William Connolley and Wikipedia: Turborevisionism

When you have the best hand, and you’ve placed your bets, you want all the other players to call you. You want everyone to see your cards. You are proud of your hand and your bets and you know you are going to win, so you have nothing to fear from the other players. If the AGW information is so strong, why would Connelly have to edit over 5000 articles and eliminate over 500 more? It’s time for all the cards to be face-up on the table. It’s time for Wikipedia to allow us to look at all the information. This kind of politicized censorship has no place in Wikipedia. Connelly is blight on open science and information sharing.

I don’t get it – what actually indicates user “Ħ MIESIANIACAL” is, in fact, William Connolley himself?
“William Connolley” preceeding the message seems to be subject; the one who signed it — user “Ħ MIESIANIACAL” — is the one who left it on User “Certayne” talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Certayne
Other than that – Wiki editing is something not worth wasting your time on. Sooner or later you’ll run into endless obstruction and frustrations with ‘established’ people and procedures that facilitate keeping certain POV in the articles.

Wikigate?
Perhaps Revipedia, Disipedia, Propapedia, or Liarpedia is more apt.
He who edits last has the last word!

What an [snip] this Connolley.
What can be done to stop this gate keeping? I’ll never view Wikipedia like I used to.

When you say Connelly is editing his “own page” does that mean his wikipedia biography page?
Hasn’t Wikipedia prevented other personages from doing that? In fact wasn’t there a case of Wikipedia preventing a skeptic from editing in his proper birth date? Was Connelly the editor there, I wonder?

The first time I came across Connolley was a response of him in the talk page over Ozone Depletion. Someone made a valid reference to how long ozone breaks down but Connolley referred him to the FAQ, which didn’t completely invalidate the question. I left the issue at that.
I also noticed he’s been very active on watering down the Global Cooling entry on Wikipedia . For example I think he’s solely responsible for making it look like only Newsweek had a significant article on it, completely excluding the 1974 article in Time (cover page feature) or even mention of other articles except at the references at the bottom. That Time article even used the phrase ‘global cooling’, probably the first reference to it, which he also doesn’t consider relevant.
I’ve been wanting to correct both that, as well as add some text about the details of the 1974 CIA memo providing more detail about how seriously the issue was at this stage: http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf
I’m reluctant to do anything like that simply out of fear of Connelly’s rapid reactions.

Looking into this in more detail, the National Post article is actually a blog, and blogs are not credible sources in Wikipedia’s policy. That’s probably a good thing, since wikis like SourceWatch can use blogs to smear people [snip].

Mike, its a sad thing to say, but we have very little chance in the short term of fixing Wikipedia. Most of our people have day jobs and other duties and responsibilities than merely sitting around and editing Wikipedia. While I’d love to see Wikipedia become closer to the ideal for which it stands by eliminating this bias, I’m afraid that, at least in the short term, its going to be nigh-impossible.

James Randi, the famous American skeptic has been bullied by AGW fanatics into recanting earlier sceptical words and accepting the necessity of bowing to superior scientific consensus.

I sent the following to donate@wikimedia.org
Dear Jimmy,
if you want donations, then you must rigorously enforce the neutrality of your articles, and, in particular, do something about William Connelly.
I refer you to this article: it contains sufficient other references for you to investigate this person as a political stooge, and, as such, remove his privileges.
I am just an ordinary guy in the street who assumed scientists were to be trusted until Climategate broke. As I have read more background, I have become convinced that science has become politicized, almost to the extent of Lysenko in post-war Soviet Russia.
I don’t give a damn whether the earth is warming or cooling. What I do care about are so-called scientists lying and scheming to get their pet theories accepted.
If we can’t trust scientists, the world is in trouble.
If we can’t trust Wikipedia, Jimmy, you are in trouble.

In any case, Connelly is in direct conflict of interest regarding AGW articles since in his biography it is stated that he works in climate science to prove that AGW exists. He is paid and gets grants to do just that. This is not science, it’s politics, and he uses Wikipedia to promote his views and only his views. Can’t he not publish in regular Journals and get peer-reviewed? I guess he is another one of the ChickenMann-type and can’t take criticism well.

Wrestling pigs in mud!
Everyone know that one?
You get dirty, the pig gets dirty.
The pig LIKES it!
I just shorten it to PIGS IN MUD!

