Apparently Mr. Connolley has edited 5428 Wikipedia articles, most about climate. Die Kalte Sonne:
Unbelievable but true: The Wikipedia umpire on Climate Change was a member of the UK Green Party and openly sympathized with the views of the controversial IPCC. So it was not a referee, but the 12th Man of the IPCC team.
I’m not sure how accurate the translation is, but it suggests he was somehow part of the IPCC “short list” team. See it here at Die Kalte Sonne via this Google Translate link:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kaltesonne.de%2F%3Fp%3D7858
With over 5000 articles he’s edited, it makes you wonder if Mr. Connolley was employed by someone or some organization specifically for the task.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Every successful organization eventually gets hijacked by zealots. The interesting aspect of Wikipedia’s case is that you can see it happening on an article-by-article basis: we’ve probably all had the experience of trying to balance an article (in my case, DRM) only to discover that the article’s imbalance is ferociously guarded by a pack of unsleeping dogs. I love Wikipedia, and hope it can last a long time before it succumbs completely.
S-witch, and the science fits.
Most things in life can be explained with Money Python
BEDEMIR: Tell me, what do you do with witches?
VILLAGER #2: Burn!
CROWD: Burn, burn them up!
BEDEMIR: And what do you burn apart from witches?
VILLAGER #1: More witches!
VILLAGER #2: Wood!
BEDEMIR: So, why do witches burn?
[pause]
VILLAGER #3: B–… ’cause they’re made of wood…?
BEDEMIR: Good!
CROWD: Oh yeah, yeah…
BEDEMIR: So, how do we tell whether she is made of wood?
VILLAGER #1: Build a bridge out of her.
BEDEMIR: Aah, but can you not also build bridges out of stone?
VILLAGER #2: Oh, yeah.
BEDEMIR: Does wood sink in water?
VILLAGER #1: No, no.
VILLAGER #2: It floats! It floats!
VILLAGER #1: Throw her into the pond!
CROWD: The pond!
BEDEMIR: What also floats in water?
VILLAGER #1: Bread!
VILLAGER #2: Apples!
VILLAGER #3: Very small rocks!
VILLAGER #1: Cider!
VILLAGER #2: Great gravy!
VILLAGER #1: Cherries!
VILLAGER #2: Mud!
VILLAGER #3: Churches — churches!
VILLAGER #2: Lead — lead!
ARTHUR: A duck.
CROWD: Oooh.
BEDEMIR: Exactly! So, logically…,
VILLAGER #1: If… she.. weighs the same as a duck, she’s made of wood.
BEDEMIR: And therefore–?
VILLAGER #1: A witch!
CROWD: A witch!
BEDEMIR: We shall use my larger scales!
[yelling]
BEDEMIR: Right, remove the supports!
[whop]
[creak]
CROWD: A witch! A witch!
WITCH: It’s a fair cop.
CROWD: Burn her! Burn! [yelling]
For every controversy, Wikipedia has a gatekeeper!
richardscourtney says:
January 30, 2013 at 3:54 pm
“No, he wrote about a rightist state in ’1984′.”
You mean by rightist state stalin is a moderate right hitler’s right wing?
“Like me, Orwell was a left wing socialist”
Not really Orwell like most people of the day believed in eugenics and socialism and a host of other things because they were indoctrinated into that belief system. He steadily moved back to the center and even fairly rightwing toward the end. Thats the science definition of rightwing not the “stalin is a moderate” political definition.
“Totalitarianism is a great evil.”
No collectivism is the great evil which is totalitarianism/authoritarianism both of which are leftwing.
@richard and @Russ: totalitarians of the left and the right
I think political-economic philosophies are described using an improper coordinate system.
A Cylindrical coordinate system could be far more useful. “Left and Right” are really “West” and “East” respectively. Keep going west and keep going east and you find the very same totalitarians waiting for you.
The vertical dimension of the coordinate system is degree of private ownership.
So, using an arbitrary origin of
(0,1) as pure capitalism
(0,0) becomes total anarchy, no government, with no concept of private anything.
(180,1) is Fascism – complete private property, but total government control over it.
(180,0) is Communism – collective ownership and total control by government.
The two paths from 0 to 180 (west and east) have to be given some definition. Arbitrarily, toward 90 favors rule of men, 270 favors rule of law
(270,1) is Mercantilism.
(90,1) is Protectionism
(90,0) is Socialism
(270,0) is Mercantilism with the government owning all assets… = Colonialism?
(45,0.5) = Tribalism.
