Apparently Wikipedia’s own attempt at self policing problem editors isn’t working. Despite being up for a restriction or a ban, rogue Wiki editor (and Real Climate co-founder) William Connolley is still removing anything he doesn’t like when it comes to climate science. This time it’s wholesale removal of any reference to the American Physical Society resignation letter of physicist Hal Lewis, who resigned over the APS global warming position:
And no wonder, the traffic to the Hal Lewis Wikipedia page looks likes a hockey stick. People are learning about the reasons for the Lewis APS resignation, and Mr. Connolley can’t have that:
Here’s the Wiki history page. Note the comment by Mr. Connolley:
And look at the Wiki entry for Hal Lewis now, fully sterilized:
Ironically. the yellow highlighted text says:
This article about an American physicist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Yeah, right. Just try.
Members of Wikipedia, you need to show William Connolley the door, or at the very least, put up a new picture for him:
Don’t get it? Read this.
h/t to WUWT reader “gibo”
These people have no shame! Off with their heads…oh but we can’t do that in civil society, can we?
“rouge Wiki editor (and Real Climate co-founder) William Connolley”
I love that slip. I would at all to be surprised to find out that the “Stoat” is darkish hue of red.
Connelley and his RealClimate mates are Green Shirt fascists. The behaviour is straight out of the 1930’s.
BBC told to ensure balance on climate change.
Are they finally seeing the light.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/8060211/BBC-told-to-ensure-balance-on-climate-change.html
Wikipedia has become like the medieval Catholic church, with its own Index Librorum and Virorum Prohibitorum. Connolley can join the proud ranks of book burners and thieves of truth. I have to say I despair of the truth being finally told; so much is arrayed against that hope.
I am still stunned that these people, anyone in fact, believes one can “disappear” stuff from the interweb. Well, maybe sometimes, but mostly one fails after the event. It is out there until we stop making electrickery (Cat Weasle, 1970’s UK).
It only goes to show that in our new ‘Green Utopia’, some physicists will be more equal than others.
Typo perhaps? Rouge is French for red (or English for a type of facial make-up).
Rogue is a scallywag or uncontrolled agent.
[Fixed, thanks. ~dbs]
Is Connolley still living at the grace of the taxpayers’ dollar? Interesting way to spend his working day.
What is the significance (translation into non-wiki terms please) of Connolley’s(?) comment:
“el rego isn’t an RS”
Thanks
Thanks for your post. I am sure you mean “rogue” in the first paragraph, not “rouge”.
[Fixed, thanx. ~dbs]
Wreckapedia.
PJB says:
October 13, 2010 at 4:26 am
What is the significance (translation into non-wiki terms please) of Connolley’s(?) comment:
“el rego isn’t an RS”
He means The Register (a UK online tech portal) isn’t a reliable source. Someone probably linked to an article there as source for the modifications to the page, which (as I’ve learned in the past) gives them all the reason they need to “revert” changes – if they don’t like the source, well, they don’t have to listen to you.
‘el rego isn’t an RS’ I think translates as ‘The Register isn’t a reliable source’.
Paul
Keep the spotlight on W. Connolley! That’s perhaps the best way to disinfect Wikipedia of such a nefarious scoundrel!
If I were Lewis I’d be rather insulted. Nothing he did during his entire professional career was apparently significant enough to warrant a Wikipedia page. Not until he at the age of 87 leaves APS is that considered newsworthy and suddenly someone adds a page consisting only of that letter, nothing else.
Gradually the page is evolving into something more reasonable, and Connolley wasn’t the only one complaining about the prominence of that letter, but I guess he is the bogeyman on this blog.
Fascist tactics, by a fascist mind, claiming to be a “Green”. When writing a biased version of the story, is not enough, and the story must be erased entirely, you must be getting seriously worried. For someone familiar with the Internet, the tactic is also naive
William Connelly-gate just keeps growing.
Proves this is about ideology, and not science.
This guy is a blessing in disguise to the skeptical movement. I say definitely leave him there its slowly wrecking the AGW cause as people see/learn about this (refer Jones etc et al)
Thank Gore, No Pressure, for the interweby.
The Grauniad has a go at the Register (el Reg!)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/12/graun_robbins_counterblast/
And here’s the Register article which was not good enough for Connolley.
The last lines of the article read as follows:-
“Updated to Add
We’ve now heard back from Professor Lewis, who confirms that the letter is indeed his work and he stands by it.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/11/lewis_resignation_letter/
Whoever submitted the first piece should resubmit citing
http://www.thegwpf.org/ipcc-news/1670-hal-lewis-my-resignation-from-the-american-physical-society.html
and at the same time cite this
http://www.thegwpf.org/news/1687-professor-hal-lewis-joins-the-gwpf.html
el wiki isn’t an RS.
Fixed. ☺
Connolley is obviously a shill for the oil companies who buy into cap and trade, a lackey for the socialists, a man with no integrity, and would have not problem with a totalitarian state. Squelching free speech is the first thing to do in his mind.
Having had interactions with him before on Wiki, he is a bully and a thug. No class, no character. Let’s throw him under the bus along with Al, Jim, Michael, and Maurice.
Also interesting is this:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/10/price-of-knowledge.html
“Coincidence or not, this morning I got a phone call from BBC Radio Oxford, asking if I would speak on their show tomorrow (at about 10:10am) on … climate change. Specifically, they are having a debate about the resignation of Hal Lewis, which Dellers did big, amongst others.”