Wiki is an excellent resource used intelligently. It would be nice if each article had an untamperable ‘Edits in the Last Year’ number showing so that high numbers showed contentious issues.

Two things:
1.) It drives me nuts when people say ‘Wiki’ as short for ‘Wikipedia’. A wiki is a system like Wikipedia, I work on 4 different wikis almost daily, and shortening it like that is like saying cheese instead of cheesecake or Super instead of Superbowl.
2.) I’m against too much editorial control and restriction on Wikipedia, it’s part of what makes it great. The community should look after it, but I think the problem with these particular articles are that one side has considerable resources in establishing their point of view. I think the best approach is just to put in the best honest approach to correct it to provide a neutral view, and if this becomes difficult raise the issue through the necessary methods. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these topics are going to end up being marked as controversial issues as it escalates. I do believe we need to raise awareness regarding the conflict of interest, especially of people who seem to have a lot of people and help to work on making certain Wikipedia entries appear in a certain way.

I am thinking of an experimental setup here that could be of interest for sociologists. Get about 50 facts from sources considered reliable like peer reviewed journals, NOAA, GISS, whatever. Divide them into two groups based by how much they support or contradict the AGW hypothesis.
Place them one by one into the according Wikipedia articles. Make sure you do this footnote thingy on wikipedia. One a day, for instance, maybe only on workdays except Fridays.
Measure the time until each one of them is reverted and by whom. The reason given should not be considered of much interest.
This way, you get a quantitave measure of biasedness of W. Connolley.
Repeat this setup once a month to get a longer time series. Maybe we can find out whether he becomes more biased over time, less biassed or his biasedness stays the same. My hypothesis is that we’ll see his biasedness increase until it reaches a “tipping point” where a positive feedback sets in and leads to a phase shift, resulting in unsustainable high levels of biasedness. Maybe – like it is often with fanatics – this leads to a 180 degree turn in his biasedness.
The best thing about this is that the experiment can be repeated any time with any other biased wikipedia editor.

I would say Wikipedia isn’t even useful for getting the facts since the activitists will post “facts” that aren’t necessarily so and delete “inconvenient truths”. I would use it only as a memory refresher or starting point for an online investigation. I personally poke fun at anyone that tries to use it as an authoritative source.

Wikipedia is useless, unless you already know the subject you are searching, then what’s the point?
Remember 1984 and Newspeak? That’s what Wikipedia is — Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. In the year 1984 there was not as yet anyone who used Newspeak as his sole means of communication, either in speech or writing.

As some of you may be aware, I’ve long believed in the possibility of a skeptics’ own wiki, an accessible space where good scientists and good science here can actually get published with index for easy ref so that even MSM can use it. We still don’t have this. Yet the AGW have RealClimate (index and wiki) and Wikipedia.
Shen, a poster at Climate Audit, has now set up a MediaWiki platform for “climate science”, Neutralpedia, that I think could, with good handling, become the much-needed skeptics’ platform. Shen had intended to develop it a bit more before announcing it, but Lawrence Solomon’s article seemed to call for Shen to speak up. It is really at the most basic early stages; I’d be doing a bit there myself today but have the flu; but I do recommend that people who care about a good skeptics’ wiki presence go over there to help build up this potential gift, and make it work.

A tempest in a teapot. Much ado about nothing. Britches in a bundle, knickers in a twist, a mountain out of a mole hill. That fact that contributors fight on a fake encyclopedia site that is really just a “king of the hill blog” speaks more for who? The combatants or the reliability of the site?
(thinking…thinking…thinking…)
Just my point. That is a hard one to call isn’t it.

EMAILS – where’s da emails?!?

Folks:
Writing letters to Jimmy Wales or the Foundation won’t have any effect. Exactly what would you like them to do??
The solution is to get in there and edit. Everyone reading this has a right – perhaps even an obligation – to edit. Wikipedia is one of the Top 10 websites in the world and it’s the only one that you, my friend, can actually affect.
Yes, you’ll probably get involved in a discussion, but it’s worth it. Don’t let the alarmists win by default !!!

Plato Says (11:03:37) : Your comment is awaiting moderation
MODS can you change that start time to 18mins please – thanks

If you are unhappy with Wikipedia, try http://knol.google.com
I’m not sure they are any better, but at least its a different process.

