Elevated from a comment by Tom Rude.
Chronicle of an announced death, Wikipedia style.
I had not posted on this road movie for a while but the occasion is too good to resist.
In the Wikipedia world there are crimes that deserve harsh punishment. Yet those appear magnified when “the Cause” could be threatened by the presence of “Global Warming Deniers” in the vicinity of Climate Change greatness.
The late French climatologist Professor Marcel Leroux (d.2008) experienced a second death at the hands of William M. Connolley and his acolytes. In “Death of a Salesman” the renowned software engineer goes full steam ahead in justifying his execution to the outside world:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/10/04/death-of-a-salesman/
From the height of his pretentious bumptiousness, he dismisses the condemned scientist’s life and work and goes on indulging in conspiracy theory about some honorific title the long serving professor received ten years ago. That Connolley is now chasing ambulances should elicit a smile since having been restricted in his editorial prerogatives following a scandal; his wings appear to have been clipped, only dead climate scientists beware! Or so you may think…
But living scientists too should be on the lookout for Connolley’s grim ripping endeavour!
Professor Gerhard Kramm is about to experience it first hand if Connolley and Eli Rabett get their way. Check Eli & W’s dialogue on the Connolley’s STOAT blog link above.
In Wikipedia vocabulary this is called “canvassing” and quoting from one of Connolley’s “friendlies” admonishing a much too vocal pro-Leroux editor about the crime: “…off-wiki canvassing of the worst type (canvassing people of a specific viewpoint in order to stack a discussion).” Repent sinner!
Yet when it comes to Wikipedia royalty Dr. William M. Connolley, all is clear. So clear, they did not bother to sub-contract rolling the ball against Kramm two days after WMC asked him to “Well don’t just complain about it, do something about it! –W”?
The Good Samaritan Joshua Halpern a.k.a Eli Rabett himself took on the job! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gerhard_Kramm
And the boys are following the same, true and proven script than for the Leroux deletion, starting by questioning the victim’s “notability” and stacking up the deck against the poor professor’s unorthodox position on Climate Change during a likely one sided discussion.
Who will be expurgated next? If history repeats itself, let’s recall that Robespierre too was guillotined and with him, “his brother Augustin, Couthon, Saint-Just, Hanriot and twelve other followers, among them the cobbler Simon, were also executed”. It must be true: it is in Wikipedia!
Update 10/10/12 @6:32 am (GMT – 8): Rescued bio deleted by Connolley, h/t Lucy Skywalker & Mike Jonas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lucy_Skywalker/Marcel_Leroux
Connolley is embarrassing to the real scientists. But that is the price we pay for free speech.
Wikipedia touts for donations: I think a few comments from WUWT followers about the unlikelihood of their contributing while this kind of thing is allowed to happen might have a salutary effect.
From the Donations page: “We are trying to make it easy for people in every country to donate. Please let us know how we could make it easier for you. Send your suggestions to: problemsdonating@wikimedia.org.”
It’s almost begging for a response.
«All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.»
«'”Who controls the present controls the past,”‘ said O’Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. ‘Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?’
Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one.»
[snip – I don’t like Connolley’s tactics but this is OTT – Anthony]
The games people play …
Why would anyone pay any attention to Wikipedia? That is a waste of time.
When Wikipedia realizes they have become irrelevant it, will be too late. They are already a non-authoritative source for research papers.
“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”
For everything else there is Connolley and his merry band of mental midgets editing wikipedia?.
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Hysteria is a syndrome, fairly or unfairly, associated predominantly with hormone-battling ladies.
As much as I can sympathise with such unfortunates, I find it really difficult to understand this condition as it relates to Eli (aka Joshua^3rd Person) and William Connolly (self-annointed Wikki custodian)
It’s not their intellect that is lacking, I suspect that they are both ‘wise-savants’ and with certificates to that effect, but their CSQ (common-sense quotient) and SOD (sense of decency) are both highly undeveloped!
A word of advice guys. Attacking the deceased? RIP before letting rip!
He’s an insult to mustelids. I should know, I have had the honor of working with them http://kajm.deviantart.com/gallery/?q=otter#/dha1on
Making someone a non-person is such an odious thing, done only by communist and fascist diktats and immature people…
corio37 says: October 9, 2012 at 4:20 pm
“Wikipedia touts for donations:”
It is a ruse, check out their IRS Charity filings. Most of the cash comes from a few very large donors. If you map it all out it is interesting, map the inputs and the output and you will find that encompanses the parent of Real Climate. That and the six figure saleries of the ‘thought leaders’ of this ‘charity’ indicates a typical warmist organization.
What the atomic weight of Boron use wiki, want the radiative spectum of the Earth pay for Britanica.
“Professor Gerhard Kramm is about to experience it first hand if Connolley and Eli Rabett get their way. Check Eli & W’s dialogue on the Connolley’s STOAT blog link above.”
Are they writing in some sort of code? I found the discussion hard to follow … kinda like when two 3-year old twin brother talk between themselves and use inside-family ‘code talk’ …
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Is it possible to sue wiki for defamation?
The question is, does he meet the wikipedia standards of notability “Wikipedia:Notability (academics)” and “WP:BIO” or not? From reading the page it’s a pretty close call, although one could argue that he squeaks in based on being “lead instructor of the Science Teacher Education Program (STEP) 2007 on Global Climate Change”, being on the “Editorial Board of the Datasets Papers in Atmospheric Sciences” and the “U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page” thing. It would be best to find some more press mentions consistent with “WP:BIO”.
