WUWT reader Dennis Kuzara wrote to Wikipedia in response to our earlier article on Wikibullies prompted by Lawrence Solomon of the National Post. He has received an eye-opening reply. Emphasis mine – Anthony
=================
Wikipedia replies
notable excerpt:
> > 4. Has William Connolley been removed as a Wikipedia administrator? If so who has taken his place?
In September 2009, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee revoked Mr. Connolley’s administrator status after finding that he misused his administrative privileges while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming. This has now been added to his article
().
Nobody has replaced him specifically, but there are more than a thousand other administrators with very varied backgrounds.
Reply follows:
Dear Dennis Kuzara,
Thank you for your email.
12/20/2009 05:31 – Dennis Kuzara wrote:
> > Pierre
> >
> > I understand there several processes and procedures intended to prevent
> > someone from taking control of a segment of Wikipedia for their own benefit. I
> > also understand that Wikipedia is huge and therefore cannot be micromanaged
> > from the top, which is why the procedures and controls are in place.
> >
> > What happened in this case was a successful conspiracy to take command of
> > information (and history) by a not-so small group of co-conspirators, a la
> > 1984, to serve their own means and ends.This is not a flash in the pan, but a
> > long term (over a decade) coordinated effort to literally rewrite history. As
> > you stated, Wikipedia … normally takes no stance in disputes about Wikipedia
> > content or administration, but this situation is far from normal by anyones
> > measure.
> >
> > I think the Wikipedia concept has enormous benefits and Wikipedia is usually
> > the first place I look when I need information. My greatest concern is the
> > damage to Wikipedia’s credibility by something as massive as what was
> > orchestrated by William Connolley and his band of cohorts. I think it would be
> > prudent for Wikipedia to be proactive on this matter, if for no other reason
> > than for damage control.
> >
> > So, actually, your (apparently off the shelf) reply does not answer my
> > question.
> >
> > Let’s break it down into several parts:
> > 1. Is the management at Wikipedia aware of the biased and dictatorial
> > Wikipedia administration by William Connolley?
I’m not Foundation management, just an editor and volunteer who answers customer
e-mail, but my understanding is that while Foundation staff are probably aware of
this and other controversies, they leave their resolution to the community of
editors and its procedures.
> > 2. Is there any internal investigation being undertaken to verify the extent
> > and the scope of this apparent hijacking of process.
What you refer to as a “hijacking of process” is, as far as I can tell, an
entirely normal (for me) series of disagreements about article content. Thousands
of such disagreements occur every day on Wikipedia, and they are normally resolved
through our discussion-based dispute resolution process, as explained at
. This process may ultimately lead to
an Arbitration Committee investigation.
> > 3. What, if any steps are being taken to correct the bias injected into the
> > 5,428 articles authored or edited by William Connolley?
Wikipedia’s content is not centrally edited. Anybody may make any change to
Wikipedia, including undoing an edit by Mr. Connolley. But that change may be
undone in turn if others disagree, and any dispute has to be resolved through
discussion until a consensus is found. This is explained at
.
> > 4. Has William Connolley been removed as a Wikipedia administrator? If so who
> > has taken his place?
In September 2009, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee revoked Mr. Connolley’s
administrator status after finding that he misused his administrative privileges
while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming. This has now been added
to his article
().
Nobody has replaced him specifically, but there are more than a thousand other
administrators with very varied backgrounds.
> > 5. Would it be prudent in this case to now have an administrator who is
> > biased against AGW but closely monitored until this situation is fleshed out?
Administrators are elected by the Wikipedia community, and require a supermajority
of about 70% for election. The community prefers to elect administrators who
display no bias in any respect, but are committed to upholding Wikipedia’s
principle of “neutral point of view” ().
> > 5. If the current controls failed in this situation (a successful coordinated
> > attack by a group), then what steps are being taken to change the procedures
> > and processes to keep such usurpation from happening in the future?
Should the community conclude that its processes were indeed subverted by anybody
(and I am not aware of any such consensus emerging currently), it may decide to
change its policies, as explained at
.