(315, 0.5) = Feudalism
Could this transformation of the political landscape be a possible answer to why political and economic discussions wind up “going in circles”?
I thought we had finally gotten rid of Connolley for good myself. Sigh…
Fortunately, or unfortunately, no; all it takes is a pathological personality. At this point Wikipedia does not have an effective method of dealing with pathological personalities who lack the self-restraint to restrain their enthusiasms [or psychotisms] and confine their work to the level of their personal competence or exclude their own biases. This shortcoming, and it is a major one, is Wikipedia’s greatest hurdle to overcome. If we don’t get over it, eventually it will kill the project. On the other hand an entire global civilization is learning to edit an encyclopedia. This is no small thing. One might expect there to be some problems at first.
I am a [very modest] Wikipedia editor, if you were to stumble across my own User Page you would discover that I have edited several hundred pages – mostly very minor edits. You would also find this statement:
The thought I will leave you all with is this: all human knowledge WILL eventually be aggregated into a single digital database, who do you want to hold the keys? YOU or Gooogle???
Time to get to work.
W^3
All one needs to know about Connolley is described at Wikipedia, under his species namesake, the Stoat:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoat?
[excerpts]
Stephen Rasey says:
January 30, 2013 at 7:01 pm
“complete private property, but total government control over it.”
The more the government controls something the more it owns it. Fascism under your definition is simply impossible. Too truly own something you must control it. To truly control something you must own it.
If the government has control over something then they dictate who owns its, when they own it and how they own it. That means the person who owns it is simply in name only since the government can give or take it away any time it feels like it.
Well, there must be one thing that really burns Connolley – that RealClimate and WUWT both have wiki pages, while his own blog is listed as a footnote under his own page.
Why doesn’t he help out his peers – make pages about Tamino’s Open Mind and others?
Must be pretty bad if even wiki doesn’t recognize several “prominent” bloggers…
It seems to me that contributing to Wikipedia under the current conditions, where gatekeepers such as Connolley can edit and re-write as they wish, regardless of the truth, and ban those who disagree with him, is exactly what educated honest people should not do. Participation gives the whole enterprise a validity which it doesn’t deserve, while the owners refuse to ban – entirely and forever – those editors so grossly in breach of the principles on which it should be founded. There should have been no come-back for Connolley and his ilk, once caught and condemned in his jiggery pokery.
The list of biased and dishonest edits regarding climate science, including banning living scientists from correcting matters of fact in entries about themselves, is so egregious as to be a matter of the greatest academic scandal. Meanwhile children are encouraged to use the Wiki as a primary source of reference, and believe what they read there is gospel.
How anyone can support such an enterprise with their time or their money is beyond me. I would be very glad to see it fail, though I fear it’s now too big ever to vanish. I do use it for things like checking on movies, and for some historical topics; but on any subject with even the slightest political implication, it’s not to be trusted.
Caleb – it would not be the first nor the second time in history that group-think has made the Germans out to be fools. There’s no reason to think the Germans of today are like the Germans of the 1900’s, but it does make you go “hmmmm” sometimes to think how easily some cultures can be repeatedly duped.
Another online ‘pedia should be developed by tweaking Wikipedia’s guidelines to allow side-by-side opposing views along with running debates. Unfortunately, such a format could easily devolve into meaningless arguments about angels dancing on pins and needles. –maybe that’s when editors with authority could step in and apply rules of proper argumentation to keep things focused.
Being the “12th man on the field” is a soccer reference alluding to a crooked referee who, in addition to the 11 players of one team shifts the balance by making decision in favor of “his” team while pretending to be the official.
dp says:
January 30, 2013 at 10:18 pm
“Caleb – it would not be the first nor the second time in history that group-think has made the Germans out to be fools. There’s no reason to think the Germans of today are like the Germans of the 1900′s, but it does make you go “hmmmm” sometimes to think how easily some cultures can be repeatedly duped.”
Well, when I look at the US, MSNBC, CNN, David Lettermann or this Stewart person from the Daily Show sure make me go hmmm… THEY HAVE VIEWERS? While we’re talking about duping.
The 12th man is the reserve player on a cricket team.
They can’t bat, it’s often referred to as “carrying the drinks.”
So you may not see them but they are definitely part of the team.
ie. Not the Umpire/Referee.
dp says:
January 30, 2013 at 10:18 pm
“Caleb – it would not be the first nor the second time in history that group-think has made the Germans out to be fools. ”
True, but the IPCC duped the UK, Australia, the US, Norway, Sweden, Denmark,….