I’m hardly in the AGW camp, but if you don’t like how WP is going, read the docs, register, learn the ropes, and start editing. That is how you affect change on wikipedia. I realize in the AGW realm it will be an uphill struggle but where isn’t it?
For the part I actually have the technical chops to have an informed opinion about, computer science, wikipedia is spot on.
This is too ‘inside baseball’ to understand.
Woaw! Thanks Anthony.
The Rabbett and The Stoat – strange bedfellows. And very strange people.
Isn’t a stoat some kind of weasle? At least Connolley got that right.
(Better watch your back, Eli!)
Well well well! It turns out that William M Connolley himself IS a notable person!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley
I haven’t found any errors on the Arduino uP board and associated IDE material either, but, that is an objective area rather than a subjective kind of evaluation as shown being discussed on Stoat.
BTW, wikipedia ‘blows the theory’ on such obscure topics as super-regen receivers however (unless the article has been re-written), missing the quantum-level level/internal device noise initiation of the ‘oscillation’ as modified by a weak incoming RF-signal (and at a sample rate which works to demodulate the received signal as determined by the ‘quench’ rate) …
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corio37 said (October 9, 2012 at 4:20 pm
“…Wikipedia touts for donations: I think a few comments from WUWT followers about the unlikelihood of their contributing while this kind of thing is allowed to happen might have a salutary effect.
From the Donations page: “We are trying to make it easy for people in every country to donate. Please let us know how we could make it easier for you. Send your suggestions to: problemsdonating@wikimedia.org.”…”
You mean comments like “I don’t have problemsdonating AT wikimedia.org, I have problemsdonating TO wikimedia.org”?
Besides, I thought that William M. Connolley was banned from editing Climate Change articles – looks like he found another mindless minion to do his unquestioned bidding.
Just waiting to see how creative editing will be used to boost up the career of the esteemed bunny.
Problem is, as of now, “Eli Rabett” does not exist on wikipedia. Neither does “Josh Halpern”. Even his blog “Rabett Run” does not exist.
Must make him angry that according to Wikipedia, he does not exist.
For now, anyway…
I’m not up to speed on Wikipedia abuse by some of it’s users, but I have seen some bad examples over the years, even to a degree where the Guardian news paper and George Monbiot have been used as a reliable source of information on a persons life as a sort of effort to undermine the persons credibility or expertise on a subject/issue. I’ve noticed George Monbiot and co. have it nailed down to an art-form, they seem to raise a subject in a Guardian article a (British news paper), then bizarrely and somewhat coincidentally wikipedia reflects these views as fact.
have a look at this Wikipedia entry on David Bellamy and especially how his Views on global warming are refuted by alarmists for example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bellamy
I muddled my way though some of the “backstage” Wiki pages and found myself on Connelley’s talk page. A couple things worth sharing, I’m not sure why he does:
After he and 14 others were banned from editing climate change pages:
From a discussion about a one week block for being uncivil:
I got tired of the politics on wikipedia a long time ago and configured my google account to block it. I use academic search through the local university when I want to know something. Too much BS on wikipedia. Though I did enjoy a few years ago when someone kept editing the bio of a 60s rocker to say he was dead. The rocker put in the comments section something to the effect of “look bloke, I am me and very much still kicking. now [snip] off.” I had to clean my monitor after that one.
Ah, I neglected to include the Wikipedia axis of “geek culture” in my suddenly composed recent essay about the sociology of anti-science socialism, here:
Oily warmista blogs focus not on ice but your own imponderably cold
heart, skeptic. McIntyre is a meanie! They overlap with the dork squad
on highly censored hipster blog BoingBoing.net and especially
Reddit.com, a community of witty Mensa atheists that has recently
started to gather in mass in person via Meetup.com and in person they
exchange insider jokes about weird crap they posted online about
melted ice cream cones. In Scientology some sort of alien particles
control our lives whereas in Climatology, oil money particles have
infested a group of evil zombies named Watts and Goddard and Nova.
Back in the day it was cathartic for me to collect their nonsense in
single poster format:
http://oi54.tinypic.com/es5gev.jpg
BoingBoing is most influenced by founder Cory Doctorow, a sci-fi
author (and thus millionaire) who is selling a textbook Marxist
fantasy about how corporations are obsolete due to a few Lego level
toys called 3D printers that spit out bright plastic trinkets. If you
want your trinket to have truly smooth surfaces you must slow it down
by a factor of 10 since you must make 10X as small of scanning passes,
and due to simple laws of geometry, this is required in all three
dimensions so the math is 10X10X10 = 1000 times as slow, meaning
instead of two hours to make a prototype, it takes 83 days. It’s all
“open source” design, meaning any new idea is immediately copyable by
Chinese factories. Every city with a tech crowd now have huge coop
“hacker spaces” where these losers vie for online attention by making,
drum roll…little battery operated LED bulbs with magnets on them
that they can toss in the air that then stick to subway stop girders.
Doctorow is telling these recent grads that they shall inherit the
Earth and create a “singularity” in which money no longer exists since
everything is free via Star Trek replicators that operate by solar
energy.
