User talk:EventHorizon/Archive 1

Relationship to Jerzy

This section copied from User talk:EventHorizon just prior to making substantial deletions to it. --Jerzy(t) 07:03, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

[The following two 'graphs including sig have been copied from User talk:Jerzy#Sophocles to their logical place in this sequence, by Jerzy(t) 00:47, 2004 Dec 14 (UTC):]

I liked your work on the Sophocles article.

A question, as it's been a long time since I've written to Wikipedia: when you come upon something that's not exactly clear, how do you deal with it in editing? For example, you read something and have no idea what the person meant to say. Do you leave it as it is, or remove it as incoherent? A few bits I was working on last night, I had no idea what the people meant. EventHorizon 04:48, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

EH, thanks for the compliment and welcome back to WP. It is with some sadness that i respond to your request at User talk:Jerzy#Sophocles by suggesting that you seek such advice from another of the many, many experienced WP editors. That request may well be sincere, and to the extent it is, it deserves a response from someone who can wholeheartedly respond to it without the excessive attention that i would simultaneously be giving to a suspicion that you are already connected to the affair currently under discussion at Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Talk:Ambition (card game).

• If you are, my assessment is that my energy would produce nothing i value;
• If you are not, the assistance you could get from me would be compromised (at the very least in the form of inefficiency) by my (in that case mistaken) concerns about that possible connection.

So i limit myself to this smidge of advice: if you really have a history with WP, resume the use of your previous username. (You can get a replacement password if you've lost it.) I am hard-pressed (unless you intend disruption) to imagine a history that would be as damaging to your credibility in pursuing the program your user page states, as will your claim to have a history that you choose to conceal here.
Collegially,
Jerzy(t) 01:39, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

What is this Ambition card game story? I can't make sense out of that deletion debate. Who is 259/Mike Church?

I haven't used my old account since the summer of 2003, and I'd rather start anew. It's true that I'll be losing what administrative privileges I had, as well as the influence and weight that comes with ~2000 edits, but I'm willing to start fresh and new as a beginner. If people don't treat me with respect as a "dark horse", they won't if I reveal my 2000 edits of history. So far I haven't had any problems. EventHorizon 05:03, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[The following two 'graphs including sig have been copied from User talk:Jerzy#Ambition? to their logical place in this sequence, by Jerzy(t) 00:47, 2004 Dec 14 (UTC):]

You wrote on my talk page something about the "Ambition controversy". As I said when I replied, I'm not connected to that issue, and I don't really understand what the deal is. It seems bizarre that a card game would be so divisive.

I am curious, because this episode seems to be one that's important in the community, and it happened while I was on hiatus from Wikipedia. Furthermore, all the back history is so opaque that it's impossible for me to get a coherent feel of what's going on. To benefit my curiosity, what is this "Ambition" issue? When did it start and why are there so many strong opinions? EventHorizon 03:00, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I Stand Here in Amazement

I said to myself,

• Who would take note of my utterly prosaic editing of Sophocles? And
• Who would use that to introduce themself, without even hinting at what it had to do with seeking me out? And
• Who would start a quest to reform WP's governance by "making a fresh start" that makes their only hint of being qualified unverifiable, and reeks of having burned their bridges behind them?

But i said "Assume Good Intent".

Now here comes EventHorizon again:

• Asking me, (the person who said EH should find another mentor, since i suspect EH might be a sockpuppet of, say, 259), twice, to explain the (to EH somehow mystifying) Mike Church events;
• Explaining that inflammatory request as serving EH's "curiosity";
• Echoing this month's 13-to-2 defeat of Church's professed admirer and admitted agent, the pseudonymous newbie User:259, by being the lone supporter of User:CheeseDreams's so-far-9-to-2 (fourth) failing VfD effort to similarly destroy evidence of a user's bad behavior;
• Attempting, without discussion, to make a policy fact out of 259's absurd summary implying that for fairness we would let a lone barbarian use 3RR achieve parity in reversion with an unlimited number of responsible editors who are willing to further revert a patently unacceptable edit.

And i stand here in amazement.

