Pointman writes: I think we’ve all had that pleasant surprise when something totally unexpected just drops out of the sky and into your lap. That happened to me last weekend when a creature called William Connolley attempted to comment on a piece I’d written about the Bengtsson scandal. If you’re unfamiliar with him, he’s infamous for editing thousands of Wikipedia articles on climate and anyone significant in the area. You can find several articles on his activities over at WUWT.
His idea of truth is somewhat idiosyncratic to say the least, but let’s just say if you were any way sceptical, you weren’t going to get a glowing entry. When the skeptics tried to correct the foul calumnies for their entry, they were promptly changed back, a loop they went around until he banned them from being able to edit anything.
I’m actually quite knowledgeable about him, since I’ve been a fawning admirer and stroker of his ego for as far back as his days co-founding the joke site called Real Climate with Gavin Schmidt and others of a similar ilk. Needless to say, it’s under one of my dark side Eco-Annie personas. The site is pretty much moribund these days but it did get a sniffy mention in the climategate emails by Phil “hide the decline” Jones, as being there just to disseminate propaganda.
He was never particularly significant in the self-declared pantheon of climate demigods, more like their technical gopher despatched as required to cobble together various bits of HTML for them. In his Wikipedia heyday, he built up a small but dedicated following of fanboys but since Wiki banned him and nobody sane reads his blogging attempts, he’s of late been at a loose end, cruising around the skeptic blogosphere, trolling for all he’s worth and generally leaving a terrible stench behind him.
As it happens, I’ve a personal score to settle with him, and one I never thought I’d get the chance to do but this looked to be a heaven-sent opportunity, if I could just play it right. Picking an appropriate way would undoubtedly come down to making use on his own rather inflated idea of his importance in the general scheme of things climatic, but in just the right way. He’s used to swimming around in a little pond of mutual fishy admirers and as far as I’m aware has never had a good kicking, so I laced up my steel-toed boots and thought about an appropriate bait to fix on the hook.
Read the rest of this entertaining post here: The scorning of William Connolley.
Of the 17,000 Wikipedia entries that you deleted and destroyed, which 3 of your edits were correct?
/sarcasm (There were actually 4 correct edits.)
What William Connolley did with his heavy handed editing on Wiki was criminal. He should have been prosecuted long ago…
Nurse my leg hurts…
😉
I was asking if there is any instance where you, now, in retrospect, think you went too far?
Obviously, lots of people think you did. Even think you did real damage to the Wiki-project, and thus are totally disagreeing with you!
My questions was (and is): Is everyone of those instances, do you think the other party had no valid point at all? That other viewpoints not only did not have any merit at all, but also had to be kept out of the record regarding a contentious issue. Essentially that only your version of the narrative should be made known to readers?
It’s a simple Yes/No question. And you didn’t answer …
> It’s a simple Yes/No question. And you didn’t answer …
Yes I did. I said “Nothing in particular springs to mind”. I have 58k+ edits (http://tools.wmflabs.org/supercount/index.php?user=William+M.+Connolley&project=en.wikipedia&toplimit=10) over 10 years. I can’t remember every one in detail. I repeat my offer: “is there any article or edit in particular you’d like to discuss?” Its a simple offer “And you didn’t answer …”
> Obviously, lots of people think you did.
Yes, that’s true, but generally most of them also can provide no specifics – its generally something they’ve heard from someone else, an endless chain with no obvious source. http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2010/01/04/a-childs-garden-of-wikipedia-p/ is part of my answer.
> Of the 17,000 Wikipedia entries that you deleted and destroyed
You’re not very good at this game. But, my deletion log is at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&offset=&limit=1500&type=delete&user=William+M.+Connolley&page=&tagfilter=&hide_patrol_log=1&hide_review_log=1&hide_thanks_log=1 if you want to look.
I suppose everyone here is familiar with the concept of shark jumping. The little brouhaha here is evidence that the AGW issue has jumped the shark. Banning, censoring and arguments about it show that the issue has lost content just like a sitcom that has gone on too long.
