Submitted by Heywood_Floyd in Tech

Below is a record of an IRC chat session between "natbrown", "Funfood", "Nickname1" and Wikipedia administrator Snowolf (Maurizio Lussetti). Lussetti is a "domain name broker" in Trieste, Italy, aka a domain-name squatter with over 200 domains. He has been on both English and Italian Wikipedias since 2004, though he claims he didn't start editing/patrolling until 2007. I have no idea who the rest of these people are, and there is a 'bot in the thread as well. The month this happened can also be filed under "allegedly." The clumsy grammar and bad spelling has been preserved.

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belisarius9 wrote (edited )

This blog is fun, because I can't tell from this or the other posts if the author supports removing masturbation related images/video from wikimedia or not. Honestly, as far as I can tell the only thing the blog consistently stands for is that everything Wikipedia does is wrong, so I assume it's pro-religious right wingers removing files. The fact that information about pokemon and about history and about modern anything is all on Wikipedia is a problem, the fact that they don't have information on random obscure bank robbers is a problem, the fact that the dumpster diving article is longer than the dumpster article is a problem, apparently. I assume the various other nearly 15 year old IRC logs they've released are bad, but there's no commentary, no formatting, nothing at all to suggest what I should even look for. As far as I can tell, the biggest problem is that they are mostly casual conversations, and people don't take the conversations seriously enough? I feel like the audience for unedited, unformatted IRC logs that are 10-15 years old is approaching 0, but respect for collating them I suppose?

The off topic content is interesting too. Twitter is far too censorious and has been for a decade. Reddit isn't censorious enough, and did you know they used sockpuppet accounts in the early days, truly we should burn it all down near 20 years later for such a heinous crime. Apparently Azov have been neo-Nazis since 1991? How they could be I don't know, when the group was only formed in 2014, but I will say the only people I can imagine who are worse than Nazis are time traveling Nazis, so they must a decent target for the author. There's an article on the Holodomor, which would almost be a neutral take on the issue if not for the sneering tone reserved for anyone who suggests Soviet policy may have exacerbated the famine in Ukraine. At the very least, we do get a sneering overview of the Buffalo shooter's manifesto, and I can't imagine a more deserving target, so kudos there.

I think the most disappointing aspect of this is the discovery that the corkboard covered in yarn so vital to the conspiracy minded and the weirdos of yore has been displaced by the blog. An idiosyncratic organization that none but the author could decipher is probably the one thing that would make the blog more interesting.

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Heywood_Floyd OP wrote

Oh yay, it's the guy who never posts and only comments!

"Honestly, as far as I can tell the only thing the blog consistently stands for is that everything Wikipedia does is wrong, so I assume it's pro-religious right wingers removing files."

Wikipedia is a hackjob that demolished the non-hackjob encyclopedia industry. Who needs religious-right cranks removing files when they have their own crank Wikipedia, Conservapedia?

"....the fact that they don't have information on random obscure bank robbers is a problem...."

They are being judged by the standards of their own program, which is to include everything. They fail at that too.

"....I assume the various other nearly 15 year old IRC logs they've released are bad, but there's no commentary, no formatting, nothing at all to suggest what I should even look for. As far as I can tell, the biggest problem is that they are mostly casual conversations, and people don't take the conversations seriously enough? I feel like the audience for unedited, unformatted IRC logs that are 10-15 years old is approaching 0, but respect for collating them I suppose?"

The person who originally had these up online was forced to take them down by JImbo Wales himself, I was given them, so as revenge on Jimbo and his dingbats, they are posted at random from time to time. They prove that Wikipedians as a whole are just grad students without thesis to write. Nobody should give the Wikimedia Foundation a dime.

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Heywood_Floyd OP wrote

Before I continue on, am I writing at Belisarius12? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Belisarius12

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belisarius9 wrote

Nope. I have one or two unsigned comments on talk pages on wikipedia, no account there, none of the changes I've recommended have ever been made, I avoid even attempting to edit wikipedia because I do realize it's run based on clique-y bullshit and I know whoever gets to a page first basically runs roughshod over anyone who tries to correct things. Wikipedians being clique-y grad students is certainly an argument I can get behind, although fun fact, a number of the editors with the most activity work directly for the US government, with a few of them having open ties to the NSA if I remember correctly. And that's not even mentioning the 8chan guy! There are reasonable critiques of Wikipedia, I just haven't seen them come from random conspiracy theorist's blogs, ya know?

encyclopedia industry

Oh no, some massive capitalist publisher has been hurt by a free alternative. I am crying, I promise. I'd love to see more proper academics doing wikipedia articles, but most encyclopedias largely weren't written by academics, most of the old encyclopedia articles were still just garbage overviews written by lay people, so it's kind of a wash in my opinion. I would not love having to buy in to access a lesser amount of articles that aren't going to be substantially higher quality. I can't say I particularly miss traditional encyclopedias.

They are being judged by the standards of their own program, which is to include everything. They fail at that too.

Two things. This sounds an awful lot like having your cake and eating it too - I can critique them for not being what I want, and I can critique them for not being enough like what I don't want! Secondly, the point of an open encyclopedia is that individuals add things. The fact that someone can grab some random 100 odd years since dead bank robber nobody's heard of isn't evidence wikipedia is failing at it's own mission, it's evidence that nobody who has heard of that person is working on wikipedia. It's a subtle nuance, but it is there. I will say, if nobody cares enough for random bank robber to add him, he probably isn't all that important.

Nobody should give the Wikimedia Foundation a dime.

Fortunately I don't, and I don't advocate in their favor, at least when the critiques of them are reasonable. But then, I will admit I am essentially a freeloader in most projects.

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Heywood_Floyd OP wrote

**Wikipedians being clique-y grad students is certainly an argument I can get behind, although fun fact, a number of the editors with the most activity work directly for the US government, with a few of them having open ties to the NSA if I remember correctly. And that's not even mentioning the 8chan guy! **

Could you give us a source for these claims? This wouldn't just be people like MONGO (ex-Federal Forest Ranger, then DSA guy)? We know all about him.

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Heywood_Floyd OP wrote

".....Apparently Azov have been neo-Nazis since 1991? How they could be I don't know, when the group was only formed in 2014, but I will say the only people I can imagine who are worse than Nazis are time traveling Nazis, so they must a decent target for the author....."

On October 16, 1991 a party called the "Social-National Party of Ukraine" was founded in what was still the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Their "Latin I through a Latin N" insignia standing for the "Ideal of the Nation" was concocted around that time as a swastika replacement because the SNP-U was a hard-core Nationalist party with neo-Fascist politics. It had an underground existence until 1992, was registered as a political body in 1995. It was disbanded in 2004, replaced with the now well-known Svoboda Party, but there was the Social-National Assembly (f. 2008) that used the "Ideal of the Nation", and just like the SNP-U it used the same I-N wolfsangle symbol on a yellow field. Spinoff or dissidents from the SNP-U keeping the old flag, but this group birthed the Azov Battalion (now a "Special Operations Detachment") and the defunct "Patriot of Ukraine" paramilitary group. In any case the Azov patch is the I-N wolfsangel, the Nazi Sonnenrad ("sun wheel"), and a breaking surf wave, symbolizing that they will break over their opponents like the ocean on a rock. To me it's all one giant rightwing organization using various party formations to hide who they really are, the same damn neo-Nazis from the end of the USSR. And the US is now backing these hooligans.

https://reportingradicalism.org/en/hate-symbols/movements/nazi-symbols/wolfsangel

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