Here's the kindest interpretation that is, at this point, reasonable for me to give to your contact with me to date: that you are engaging in a harassment simply for your amusement; that is quite bad enough without bothering to evaluate further probabilities. Don't edit my talk page further unless your desire to communicate with me is endorsed by an admin who has read this and who says they have a good relationship with me. --Jerzy(t) 00:47, 2004 Dec 14 (UTC)

Fine. I won't contribute to your talk page. I don't know what you're trying to say, or who you're talking to, or anything else. If we ever cross paths, I will destroy you. Otherwise, there is no reason we should interact. You found a great solution. Cheers. EventHorizon 01:59, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Spin-off Discussion re Ambition

(Not Jerzy, but I'll interject.)

You asked: Who is 259/Mike Church? That's part of the problem-- no one knows. It has been proposed, variously, on and off Wikipedia, that:

1. Mike Church does not exist. (Proven false: A Mike Church does exist, and he's a student at Carleton.)
2. User:Mike Church is not said Mike Church, but an impersonator and a troll.
3. Mike Church = 259.
4. Mike Church = UninvitedCompany (a user who, on the surface, seems to have opposed MC.)
5. "259" is a 31-year-old political speechwriter in the Chicago area intending to hire MC into his consulting firm and wanting to clear his reputation. (Unlikely, only because Wikipedia didn't damage MC's reputation anywhere but Wikipedia, where he is basically persona non grata. Elsewhere he remains unknown.)
6. Mike Church is Jimbo Wales's sock-puppet account. (Highly unlikely; it's not known if Jimbo even has a sock-puppet account, and there's little reason to see why he would do this.)
7. This "Ambition" is an adaptation of a game played by pirates in the 19th century that this MC hopes to market at his own. (Very unlikely.)

In other words, there are a number of crackpot theories out there, none of which are very likely. I'd say it's reasonable to guess that 259 and the other supposed MC socks are not him, only because, if they were, Mike would have to be a lot more clever than he seems. What I read of Mike is a young, arrogant, hothead not capable of that sort of subtlety, and not capable of writing prose at the same level that his supposed "socks" are able to command.

What is known is that some "Mike Church", with a Carleton email address, exists and claims to have invented Ambition. So far, no one has challenged that claim. Several accounts, used solely for the vandalism of one of User:Isomorphic's subpage, appear to be unequivocal MC socks. However, other accounts were accused of being MC sock puppets, left Wikipedia, and were later proven (by state/country-of-origin verifications, etc.) not to be MC socks.

My belief, and I consider myself neither pro- or anti-Church, is that Mike Church should come clean about his activity, on his user page, and put all the suspicion to rest. In exchange, WP community would offer to erase all the back material on Talk:Ambition (card game) and Talk:Carleton College. Then there would be no more suspicion and the issue would be singularly uninteresting to everyone. However, I highly doubt that any such compromise would ever come to term; it means corralling a number of humongous egos, including that of a person who stormed off Wikipedia in disgust.

I'm signing anonymously, out of a desire not to get into this mess, but if you want to know who I am (so I can verify that I'm not partisan in this debate) we can chat. Did you say you left in 2003? I've got a guess at who you are/were.

Regards,

152.163.100.133 05:32, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• There have been plenty of assertions by anonymous IPS or pseudonomous newbies, of non-sockpuppethood relating to Church and/or 259. Many reliable users -- i mean those with substantial, positive, and (need i say?) verifiable track records at WP -- nevertheless find the accusations compelling. I am unaware of any WPian with such a record who believes there is any of the charges can be disproven. (This suggests that any claim of proof that such an accusation is false, in the absence of reference to an endorsement of the claim by a reliable user, is no more helpful than any instance of the Big Lie. )

In this case, the assertion that IDing the country an IP is allocated to can (combined with knowledge of a person's whereabouts) suffice to disprove a sockpuppet claim is false. And anyone who understands what a proxy server is would find that obvious; anyone of normal intelligence who's even heard of anonymous-remailer sites should be able to re-invent proxy servers in their head while adding long columns of numbers.

--Jerzy(t) 00:47, 2004 Dec 14 (UTC)

Comment on Jerzy's input

The heading immediately above was added upon archiving, to provied a target for a link to this point in the file.