So even the BBC is taking notice now
Connolley desperately craves attention. The Register (theregister.co.uk) is one of the best and biggest online tech publications worldwide, with more than five million users each month. How dare Wikipedia allow this repulsive Connolley free reign to make false accusations that the Register is not a reliable source.
When a scientist becomes paranoiac about something, then he pursue it to point of ridicule. My rather innocuous graph
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-Mca.htm
has been subject of relentless ‘blog-icide’ by the same contributor of repute, as you can see here and here and here
There must be something to it !
Wikipedia apparently is not interested in striving for excellence.
excellent reference Anthony.
Also, anyone else laughing at wc for turning wikipedia into an unreliable source by blasting something else as an unreliable source?
William Connolley from the Ministry of truth
Who can we complain to about this?
Whilst on the subject of El Reg, here’s another article which links to a report on modelling vs reality. El Reg. A topic that sounds vaguely familiar.
What next for Connolley? Eliminating pages on Galileo, Copernicus? House arrest for
Lewis? Papal bull from the Profit excommunicating Lewis and taking back his PhD?
Getting mighty Medieval out there…
Teachers all over the world warn students NOT to cite Wikipedia as a reference in any of assigned papers; why these warnings are issued is very obvious.
OT, for which I apologize, but wanted to let you know that today is the day we will be saved from global warming, no wait, climate change ahhhh DISRUPTION, errr cooling? AT ANY RATE very very bad CO2 by benevolent alien dead souls who are no relation whatsoever to those thetans from Battlefield Earth:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/prweb/20100914/bs_prweb/prweb4491804_1
Oh Canada!
(not all Canadians, I know!)
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Connolley doesn’t care when you catch him. People like him are arrogant enough to think you owe your lives to their divine existence.
You may not like it thomas but Connolly is an embarassment to science and the Wiki treatment of the entire issue is anti science.
This is a great problem with Wiki.
It is not just AGW issues, but any other ‘challenging’ subject is routinely guarded by a ‘gatekeeper’ who will not allow any dissenting views. Wiki is routinely biased.
Regards AGW, I must have posted paragraphs on wind-power unreliability about 50 times, to have them all deleted. According to the oracle of Wiki, the wind never drops.
.
At the time of this post, the Hal Lewis page now carries this;
In 2010, Lewis resigned in protest from the American Physical Society, citing its position on global warming, which he labelled a “scam” and a “hoax.”
>>Thanks for your post. I am sure you mean “rogue” in
>>the first paragraph, not “rouge”.
I don’t know. Perhaps Connolly should be ‘red-faced’ at his continuing antics.
.
Wikipedia is No Man’s Land. Er, uh, Nomad’s Land.
==============
You can help Wikipedia by removing Connolley from it.
Is it just me? I can’t wait for the clever video artists from Minnesota to create a “no Pressure” video featuring Schmidt, Mann, Bradley, Connolley, Jones, Briffa, Schneider, Trenberth and the other horsemen of the climate apocalypse.
Arijigoku>
“Who can we complain to about this?”
If you have the energy, you can register yourself a Wikipedia account, edit the page, and then go through their arbitration process when Connolly attacks. You’ll win (as long as keeping to a single issue), but it’ll take while.
I would note that El Reg actually meets all criteria to be a Wikipedia RS.
I thought Connolley was hit with the ban-stick? Or am I thinking of someone else….
Seriously, the Wiki article on William Connolley states:
“Connolley is an editor of Wikipedia and served as a Wikipedia sysop, a form of website administrator, until 2009.[13][14][15] A December 2005 Nature article that compared the reliability of Wikipedia to Encyclopedia Britannica used Connolley as an example of an expert who regularly writes for the on-line encyclopedia.[16] An October 2006 Nature article that contrasted Wikipedia with the Citizendium online encyclopedia project (which recruits experts from academia), quoted Connolley as saying that “some scientists have become frustrated with Wikipedia” but that “conflict can sometimes result in better articles”.[17] His Wikipedia editing was also discussed in a July 2006 article in The New Yorker that said he briefly became “a victim of an edit war over the entry on global warming”, in which a skeptic repeatedly “watered down” the article’s explanation of the greenhouse effect.[18] He told The New Yorker that Wikipedia “gives no privilege to those who know what they’re talking about.”[18] ”
So why is a line stating that Hal Lewis’ recent resignation from APS not appropriate in Wikipedia, including the reasons why he resigned?
Huh?
Wikipedia is a fixed game. “Facts” can only come from “reliable sources” which means filtered (and edited) by the major media outlets.
Try to prove from major media sources that there are ANY climate skeptics who are qualified, sincere, and respected, and you begin to see the trap.
Connolley, and even Wikipedia itself is really more of a symptom than the problem itself, which is an allegedly impartial media that props up positions it agrees with, and hides or demonizes the rest.
To extend the Medieval Catholic metaphor some have been advancing:
Don’t forget to buy your Carbon Credit indulgences! (You can spend them on out of season blueberries!)
Quite rightly, strict editorial rules exist to ensure every Tom Dick and Harry don’t try to use Wikipedia to promote their personal half baked theories to a world audience.
On the more specific question as to whether the gatekeeper of the Climate science section is more hostile to Sceptic submissions than Warmist ones, the following information may help readers to make their own judgements.
To achieve this aim it may be instructive to follow the role of the administrator of the climate section, Mr William Connolley
Firstly, it is worth restating the criteria for wikipedia in considering submissions made to them;
“Verifiability
Main article: Wikipedia: Verifiability
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. This policy and the verifiability policy reinforce each other by requiring that only assertions, theories, opinions, and arguments that have already been published in a reliable source may be used in Wikipedia.”