The Museum of Modern Art has a gal who takes seriously these scruffy
weirdos and cock teasing “cosplay” (they wear sci-fi movie costumes as
an excuse to show cleavage in more than one place) chicks, a crowd
that overlaps too with the embarrassingly tacky “Reality Is Obsolete”
MIT Media Lab. In Brooklyn there’s GenSpace, a genetics “hackerspace”
with trust fund “artists” on the faculty who have created a MoMA
installation of entire buildings made of fungus. Lots of spores in the
air that way, I nervously note.
-=NikFromNYC=- Ph.D. in Carbon Chemistry (Columbia/Harvard)
To date, I know of no DNA analysis (XX or XY chromosome determination) that has been made on either of those two individuals nor has any result ever been made public, therefore, it may be too early to rule out any particular biological or physiological root cause or reason, including bona fide case(s) of classical ‘hysteria’ …
Make no assumption before its time.
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Dang, quote WMC’s talk page, wind up in the WordPress spam bin. Sigh. Mods, please fish it out….
some info:
Wikimedia Foundation: Benefactors 2011
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors
Wikimedia Foundation: Benefactors 2010
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors/2010%E2%80%932011
Wikimedia Foundation: Benefactors
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors/2009-2010
Ooops – (or Hmmm … thread must be under heavy moderation b/c of subject) got one in the spam filt again! TIA _Jim
Well I guess you have to speak French
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Leroux
“Connolley is embarrassing to the real scientists.
But that is the price we pay for free speech.”
Conolley’s free speech — and a free but often wrong or incomplete encyclopedia !! No wonder good universities ban Wikipedia from being used by students. It has been deemed mostly trash but sometimes it does have correct physical constants ☺ (seems they do know how to copy and paste from the proper sources)
The nice thing about Google Chrome (yes, I’ve got it installed on one computer in lieu of Opera) it offers an ‘instant translation’ option; the first two sections of that page xlated below:
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Marcel Leroux
Marcel Leroux , born 27 August 1938 and died 12 August 2008 , is a climatologist French. Emeritus professor of climatology at the University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 , he was director of Laboratory of Climatology, Risks and Environment.
He was knighted in the Order of Academic Palms October 31, 2002 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leroux_2002_Palmes.jpg ).
Marcel Leroux is known one for its original and controversial scientific concepts such as the polar anticyclones mobile (AMP), and challenged concepts of climatic non-consensual , such as global warming .
Theses and contribution
In his doctoral thesis, which was published by the World Meteorological Organization , it has been shown by the analysis of synoptic charts, satellite imagery, meteorological data and paleoenvironmental tropical Africa and the seasonal migration of paleoclimatic meteorological equator is a reliable indicator of the evolution of Earth’s climate.
This migration and the geographic extent of the meteorological equator are the result of exchanges meridians in the lower layers of the atmosphere denser, whose distribution is governed by the ballet of polar anticyclones mobile , 1.5 km high , 3 000 km in diameter discoidal, lenticular masses of cold air from the poles, the power and the frequency depends directly on the thermal deficit polar. Cooling results in an accelerated circulation while a warming will slow the circulation and exchange.
Aerological spaces, circulation areas continues the pole to the equator are defined by the reliefs of over 2000 m and the current position of the continents. Based on direct observations, the reconstruction of Leroux seeks to demonstrate inconsistencies GCMs previous indications of oscillations and those schools frontologique dynamic, reductionist and diagnostic meteorology. His positions made him a controversial figure. In doing so, Leroux rejects the artificial separation between it considers meteorology and climatology and, through the concept of AMP proposes a redefinition of both disciplines. By reconstructing the geometry of general circulation in the troposphere, it has sought to show the reduced share of randomness and chaos in climate: for him there is no climate change, but variations in the intensity of the sum of meteorological processes that constitute the climate.
His research, in particular on the evolution of atmospheric pressure, concluded that the observed climate change since the 1970s is the installation of an accelerated traffic, always linked to cooling during evolution paleoclimatic the recent Quaternary, and its consequences meteorological time contrast, stronger mid-latitude storms, increased water vapor in the troposphere at midlatitudes and impermanent anticyclonic stability on the continent, leading to periods of vigorous cold winter and heat waves in summer 5 . It should be noted that recent developments in his favor: eg agglutination anticyclonic responsible for the heatwave of summer 2010 in Russia occurred again during the winter 2010/2011, with the capital Moscow, his winter the coldest for 100 years.
Accordingly, its results oppose the idea of a global average temperature curve as an indicator major climate reliable (in this he is joined by Roger Pielke Sr. , Judith Curry and Vincent Courtillot among others) and are disagree with the assumption that the weather changes observed in the second half of the xx th century were the result of global warming by anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases due to human and industrial activities.
In addition, his work provides a mechanism weather for the last glaciation and deglaciation, and claims to significantly improve weather forecasting models and the accuracy of climate simulations to include in the binding geometry of the atmospheric circulation, its discontinuities, energy exchange and clouds associated with them.
His latest book summarizes his scientific conclusions. The two English edition of The Dynamics of Time and Climate: Atmospheric circulation, disturbance, climate change was completed in 2008, two months before his death and published in January 2010.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Note: Footnote numbers removed b/c of the distracting effect they have in an excerpted page.
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Kinda the digital version of book burning.
Didn’t wikipedia become totally irrelevant as a source of information years ago?
The French and Spanish Wikipedia pages for Leroux (which are still there and not marked for deletion) offer a link to the English version, which link simply leads to a page saying the article has been deleted, but does not offer any links to the still existing pages in the other two languages.