Reliable? Positive track records? Look, if all someone's going to do is throw around careless accusations, I don't see how they're that person is contributing anything positive to Wikipedia. EventHorizon 01:59, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC) [Italics & bold are refactoring, by Jerzy(t) 22:36, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC), to reflect both 01:59 and 02:01 edits by EH]

You're not reliable (I've read some of your contribs and your spelling sucks) so why should your definition of reliable be reliable? EventHorizon 02:01, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It sounds like no one knows anything, then. That's not a big surprise.

Are you looking for me to chime in on this matter with my opinion?

I'm not ready to do so yet; it seems that this is a very complex issue with a lot of back history and negative energy. But let me get the story straight: this guy got into a fight over a card game? EventHorizon 17:56, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Explanation

The card game isn't half of it, really. Mike Church is basically someone who refused to get along with Wikipedia, and Wikipedia refused to get along with him. Most of the history is actually in Ambition (card game), which has been deleted, but some of it can still be found.

He (or someone else) started a page on his card game, Ambition, about a year ago. He made a lot of edits to the page anonymously, but all from the same IP range (167.22, I think) so it was obvious who was making them. He claimed that he didn't realize this would be ill-received; I tend to believe him.

His assets were strong writing skills, a willingness to be constructive with other people (as long as they didn't attack his card game), an adeptness at rewriting/cleanuping bad articles, and creativity in terms of writing useful articles most other people would've have thought to create. His flaws were that he was somewhat of a leftist POV pusher, and he tended to write articles on "trash" topics (in the quiz bowl sense of the word, e.g. pop-cult trivia) of borderline inclusibility, including (deleted) articles on crude memes from late-night comedy shows. Still, he mostly got along with Wikipedia over everything but his card game.

Mike actually wrote the article before Ambition became famous, and tried to link to it whereever he could. Most of his links were appropriate, but occasionally he pushed the envelope too far. He once wrote an article on an "Ambition trolling phenomenon" that he probably started, and that wasn't notable by any standard. It was apparently an effort to make a second-degree link between Internet troll and the page on his card game. This kind of behavior would lead to a backlash from the community in which legitimate links to Ambition (card game) were removed.

He was nominated for adminship by another user and summarily rejected. He left Wikipedia shortly after in disgust, nominating Ambition (card game) for deletion (for the second time). It survived.

The big issue now with Mike is that he may be editing pseudonymously (as might anyone) and there's no trust. A major part of this is that 90% of people who comment on the matter, from either side, do so anonymously-- those who post "pro-Church" fear harrassment from the community, those who post "anti-Church" fear harrassment from Mike. (I consider myself neither and am hedging my bets on both sides.) Both sides have accused the other of sock puppetry, and both sides have probably used it. User:Isomorphic wrote a damning subpage about Mike, who proved him right by transparent sock vandalism. Most of the people originally listed on that page were not MC socks, but the fact that Mike went and vandalized the page suggests there was something to hide. My guess is that User:38 and User:MathyGuy23 were the "true" sock puppets, as well as the transparent vandals against User:Isomorphic's page. The rest of that page is pretty much crack theory, though, and most of Wikipedia has accepted that.

User:259 plays the role of Mike's representative. All I know about "259" is that he's an older friend of Mike's who is very secretive about his offline identity, but is definitively not Mike.

The "Church issue" is extremely divisive: depending on whom you ask he's either a Randian hero or a devious shyster who used Wikipedia to manufacture his own fame. My opinion? He's neither: he's a decent guy who made some mistakes in an unforgiving Wikipedia. My advice is that you not comment on the matter until you've thoroughly researched it, and accept that you'll probably end up taking some flak on one side or the other. If you criticize Mike, expect to have your page (ineffectively) nominated for deletion; if you support him, anticipate having your identity questioned. 172.161.36.242 05:46, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

User:EventHorizon's response

Oh, I have an opinion. I don't know everything about this issue, but I know enough.

Keep in mind that I have no personal association with Mike Church, I've never played Ambition, and I really don't care on a personal level about him or his game, not at all. However, I do care about what the Mike Church debacle says about Wikipedia.