Anthony,
I think this post may be somewhat factually incorrect. If you look at the history of edits on WC’s page, he has not edited his own biography any time in the past 12 months: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Connolley&limit=500&action=history
Additionally, per the talk page there:
“Like Solomon’s op-ed discussed above, this blog post appears to be both confused and inaccurate. It is trivial to look at the history of this article: history. WMC’s last edit to it was more than a year ago (in September 2008) and removed a single inaccurate, misplaced category. (For some reason, someone misidentified him as a ‘Global warming critic’: diff.) His last edit preceding that one was in September 2006, and corrected a typo in an AfD notice: diff. In August 2006, he corrected a typo in the name of his village: diff. He hasn’t made a significant edit to this article in more than three years. In total, WMC has made fewer than twenty edits to the article, they have tended to be minor, and the bulk of them took place in 2005.”
This is fairly easy to verify by glancing at the edit history.
REPLY: I don’t know that it is factually incorrect, since I don’t know the identity of the people behind the anonymous editing handles involved. As it was presented to me it appears factually correct, but looking through the history, there’s a lot of confusion over who is who. Not having access to the Wikipedia message system one can’t see the messages upon which this is based. Therefore due to this uncertainty I’ve removed the reference to self editing, and I’ll leave it to Wikipedia to sort out. – Anthony

O/T…may be a good article to link to.
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/22/build-a-climate-scare-why-you-should-boycott-build-a-bear/
Part of the text:
——————-
Girl Elf: Santa, it’s gone!
Papa Elf: It’s gone, It’s gone!
Santa: What’s gone?
Girl Elf: Tell ‘em, Dad!
Papa Elf: The North Peak.
Santa: A mountain? A mountain’s gone? How is that possible?
Ella the polar bear: Santa, sir, that’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re here. The ice is melting!
Santa: Yes, my dear, we know, the climate is changing. There’s bound to be a little melting.
Ella: It’s worse than that, Santa, a lot worse! At the rate it’s melting, the North Pole will be gone by Christmas!”
Santa: My, my…all of this gone by next Christmas? I don’t think so.
Ella: No sir, not next Christmas, this Christmas! The day after tomorrow!

How often does bias cross the line into libel?
Wikipedia is currently in some form of financial trouble guessing by the constant begging for money at the top of every page.
WE ARE IN A PROPAGANDA WAR.
Most people seem to be missing this point. The climate changers had all the advantage from the beginning because the first principle ie; “the world is heating up” …
It’s a lie.
The enemy defined the battle from the start.
Our side had to engage them on a field where the targets are marked and crossed by enfilading fire. No wonder we get croaking frog disclaimers from even our most clear thinking politicians and scientists, confining themselves to arguing “man didn’t do it”, nipping around the perimeter while ignoring the monolithic lie.
Wiki is in a financial distress. It’s time to kick them in the head. It’s time to force them to use scarce resources in the legal dept.
How many WUWT readers have been slandered directly by name by the minions of Wiki?
File papers. Make them take that stuff down. The UK has incredibly friendly libel laws. And haven’t you noticed that the pushers of the global warming, ignoring Al Gores contributions, are predominantly Brits?
What would happen to wiki if it were suddenly forced to fight 10, 100, or 1000 libel suits at the same time?
Why they would be put off the net entirely.
And the world would be a better place.

I think Wikipedia should allow multiple versions of a topic. They could be numbered and the original creator of each topic version would maintain editorial control over the page. The end result would be that the original creator shapes his or her version of the topic into what he/she thinks it should be. Contributors would go to the topic’s version that they agree with.
The end result would be that readers of Wikipedia can shop around a particular topic and get a wide variety of information and viewpoints. That is something they cannot get now from Wikipedia.

As others have said, what evidence is there that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Miesianiacal is William Connolley?

This AGW scam could not be carried out by a few environmental exremists at CRU plus a few like minded blog monitors and one Al Gore. This is easily the biggest hoax in history. Are all of the governments in the world really dumb enough to fall for it? Well maybe they are that dumb, but I think there had to be pressure from powerful interest groups.
We need to start getting these low level crooks on the witness stand. My guess is they will start singing like canaries, and that should lead right to the top. The full extent of this scam must be exposed and the nefarious intention of those who promote it must be made public. Then the higher level crooks need to be prosecuted.