To examine the claims of bias often made against William Connolley on the matter of him favouring material submitted to him by warmists, as against that from sceptics, it is worth following a specific case-that of Lawrence Solomons- who wrote the well known sceptics book ‘The Deniers’
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/12/wikipedia-s-zealots-solomon.aspx
The above is a very good link re alleged wiki bias, with a subsequent blog of claim and counter claim, including a robust defence mounted by the editor of wiki who was criticised. It is instructive reading and worth staying with to the end.
This is by way of a review of the book by Solomons in The Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/06/the-climate-change-deniers/
This is another review and provides some further background to the wikipedia bias claim by Solomons, so throws further light on the first link.
http://richardvigilantebooks.com/
The link below is again biased, but throws interesting light on William Connolley (The Administrator) and his alleged bias against sceptic’s views.
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=17981
This is the blog of William Connolley that is accessed from within Real Climate, in which he actively supports them by, amongst other actions, attending a conference in Vancouver.
“I was there with my Real Climate hat on, to offer ideas and insight on blogging in particular and public communication of science in general.”
http://www.realclimate.org/
Some people wishing to submit sceptical material question whether wiki should allow people with close links to a web site enthusiastically endorsing the views of Dr Mann (whose Hockey stick reconstructions were thought to have been widely discredited) and has known passions-he stood as a candidate for the UK Green Party-is objective enough to be allowed to oversee the editing of the climate pages of the worlds leading reference source as an administrator (definition and duties here)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators
The wiki core element of verifiability rather than truth allows some potential leeway in accepting articles that support a personal view. Consequently wiki’s objectivity- by any reasonable measure- should be called into some question (on certain controversial topics such as climate change) Checking back to the original source should be a follow up to any wiki climate related research, but many people rely on it as their primary and only source, thereby receiving a certain view of the topic.
This is William Connolley’s blog leading to various other topics he is interested in.
http://www.blogger.com/profile/05836299130680534926
The guy is no ogre, has an obvious sense of humour, and has a particular world view as a UK Green party candidate. The policies of the party in general are here-they have sometimes been (perhaps over sensationally) described as the green successors to the communist party and anti capitalist. In Britain they have a Euro M.E.P in Caroline Lucas.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Babylon-Beyond-Economics-Anti-capitalist-Anti-globalist/dp/0745323901
This about other Green party links to anti capitalist, socialist, communist and Marxist movements
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/theory/ecology.htm
The Green party’s specific policies and philosophies can be read here. http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/mfsspb.html
This page states the green party’s current understanding of climate change and their own mitigation policies
http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/mfsscc.html
William Connolley’s politics and beliefs are his own business in his personal life. Where they might impact on the public in a wider sense, some might say that his own deeply held beliefs and links may make him insufficiently objective to administer the climate science pages of the world’s most referenced information source.
Footnote-There is something of a Catch 22 situation. As the IPCC report -warts and all- is considered the pinnacle of verifiable climate science it is referenced accordingly by Wikipedia, so even debatable information is presented as factual. Consequently sceptical information -which by definition is therefore incorrect- will achieve limited profile. The end result is that those from the wider world seeking information on the subject will always end up with IPCC supplied ‘factual’ data and will take a view on climate change accordingly.
tonyb
587 views on Wikipedia on the 12th! I’m sure there were a lot more here, even on the 8th.
People looking for Lewis’ letter can find it here or elsewhere.
What is Connelly doing back on Wikipedia? Hasn’t he accomplished enough to be banned for life?
Connoly has a new article!
Its called the “mediaval wanished period”
From: http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/10/price-of-knowledge.html
Connely’s post on STOAT on October 12/10:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/10/im_sure_dr_lewis_deserves_some.php
It looks like he won’t be long at Wikipedia if you read the history.
Has WMC errred in using the word “happily”?
It looks like there are very formal procedures for challenging the deletion of the reference to Dr. Lewis’ letter on Wikipedia by William Connolley. I’ve sent a note to Jimmy Wales but would be happy to use the formal procedure if someone can point the way.
Reference to Hal’s resignation is now back on his wiki page, apparently The Spectator is RS.
And I have to admit; someone on the discussion page suggested Will be banned from his editorial responsibilities, which I ‘seconded’ (sic) with a brief editorial intended for Will’s reading pleasure. (My disdain for his activities and POV finally got the better of me.)
If anyone knows a better way to get the attention of the powers that be at wiki, let me know and I will pursue a better approach.
What is really humorous about using a picture of Nomad from Star Trek is how Nomad is overloading and mixes the words error and sterilize into “errorlize”. Perfect word for what happens on Wiki.
Interesting internal dialogue at Wikipedia, with and regarding Connely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Harold_Lewis
Interesting internal dialogue with, and regarding Connely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Harold_Lewis
Haha, a great unsigned comment about Connolley on the discussion page:
I firmly stand behind Wikipedia. No other online source is as handy for looking up the birth dates or political affiliations of Congressmen or the atomic weight of boron. OK…so beyond that it’s pretty useless…but you CAN find the atomic structure of MTBE there.
Seriously though, Wikipedia is handy for unambiguous, non-controversial information (e.g. the date Eisenhower died) but nearly useless for any information that is “open to interpretation” (e.g. Eisenhower’s civil rights policies). You can safely trust only about 20% of the content. Most of the rest of their content has fallen victim to revisionists. Why they allow it is beyond me. The user has to apply their own filters. I’ve actually been quite impressed with some of their articles. I was fact checking about fluorescent lighting and found their article to be very good…all factual, all verifiable, objective and with no particular slant. Even their article on MTBE wasn’t too bad. In fact, in many ways it was superior to most of the information found with a casual Google search. If only they could maintain those standards. When you start looking for information regarding people, issues or events the bias become readily evident and renders Wikipedia useless as a source. It’s actually a pity.