He's evidently, yes, a guy who "made some mistakes in an unforigiving Wikipedia." The matters at Talk:Ambition (card game) and other pages should be deleted. Why? Because they're now irrelevant to Ambition itself, and relevant only to the controversy they prolong by existing in the first place. If anybody wants to write an Ambition page, Wikipedia can confront the matter as it comes with a clean slate. It's obvious that most of the accusations about Mike Church aren't true; if some are, so what? I'm not saying Mike should be nominated for bureaucrat status; I'm saying that he has the right, if the "Ambition issue" re-emerges, for it to be discussed with a clean slate.

I do think that an Ambition article is probably worth including, but I wouldn't be qualified to write one, and I don't know who would be. Certainly Mike should stay away from it. If no third party steps forward to write the article, Wikipedia can go without it. EventHorizon 06:56, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

All in Summation

First off, User:Jerzy might claim that my motives were in relation to this "Mike Church" character and the card game, Ambition. He can say that. The record shows, however, that Mr. Jerzy was the first person ever to bring up Ambition. I didn't even know Ambition existed, and I still don't know who this Mike Church is.

I care about intellectual and social justice on Wikipedia. When I see or sense something wrong, I speak out about it. If this is going to make me a problem user in your eyes, Mr. Jerzy, well that's just a sacrifice I'll have to make. Oh well. EventHorizon 03:40, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Personal Attacks

[Entire section reformatted, via bracketed material, by Jerzy(t) 22:16, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC) to restore original structure.]
You twice questioninged me about User:Mike Church and his supporters. This was in response to my twice informing and advising you, in polite terms, but IMO clearly stating my desire not to discuss the subject with you. I pointed out to you how your preceding actions toward me forced me to act as i would if confident of your intent to harass: in light of your persistence, i fell back to giving you, without abuse, a clear limitation that i consider reasonable in view of your failure to heed my polite prior communications. [2 corrections, deleting struck-thru "[question-]ing" and "twice", &/or adding bold text, by Jerzy(t) 22:16, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC).]

You responded with 4 distinct personal attacks on this page:

1. At 01:59, 2004 Dec 14, you made a personal attack via threat:

   If we ever cross paths, I will destroy you.

2. In the same edit, but a different section (where i had responded to an IP), by saying

   Reliable? Positive track records? Look, if all someone's going to do is throw around careless accusations, I don't see how they're contributing anything positive to Wikipedia.

   you mocked

   1. me for my reasonable choice of meanings in my use of "positive" (and arguably "reliable"), and
   2. my entire body of work here, whose size and duration would make your judging its worth the height of arrogance, even if your claimed 2000-edit oeuvre were verifiable and examinable
3. At 02:01, in replacing "they're" by "that person is", you reiterated #2, and
4. in a new sentence for the same 'graph, in that same second edit, reading

   You're not reliable (I've read some of your contribs and your spelling sucks) so why should your definition of reliable be reliable?

   1. mocked me (again?) for my reasonable use of "reliable",
   2. mocked me for your irrelevant (and BTW unsubstantiated) claim about my spelling, and
   3. chose the word "sucks" where the context that you created
      • made its ambiguous connotation at best unreasonably negligent and
      • made it reasonable to infer intentional personal insult.

Since then, over 48 hours have passed, during which you made 4 edits in a period of 38 minutes, and another 21 edits in just under 2 hours. You passed up at least 4 great opportunities (one each at the start and end of each of those two sessions) to ameliorate these attacks.