As someone who has dealt with William Connolley extensively over the past few years, and someone that has an editing restriction from editing Connolley’s BLP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:GoRight/Community_sanction), I think it is important to correct a factual mistake in this post. I have personally reviewed the history log for Connolley’s BLP and the last time he edited the page was 07:25, 15 September 2008 which made a minor correction and non-controversial correction.
In our passion to fight the systemic bias that does occur on Wikipedia in the GW pages, we must still strive to keep the record accurate and true. In this case, WMC is being falsely accused of wrong-doing and it should be corrected.

@Lucy Skywalker (10:42:32) :
I went and made an account on neutralpedia. then when I found myself sitting down to write, I found myself going to Wikipedia… where I discovered this. This is the protection log on the climate gate page on wikipedia. You see, the climate gate page is not edit-able by people such as myself, it has been made this way by the people shown in this log. I highlighted Connoley
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4054/4207297548_cbe971810f_o.jpg

@ Frank
The National Post article is not from a blog. It was in the Saturday paper. I read it with my cup of coffee.

Have some fun, and take up the challenge. Everyone get together here to write an edit critical of some aspect of AGW which is widely and authoritatively agreed to be beyond any reasonable scientific question or dispute. When the edit is finished, someone from the group can post the edit to Wikipedia and demonstrate how long it lasts before being reverted into oblivion and posting privileges on Wikipedia denied. Call it another scientific experiment which relies on actual experimental evidence.

We are the “Ministry of Truth” you will be assimilated.

This online encyclopedia lacks transparency and is a propitious habitat for ensconced ideological cabals. Articles on subject matter that is ideologically charged cannot be trusted. Another battleground is ed ideology. I know writers with a background in pedagogy who fought a losing battle with censors on constructivism.
Until this institution cleans house I will call it Kafkapedia.

My wikipedia account is TMLutas. I’m currently working in the global cooling article to improve it and getting double teamed by WMC and Atmoz, nothing new. If you’re frustrated that you can’t get your edits into a semi-protected article, put them in talk. If they’re good, somebody with rights, like me, will put them in.
Another thing you can do is to go to noncontroversial pages that you are knowledgeable about and put some edits in there. I do edits on religion, anti-communist politics, and climate issues and have done so for years. The red diaper babies defending Alger Hiss are just as annoying as WMC, believe me.
You can express yourself and improve articles totaling 10 edits over four days and you will be auto-confirmed. If you’re using an anonymizer like a Tor network, it’s 90 days and 100 edits. Once you’re auto-confirmed, you can edit semi-protected pages.

Wikipedia looks to be nothing more or less than the 21st century update to Orwell’s 1984 with regard to rewriting history on a daily basis. Though Wikipedia is much more efficient at this task than was actually possible in 1984, I think it is fair to say that Big Brother is (so far) somewhat less brutal in enforcement of the process than he was in Orwell’s novel (Orwell imagined a totally repressive Stalinist type of regime in 1984). Though certain politicians have devoted extraordinary energy in attempts to terrify the public with their “consensus” of AGW Armageddon, they haven’t quite succeeded…yet.

As far as I can tell Miesianiacal was someone trying to add similar content to you. He was complaining that your wording of it was inferior to his own. Go look at the change log.
Anyhow based on the change log, you should examine the activities of Stephan Schulz. Crazy stuff it is Wikipedia. This is what you get when you are trying to write history as you are living it.

Thanks, GoRight. I think your statement clears up a lot of confusion.

It is my opinion that items posted on something like the Wikipedia that have withstood the test of time in that venue or in the peer reviewed literature of record should not be subject to summary deletion by any one person who thinks they are inaccurate or incomplete.
I believe the most appropriate action when apparent new information raises doubts of an earlier science is to add amendments to the earlier articles without destroying the original information. We do not stop teaching Newton’s laws just because Einstein has shown them to be incomplete. I suppose some degree of Wiki-Thrashing is unavoidable on new controversial issues.