The deleted Marcel Leroux entry is preserved by Lucy Skywalker at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lucy_Skywalker/Marcel_Leroux
(maybe this could be added into the post?)
When one reads that insider talk of the wikipedia fanatics it’s quite clear these people have no life, are a cult, and are about as far away from ANY objectivity you can just treat the wikipedia as another propaganda source.
I noticed pages concerning topics controversial to Chicoms are basically blank in the English wikipedia while they still contain information in other languages. Some heavy editing going on there. The jackboots are trampling the truth not only in the warmist arena.
And that’s to be expected. Probably a majority of wikipedians belong to PsyOps of the various power blocs. Warmism, any ole dictator or current totalitarian exploitation regime, you name it. It must be a madhouse.
I’d like to thank the contributors who attempted to save the page in the deletion discussion. They went above and beyond and twice made Connelly (and his cohort) look foolish. He was doing that pretty well on his own, but supplying direct evidence of the WMO distribution of his thesis and apparently contacting the Leroux family to gather evidence of his knight award was something else.
Connelly really shows his stripes in his Oct 2 comment where a link to a Senate report mentioning Leroux is provided and he states something like “that’s not a senate report, it’s lying”. This is supposed to be someone who look at things objectively? It’s a farce. Sorry Mr. Connelly, they could produce a Senate report saying your brilliance was beyond reproach and it would still be a Senate report. A lying Senate report, but one nonetheless.
Speaking as an historian, there’s nothing really new in this. History has been and is being constantly rewritten, generally by those who win political or military conflicts. It’s only with great difficulty that professionals can sort through the lies and distortions of the past to approach the truth of what actually happened. You would be astonished how much of the history we are all taught in high schools is either misleading or a complete travesty.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Leroux
Well, to be complete, the French page (above) lists several articles he authored plus the books he (Marcel Leroux) authored and also describes him as professor emeritus (again, none of these items appear in the en language version page).
What I don’t understand is, why did ‘the Stoat’ et al _not_ scrub the French page … is there a ‘French Connection’ (French mob) they are afraid of? As it is, they only scrubbed the English version from ‘history’ … I think the French page is a little more complete overall, Stoat and gang probably never touched that page (I didn’t see WMC on the change/talk page for the fr version for instance.)
Stoat and gang are just burned that he authored and proposed so many theories countering CAGW that they are burned-up about this that Marcel must be erased!
Bring out the old Soviet-style air-brush artists! We have to ‘erase’ a non-conformist from the picture!
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Owen in Ga says: “I got tired of the politics on wikipedia a long time ago and configured my google account to block it.”
Is there a way to block Wankerpedia for other search engines?
There is no reason for wikipedia to have a limit on how prominent a person should be to allow
an entry about that person. For a print encyclopedia that has to be paid for by the publisher, the publisher should ask if the entry is worth the paper and ink. For wikipedia, the electrons are free, and disk space drops in cost faster than it can be wasted. A biography of a nobody hurts nobody. Not having information about an almost nobody hurts the very few that sought some information about that person. If the value of wikipedia is increased, even a tiny bit, the entry should stay. The same criteria says lies should be eliminated.
I’ve said it before and at the risk of boring you I’ll say it again.
If Wikipedia was made of paper, I wouldn’t wipe my arse with it.
“If you map it all out it is interesting, map the inputs and the output and you will find that encompanses the parent of Real Climate. ”
Well that would go a long way to explaining why it took years for even the slightest action to be taken against Connely.
It’s also worth digging out his papers. He cliams to be a “real” climate scientist and indeed he did do some work on computer modelling of ocean currents around Antarctica.
The interesting thing is that if you read his papers they are all documenting their failure to reproduce anything even resembling that actual ocean currents.
Connelly is a FAILED climate scientist. Having failed in his scientific work he has turned his attention to propaganda, politics and wikipedia editing, where FACTS do not matter.
It would be an interesting exercise to do a cross-wiki analysis to see how often this circumstance happens, one language wiki deletes an article while other languages retain it.
tmlutasTMLutas says:
October 9, 2012 at 9:54 pm
“It would be an interesting exercise to do a cross-wiki analysis to see how often this circumstance happens, one language wiki deletes an article while other languages retain it.”
You would see the differing book burning hotspots in the different cultures. There’s not much skeptic book burning in Germany going on, for instance, simply because the Warmists have an absolute stranglehold over German political parties, public opinion and tax payer money. Only in the Anglo Saxon sphere is that war still raging.
Wikipedia is possibly the greatest impediment to finding accurate information in the history of mankind. A source of information that changes constantly, and is driven by intensely political and ideological contrary personalities, and open to almost anyone to edit is so much worse than useless that we may need to invent a new word to describe the condition. It’s like the Tragedy of the Commons on meth.
Traditional histories may not be very reliable, but when you do find a reliable source it’s not going to suddenly change tomorrow because a professor at Bleeding Brain University got 500 students to attack the source with the threat of grade penalties.
鼬の最後っぺ(Itachi no saigoppe)! A Japanese weasel themed saying referring to a final desperate action.
And this guy gets a page!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Mashey
Dude held job in early days of IT industry, famous.
So….
The drummer from Kajagoogoo has his own page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jez_Strode
But a distinguished scientist?
These two activists are “not even climate scientists”.
I think Leroux was on the right track hence the attempts to ‘disappear’ him.