Yours sincerely,
Pierre Grés
– Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org — Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and responses are not to be considered an official statement of the Wikimedia Foundation. For official correspondence, please contact the Wikimedia Foundation by certified mail at the address listed on http://www.wikimediafoundation.org
| D L Kuzara |
Submitted on 2009/12/19 at 11:36pm
Wikipedia replies notable excerpt: > > 4. Has William Connolley been removed as a Wikipedia administrator? If so who has taken his place? In September 2009, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee revoked Mr. Connolley’s administrator status after finding that he misused his administrative privileges while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming. This has now been added to his article (). Nobody has replaced him specifically, but there are more than a thousand other administrators with very varied backgrounds. Reply follows: Dear Dennis Kuzara, Thank you for your email. 12/20/2009 05:31 – Dennis Kuzara wrote: > > Pierre > > > > I understand there several processes and procedures intended to prevent > > someone from taking control of a segment of Wikipedia for their own benefit. I > > also understand that Wikipedia is huge and therefore cannot be micromanaged > > from the top, which is why the procedures and controls are in place. > > > > What happened in this case was a successful conspiracy to take command of > > information (and history) by a not-so small group of co-conspirators, a la > > 1984, to serve their own means and ends.This is not a flash in the pan, but a > > long term (over a decade) coordinated effort to literally rewrite history. As > > you stated, Wikipedia … normally takes no stance in disputes about Wikipedia > > content or administration, but this situation is far from normal by anyones > > measure. > > > > I think the Wikipedia concept has enormous benefits and Wikipedia is usually > > the first place I look when I need information. My greatest concern is the > > damage to Wikipedia’s credibility by something as massive as what was > > orchestrated by William Connolley and his band of cohorts. I think it would be > > prudent for Wikipedia to be proactive on this matter, if for no other reason > > than for damage control. > > > > So, actually, your (apparently off the shelf) reply does not answer my > > question. > > > > Let’s break it down into several parts: > > 1. Is the management at Wikipedia aware of the biased and dictatorial > > Wikipedia administration by William Connolley? I’m not Foundation management, just an editor and volunteer who answers customer e-mail, but my understanding is that while Foundation staff are probably aware of this and other controversies, they leave their resolution to the community of editors and its procedures. > > 2. Is there any internal investigation being undertaken to verify the extent > > and the scope of this apparent hijacking of process. What you refer to as a “hijacking of process” is, as far as I can tell, an entirely normal (for me) series of disagreements about article content. Thousands of such disagreements occur every day on Wikipedia, and they are normally resolved through our discussion-based dispute resolution process, as explained at . This process may ultimately lead to an Arbitration Committee investigation. > > 3. What, if any steps are being taken to correct the bias injected into the > > 5,428 articles authored or edited by William Connolley? Wikipedia’s content is not centrally edited. Anybody may make any change to Wikipedia, including undoing an edit by Mr. Connolley. But that change may be undone in turn if others disagree, and any dispute has to be resolved through discussion until a consensus is found. This is explained at . > > 4. Has William Connolley been removed as a Wikipedia administrator? If so who > > has taken his place? In September 2009, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee revoked Mr. Connolley’s administrator status after finding that he misused his administrative privileges while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming. This has now been added to his article (). Nobody has replaced him specifically, but there are more than a thousand other administrators with very varied backgrounds. > > 5. Would it be prudent in this case to now have an administrator who is > > biased against AGW but closely monitored until this situation is fleshed out? Administrators are elected by the Wikipedia community, and require a supermajority of about 70% for election. The community prefers to elect administrators who display no bias in any respect, but are committed to upholding Wikipedia’s principle of “neutral point of view” (). > > 5. If the current controls failed in this situation (a successful coordinated > > attack by a group), then what steps are being taken to change the procedures > > and processes to keep such usurpation from happening in the future? Should the community conclude that its processes were indeed subverted by anybody (and I am not aware of any such consensus emerging currently), it may decide to change its policies, as explained at . Yours sincerely, Pierre Grés – Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org — Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and responses are not to be considered an official statement of the Wikimedia Foundation. For official correspondence, please contact the Wikimedia Foundation by certified mail at the address listed on http://www.wikimediafoundation.org |
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I gave up on Wikipedia a LONG time ago. While I guess I’m not altogether moribund about the demise of the Connolley, I hold very little hope that his ilk won’t carry on polluting the thing and continue its bias.
‘On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age’
Nothing better to do I guess.
Slightly ot/ is steve mcintyre actually a climatoligist? What are his credentials?
Is he considered an expert in this field? How would i go about using his work as a reliable source?