This chap Connolley seems to be a particuarly sad individual. I picture him hunched over his keyboard, night after night,….. after night…. after night…waiting… AFTER NIGHT… waiting.. … WAITING…WAITING… How long does he wait there?… waiting… … waiting… waiting… until… YES!!!… HE POUNCES…GOTCHA YOU BASTARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TYPE TYPE ERASE ERASE TYPE……TYPE…. TYPE….. ERASE… ERASE… ERASE… ERASE…. .TYPE ….TYPE…. TYPE ….TYPE……………….
Robinson says:
October 13, 2010 at 7:50 am
er . . . yeah, that was me. Sorry.
They’ve removed it now though. ( By ‘they’ I assume I am referring to WMC.)
“…and King Canute stood on the shore and commanded the waves to stop their crashing as he was King and Master of All He Surveyed.”
Canute was almost swept away by the incoming tide, but survived, humbled with a new perspective on his place in the grand scheme of things.
Life Lesson #5: Arrogance and pride always precede a fall. Perhaps Gore, Connelley and the rest of the Confederacy of Conceit will take note.
Sadly, more than likely, they won’t…
It all seems to be fixed now. Yes it was unreasonable to have one small paragraph about Lewis, followed by a large one purely quoting some of his resignation letter. The page is now well balanced with a link to his resignation letter.
Make you wonder how many uncontrolled revisions he adjusted in the HadCM3 of the CO2 forcing parameter. I would bet that with all the his “preferential adjustments” that the MetCentre’s seasonal forecasting was always “warm biased”.
If they did a fresh install of the HadCM3, I bet it would be comparable to “more accurate models” 😉
Patrick Davis
October 13, 2010 at 4:03 am
These people have no shame! Off with their heads…oh but we can’t do that in civil society, can we?
#
No we can’t. It’s what they do 🙁
I’ve been trying to get the folks at Britanicia to dump the stupid membership fee requirements at their website, at least on an abbreviated version, and go the fast access open-site way and knocketh the socks off the corrected sociosanitized and sociocorrected and socioedited crap-olla at the sociopathetic subject wikisite. (If they, the Chicago Brits, don’t getteth with the program I feareth they will not last too many fortnights hense, me thinks, and my kith and kin and I grew up on their books and if it weren’t for them we sould not be whom we areth today –get the pic?)
I went to the Wiki page on the “hockey stick” and noticed that there is no mention of McShane & Wyner’s paper. Has anyone made Wikipedia aware of the paper?
Wiki doesn’t consider The Register (El Reg) to be a reliable source because its always making fun of Wiki, it’s founder and it’s editors.
Consider Connelley’s association with Europe’s Red-Green Alliance. It is described as a revolutionary socialist political party. Connelley is well-schooled in the ways of Saul Alinsky and the “Rules for Radicals.”
Any questions?
Maybe William Connelly should rethink his priorities. After he dies, much of his life’s work, the censorship of others, will be undone within a month. His accomplishments, such as they are, are totally negative. What a sad little man.
Don’t forget the vote he forced and lost on deleting Joanne Nova from Wikipedia last week either. I left a note on it in Tips and Notes at the time. You guys can double check me on that, I may have misread but I’m sure I didn’t.
Someone with a current Wikipedia account should post a series of footnotes to back up every one of these assertions:
“Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)”
It’ll take a while for me to get to where I can edit restricted articles, but I think it’s worthwhile. Wikipedia is too useful to concede to Red-Green shills like Connelley.
The guy seems to be a little narrow minded and overzealous.
It is interesting to read the discussion for the wuwt blog on wiki –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Watts_Up_With_That%3F
Mr Connelly seems to have some advocates and like minded people, especially ScienceApologist – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ScienceApologist
Funnily enough, his whole ethos seems to suggest that he should agree with Hal Lewis.
This whole wiki thing seems to be perfect for zealots to control the information flow and to suppress any comments or arguments that are contrary to their views although the irony is that they insist that wiki seems to insist that it should not be used as a reliable source !
The discussions and talks on Gobal Warming are probably more informative than the published articles.
On the bright side – QScience seems to be a good guy – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Q_Science
Is Connolley a denier with regard to Lewis?
The total irony is that William Connelly has his own wikipedia page which shows not the slightest sign of being notable – because the only thing that makes this idiot notable is his bully boy tactics on Wikipedia.
Personally, I used to write quite a few articles on wikipedia (NOT ABOUT CLIMATE – house of Lords reform was one I wrote) and I happened to accept the climate dogma.
Then I met this silly billy and I took exception to his bullying and found that Wikipedia did absolutely nothing to stop him. So:
– I stopped writing anything for Wikipedia.
– I felt I could no longer trust the word of the “warmists” if they were so underhand with things like Wikipedia
– Since I discovered their lies … I’ve had a little hobby undoing their work on Wikipedia and I think I probably have more than compensated for Silly Billy!! He he he he!!
Shytot says: “This whole wiki thing seems to be perfect for zealots to control the information flow and to suppress any comments or arguments that are contrary to their views although the irony is that they insist that wiki seems to insist that it should not be used as a reliable source !”