I invite your efforts now at amelioration, on this page, via apologies, clarifications, corrections, rewording, and/or commitments to avoid repetition.
--Jerzy(t) 03:46, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)

• [As to Jerzy's first "You twice ... prior communications." 'graph:]

  Yes, I won't claim that any of that is untrue, but you brought the Mike Church matter up in the first place. I wouldn't have even known who he is if not for you. So I read up the back story and found the matter interesting, and wanted to know your perspective, as well as why you thought I was associated with the situation before I had even heard of it. I'm sorry if you felt harassed. I won't ask you to speak on the matter again. EventHorizon 18:08, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • In reformating, i did some rereading as well. You declined to "claim that any of that is untrue", but i find that i erred in writing that i made you aware twice of my concerns about the Church-supporters matter. I wrote that on the 16th, summarizing what had started on the 5th; both the long hiatus in that initial phase of our interaction, and the innocently confusing fact that you wrote three notes (one on my talk, one here, and another on my talk), before i wrote my second, must have contributed my error: to my impression that i had already said something stronger than

  compromised (at the very least in the form of inefficiency) by my (in that case mistaken) concerns about that possible connection

  and softer than

  Don't edit my talk page further unless....

  I'm fairly confident that if i'd remembered that i'd only replied once before, that i'd have ratcheted up instead only as far as something like

  I'm disappointed that you haven't taken seriously my concern about the disruptive influence of the possibility you're here solely to support or hide Church's bad behavior.

  (I hope you have enough sense of humor left to crack a smile when i say "Now do you believe me in saying that would keep me from helping you efficiently?" -- i hope you will believe me, that it is i, not you, who is the butt of that little joke i make!) Let me stop at this point, and put this major lapse on my part out there, as information -- not expecting you to comment on it, but before my going forward from there to treat our respective responsibilities.

  --Jerzy(t) 23:27, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)

• In response to your ameliorative posts above and below in this "Personal Attacks" sub-section:

• There's a lot that could be said, but simply doesn't need to.
• I'm making minor, clarifying, comments on the responses you made to 3 and 4 among my "4 ... attacks" points.
• At the present end of the sub-section (after your & my comments that i subordinated to my "In closing" bullet), i'm making a substantive response to what you said there.
• Following that, i'll discuss my imminently pending

• archiving of the section that includes this sub-section,
• removal of the parts, by both of us, that will probably serve WP (and incidentally you and me) better there than here, and
• summaries that will avoid the evils of those parts simply disappearing from the enclosing section.

• Finally, i'll offer some thoughts for your consideration about where you might want to go (or legitimately might not want to go) from here with this section.

--Jerzy(t) 06:30, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

• [As to Jerzy's point 1, complaining about a threat:]

  You're right. I went way over the line. EventHorizon 18:08, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• [As to Jerzy's point 2, claiming EH "mock"-ed in saying

  Reliable? Positive track records? Look, if all someone's going to do is throw around careless accusations, I don't see how they're contributing anything positive to Wikipedia.

  :]

  Again, I was being a jerk. EventHorizon 18:08, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

• [As to Jerzy's point 3, referring to

  replacing "they're" by "that person is"

  :]

  I was correcting my grammatical error, not yours. I make them as well, and often need to do multiple previews before I post. EventHorizon 18:08, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  Yes, i understood that. You probably misunderstood what i meant, which was that when you made that fix, you saved the rest of the sentence again without removing the attack. (I probably contributed to confusing you by my 22:36, 2004 Dec 15 edit summary

  Spin-off Discussion re Ambition - Refactor EH contrib to eliminate minor time-stamp forgery

  I'd be better off with another term for changing one's own signed contrib, without ill intent, in a way that makes the time stamps not match up directly with the page history; i'll be thinking about that and taking suggestions.) I meant for "minor" to express that this "forgery" was just a clerical matter, with the potential confusion it could produce not even being worth discussing -- but it's my fault, not yours, that you missed that.

  I was also being a bit hard-nosed with you, in making an analogy with criminal law: if you steal a million dollars and bury it for whatever time the statute of limitations on larceny prescribes, you aren't off scot free: you either (i dunno, and it may vary from state to state) are continuing the same criminal act, or are repeatedly committing new acts of the crime of possession of stolen property, as long as any of it is still under your control. I was arguing that touching up the offensive sentence without removing the attack is worse than just letting the sentence alone. I admit that, given that it was only two minutes later, it certainly was nowhere near as bad as writing it in the first place. Probably i should have said something to the effect of "3 and a small fraction" instead of "4".

