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
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.”
@ur momisuglyAndrew30 says: October 9, 2012 at 5:21 pm
@ur momisugly@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.
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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