific subject] critic" 95, and so on. Paging through the "journalist" and "XYZ" results gets all of 354 results (Google is "notorious" for overstating number of hits, by the way). So it is correct to affirm the 371,000 hits you thought you found were wrong (my search had Google say only 47,300 hits) -- but when only 354 results get shown, then that is the actual figure one should use. "Notorious" and "XYZ" gets 425 solid results. Next time you cite Google hits, page through the results to confirm at least 1,000 are "real." "Critic" and "XYZ" gets 385 actual results. Cheers. — User A
The accuracy of a calculation (specifically a simple addition) you posted elsewhere was questioned by a user who seemed to me to have a better grasp of addition, so while I thank you for your musings I hope you don't mind my glossing over your figures in this instance. Your clarity about the precise form of the content you want to insert is helpful: you are pressing for "notorious critic" (you wrote "notorious critic" applies) So do you want that as, say, "XYZ, a notorious critic" (search returns one hit,* unfortunately not RS)? Or perhaps "notorious critic XYZ" (two hits,* neither of them RS)? *I note your comment that Google is notorious for overstating the number of hits. — User D
It would be nice if you noted what I wrote, consider what I wrote and then accurately deal with what I wrote. The word "notorious" is frequently found directly referring to XYZ, and the counts given of "371,000 hits" or the like are technically and factually errant. And if you will note precisely what the section title is [section title] I think your snark is all-too-clear. — User A [Note absence of cheery "Cheers" cheerio from this one]
At which point User D withdrew from the discussion instead of posting this response:
I have done so. It would be nice if you noted what others wrote, considered what they wrote, and then accurately dealt with what they wrote. The wording you have explicitly demanded is "notorious critic": The original wording before I came in on this was "outspoken" which I considered as unsourced, and feel now that "notorious critic" (not just "notorious" with criminal implications) applies. [link]. I have offered you two constructions to frame notorious critic, the precise contentious description you say you desire. One returns two Google hits, neither of them a reliable source. The other returns one hit, which is also non-RS. Specious sources you cite for notorious have already been dealt with at one of the other forums where you've tried and failed to gain support.[link] You demanded notorious and it failed. You demanded notorious critic and it failed. Now you are apparently campaigning again for notorious Oh well. When vexatious, battlesome, IDHTish comments move the goalposts in circles at least the goal stays somewhere on the pitch instead of disappearing into the next county. We must be grateful for small mercies. — User D
Thank you for your cool head, which should always prevail in WP. Cwobeel (talk) 18:28, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
The Random Acts of Kindness Pornstar
for helping a newbie (me) out with this site. The K (talk) 03:50, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
The Pornstar of Good Humor
Refined humor is hard to come by. Thank you, – Lionel(talk) 23:05, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Of course I've amassed tons of these, going back to the days when Wikipedia was powered by the more gerbiloid of its two co-founders walking in circles with a donkey harnessed to a horizontal wheel driving a crank. (Legend has it the wheel was salvaged from a junkyard dog cart.) But I value modesty and abhor boastfulness. And if I displayed them all here they wouldn't leave room for my peerless insights. I'm hugely proud of the three above. That I'm also deeply grateful to the thousands of other donors surely goes without saying, so I won't.
Common Wikipedia Acronyms: Writegeist's Handy Guide
. . . for your interest in my user page. You may find this useful: WP:EIW. Or not.
Snoop globally, act locally.
† "Hoes these days!" — Gardener’s lament, overheard by George Borrow in a Welsh blacksmith’s forge, and recalled in his travel book Wild Wales: its people, language, and scenery (London, J. Murray, 1862).
Bitter cold winter of 1992-1993, at the height of the siege.
Braving snipers, a man runs out from the cover of a destroyed building, its shattered glass lying in a frozen wave of glittering shards at its base.
One man gathers branches for firewood, another cradles precious loaves of bread.
Fetching water as a light snow falls.
Childen in the Baščaršija (old town) district delight in a fresh fall of show, in contrast to the anxiety visible on the faces of the adults walking behind.
Children pose with their dog outside their home in the Baščaršija (old town) district.
Children play with a wrecked car in the Baščaršija (old town) district.
UNPROFOR armoured personnel carrier passes the Presidency building.
Partially shielded from snipers by stacked shipping containers (left), pedestrians and a solitary car hurry across the lethal Skenderija junction on Maršala Tita (Marshal Tito Street), which becomes Vojvode Putnika, or ‘Sniper Alley’, the road to the airport. Ðure Ðakovića, the street at far right, soon climbs uphill, making it an easy sniper target above the containers.
Internationally renowned feature film director and screenwriter Mehmed Fehimović passes a concrete sniper screen whose Pink Floyd graffito reminds him that "all in all, you're just another brick in the wall."
From downtown, Mehmed Fehimović slowly makes his way up steep, dangerous streets to his home in the Breka district, which is in the northern sector of Novo Sarajevo. The attempt at camouflaging the van appears to have been unsuccessful.
Mother and child walk a sniped street.
Garbage, too dangerous to collect and anyway impossible to dispose of, accumulates and rots in the streets – this pile is in Kralja Tomislava, a dangerous north-south street parallel to Ðure Ðakovića. Eventually UNPROFOR alleviated the problem.
Crossing the Miljacka River in Sarajevo's Baščaršija (old town) district.
Residents of Baščaršija wait to receive rations from a UNHCR humanitarian aid delivery, their first in 40 days: 1 K-ration meal per person, 1 kilo each of powdered milk, rice and flour, ½ kilo each of sugar, 2 200g cans of fish and meat, half a litre of rapeseed oil, 200g of detergent. Interval to next delivery: unknown.
Urbicide: one of 35,000 buildings destroyed by shells from Serb positions in the surrounding hills. By the end of 1993 most of the city's buildings had been hit.
Plastic sheeting trucked in by the UNHCR covers blown-out windows.
Typical street scene: garbage, shot-up cars, buildings pockmarked by bullets.
Gun holster makes an ironic fashion statement in the window display of an erstwhile shoe shop.
Cutting branches from Sarajevo's trees—often at risk of being sniped—as fuel for stoves to heat water and provide occasional meagre warmth. Winter brought freezing indoor temperatures, often even colder than outside.
Bosnian deputy prime minister Hakija Turajlić was murdered in an UNPROFOR armoured personnel carrier at a Serb roadblock on January 8, 1993. Photo shows Dutch journalist Robert Dulmers beside Turajlić's grave at the little Ali Pasha mosque located in central Sarajevo.
Crashed car; bullet holes in driver's door tell the story. Engine has been salvaged.
The Post Office on Obana Kulina, gutted by Serb incendiary shells.
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Dogs are stupid while Cats, on the other hand, are cunning. Starr has convinced Sadie to start sleeping on the outdoor grill instead of her comfortable doggie pillow. ```Buster Seven Talk 13:25, 19 March 2013 (UTC)
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