Stalinist tactics.
A warming stratosphere (not troposphere as Leroux suggests) slows down the zonal air flow such that it wanders about more meridionally for more global clouds and system cooling.
A cooling stratosphere speeds up the zonal flow for the opposite effect.
The concept of mobile polar highs originating within the polar air masses around the poles and then migrating across middle latitudes is being supported by recent events.
Such changes appear to be linked to solar effects on the size and shape of the polar vortices.
beesaman says:
October 9, 2012 at 5:16 pm
Making someone a non-person is such an odious thing, done only by communist and fascist diktats and immature people…
………………..
Agree 100% – Scrote is more than an embarrassment – he is a political spin merchant that makes the likes if Alastair Campbell look quite tame.
There is much truth in the this – ” there is not a totalitarian ideal that the left do not embrace with enthusiasm” –
And of course – Scrote exemplifies the double standards of his ilk, by way of spluttering anger if their obnoxious actions are aired in public.
_Jim says:
The Iconoclast says October 9, 2012 at 5:29 pm …
For the part I actually have the technical chops to have an informed opinion about, computer science, wikipedia is spot on.
I haven’t found any errors on the Arduino uP board and associated IDE material either, but, that is an objective area rather than a subjective kind of evaluation ….
This is a Wiki issue rather than just a Climate Change one. An area where I have an informed and ‘qualified’ opinion is that of the life and works of the proto-scientist Roger Bacon (whose 800th birth anniversary occurs next year, but will not be being celebrated, because he’s been forgotten). There the Wiki originally had a worthy and accurate but dull entry until a few years ago, when some Catholic church apologists got together and rewrote the article to claim that he had no revolutionary ideas and was not punished by the church for holding them…. After the inevitable edit war the article now has little coherence, and is mainly a random set of accusations…
William Connolley states in his own comments he has NOT ready any of Leroux’s work, or any of Leroux’s books!. When someone say he made useful contributions.
[I haven’t read his books, or any of his work, but what you say fits roughly with what I’ve seen: he had some ideas, mostly in a few limited areas, that might be good or not. But his “contributions” to GW were not useful -W]
so says William.. he has NOT read his work, but he ‘knows’ his ‘contributions’ were not useful!!
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/10/04/death-of-a-salesman/
comment by Jan Morten, and WC responds
The sooner Wiki goes bust the better.
WHat a potent cobination of small minds with PhDs behaving like they control the world, why because they must be better than the rest of us.
As Mike Jonas and others have noticed, I caught the doomed Leroux WP bio at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lucy_Skywalker/Marcel_Leroux and was drafting an article for Anthony but Anthony’s beaten me to it. I have several things to add right away.
(1) I was thanked and awarded the “anti-vandalism barnstar” for my work by one WP contributor ShowTimeAgain, and another contributor Africangenesis then set about improving the article in this “safer” space. Two other Wikipedians then got on the case, one (reasonably) added a WP label to the effect that my article was just a “sandbox” article; William M Connolley then decided (in my personal User sandbox Leroux page, without consulting me on the sandbox Leroux Talk page) to remove all the reasonable editing that the other WP contributor had done – because I’d put a note that said the article was as it was when I copied it to preserve it. Evidently he is quite capable of using my Talk page on my Leroux copy, since I put in a “hands off” note to which he responded. Please go visit my WP User sandbox Leroux Talk page, to note his weaselly approach. He’s commenting as I’m drafting right now. I refuse to be sidetracked! Have fun reporting!
(2) I did a bit of rekky. Leroux was deleted at WP for supposedly not being “notable” enough. Yet a visit to Leroux’ French WP bio (I installed Google Chrome to translate, Firefox wouldn’t do it) reveals easily, if one follows appropriate links there, that this man was knighted and was one of his university’s specials, almost all of whom have WP pages, some for far less.
(3) A gratuitous piece of vandalism: WMC deleted the picture whose title suggests it shows Leroux being awarded the decoration. Yet this picture is referenced from the French bio which has not been deleted. To compensate this I put in a link in the saved bio to the French page on the decoration, l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques.
(4) Since by now even my Wikipedia haven was not looking safe from the Orwellian tentacles of WMC, I decided I had to both save the text file and import it to my own Climate Wiki and this brings us to the most important point
(5) I have this wiki sitting there quietly which I originally set up so as not to allow skilled fast-acting vandals like WMC from taking over, as they have done at Wikipedia.. This was what I wanted to elaborate in an article. But for now it will have to be notes. This is a project that has come on in several waves of activity followed by months of shelving. I’ve been in touch with my opposite number wiki at Heartland, they liked it in principle. Justthefacts here did an incredible amount of work for a while, dumping facts which still need turning into decent articles. But what interests me at this point is the possibility of transferring the maligned biographies to my wiki, and turning them into something that can fight back. But for this, I really need more templates installed on my wiki to cope with things like references – and since I taught myself on a need-to-know basis and have little underpinning general MediaWiki skills, I need help. Plus I want to be sure that it’s vandal-proof!!
Originally I’d hoped to allow for research on my wiki, but since I’ve studied the science, I’ve become convinced that climate science basics are so deeply in question (I still support Nikolov and Zeller, with proof due to Dr Roderich Graeff) that I doubt that even a climate skeptics’ wiki can cope. I’d been thinking of separating the two functions. But then got further diverted…. Then I was wondering how I could pass on the baton, since I am otherwise busy these days but still believe there is a need for a crowdsourced climate skeptics’ wiki, to (a) correct the bias of WP, SkSci etc (b) provide a first stop reference point (c) rehabilitate those like Leroux who have been so shamefully defamed (d) etc – see wiki.