Wikipedian gets the last word at WUWT? And it’s an apologism.
“Please kind sirs. Don’t destroy the Wiki. It’s not all bad.”
Isn’t it delightful? Take a deep breath. Can you smell that sickly sweet aroma?
The stink of fear is on this thread. The Wiki is in a vulnerable position.
Now I’m simpathetic to the Conservapedia efforts, but isn’t it just another example of “me too”.
We’ve been there haven’t we? We got the NewYork Post and the Washington Times, me tooing the NYT and WaPo, but what does it get us?
I submit to you that the world doesn’t need a conservative version to balance the misinformation of the Ministry of Truth.
Instead let us kill Wikipedia dead using the very statist tools the liberal government of the UK so generously provides. They have libel lawyers advertising there like we have personal injury attorneys here. There has to be a reason for that. Maybe they’ll take your case on contigency.
Imagine a world without Wikipedia.
It isn’t hard to do.
No more slander of our heros.
The end of edit wars too.
Lets introduce a little chaos into their well ordered Orwellian world.
I’m looking forward to seeing what springs up from the desicated husk of Wiki.

GoRight says, “It boils down to some number of people wanting something in, and some number of people wanting something out, and the larger group ultimately prevails.”
Wikipedian says, “At a certain point it turns into a war of attrition and they simply have more time and more accounts. In the end, the neutrality of the encyclopedia suffers.”
*) Which confirm what many of the posts for this blog entry have stated. Wikipedia “Truth” is determined by a pseudo-democratic battle.
*) The Wikipedia battlefield is predominantly controlled by leftist activists who are going to save the world in one way or another. This fact alone advantages propagandists like William M. Connelly. I’ve butted heads on blatant misrepresentations found in Wikipedia articles and lost. It wasn’t worth the time to appeal up the chain.
*) You might be surprised at how many articles are biased or controversial. It is often as informative to read the discussion page as it is to read the main entry.
*) Even Wikipedia’s CO-founder has been caught rewriting history. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales#Controversy . That’s the CO-founder of Wikipedia REWRITING HISTORY!
*) My wife who occasionally reads articles from Wikipedia came to me some months back with a “fact” she had just read. It was one of those “authoritative Wikipedia facts ’cause it’s in black and white” that was posted by a troll and the article was reverted 5 minutes after my wife saw the page. She learned a lesson about trusting Wikipedia.
Wikipedia can never be more than the aggregate consensus of its left of center editors with healthy doses of propaganda and troll droppings indiscriminately mixed in. And if you know it, you probably aren’t qualified to edit the article.

The same tatics are used all over the place.
For example, the Bilderberg meetings, where the most powerful and influencial people in the world meet every year, has been suppressed and censored sistematically. This year I tried to get enough information in a especific page and that was delete, under the pretext the page was not relevant. If the most important meeting of the year, which participants and minutes are secret, are not relevant, what is relevant, the xfactor series????
Check the details and help to change this censoring trend:
http://bigbrother-uk-1984.blogspot.com/2009/06/2009-bilderberg-meeting-wikipedia.html

*snort* Wiki…great information source. OT, but for a good example, check out the glittery review of Ernest “Che” Guevarra sometime. From reading it, you’d think he was a cultured, dignified politician…rather than a psychopathic mass-murderer. /shrug Go figure…

Malay Observer:
: “Simply, organise or surrender the turf.”
That very formula is inherently biased against fact. Wikipedia reflects the vocal nature of the activist minority.
Wikipedia will never work, no matter how many “safeguards” evolve because it cannot vet the accuracy of its editorship, which will always be predominantly left of center. Wikipedia is today what it has always been: The encyclopedia of Utopians… vainly striving but never arriving.
: Bad mouthing it won’t make it go away.
No, it won’t. But it will make others aware of how flawed the nature of the so-called “encyclopedia”.
: Simply, organise or surrender the turf.
As you may have guessed, I have more profitable things to do with my time. Further, the turf of Wikipedia was pwned by activism to start with, so surrendering the turf is a misnomer. It would be like saying, organize or surrender the turf of RealClimate.org! I am a realist, not a dreamer.