William Connolley says:
May 31, 2014 at 2:21 pm
….” I have 58k+ edits (http://tools.wmflabs.org/supercount/index.php?user=William+M.+Connolley&project=en.wikipedia&toplimit=10) over 10 years.”
thats moret 15 per day, every day, 365 days per year for 10 years……no breaks, no vacations…what do you do for a living?
besides censor those whose opinions differ from yours, that is,
You are right, I was wrong. 58,000 edits and detections. I most sincerely apologize. My value above was wrong. It was 17,000 edits per error detected.
Now, which of those 4 errors you deleted properly was actually justified by the evidence?
I once edited an entry on Chaos Theory on wiki.
The article was quite god but I noticed that it had changed since I last saw it.
Examples of Chaotic Systems used to include ‘weather and climate’ and now it only included weather. ‘Climate’ had been removed.
So I looked at the reference to Weather. It was a paper about Climate.
So I added Climate back in.
So within a day the Connolley troll appears and removes the word Climate.
So I replace it.
It disappears again as does the reference.
The explanation was “I looked at the reference and it wasn’t very good.”
Funny that that reference had been fine for four years while it supported ‘Weather’ but not when it supported its own subject ‘Climate’.
THAT is why people despise your arrogance Connolley.
Connolley makes Pointman’s point for him over & over right here for our pleasure. It’s cute seeing a monkey dance for his banana.
[snip I don’t particularly like Mr. Connolley either, but that’s over the top – Anthony]
because it was so good, right? 😉
everybody likes a little:
@William Howard
William, are you going to let that [snip] Pointman get away with talking to me like that?
Eco-Annie
[Please, when you are quoting a non-WUWT conversation that started elsewhere (such as Twitter or another web site), please be very clear where the words are coming from, and who is saying what words to whom. You can certainly quote public comments from others, but just be clear who you are quoting and what they are saying. .mod]
William Connolley says: What do you think of the behaviour of someone who censors the other side of a conversation
=============
Isn’t “hypocrite” the name for someone that complains when the shoe is on the other foot? What is the name for someone that censored Wikipedia wherever it disagrees with their narrow beliefs? Isn’t it true that the is a 97% consensus that the name for this is a “William Connolley”?
58k+ edits over 10 years.thats more than 15 per day, every day, 365 days per year for 10 years……no breaks, no vacations
===========
bots as I noted above. physically impossible for a human to monitor all the pages involved.
http://www.wikihow.com/Deal-with-a-Narcissist
Part 1 of 3: Dealing With a Narcissist Long-Term
1 Learn to identify a narcissist.
Ok, part 1 is dealt with.
http://www.wikihow.com/Deal-with-a-Narcissist
Part 2 of 3: Dealing With a Narcissist in the Short-Term
1 Avoid the mind games. Narcissists tend to be really good liars. The most important thing to remember is to cultivate a non-responsive attitude towards them. Don’t respond.
ferdberple says:
May 31, 2014 at 6:10 pm
true that.
just pointing out that he has a history of obsessive editing re wiki…
using a bot to enforce one’s weltanschauung…its sad, just sad.
> What is the name for someone that censored Wikipedia wherever it disagrees with their narrow beliefs?
“A strawman” is the correct name. Nonetheless, note that you are still evading the question re P’s behaviour.
> Don’t respond.
Yes. It requires self-restraint. You don’t seem to have that.
> Chaos Theory on wiki
There’s a discussion of this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chaos_theory#Weather_and_climate That’s a fairly full explanation of the edits.
Does not explain why a paper about climate was a suitable reference for ‘weather’ for four years but suddenly not good enough when it was pointed out that it referred to climate.
We all know the real reason, of course…
Some years back, I decided to read up on this “global warming” thing and find out for myself what it was all about. Immediately, a number of things seemed strange – the grafting of instrument records to temperatures obtained from proxies just at the point where the temperatures suddenly seemed to rocket skywards; the lack of a clear explanation of the greenhouse effect at (say) physics graduate level; the reliance on unvalidated models for “evidence”.