Well, that is, a small group in each of these countries decided to dupe the rest.
The rest didnt care much, or bother much with it all, until leaders started gathering in big meetings, trying to take complete control [of] the energy usage in all countries. Then it fell apart. Climategate helped.
So now, like in Norway, it isnt that we are duped, its just that in the western democracies nobody cares anymore whenever a tax is raised. And another business is moved to China.
richardscourtney, Jon Sanders:- I assume you did not do 1984 in school. .
It was about post war Britian. Which is why 1948 was the original proposed title. Orwells was left, but worried by with the abuse of power, particularly by the left. Naturally the Stalinist left had a problem with this. Big Brother was a 1940’s nick name for a UK labour MP. Ernest Bevin?. We know this as he did radio interviews and explaining his work.
Room 101 was his office in the BBC during the war. He specialisted in propaganda during WW2.
Editierauflagen = Editorial Conditions
Thanks Kaboom, it’s an expression in cricket too, but seeing it’s German you must be right. The 12’th man in cricket I believe is an emergency, usually not of the greatest calibre.
isabelle says:
January 30, 2013 at 2:50 pm
Thanks, Isabelle. The first problem is that Connelley is doing as much scaremongering as either Stern and Gore are doing, perhaps more … so why would we not want to discuss that here? All of them are bad news alarmists, all of them need opposing.
Regarding his blog, I refuse to visit or comment on blogs whose owners censor valid scientific opinion. These include “Open Mind”, “RealClimate”, and whatever Connolley’s blog might be called. I wouldn’t raise his page-view count by one, don’t have the time, don’t have the interest.
Finally, you assume that we haven’t addressed Señor Connolley right here on WUWT. Occasionally he comes over here to try to sell his alarmism. Of course, since he can’t control the conversation here, he doesn’t hang around much.
[UPDATE: William Connolley has informed me, in his usual unpleasant manner, that he is banned from the site. I was unaware of that, and so I wholly retract and apologize for my interpretation of why he has not been seen around here. The rest stands, however. -w.]
You can find his junk with a search. So there’s no need for me to go to his blog to tell him what I think about his actions. For example, here’s my comment from his ill-advised appearance on one of my threads, where he made the laughable claim that the climate models are not tuned to replicate the historical surface temperature given certain inputs:
As you can see, I was gonna tell him how I really felt, but I held back …
w.
the original source of the article (Kopp) features also anti-vaccination articles and similar stuff. Just a thought.
@Dodgy Geezer
I was just looking up Marshall & the stomach ulcer business this morning for other reasons. The wikipedia article is definitely wrong. I also noticed that a 2004 Skeptical Inquirer article explaining away the phenomenon was high on the google search results: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bacteria_ulcers_and_ostracism_h._pylori_and_the_making_of_a_myth/
Kimball Atwood makes the case that Marshall’s discovery of H. Pylori was accepted right away. But, that’s not how I remember it. Is there some movement to say that the H. Pylori explanation was accepted right away?
You could say the same thing for Galileo. His books were popular, relatively speaking. He had stargazing parties for friends. He was a professor at Padua, one of the great medieval schools. A minority of people who saw his work were unconvinced. Those people were the government inquisitors and other natural philosophers that didn’t want to be put in jail or give people cause to attack them. That’s all. The wikipedia article on Galileo is quite good in this respect, that Galileo’s ideas had some popularity in his time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
sean.fr :
Your post at January 30, 2013 at 11:32 pm says
I lived through post-war Britain so did not need to “do 1984 in school”.
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) who wrote under the pen-name of George Orwell was – like me – a left wing socialist who opposed the evil of totalitarianism. That is why he went to Spain to fight against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.
If you want to know his views then read ‘The Road To Wigan Pier’.
Yes, Orwell opposed abuse of power by left or right: like me, he was anti-totalitarian. But if you learned in school that Orwell was opposed to abuse of power “particularly by the left” then your teacher was very biased.
Richard
temp:
I have read your posts addressed to me in this thread.
I suggest you take your meds.
Richard
This search yields different numbers:
Username: William M. Connolley
User groups: autoreviewer, reviewer, rollbacker
First edit: Feb 07, 2003 11:46:59
Unique pages edited: 7,411
Average edits per page: 7.71
Live edits: 55,351
Deleted edits: 1,766
Total edits (including deleted): 57,117
http://toolserver.org/~tparis/pcount/index.php?name=William+M.+Connolley&lang=en&wiki=wikipedia