Here’s some good news. Michael Mann is getting his ass whipped by the commenters of his pathetic Washington Post editorial in which he tried to defend AGW by attacking Sarah Palin:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/17/AR2009121703682_Comments.html
Let us see how quickly the MWP rises like Lazerus from the dead. If it doesn’t, we know the bias remains.
I read through the comments/endorsements for Conneley’s candidacy for arbitrator. Wow, a lot of folks have been rubbed the wrong way by this guy.
Ok, I would love to write an entire article on this subject, but I believe the spam filter would kick in.
First off Connolley, several years ago, lost his adminship due to similar behavior. Once, when I was a bit active with wikipedia, and pissed off at his obvious censorship and his “teamwork” with several other individuals, I pointed out that his facebook friends (right off is own profile), included about 12 obvious wikipedia admins – this would allow them to communicate off-wiki to coordinate their activities (a big no-no according to wiki rules).
I pointed it out in the appropriate place, but knew nothing would happen due to the culture of wikipedia (it is all about sucking up to people like “Jimbo”) and so I didn’t spend too much time fighting it.
Honestly, the best thing to do in reponse is to play dirty. They break wikipedia rules all the time and know how to game the system with socks, email lists, and wiki-lawyering. A coordinated attempt to correct the bias on wikipedia is the only way to counter them – they’ve been doing it for years.
Mind if I write a “How to” guide?
Reply: Go for it, but we will not advocate gaming the system, but some may need to understand the system better. I’ll send email. ~ ctm
Well, at least we can hope that this is a move in the right direction at least.
NigelS, how very true. Maybe WUWT readers and their associates should attempt to become a sizeable part of the community.
“he misused his administrative privileges while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming. ” Do I understand that he lives in England? If so, will he try to use the notorious English libel laws?
Look up ‘Medieval Warm Period’ in Wikipedia and you will notice that graph, still, at the head of the article.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
It opens (inter alia): “The Medieval Warm Period …… is often invoked in discussions of global warming. Some refer to the event as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly as this term emphasizes that effects other than temperature were important”.
I have noticed that AGW enthusiasts are now willing to accept the existence of the MWP, but emphasize possible negative consequences like the collapse of the Maya civilization (supposedly caused by climate change, i.e. drought).
This tactic is, of course, an attempt to deflect attention away from the crucial point that the MWP was probably global and probably warmer than now.
“In September 2009, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee revoked Mr. Connolley’s administrator status after finding that he misused his administrative privileges while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming. This has now been added to his article”
Does he mean this article :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley
Looks like it has been edited out already …
Ah, on the dispute page: “I came to cold fusion – I forget how”. One does, doesn’t one?
The german Wikipedia has long been overtaken by people we call “Blockwarte” (in Nazi Germany there was one spy per housing block, the GDR had a similar setting; their job was to control that everyone behaved conformant). The Blockwarte will delete any article they deem “irrelevant”. So there’s a constant “relevance discussion” in the german wikipedia. The trick now is this: Wikipedia stores the history of all changes of an article so any viewer can get at old versions. But if an entire article is deleted, that history is lost as well [or at least becomes inaccessible, i don’t know what happens when you create a new article with the same title].
So be prepared to see entire articles deleted by the admins. They will want to destroy the history of those articles. Watch out for discussions of the relevance of an issue, this discussion always indicates efforts to delete it in the near future.
I’m not sure what he’s hinting at here in his square brackets comment to Dallas Dinosaur’s post at his stoat blog – anyone help?
Quote DD:
Can you explain the one below? It looks innocuous, but there are others emails that have at first glance, looked harmless, only to look much more conspiritorial once you understand context.
> William M Connolley wrote:
> > On Thu, 4 Jan 2007, Phil Jones wrote:
> >
> >> The net is closing…
> >>
> >> National Research Council, US Committee for the Global Atmospheric
> >> Research Program, Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action,
> >> National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, (1975), appendix A.
> >>
> >> This book (Fig A2b) has the same figure as Imbrie/Imbrie. It is rotated.
> >> It also has the same concept of the IPCC 1990 Figure, changes on
> >> various timescales – all rotated. Loads of Lamb diagrams I have
> >> seen countless times before.
> >>
> >
> > ? The source for IPCC can’t be the 1975 NAS report. That fig is relatively warm
> > about 1600; the IPCC ’90 figure is cold then. And as noted the “MWP” is colder
> > than 1950. But NAS 75 is the same as I+I, true (they both source to Lamb 69).
