At 05:23 PM 9/3/2009, you wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
If I'm banned from Wikipeida, as may happen in short order, the
biggest reason will be prolixity.
No, the biggest reason will be the message you just posted here,
plus the fact that you are part of this discussion group.
Nah. Prolixity. If I'd been willing to throttle it way back (which is
a lot more work!), I'd have been "successful." I didn't do it largely
for, I think, emotional reasons. I'm tired of dealing with much of
that community. There are some really good people, but it's toxic
dealing with the others. At a certain point I just don't want to do
it any more.
Understand, Jed, that before I posted this message here, I explained
my plans on the Proposed Decision talk page, having been asked what
I'd learned as a result of the arbitration case. At that point,
ArbComm had made a series of weak responses, none of them really
close to passing.
Immediately two arbitrators proposed a complete site ban, much
stronger than what had been only weakly supported before, and a total
of five arbitrators voted for it immediately. That's one short of a
majority, given the short panel. Maybe there will be one more, and
even maybe an arbitrator will withdraw a support, but I don't think it likely.
One of the major reasons given was that I intended to continue to
write what I think, at length. Which is allowed, actually, and I was
careful to qualify it as "as permitted by my mentor," -- I'd accepted
"mentorship," or was at least willing to try it, and was going to go
ahead with it even if it wasn't required -- and the proposal for
mentorship was being rejected, even though that would provide an
experienced editor to monitor and restrain me. I.e., it would have
actually solved any real problem, or would have "failed"
demonstrating that I really should be banned. I also noted that I'd
use techniques to make my long posts less objectionable, such as
layering them as hypertext, with summary at the top level, which is
easily done on Wikipedia. But the idea that I would continue to put
personal effort into detailed expression, as I do, was just too much,
it blew some fuses. I've seen this for years, it was utterly
unsurprising in that sense, but some of the arbitrators were more
sophisticated, and it looked for a time as if I might have a majority.
See, Jed, non-resistance, go with the flow, do what is natural and
relatively easy, and it all comes out right.
The people who would be banning me, if it happens, a majority of
ArbComm, are not "cold fusion skeptics." They are simply ordinary
people who have risen above the level of their competence, they don't
know what they are doing, but because they have some narrow
experience, they imagine that they do. They've been working on
dealing with Wikipedia for a few years at most. I've been working on
the generic organizational problem, anticipating activities like
Wikipedia, for more than thirty years. It makes a difference.
It's probably right that I be banned so that I don't waste more time
in ineffective struggles to improve wikipedia one sentence at a time.
I'll put my efforts elsewhere, including going "meta," which means
working above the wikipedia level, both with the wiki where overall
policy and concepts are discussed -- and where lenr-canr.org is
blacklisted, I won't be banned there, ArbComm has no authority there,
discussing proposals with Wikipedia's founder, Jimbo Wales (there is
some possible interest), setting up off-wiki coordination --
legitimately! but the medium is the message -- and also going back to
my work before I got stuck on Wikipedia two years ago, setting up
demonstrations of free association/delegable proxy organizational
technology, which is about fixing not only the Wikipedia problem but
a whole lot besides.
Some of the FA/DP principles are involved in setting up the kit
company, as will be seen. The community of interest, represented by
joining the mailing list, will be what I call a Free Association. It
will not make decisions, control property. Rather, it will advise its
members and anyone interested, and most especially the Company, which
will be, I assume, a traditional business organization of some kind;
and there may even be more than one Company, if investors want to set
up more than one.
I've announced my conflict of interest on the topic of Cold fusion,
which would mean that I wouldn't be editing the Cold fusion page any
more even if I'm not banned from the page or topic. But there was
still an attempt to use my post here against me. These folks are
definitely watching closely, it wasn't one day before that was cited
on-wiki, with the admin I'd dinged for action while involved, based
on his ban of me from Cold fusion, and who is also sitting at five
votes to lose his administrative privileges, gleefully adding a note
to the kit company thread on the Evidence page as if it was going to
save his ass. "See what a fanatic he is?" and a hostile editor wrote
"Doesn't this mean that he has a conflict of interest?" (Translation:
we can ban him from the page for that!) No shit, Sherlock, would have
been a rude summary of my response.
These editors have no shame about violating policies when it serves
them, they only want to strictly enforce policies with others. It's
typical and to be expected, when structures allow people who act like
that to advance in influence, as they often do.