I remember a discussion with the zealots when they more or less told me that the BBC wasn’t a reliable source for Wikipedia!! Basically, the only source they permit are the climate “scientists” … and guess who are the main people editing the article … yes, that’s right, its those same climate “scientists” or at least their sycophants and underlings.
In fact, I remember at one point there was some issue that they had to give way on because they didn’t have any supporting references … and then by some miracle a specially written paper got produced … they were even bold enough to talk about the way it was being produced and when it was going to be ready.
Talk about being stitched up!!
I’ve no doubt the wikipedia has the dirty paw-prints of Mann-made contributions!
To be fair, The Register *isn’t* a reliable source. The original poster erred in using it and not waiting for the later RS link. In doing so he provided cover for Mr Connelly to strike and technically be in the right.
I don’t say that Mr Connelly was right or honorable, as the right and honorable thing would be to replace the non-RS link with an RS link, which would have taken a 15 sec googling.
Mr. Connelly knew he was being a “rules lawyer” by showing his bias in saying “happily”.
The useful lesson here is “dot all i’s and cross all tees,” or the unscrupulous will capitalize on the trivial to silence the essential.
It is interesting to watch that the warmists can only maintain their stranglehold on public opinion by suppressing information.
Very much like the Soviet Union before its end. Wikipedia was intended to be an encyclopedia, and it is now an instrument of reality distortion and mass delusion. The collapse of the warmist movement will be a rude awakening for many.
John Galt says “Who is Hal Lewis?”
If anyone has the will, here’s the wikipedia page to Nomad. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomad_%28Star_Trek%29 I suggest putting something on the page about William Connelly as the cheif Sterilizer of wikipedia entries.
tonyb:
If it is not “verifiable” by Wikipedia’s standards that well-intentioned and credible skepticism exists to AGW given the huge mass of information that exists on the subject, then I would say there is a problem with the “strict editorial rules” you cite.
I fully recognize that some kind of guidelines ought to exist as to what can be posted, but when editors spend hours keeping a single undisputed (except for the sourcing) piece of information out of a stub class article, and express schadenfreude-esque glee because they have the Pharisaic right to do so, there is a problem with the rules, or the people, or both.
Is Connelly banned or not? We keep hearing about it, but it never seems to stick.
Will no one rid us of this troublesome editor?
All one need do is compare Unrealclimate stats with WUWT? stats. Those who run wicki don’t seem to understand the harm Connelly is doing to their credibility. Perhaps it has not hit them in the pocketbook yet. Censorship cannot be a good thing, ever.
Woe is me, triple woe is me! Once again an intrepid WUWT reader gets the Canute story backwards. So, dear scientist, what was your source? Did you check at source???
Canute knew perfectly well what the tide would do. His action was to demonstrate to his fawning ministers that he did NOT have command over the elements.
jorgekafkazar says: October 13, 2010 at 9:25 am
The Canute reference here shows that faulty ideas can persist all too well. However, nice to read the comments here. Kudos Mike Haseler! Warm thanks! Keep it up!
RockyRoad says: October 13, 2010 at 4:41 am
Hey, I’ve an idea Anthony. Why not have a weekly Wikipedia piece here? First, to keep the spotlight on WMC. Second, to look to building up the REAL wiki we need. Like, take a bad article. Crowdsource a rewrite. Paste it up. Have mods on the case 24/7 like WMC does with his little red “No Pressure” buttons…
Ah, the technics. How can we crowdsource a rewrite? …………….
Wikipedia needs a Torquemada to gracefully revise its articles. But Lucy Skywalker’s idea of a weekly Wikipedia piece here would be worst than taking all of them to the Inquisition, they would have one and only choice left: To repent wholeheartedly of their sins or disappear.
vukcevic says:
October 13, 2010 at 5:09 am
Do you think there is a brown and white dressed inquisition priest behind it? 🙂
Just keep on telling him, like Galileo Galilei : “E pur si muove”
Ok, this might be a bit long so sorry for that ahead of time.
First off, the ArbCom proceeding are going quite slowly but it looks like Connolley and several of his cohorts will be topic banned for at least 6 months (they can appeal after that). The downside is that several of his more prolific supporters are not going to be topic banned and nearly every single person who has opposed that group (myself and several others) will be topic banned too (most on my side on really pathetic grounds).
My personal belief is that Connolley will set up a sockpuppet account (if he hasn’t already) in order to continue his crusade and ArbCom has not indicated that they will check his IP now in order to prevent this from happening. These people literally are insane; one of the ArbCom clerks revealed private personal information about a couple people on my side to one of Connolley’s cohorts (who isn’t getting banned) who then passed off that information to a few very dangerous people who are now harassing them offline.
It is completely outrageous, but even though ArbCom is aware of the problem with Connolley et all they have bought into the myth that they are “great content contributors” (translation: they push AGW) and so they give them a huge amount of leeway.
Bearmanpig says:
October 13, 2010 at 8:26 am
‘“…and King Canute stood on the shore and commanded the waves to stop their crashing as he was King and Master of All He Surveyed.”
Canute was almost swept away by the incoming tide, but survived, humbled with a new perspective on his place in the grand scheme of things.’