I’m glad that this issue came up and blew the wikipedia’s status as a reliable information authority to bits.
I am particularly sympathetic to the person who deals with Dissociative Identity Disorder. I invite him to go look at the site’s treatment of trauma induced dissociation.
My first inkling that something was wrong with the Wikipedia came through trawling the talk pages of Satanic Ritual Abuse while looking to find out more about the subject while researching potential research proposals for a postgraduate psych course in research methodology.
It was immediately apparent that there was censorship going on, and that a contributor was having all attempts to post links to academic articles and news stories supportive of the phenomenon removed by an editor/administrator (you’d actually have to see the dialogue to believe it).
This subject is, incidentally, tied up to larger issues such as the alleged involvement of the political elite in pedophilia etc (some of which was exposed during the course of the infamous Dutroux Affair).
From what I could tell the page simply served to bar entry to deeper thinking on the topic in the same dismissive, sneering, scornful and patronising tone we have become so accustomed to from the AGW camp. In other words it became a facilitator for censorship and propaganda.
The irony of this is I went there an agnostic, and left the page suspecting that there was far more to the issue than was indicated by the Wikipedia entry. I’ve since noticed similar patterns on any contentious issue.
Both sides of the question are rarely given equal weight, and there is a strong bias towards modern establishment narratives, a tendency that puts the wikipedia site on a par with the laughable Skepdic. In fact when I want more reliable info I just look at the talk page rather than the main page as there is a far greater chance of other perspectives being aired.
True pursuit of knowledge should expose us to all sides of a question and encourage us to use and develop our critical thinking skills to reach our own conclusions.
In 1789 Mason de Luchet summed it up quite effectively:
“There are a certain number of people who have arrived at the highest degree of imposture. They have conceived the project of reigning over opinions, and of conquering, not kingdoms, nor provinces, but the human mind. This project is gigantic, and has something of madness in it, which causes neither alarm nor uneasiness; but when we descend to details, when we regard what passes before our eyes of the hidden principles, when we perceive a sudden revolution in favour of ignorance and incapacity, we must look for the cause of it; and if we find that a revealed and known system explains all the phenomena which succeed each other with terrifying rapidity, how can we not believe it?”

Pointed out earlier:
Wikiwiki – the Hawaiian word for “quick” that the “pedia” appropriates for its name, is in fact NOT the proper word. The first word in Hawaiian for quick is – AWIWI. Thus an etymologist would suggest the proper corruption would be: AWIWIPEDIA…
However, you can understand why the inventor of even a hearsay-based encyclopedia has shied away from using King Kamehameha’s Hawaiian.

I’ve asked you for a diff of whatever it is you’re complaining about. You’ve ducked the question by refusing to reply. If you want an answer to “why was text X removed from wiki” yuo’ll need to tell me what piece of text X is, and the best way to do that is a diff. If you’re not interested in an answer, that’s fine.
REPLY: The issue is simple, you have, in the opinion of many, undue influence over a huge number of Wikipedia entries related to climate change. A germane reference to an article bringing that to light, published in a newspaper of record in Canada, keeps getting deleted from your Wikipedia page. The edits (or “diffs” as I think you mean) are listed in the body of this article. The number of articles you’ve edited and people you’ve banned from making edits to articles you’ve been involved in on Wikipedia is documented by an independent source here and agrees with the numbers in Solomon article, yet that article keeps getting deleted from your Wikipedia page. The question is why? That’s really the only question here. While it initially appeared that you were making the edits to your own page yourself, upon further inspection (and to an outsider the Wikipedia is somewhat of a maze) that claim was brought into question, and the article here reflects that uncertainty.
If the Solomon article is untrue, or somehow erroneous, and that is why it is not cited as a reference, in the interest of fairness I’ll offer you an opportunity to write a new guest post here. This affords wide exposure so that you can address/explain why it is not valid and tell your side of the story. The only caveat would be that you limit the topic to that issue and do so without using denigrating language that insults the readers and myself as you have done in comments here and in your articles.
Thank you for your consideration. – Anthony

Dan-
Nah, he’s just lonely. After all, he’s got…what…like three commenters on his blog page (and one or two of them are skeptics — likely from WUWT)?
Awww…does wittle Biwwy need a hug? I think him does…
P.S. The Mekons were posers.

Lawrence Solomon has a new column at:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/12/23/lawrence-solomon-climategate-at-wikipedia.aspx
It looks like Connolley and/or his cronies are still hard at work re-writing and revising. It’s really quite pathetic.

Notice that the title of Connelley’s blog, “STOAT: Taking science by the throat …” nicely fits his role as Wiki-censor and his manner of commenting here – crude thuggery and bullying.

This is the same thing that happens with the articles about cult leaders. Sun Myung Moon and Elron Hubbard both have devoted minions who will remove anything negative that gets added to their articles.