I will follow developments on this with interest!
Stoats have a tactic that is important to understand. They dance like a snake in front of their victims, hypnotising them into inability to do anything but scream. One should use Medusa’s mirror in cases like this: Awareness. Don’t attempt to respond directly because he then has you in his arena where he can run circles round you.
Thanks WUWT for being such a good mirror.
Reading this and its background materials, I am reminded of Kibology and Archimedes Plutonium.
WUWT is on the waiting list I’m sure.
The “notability” arguments are a crock. Wikipedia is full of entries like the following, and nobody minds:
“John Joseph Smith (1858 – January 6, 1899) played *one* year of professional baseball in 1882 with the Troy Trojans and Worcester Ruby Legs. In his 54 games of play, Smith had 219 at bats, hitting .242. He was a first baseman.”
@Andrew30 says: October 9, 2012 at 5:21 pm
@@corio37 says: October 9, 2012 at 4:20 pm “Wikipedia touts for donations:”
It is a ruse, check out their IRS Charity filings. Most of the cash comes from a few very large doners.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Like this?
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_foLDtq6pJkI/TJo-DjFNPYI/AAAAAAAABhQ/BJWnnisv8Oc/s1600/doner.jpg
P. Solar says:
October 9, 2012 at 9:50 pm
He claims he isn’t, continuing from one of my quotes from his talk page:
WP seems to have mess my my link before, the talk page is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:William_M._Connolley
DaveA says:
October 9, 2012 at 11:23 pm
He was a major figure in the midst of the mini-supercomputer period, his contributions to system design at Silicon Graphics (now merged with Cray) and the SPEC benchmark suite (still an important tool for people buying and selling million dollar systems) are worthy of not on Wikipedia.
He was just as annoying and opinionated in the 1990s, so I’m glad I never had to work for him. He was annoying enough as a competitor.
Doug Huffman says:
October 10, 2012 at 4:43 am
> Reading this and its background materials, I am reminded of Kibology and Archimedes Plutonium.
It sure would be nice if WordPress could implement “kill files,” huh? Then we could impose personal timeouts or permanent bans. At least AP was a fun read. Nancy, on the other hand, required the right level of boredom and curiosity. And was still agonizing.
Connelly is banned from responding on WUWT?
Don’t forget that if his right royal lordship gets upset about Lucy having the page in user space, then WMC should do the honorable and remove this propaganda;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_M._Connolley/The_science_is_settled
from his user space.
I had to drill down to confirm what it was that I was reading (nullius in verba and all that); doing so required descending into Dante’s Level 7 (… encircled within the river Phlegethon, filled with boiling blood, is the Seventh Level of Hell. The … tyrants … lament their pitiless mischiefs in the river, while centaurs armed with bows and arrows shoot those who try to escape their punishment.)
I had to drill back in time going where this sane man has never gone before, eventually to this link, to verify just who was saying what:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:William_M._Connolley&oldid=392199425
Except from that page follows:
If he is not a ‘participant’ (nor a scientist; being a ‘software engineer’ on wikipedia has little meaning I think in this context), this raises the issue of: just what is he?
.
Oops … g’morning mods/Anthony … one stuck in the spam filt. TIA _Jim
“I’m hardly in the AGW camp, but if you don’t like how WP is going, read the docs, register, learn the ropes, and start editing.”
Why? It’s a worthless “reference”. They ban citations of primary sources, for example. That means a newspaper article rephrasing (and filtering) a court trial transcript is an acceptable source, but the transcript itself is not!
@Doug, given his propensity to simply insult anyone who disagreed with him and his constant attempts to drag threads completely off-topic with rants about his own obsessions, it’s surprising he lasted as long as he did. He refused to play nice. I have no idea if he’s actually banned – I would not be surprised if he has – but I do know he’s been made most unwelcome for his behaviour.
Some time back, Wikipaedia was soliciting financial support. I received an email purporting to be from Jimmy Wales, asking me to contribute.
I wrote a response saying that I thought Wikipedia’s postings on global warming were, overall more harmful than whatever benefit comes from Wikipeadia so I would not be contributing. I mentioned Connelly’s editing of Wikipedia entries. I asked for me message to be forwarded to Jimmy Wales.
I got a reply saying:
– Jimmy Wales is not involved in the day-to-day business of Wikipedia.
– Connolly had been admonished, so the problem had been dealt with.
Hi Anthony, my handle is TomRude, without space. Thanks
cgh says:
October 9, 2012 at 9:20 pm
“You would be astonished how much of the history we are all taught in high schools is either misleading or a complete travesty.”
I realized this only modestly when going to school, and it really did’nt sink in properly.
Now, I have understood it. And it is a travesty, it really is.
Climate “Science” is one of the areas that really woke me up. Religion is another. Catholics versus Protestants, Islam versus Christianity. Communism. World wars. National Socialism.
Interesting to see how everyone cover up the alliance between arabic countries and National Socialism during WWII, and that many top N.Socialist found cover in Egypt, Syria and so on.
Wikipedia says “Connolley has been admonished, so the problem has been dealt with.”