Well before Climategate, I concluded that “climate science” in general was untrustworthy. The way “climate science” was presented by Wikipedia was one of the principal things that hastened my reaching that conclusion.
William Connolley says:
May 31, 2014 at 2:21 pm
Yes I did. I said “Nothing in particular springs to mind”. I have 58k+ edits (http://tools.wmflabs.org/supercount/index.php?user=William+M.+Connolley&project=en.wikipedia&toplimit=10) over 10 years. I can’t remember every one in detail. I repeat my offer: “is there any article or edit in particular you’d like to discuss?” Its a simple offer “And you didn’t answer …”
Nothing springs to mind? Please take one by one those edits and look what you have done. It may be a start.
I take randomly: global cooling.
The articles about global cooling are a farce. No objectivity in presenting those but from a global warming activist point of view.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
Little support in scientific community? Simple lie.
“In January 1999 contrarian Patrick Michaels wrote”
Contrarian to what?
Peer reviewed papers predicting global warming and cooling classification based on SkS site? What scientific reference is that? And of course self reference.
Take the greenhouse effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
The explanation is obfuscating and not clarifying the effect, the effect is a simple thermal energy transfer where the rate of the transfer is influenced through the radiation property of the gases, but not only by that.
It could be nice and scientifically explained with examples how the heat transfer is influenced in various gas compositions and where are the challenges.
What has been done there is a catastrophe.
Also interesting to note that in the same article about greenhouse effect the role of CO2 and composition in the ice cores is mentioned, but not a single mention is done to the fact that CO2 lags temperature.
So eliminating inconvenient truth, highlighting only that what would fit the respective viewpoint and stubbornly killing any attempts from other persons to correct or update.
And so on and so on.
The bastardisation and politicisation of the articles is what made me realise that wikipedia does not have the means and the tools to fix and I ceased contributing to it.
It was a good idea, to make information and science available to all by the work of all has been perverted to a platform to disinform and promote specific opinions for a “good cause”, whatever that would be.
I see wikipedia is trying to address those but not sure they will be able to fix, it will take years and years to clean-up the mess. A reputation is build up very slowly and destroyed very fast.
Craven motive
vomit can veer
to manic verve
Move vicar net,
vet Mac over in
eco-vermin vat
Kinda inevevitable really, Victor.
> is this really worth the effort?
Well, its about me, so obviously yes
=============
http://www.wikihow.com/Deal-with-a-Narcissist
How to Deal with a Narcissist
1 Learn to identify a narcissist.
To know whether or not you are dealing with a narcissist, ask yourself a series of questions. Does the suspected narcissist behave as though the world revolves around them?
Kevin Kilty in reality William Connolley never went away , his just took a break from direct editing and used his sock puppets instead, his back now with his usual ‘style ‘
Which means if he is editing the page , if you start from the idea its BS and you will not go far wrong .
OK WC, that’s what I was asking about. You think you have been infallible, still do …
In 58k+ instances you believed that your view warranted the deletion of the view or information of others, and not one single time do you think this practice went too far …
.. most of them also can provide no specifics ..
Irrelevant! The question is [not whether any] of these can provide any specifics. If none of these instances warrant another perspective than yours, even to be seen. Moreover, I wasn’t asking them, I was asking you.
If you truly believe that you have been infallible during 10+ years, as you indicate, but are reluctant to claim openly, I’ll accept that as your belief. However, after reading your arguments (on various issues) and your responses to criticism I’d say your skills are mediocre (at best) and that the idea of being an ulterior arbiter of (encyclopedial) truth would be delusional to put it mildly.
But such delusion, the belief to already know it all, and better than anybody else, is not uncommon among some. Neither is the wish that everybody else should listen to only you and nobody else. And act upon such beliefs!
(Those people should however not be trusted, particularly not with any ‘responsibilities’ involving other people, which unfortunately they often are eager to seek)