I have battled Connolley and the bias at Wiki for over four years. It has been a very frustrating experience. He and Petersen, Schulz among a few others have worked diligently to manipulate the Wiki info on AGW. In particular, their peer review “trump” card has been played consistently and without reproach to defend their religion.
Reminder: Wikipedia is used in schools as a point of reference for children to seek out facts on AGW.
Connolley and cohorts have effectively been indoctrinating young minds and that makes them among the very lowest forms of life…

Quite right Bulldust. Let’s analyze. He comes to our neck of the wood to issue a challenge against Anthony.
The problem is why would Anthony lower himself? Connolley isn’t in Anthony Watts league. He’s just the CRU’s cabin boy.
If the captain of that ship were to come and challenge, that would be different, but as things stand we need someone from the Watts “crew”, a swabbie if you will, to take on Connolley.
There has to be a stake involved. Lets argue a point of contention, say the MWP page. If the Watt’s swabbie wins the edit stays from now till the end of time. If Connolley wins WUWT will never post another disparaging word about him or Wikipedia.
There has to be a jury selected at random, whose verdict will be final.
There has to be some neutral place outside of Will’s ability to tamper with the jury. Sciblog, where he can manipulate his antagonist’s comments, is right out.
Those are the terms. Are these acceptable with you Anthony?
William are you hard enough to face someone without your automated posse backing your every word?
Personally, I think a fair fight will be too much pressure for ponytail boy.

I notice that for a while now the sceptic arguments seem to revolve around attacking people rather than the science of AGW. Does that mean they finally understand the science and realise that attacking it is a no-hoper??
Given that Plass in 1956 got all the main elements right, it’s about time.
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2010/1/carbon-dioxide-and-the-climate/10

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medieval_Warm_Period&dir=prev&action=history this is the early record for the Medieval Warm Period article on Wikipedia.
The article was created on 27 Jan 2002, had two more edits and was then redirected to “Medieval climate optimum” on 25 February 2002.
The record for that page starts at 20:57 on 15 November 2002, when it was moved back to “Medieval warm period”.
The page moved in the Medieval warm period is noted at 20:58. At 21:42 the same day William M. Connolley made the following edit, with the edit summary:
“Remove rubbish. Look at Temperature record of the past 1000 years where this has been addressed for some time now.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medieval_Warm_Period&action=historysubmit&diff=7502049&oldid=7501548
The edit removed the section header titled “Recently changes in scientific thinking” and the following text:
Sherwood and Keith Idso wrote:
:”IPCC documents up to at least 1995 had faithfully depicted the existence of both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age … The Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age – which followed hard on the heels of the Roman Warm Period and Dark Ages Cold Period (McDermott et al., 2001) – were long considered to be classic examples of the warm and cold phases of a millennial-scale climate oscillation that has reverberated seemingly endlessly throughout glacial and interglacial periods alike (Oppo et al., 1998; McManus et al., 1999), as well as across the early Pleistocene (Raymo et al., 1998).” [http://www.co2science.org/edit/v5_edit/v5n13edit.htm]
Make of that what you will.

Error in my above text:
Third sentence should be 2004 not 2002 – both the page move back to MWP and WMC’s edit were on 15 Nov 2004.
Should read:
“The record for that page starts at 20:57 on 15 November 2004, when it was moved back to “Medieval warm period”.”

Well as one of the many many many people who was banned from Wiki by William and his goon squad(not for anything I did mind you, they simply accused me of being a fake account of someone else and I was never even given the chance to respond) I can say that wiki is a waste of any reader of WUWT time. Let it die the death that its new “we need money” advertisements show quite clearly it is dying..
And anthony please don’t justify this mans existance by arguing with him. He is the lowest of the low.

Here’s a little nugget from UK libel laws that might explain the use of handles at Wiki.
You can’t defame nicknames when people don’t know who they are. Hence the fancy nicknames on the revision. It’s to give WC plausible deniability.
There are no special internet defences. The only advantage is that web sites tend to have a smaller number of users, (so less people see it hence it’s less defamatory so it’s rarely worth the bother of going to court) and allegations can be removed promptly on protest from a defamed party.
But what about a site like Wiki which is preeminent on the Google search engine? I bet those damages are more substantial.
On the web, the writer, the web site owner and the ISP can all be sued just like the writer, the magazine and the distributor in the print field. A link could also be potentially defamatory if you are linking to defamatory material. So if you have Connolley defaming Benny Pieser, the case can be filed against Will, Wiki, and Google. That could be interesting.