Apparently not! – William Connolley is a serial liar and narcissist who has been banned from Wikipedia multiple times. The fact that Wikipedia still allows him any interaction whatsoever damages their credibility and emphasizes their uselessness as a reference. Connolley may have a PhD, but his demonstrated lack of objectivity precludes him from ever being a scientist. It’s good that he himself admits it.
Can you imagine what havoc this man would wreak if he had real power?
For Marcel Leroux to be nominated by the minority team of Stoat/WMC as the target for their next amateur intellectual drive-by hissy fit is significant only in highlighting that Stoat/WMC are the intellectual equivalents of Cook’s Crusher Crew from Paranoiaville (CCCP).
The more that the alarming climate science supporters emulate Cook, the more the public becomes increasingly skeptical. That is good.
John
Connolley is a joke – a very very bad joke……..
(Yet when it comes to Wikipedia royalty Dr. William M. Connolley, all is clear. So clear, they did not bother to sub-contract rolling the ball against Kramm …)
The plot is getting thicker against Kramm: a sub-contractor has been found… and Halpern is off the hook. Although a pro-Kramm asked Halpern to withdraw, no one dared firing an official complaint against either Halpern or Connolley yet… Instead, the pro-Kramm will have to battle the known, the unknown, the known-unknown and the unknown-unknown.
corio37 says:
October 9, 2012 at 4:20 pm
Wikipedia touts for donations
yes, I stopped donating some years ago when I realised their bias on climate change.
I found the initial idea great, but it degenerated with the acceptance of all these bias of vociferous groups. It is just another reason to dislike these climate-zealots.
[snip – I don’t like Connolley’s tactics but this is OTT – Anthony]
——————————-
Anthony – the truth and facts are never OTT
REPLY: But they way you say it was – Anthony
Does sweasel.com know about this? 🙂
I have to say, as a teacher of IB students in a suburban high school, one of the first things I do when teaching how to write a science research paper is that wikipedia is not an acceptable source to cite. I tell them they can start there, to get a general rundown, but they must verify everything with a more credible, as primary as possible, source. They still try it, and predictibly get knocked down. So a wiki cite? Not impressed.
What the heck is TR talking about?!?
Something about “scienceblogs” and wikipedia, and some people is all I get out of it, but suspect that one has to be part of one of the clubs to get it.
A few years ago, “a prolific Wikipedia contributor who wrote under the pen name “Essjay” and claimed to be a professor of theology turned out to be a 24-year-old college dropout, Ryan Jordan.
“Jordan’s fraud came to light last week when The New Yorker published an editor’s note stating that a 2006 Wikipedia profile in the magazine had erroneously described Essjay’s purported academic resume. The New Yorker said a Wikipedia higher-up had vouched for Essjay to the author of the piece, Stacy Schiff, but that neither knew Essjay’s real identity.
“In addition to contributing thousands of articles to the sprawling Web encyclopedia, Jordan had recently been promoted to arbitrator, a position for trusted members of the community. Arbitrators can overrule an edit made by another volunteer or block people who abuse the site.
Jordan also was hired in January by Wikia Inc., a for-profit venture run by Wales. He has since been dismissed.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17508203/#.UHXxoET4-So
The article concludes: “Wales (a founder) said Wednesday that belief is unchanged. But, he said, if people want to claim expertise on Wikipedia, they ought to be prompted to prove it. If they don’t want to give their real names, they shouldn’t be allowed to tout credentials. Had that policy been in place, Wales said, Jordan probably would not have gotten away with claiming a Ph.D. in religion.
“It’s always inappropriate to try to win an argument by flashing your credentials,” Wales said, “and even more so if those credentials are inaccurate.”
Sounds just like the belief in CAGW. I’d rather not see their credentials…
I don’t know if this article is now passing into the Great Blue Yonder re. visits, since comments have slowed right down.
However, over at my Wikipedia pages, things have been busy, with a number of visitors including WMC of course. First my copied article was offered up for “rapid deletion”, then others complained, then another admin removed the “rapid deletion” tag.
None of this happened when I posted Tim Ball’s bio “posthumously” in my sandbox. But then I just did it quietly, no fanfare of announcements, and there was no active warring with WMC nor WUWT article at the time.
I think Wikipedia is becoming more akin to a creative writing piece as humanity or resemblance to the human sprit. It’s in constant fluid state and open sourced to our imaginations, discoveries, and beliefs.
I don’t ever consider it as a prime source of strictly correct information, rather, if it helps me to expand my point of view and help discover more information, then it becomes a source for my own personal human spirit growth.
Glad to help Lucy!
Kramm follow up news:
Halpern first call borne out of a taunt by W.M. Connolley on Stoat: -“I intend to nominate this article for deletion. Joshua Halpern, added 00:57, 9 October 2012 (UTC)”-
Now, unwanted publicity has brought a willing sub to take care of business and unexpectedly revealed Eli Rabett’s… humm, human side: – “DLM that is exactly the problem and why I put this here rather than directly into an AfD, and why the statement I made is as neutral as I could make it. (.) Joshua Halpern (talk) added17:43, 10 October 2012 (UTC)-
Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit comes to mind http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312004/
If I’m reading things over there right it appears Africangenesis is in danger of being sanctioned for his comments in defending that page. The underhanded tactics of Connolly and his cohorts are too much for a sane person to bear. Actually trying to claim he was doing Lucy a favor by reverting Africangenesis’ helpful changes to the copy and then getting indignant about it. If we only had a secret camera on his computer that captured his crap-eating grin as he posted that one.