I think you have it about face Bearmanpig. Knut Sveinsson wished to show his sycophantic courtiers that he was an ordinary man and had no such powers to control nature, as they had suggested to him in shameless flattery. We should embrace him as a sceptic. But we all know who the courtiers are and it’s a shame our rulers are not so rational. The original story is Henry of Huntingdon’s but the best version is from the historical parody ‘1066 & All That’ by Sellers and Yeatman:
‘Canute began by being a Bad King on the advice of his Courtiers who informed him (owing to a misunderstanding of the Rule Britannia) that the King of England was entitled to sit on the sea without getting wet. But finding that they were wrong he gave up this policy and decided to take his own advice in future – thus originating the memorable proverb, “Paddle your own Canute” …’
[REPLY – Checking for a blog policy injunction against bad puns. If I find one, this post is DUST. ~ Evan]
They would probably replace him with the equally impartial man of integrity, gavin schmidt.
What’s frightening is when discussion material at WP gets deleted. When I first read this thread I went to the discussion page, where I found part of the material I’ve drawn attention to here, that has now been deleted – less than 2 hours.
ah, meant to add some more from that particularly interesting deletion of mere comments.
Perhaps this was an autobot delete because unsigned, but I’m not sure. The Good Locust here knows the malfeasances there pretty well.
It’s really quite sad how you people can work yourselves into a frenzy in hundreds of comments to complain about one, quickly reversed, edit on Wikipedia. You seem to get a real kick out of thinking you are persecuted by nefarious forces, building mountains out of molehills.
Let’s face it, that letter from a long retired physicist who as far as I can tell never worked on anything related to climate science is soon going to be forgotten even by you, once you manage to find another “scandal” to get upset about.
Is it true that that con olly is paid off of tax payers money to do all this?
I could not find in the English version of wikipedia list of 11 falsehoods:
Snow of Kilimanjaro disappearance
Antarctic melting
Millions of refugees
Sea levels rise
Hurricane Katrina caused by GW
Rise in CO2 advances temperatures
Gulf current will stop
Sea corals disappearance
4 polar bears drowned
Greenland ice will disappear
Lake Chad drying out due to GW
Sinking of Pacific islands
all listed by UK courts in the Gore’s ‘Inconvenient truth’ film ban, but they are in some other languages versions.
Hello Thomas, you should do comedy. Perhaps you know this chap:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100058818/what-on-earth-is-bob-ward/
‘….isn’t this exactly what Bob Ward does all the ruddy time, popping up like a bad smell on TV and radio whenever a rentaquote spokesman is needed to talk about ‘Climate Change’? He’s a PR man, let us remind ourselves, not a scientist ‘
And Connolley does much the same on wikipedia. Maybe you do here. When the music’s over, Connolley and his ilk will (perhaps, since they appear to have no insight now) realise that they made a bargain with the devil, like Faustus, trading their reputations, if they had them, for temporary power. Mountains from molehills eh? The end of the world from 0.036%?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/belette/5050213093/
A window into his world.
p.s. “belette” is French for stoat….
From the Wiki Harold Lewis talk page, courtesy of this sad Connolley chap:
“Agreed; AFD looks like the right thing.” 07:44, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Harold_Lewis
I had to look up what AFD stands for and it means “Article for Deletion.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion
So this {snip} whose only real claim to fame is as a Neo-Inquisitor political activist and who has his own Wiki page thought that the correct course of action would be to delete Hal Lewis from Wiki altogether? He was deemed unworthy? The audacity of this doude is “incontrovertible”.
REPLY: Mr. Connolley has tried to delete the pages of many people who speak up. This is not new for him. The wet dishrags that run Wikipedia let sterilizers like Connolley run roughshod over most anything. – Anthony
A comment from Stoats blog (Connolleys blog)
13
That wiki page is much better now, and I imagine will improve still further with time.
It’s interesting to see how much of an apparent about-face he’s made wrt climate change (unless the stuff quoted in comments above was only written out of a conscious desire to cash in on the scam?). But it’s telling that the main trigger seems to have been the emails, not the science. That’s becoming such a familiar story…
Posted by: outeast | October 13, 2010 8:14 AM
Thomas says:
October 13, 2010 at 1:07 pm
It’s really quite funny how I can work myself into a frenzy yada yada yada
As rock hyrax wee is a boon for paleoclimate reconstruction, Stoat leavings will become a history for climatology in the wiki era.
The Register was the first to call Wikipedia out in 2004, I think it called them “the Khmer Rouge in Diapers” – a pretty accurate description.
Andrew Orlowski was smeared for his trouble. Look at his Wikipedia entry, it’s angry Wikipedians getting their revenge. Unfortunately for Connolly there are thousands of links at Wikipedia citing The Register, and he can’t remove them all.
Does any other “Encyclopedia” act so childishly?
EthicallyCivil says:
October 13, 2010 at 10:23 am
To be fair, The Register *isn’t* a reliable source
Or, if I may suggest a slight revision to this statement (wiki-style): To be fair, The Register is *usually* a reliable source but this article was written by Lewis Page and his articles can *never* be considered a reliable source.
Don’t get me wrong, Lewis Page is my favourite journalist at El Reg (never, never, “el rego”), his writing style is second to none; always amusing, always informative but also always to be taken with a grain of salt as his personal passions are poured out on every page.
That said, the Wikipedia page never needed all that text from Hal Lewis’ resignation letter. It works much better with a simple one sentence summary of the fact that he had resigned and a link to the letter for those who wish to learn more.
1984 meets the “memory hole”.
Keep stuffing the facts down the memory hole – hopefully no one will notice.
Whoops looks like everyone just did.
How embarresing for wikipedia
It is very interesting to see you use “nefarious” to deny any wrongdoing and serve as an apologist for the very people responsible for the criminal conduct in the Climategate scandal and related post-normal so-called climate science. You can attempt to disguise and pretend the “mountains” of evidence demonstrating unethical and crmiminal conduct by the proponents of AGW amount to nothing more significant than “molehills,” but your attempts to do so are failing miserably. That’s alright, however, because your folly only serves to awaken the suspicions and the responses of even the most oblivious of uninformed observers. Keep up the good work.