> >
> > Incidentally my I+I says copyright 1979, seventh printing 1998.
> >
> > -W.
[Yes, this is the bit I said you could find if you looked hard enough. But I don’t think you’ve done your homework enough – go read the wiki page on MWP/LIA and see if you know then -W]
(ENDS)
His comment reads like someone who wants to get caught like the poisoner who actually suggested the police test for Thalium.
In the last thread I noted
Mike Lorrey (22:48:33) :…. There is a conservative group launching their own wiki encyclopedia, btw, which will have better vetting of admins and peer review of contributions.
Please keep us informed Mike, if this is a usable alternative wiki platform for the real climate science, we surely want to bless it and use it… When there is an opposition party, the worst excesses can be kept in check.
We need a skeptics’ reference point, that is open to editing by a wide number of editors (unlike NIPCC for instance) that can in this way become a gold standard for Climate Science where it differs crucially from the AGW point of view.
Both he and “atmoz” are still working the Patrick Michaels entry as of 2 days ago…
REPLY: Atmoz is this guy:
http://atmoz.org/blog/
He’s a grad student at the University of Arizona Atmospheric Sciences Department. And yes, he’s worked up a number of Wiki articles. – Anthony
It looks like this person is still contributing a lot, every single day he updates a dozen global warming related articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=William+M.+Connolley
No surprise here. This is the single biggest problem with the wiki idea and, as wiki has become bigger more and more people with a vested interest have joined the support volunteers to skew the content to match their beliefs. This applies to many topic areas, not just CAGW.
Just like the MSM, wiki is not a reliable source for accurate information.
OMG yesterday he removed any reference to climategate in the article concerning Michael Mann:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_E._Mann&diff=prev&oldid=332744981
Wikipedia needs to take action on this instead of the whitewash. Unless they do their credibility will fall even further.
During the years, I have been a bit surprised to see Wikipedia’s obvious bias when it comes to facts and conclusions in climate science. It has been clearly partial, like reading Guardian. I have not reflected much on that, thought more like “one can’t ask for a professional quality, after all it’s free of charge”.
But I now understand that the ambitions are admirable:
“Administrators are elected by the Wikipedia community, and require a supermajority of about 70% for election. The community prefers to elect administrators who display no bias in any respect, but are committed to upholding Wikipedia’s principle of “neutral point of view” ().”
I believe that all controversial subjects should be treated with more caution and should be controlled by more than one person. I have seen requests for monetary contributions, but I would not consider contributing to something that amounts to a partial source of information. I hope that WUWT follows up the development, a neutral source of high quality would be of great value.
Something needs to be done about Wiki, as an information source on energy, for the bias here is as bad as at the BBC.
A few years ago I edited Wiki ‘wind power’ to add details on intermittancy, which it did not mention. These were constantly deleted and had to be re-added – and this got to the stage where I was banned from Wiki for ‘topic vandalisation’ !!
I re-added similar details under a different user for many months, and I now note that an ‘intermittancy’ section has been added. But I still note that this mentions things like:
“”Thus, the 2 GW Dinorwig pumped storage plant adds costs to nuclear energy in the UK for which it was built””
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Intermittency_and_penetration_limits
This is totally untrue. Dinorwig was built (at enormous expense) to cover variability in demand, not in supply. It is a capacitor. It is there to soak up the instant demand when 5 million households all put the kettle on when a football match ends, and all demand extra power. It is NOT there to soak up any perceived variability in supply from nuclear plants.
If we can all have a concerted effort to change this and other points, I would appreciate it.
Remember:
a. Anyone can make changes.
b. All changes and information must be referenced to original sources.
c. It is sometimes better to enter the discussion pages and talk with the others monitoring that topic first.
.
Maybe we should take this chance and edit some of the pages ourselves. I don’t have an english account (anymore) but I can edit the swedish sections.
I remember reading a blogger post on RC, I think, about a year ago, where the blogger was lamenting that Connelly had too much power in Wikipedia. The comment was only allowed to stand so Connelly could add his dismissive riposte. He said, “Apparently I’ve got a lot of power. I must start using it then.”
In hindsight, his sarcasm was rather prophetic.
Here’s Wiki itself on Connelly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Connolley
Sparse details of his canning are left to a footnote: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/31/060731fa_fact
(Connelly mentioned about 2/3 into the article):