Lucy Skywalker says:
October 10, 2012 at 4:51 pm
TomRude says:
October 10, 2012 at 7:38 pm
I wanted to let you both know how much your efforts are appreciated.
Wikipedia is a great idea ruined by the nature of some humans. Connolly should be recognized as one of those who has done harm to wikipedias credibility. It is unlikely (in the extreme) that he would acknowledge this.
Delightful conversation with WMC continues over at my Leroux Talk page.
Thank you David Ball and TomRude for thumbs-up. I will copy Kramm now, to (a) sandbox with note (b) text file (c) Climate Wiki. Africangenesis has signed on there (thank you!) and hopefully can now help it grow.
Wikipedia condemns itself to much worse than second-class status. It is now actually debased, and destructive to the goals it nominally set out to serve. Connolley epitomizes the failure, and indeed is actively working to achieve it.
Are William M Connelly (WMC) and Joel B Lewis (JBL) the same person, and using the logic put forth why the hell has Connelly got a Wikipedia page himself?
beesaman says:
October 11, 2012 at 3:55 am
I was going to point out that all the editors seem to have or can create a page to document their activities, i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:William_M._Connolley
However, WMC does indeed have his own page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley – which notes, in part:
Oh well, it’s less annoying reading than his User_talk page.
It seems to me that one could make a pretty good case to delete that page on notability issues alone. I don’t think someone deserves a Wiki page in large part because he’s a jerk. 🙂
Looks like the first deletion request was “23:46, 14 February 2005 GRider (talk | contribs) m . . (1,625 bytes) (+1,144)”
Arrogant to the nth degree, Connolley really is a despicable little man.
More conversation over at the Leroux talk page
WMC said
WMC also said
Perhaps Anthony can amend the article’s words to “bio deleted by warmists who it seems don’t know any better than to silence what they cannot answer, thanks to their education at the hands of a biassed Wikipedia whose original bias was well locked in place by Connolley long before he lost his Admin rights.”
You can see the weaselling continuing in the details. Of course, I did not actually send this tip to Anthony, it was TomRude whose name WMC omits! And even if it wasn’t WMC’s deletion, his input was certainly at work in helping reach this result.
btw here is WMC’s version of how / why he got banned at WUWT. Seems only fair to reference this in today’s context. I remember checking out the story details at the time and the one thing I recall is that Stoat did NOT give a balanced, fair, unbiassed picture of how / why he got banned.
Again, if WMC is reading this: it is a matter of comparatives. Probably Anthony was not 100% polite or 100% correct in all details. However, Anthony’s overall attitude (as well as his track record generally) show both his courtesy and openness to decent evidence, honest scientific method, and good scientific practice, as in a different league from WMC altogether.
How do I know which “side” is right, if both claim the high ground here? One of the quickest clues is the willingness to apologize for unwarranted rudeness and to correct inaccuracy – and to support that behaviour in others. I am pretty certain that if WMC were actually to listen to criticisms of his approach and were actually willing to apologize and change (without it looking like just a stunt), Anthony would be the first person to welcome WMC back as a commenter.
But alas, beyond the issue of manners lies the deeper issues of the still-unacknowledged corruption at the heart of Climate Science, that still either fools the NAS and the RS or else they too are corrupt and in cahoots.
Not a conspiracy, WMC, just a combination of “follow the money”, human pride, bad science, unreasoning anxiety, and “noble cause corruption”, that the world has seen many times before now.
If Connolley wants to apologize for his thread baiting behavior (which he then used as fodder on his own blog) and promises not to do it again, sure, I’d allow him to participate here again.
I saw no reason to invite him into my home on the Internet any more the way he behaved. If he was a dinner guest at my physical home, I’d have shown him the door as I suspect many people would. See my policy page on how I view this.
Here’s an update: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/11/tabloid-climatology-may-be-the-real-reason-for-the-marcel-leroux-william-connolley-wikipedia-dustup/
I’d hazard a guess that Connolley’s article is not there as a result of explanation or due other folks excoriation but rather as a way for him to bolster his own fragile ego.
That he has gone after a defenceless, deceased academic and got away with it has emboldened him to take on another. The added fact that he has gone after foreigners might indicate a past event he is trying to purge by these present deeds. All in all rather disturbing, I wonder what the international company he presently works for would make of his beliefs and behaviours, particularly Joep Van Beurden the CEO?
Sparks says:
October 9, 2012 at 6:35 pm
have a look at this Wikipedia entry on David Bellamy and especially how his Views on global warming are refuted by alarmists for example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bellamy
Connolley’s banning, btw, was just a temporary sham. While it “held”, minions did exactly the same kind of sceptic-purging, probably at his explicit direction. He’s been back at it himself for some time now.
Gerhard Kramm is alive and kicking and sums up what to think of this row: check his comment to Halpern!
“I beg your pardon, folks, but I do not believe that having an Article in the WIKIPEDIA is a matter of honor. The discussion of climate and climate change is clearly occupied by eco-activists like Halpern. From this point of view I am feeling being honored if this Article will be deleted owing to the activities of eco-fascists. I have my professional homepage. For Halpern who speaks German I have a simple message: “Was stoert’s den Mond, wenn ein Hund ihn anbellt.”Gerhard kramm (talk) 23:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)”