  --Jerzy(t) 06:30, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

• [As to Jerzy's point 4, making various claims about several things including the word "sucks":]

  I don't think "sucks" means anything more than "is bad" to most people. If you think I meant more than that, well I didn't. I was kind of pissed off by your surprising reaction to me and your demeanor on my talk page. EventHorizon 18:08, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  As i say, context is important, so i don't think you can reasonably assert that for most people "sucks" always has a single meaning. Nor, if i guess your approximate age, is your knowledge of what it means to others even as good as my poor knowledge. But in any case, what you say publicly in civil discourse is subject to a much stricter standard than a "most people" standard that you might apply in private with someone whose likely understandings you a better chance of gauging or dynamically correcting for.

  Of course, you've now done a good job of changing the context, so we're now beating a dead horse.

  --Jerzy(t) 06:30, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

• [In closing:]

  Let's just stay out of each others' way. I don't get into wars too often, so we probably won't have problems. EventHorizon 18:08, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • Thank you for your relatively gracious response, which significantly eases my concerns. I'll respond ere long, but only after refactoring into a more Wiki-ish style (that you may want to take the trouble to learn): i've been known to comment on talk by interleaving beween points of a single editor's contrib, but i'm satisfied that it just doesn't work on a project that saves nearly everything, for more reasons than just fragmenting numbered lists into, as in this case, a nonsense format.
    

  --Jerzy(t) 20:45, 2004 Dec 16 (UTC)

• WP has won at least one award for "Community", and i don't think that occurred by editors in disagreement each staying out of the other's way. (In fact, in such a so-to-speak "divorce", who would get custody of the topic of MC and his defenders? Are you willing to settle for, say, Sophocles and a playwright to be named later? [wink])

The problem i have addressed here is not our disagreement about that topic, nor "ask[ing me] to speak on the matter", nor even a personality conflict, but your resorting to personal attacks in the face of much less significant difficulties than the one we are now wrapping up. That is why i mentioned possible "commitments to avoid repetition". I didn't and don't insist on that, but think about it.

--Jerzy(t) 06:30, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

• While the word "mandates" would be a tad strong, current practice strongly encourages removal of personal attacks, while keeping them accessible to those who seek them out. I'm

• copying the whole Relationship to Jerzy section to User talk:EventHorizon/Archive 1 to serve as a record for the WP community, which is entitled to have access to it for, among other things, judging our respective behavior and, perhaps, considering whether it is a useful case history. (I also think it paints, at this point, a picture that each of us has some reason to take pride or satisfaction in.)
• removing

• the entire text within the subsection I Stand Here in Amazement,
• two 'graphs, reformatted by me with text by you, from Spin-off Discussion re Ambition, and
• the entire text within the subsection Personal Attacks,

constituting what i think we would agree needs no obvious future attention: the whole of

• my complaint about your Ambition questions,
• the attacks, and
• our discussion to date of the them both.

• replacing those passages with brief linked references to the corresponding parts of the archived text.
• adding headings as necessary to satisfy those links.

--Jerzy(t) 06:30, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

• Finally, i remind you that the prohibition on personal attacks has nothing to do with trying to silence you, and that WP stands ready to protect your ability to express your opinion (within limits like no personal attacks, not suppressing others' opinions, and so on).

What i've said about not mentoring you applies fairly well to the task of trying to restate the other ideas your personal attacks were entangled with. I think i probably succeeded in doing that with your three-word personal attack on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Vandalism in progress/CheeseDreams controversy, but i think doing as well at "writing for the enemy" here would be effortful and less likely of success. You are in a far better position to write your own personal-attack-free critique of e.g., what you described as my "careless accusations".

(Actually, "careless" is either an inaccurate term for what you're trying to say, or an uncharitable guess at something you can never know about me (how much care i put into characterizing others' behavior), and thereby it probably shades into personal-attack territory. But "unfounded" is something you can reasonably use to express an informed opinion you may have (based on your assessment of what you think is the same evidence available to me), not about me but about the characterizations themselves. Attack my statements and actions, which are much more worthy of your attention than whether or not i'm a prick.) (And BTW, stating a suspicion is not making an accusation -- tho your failing to make the distinction was IMO not a personal-attack issue.)

--Jerzy(t) 06:30, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)