As explained well in an article by Emily MacManus, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that British laws on libel are a threat to free speech around the world. Because they permit frivolous cases that would be far too costly for most people to fight, they give a great deal of power to anyone who is annoyed enough and has the resources to pursue legal action there. Even the threat of such action may be sufficient to make individuals or publishing organizations censor themselves.

Let the treats commence.

Smokey puhleese. In the anstract of that link the author reveals he doesn’t understand the science of CO2 in solution. The release of CO2 from the oceans as temperature rises is in equilibrium with the partial pressure of CO2 which gives negative feedback.
Now if you knew that yourself, why link to such a bogus analysis? If you didn’t know it, I suggest you bone up on the science of AGW.

Oh Smokey, going straight to the appeal to authority aand ignoring the mistakes in the text does not enable you to pass “Go” and collect $200.
You also went for the classic double of an ad hominem on me to.
In addition to not understanding the point about partial pressures, you also ignore the fact that the ocean surface exchanges CO2 not only with the atmosphere, but also deeper water and that exchanges happen between waters of a different temperature. Given that the basic physics of the CO2 ocean/atmosphere dynamics seem to have escaped your hero, I have no intention of wasting my time looking deeper into his story.
Perhaps he should have spent more time learning about them rather than on all the unrelated subjects that his CV reveals.
Back to my original remark: “Now if you knew that yourself, why link to such a bogus analysis? If you didn’t know it, I suggest you bone up on the science of AGW.” Let that be my Christmas gift to you… a bit of advice to help you sort the wheat from the chaff.

Well Smokey, you seem to have no intution at all. Check my nickname on Google to see how far off the mark you are.
You seem strangely reluctant to argue the point. Here’s what the abstract of your link said: “When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase. If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere.”
The catastrophic positive feedback that he postulates, didn’t occur because a basic knowledge of the physics and chemistry that I explained above show that it can’t occur.
Claiming that Carbon Dioxide doesn’t accumulate in the atmosphere is so contrary to evidence that it shouldn’t fool anyone.

I would invite all readers to help improving the climategate article on wikipedia, which has been hijacked by alarmists that have a troop of sleepless zealots that work in conjunction with the aim to keep the page as useless as possible. Please bear in mind the use of reliable sources and read and add your views in the discussion page before changing the main article. We need more people to counter W. Connolley and his troop of alarmists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident
talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_e-mail_hacking_incident

I tried changing some bits in the article on “climate sensitivty”. Given a range of estimates appears already and warwick hughes site suggests even lower is reasonable, I added it to the mix. It got undone by W Connolley. Didn’t know about him until that. Citing “unreliable source” is an interesting rule to push, since one could arguably delete all reference to IPCC et al as “unreliable source” after climategate.

There’s a reason Wikipedians don’t take this criticism seriously. The main reason being the numbers you cite.
You site that he deleted over 300 articles that he disagreed with. While it is true that he deleted articles on Wikipedia, that’s part of the duties of an administrator. He can only delete articles that don’t belong on Wikipedia according to Wiki policies and guidelines which have been decided by hundreds if not thousands of people. You have no proof that he has ever simply deleted an article that he just didn’t care for or went against his alleged views.
The same holds true for his edits. Did you check to see what percentage of his edits had anything to do with climate change articles? I would guess that not even 25% of the 5k+ edits had anything to do with climate change.
I worry that my words will fall on def ears as you apparently do not fully understand how Wikipedia works and the conspiracy theory that a cabal of editors headed by a dastardly Goliath are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public.
I think your reports are borderline libel and that you should have looked more deeply into the matter. Once you do, I believe you will find that at least a partial apology is in order as I don’t expect you to agree with everything he does (I don’t either).

Opening comment – “politicized censorship has no place on Wikipedia”. Well just out of curiousity where in hell are these articles in Wiki. I have totally missed them – other than bland science etc. Anything to do with history, etc, etc GW is a good one, etc is so politicized I read them for the humor. I didn’t think ( and seriously doubt ) that anyone other than a few editors on Wiki take the quality of their work seriously.