Meanwhile, we’ll be more than happy to continue spotlighting the incidents of “nefarious” misconduct and acts of real persecution, no thanks to you.
The latest Connolley comment is riddled with condescension… clearly he thinks people past a certain age lose their marbles (Connolley is my age… what’s his excuse?):
“It seems regrettable that 80% of this chaps biog should be a regrettable letter that he wrote in old age. Is that really the only notable thing he has done? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:03, 12 October 2010 (UTC)”
BTW was rouge a slip? Look at his user page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_M._Connolley
He is badged as a “rouge admin” replete with Jolly Roger flag in bright red:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rouge-Admin_JollyRoger.svg
I couldn’t think of a more appropriate flag for someone who rapes and pillages across the Wiki seas…
A few comments, since I’m one of the Wikipedia editors involved in l’affaire Harold Lewis:
1). The article is much better now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lewis
Things move pretty fast at Wikipedia.
2). Connolley’s actually a pretty reasonable editor– except when something sets him off, and he’s not, like here. He’s certainly knowledgeable, and even pitched in with some BG info on Prof. Lewis once I prodded him a bit. Lewis has an interesting backstory — see the article.
3) The WP climate-change articles are in much better shape now than before I got involved. Coincidence? Pick your favorite topic, and have a look. Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_McKitrick . Even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Watts_%28blogger%29 isn’t too bad. Anthony — we need a photo!
Better yet, contribute to WP instead of complaining!
4) The Register article will probably go back in, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#The_Register_article_on_physicist.27s_resignation_from_the_American_Physical_Society
But it doesn’t really matter, since lots of other sources have since picked up the Lewis/APS story.
Best regards, Peter D. Tillman
Consulting Geologist, Arizona and New Mexico (USA)
REPLY: Peter, thank you for the update! Yes I see now there’s been improvements, thank you. I did contribute to Wikipedia at one time, creating the page for the Climate Reference Network. It was soon hacked apart, and I found myself disillusioned with the entire process. It seems less like a collaborative effort and more like a food fight. But your notes make me hopeful this will change. There’s a photo on my facebook page you can use here. It was taken at KHSL-TV in 2002 IIRC. – Anthony
Patrick Davis says:
I am still stunned that these people, anyone in fact, believes one can “disappear” stuff from the interweb. Well, maybe sometimes, but mostly one fails after the event.
The simple act of trying to ban or censor something tends to draw attention to it. People who would otherwise never have heard about it will be queueing up to view the webpage, buy the book, see the movie, etc.
This is nothing new (It happened with Monty Python’s Life of Brian over 30 years ago). But it can now take a matter of minutes/hours before people all over the planet are aware what is going on.
Thomas:
Let’s face it, that letter from a long retired physicist who as far as I can tell never worked on anything related to climate science is soon going to be forgotten even by you, once you manage to find another “scandal” to get upset about.
Once you’ve finished trying to convince yourself by talking to your mirror, Thomas, maybe you should consider taking a course in logic? Hint, your willfully ignorant personal wishes and needs are not anyone else’s commands. And also ask yourself why you try to support this Climate Science crappola, and so pitifully! Is your life that meaningless?
Mark says: “The simple act of trying to ban or censor something tends to draw attention to it. People who would otherwise never have heard about it will be queueing up to view the webpage, buy the book, see the movie, etc.”
And you can’t censor nature!
They can spend all the hours on earth modifying Wikipedia to fit their own preconceived ideas as to how we should view nature, but nature doesn’t listen to these idiots and it will do what it will do.
As we all know at the very least the threat of global warming AND the extent (if any) of human global warming is massively overblown, we know that sooner or later the cold facts of mother nature will force them to change Wikipedia to suit the reality of what really happens rather than what they think we should be told will happen.
That’s half the fun of Wikipedia climate articles. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion. Worse, the car driver is not only trying to pretend they are in control, they are even showing off to us how well they can control the car, but we can see the thick layer of ice which they are denying is there and then slowly slowly slowly the car begins to spin, they try to pretend it is still going straight but, we can see it slowly turning around and their struggles to gain control have absolutely no effect on the car. And, its such an expensive car which they’ve spent so much time and love on fashioning to be the ultimate in driving experience. and did they listen to anyone who told them their was ice on the road?
Bang!
@ Peter Tillman
Peter – your comments and input in wikipedia are indeed fair.
I have only revisited wikipedia on the back of this story and there are obviously a few reasonable minded people who are trying to make it better.
That said, the link from Lucy Skywalker’s post to the “Regret” heading could easily be condensed into a simple sentence saying – “I don’t agree with this guy’s inputs so I will do whatever I can to keep them off wikipedia”.
Also, as mentioned above Connolly has several pals who will continue to do the dirty work for him.
As for contributing to wikipedia – I think that is also a fair comment, however, it appears that several WUWT contributors have tried and been well and truly shafted.
So maybe it is best left as is – for general information on dates and specific points and leave it as an unreliable source for factual information on global warming.
When you consider Hal Lewis’ illustrious scientific career and the Wikipedia biography and compare it with Stoat’s very undistinguished scientific career with the voluminous guff of Stoat’s wiki bio, you realise exactly why Wikipedia is a menace to knowledge and scholarship.
As far as Connelley’s revisionism and censorship, its been a constant factor for many years. He really can’t help himself.
Mr. Tillman- Could you please correct the wiki page for my father , as it is filled with incorrect and erroneous information. A google search of Dr. Tim Ball will reveal much of the misinformation is put out by sites like Desmogblog. They are not a CR. Look further and you will find much different and more accurate information easily on the net. To look at the wiki page on my father is distasteful to be sure, along with inaccurate. Many have tried to correct it, but Connelly and his “assistants” keep changing it back. You need to have unbiased gatekeepers at the helm. Please and thank you.
While I appreciate Tillman’s corrections of Connelley’s attempts to “memory hole” the resignation letter, he (Tillman) is far too forgiving of Connelley. Connelley’s obvious abuse of his (heightened compared to regular users) editorial privileges merits the revocation of those privileges. Otherwise Wikipedia is 100% a battle of “who spoke last” — and even now it is perilously close to such.
I’ll believe the bona fides of Mr. Tillman when I see him speak out in favor of stripping the likes of Connelley of their ability to edit articles. “Boys will be boys” just doesn’t cut it.
>>>Better yet, contribute to WP instead of complaining!
Tried that. Got banned, for saying that wind turbines were intermittent !!
.
“el rego isn’t an RS”
Says a man who edits Wikipedia. And they say Americans don’t do irony…
@David Ball
Your father’s bio was recently deleted according to this conversation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Timothy_Ball
As you can see most of the votes were to “Keep.” What you don’t see is that on the ArbCom PD page Connolley made a point about how he was going to delete the page and several of his friends showed up to do exactly that.
Another thing that isn’t obvious is that the admin who closed it as “delete” (against the consensus to keep) has a pro-AGW/WMC bias and is, in fact, also the ArbCom clerk I mentioned who released private information that was passed to dangerous religious fundamentalist who then used that information to harass people offline.
ArbCom is well aware of his activities but they seem to be protecting him either because of his viewpoint, the fact that he is a minor, or since they feel they may be legally responsible if the people he endangered come to harm.
I know this stuff sounds unbelievable because it is so sick (and I’m leaving stuff out because I don’t want to mess up any future legal proceedings), but to the best of my knowledge it is true.
WMC topic banned on WP. Sorry not sure if anyone has posted this already. BishopHill has the link and it’s also given here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change/Proposed_decision#William_M._Connolley_topic-banned_.28R3.29
Are William Connolly’s contributions peer-reviewed?
Yep, it came down pretty much as expected. They let a few of the AGW group beg for voluntary topic bans so they can come back in 6 months and they refused to ban several really bad characters. They also banned nearly every single skeptic on really dubious grounds – perhaps they were expecting an increase in activity with Connolley gone and they wanted to get rid of anyone who could show the new guys the ropes so they don’t get banned (too quickly anyway).
Anyway, I’m happy Connolley is gone, that the case is finally over and now I don’t have to deal with wikipedia’s crap anymore.
‘Revisionism’ is a form of ‘denialism’ with exactly the same black connotation. E.g. David Irving.
@Ross – ‘The Register called Wikipedia “the Khmer Rouge in Diapers”’:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/07/khmer_rouge_in_daipers/
I thought up the phrase ‘Khmer Vert’ – at last – my own buzzword! I was disappointed to find someone else had already used it. Then I found out it was a parody of skeptics parodying warmists. A bit like Fran Armstrong’s movie parodying greenshirts blowing up recalcitrant children. Just a bit of harmless, self-deprecating humor, showing the climate change promoters are big enough to laugh at themselves. Nothing to worry about.
http://wikipediaisbiased.wordpress.com
‘Hate, wikibias and the Arab Islamic militant lobby’
THE PROBLEM WITH WIKIPEDIABIAS VIS-A-VIS ISRAEL
HOW IT ‘WORKS’
1) OUTNUMBERED
There’s always 2 to 1 or 10 to 2, in the ratio when trying to defend the non-Palestinian version.
2) NON-STOP ORGANIZED
The anti-Israel wikipedians are 24 hrs non-stop well organized and work in team (though one or tow are using “sock puppets” when needed), tag-teams, suggesting organizations and financial backing.
This lobby works mainly in: Edit wars, relentless reverting edits they dislike, pushing to delete any article that is not in their line. Lobbying adminIstrators to back them up.
3) AGGRESSIVE AND RADICAL
The (POV – point of view pushing] line these anti-Israel users adopted is hard-line Islamist.
4) WHAT IS A RELIABLE SOURCE? AND ‘YOU ARE A SOCK – BLOCKED!’
One of the main “leaders” in the anti-Israel Arab-Islamic “mob” has introduced and dictates a line whereby any non-lefty Israel source is branded as unreliable and whoever comes fresh to wikipedia and tries to defend the non-anti-Israel-line “must” be a “sockpuppet” of someone else, and pushes administrators to block him/her based on this pseudo notion and “evidence.”
5) TERRORIZING
The terrorizing mentality by some Islamists in real life does not escape Wikipedia, once an editor makes edit/s “not in line” they are after him/her, harassing, keeping reverting his edits, even when unrelated to Israel.
6) WHERE THE BIAS – SCREAMS
Anti-Israel editors are allowed to edit war as much as they wish, the other side is being harassed under banner of “disruption.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Chesdovi_blocked ]
“Accusation” of someone as a sockpuppet if it’s by anti-Israel Islamists its considered in a serious manner, carefully investigated and blocking occurs even without definite evidence, when such an accuation is being presented by the other side it’s rejected as an outright “bad faith,” and never investigated.