It's still insane. Things containing sensitive information like that should normally be restricted to users who had certain needs or ranks to do so. After all there's little to no vetting process and anyone can post libellous information against other editors, whether on as a LTA page or as a user subpage, the latter which is more prevalent than the former.
I would ask you to suspend your judgement and belief and ponder for a moment that no institutions are perfect and whether you might be making the same mistakes as defenders of Theranos or Scientology did, before the respective scandals are exposed.
Here is the so-called Anvil email, which was an abusive message sent to an alleged rule offender by a Wikipedia admin. There they specifically mentioned that the alleged offender is Jewish and then the former insulted the latter further based on that.
https://www.logicmuseum.com/x/index.php/Chapters
As for the sexual harassment scandals, there's one thing to corroborate on the veracity.
Wikipedia gets a million people saying its bullshit every week. I doubt theyll personally track you.
Unfortunately, they can, and they will.
Here's an example on how they dox people they branded as "vandals":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Tirgil34
Note how the sensitive details are publicly shown in a brazen manner. In fact, that's not all yet; there are at least one instance of politically motivated hitjob which exploited exactly that kind of process.
Such a stuff won't be normally allowed elsewhere at all because of the risks of violating relevant data protection laws. However, you're only looking at the tip of the iceberg since there are credible allegations of admins involving in sexual harassment scandals along with doxxing and stalking attempts against a federal employee.
https://rdrama.net/post/215764/there-are-two-dozen-sexual-harassment
Single-purpose shared accounts are good for security purposes, particularly if you want to expose a problematic organization whose members will stop at nothing to harass, stalk and even doxx you.
Yup. Unfortunately it's far from an isolated incident. The surface is barely being scratched. This page back on Reddit has more Wikipedia scandals which you should know about.
Yup. Unfortunately it's far from an isolated incident. The surface is barely being scratched. This page back on Reddit has more Wikipedia scandals which you should know about.
Wow, that's miraculous!
To everyone who're dissing the Substack article here, at least the much-derided "Reddit hivemind" has more sense than ya'll.
I'll just leave this here without comments.
As someone who had this article randomly recommended to me and followed a google search of Gerrard here, I have to say I'm disappointed and mildly concerned by the tone of people's criticisms of the article. It reads like people who feel compelled to unquestioningly defend a colleague rather than evaluate the claims. Comments like "that is precisely how an encyclopaedia is supposed to work", "Somebody's butthurt their edit got reverted by this guy", ""I am a republican and am angry that this guy isn't" lmao" do not engender confidence in the community. People arguing against Gerrard also seem fixated on fighting the culture war and disparaging Gerrard's character rather than elucidating the specific wrongdoings.
The article is not well structured. The author meanders between a specific accusation(continuous and malicious violation of a policy), a psychoanalyzing biography, public curiosity, criticism of various sources/policies, and thinly veiled personal animosity. Worse, it leads with the personal animosity and asks us to take much of the narrative connecting the individual references on faith.
However, Gerard's consistent and seemingly unrepentant use of his authority to further personal feuds is very upsetting to hear. That is not behavior I want to be tolerated from major Wikipedia editors, and it makes me doubt the general credibility of articles I read. This form of abuse of power speaks to a general personality flaw that I find unlikely to be limited to one incident, especially given the quote of him apparently crowing over his manipulation. If the treasurer of an organization embezzles money from one bank account, we don't just remove them from that one account; we would remove them from any role of financial authority.
Gerard's extensive use of a secondary source he contributed to, to justify his edits also seems very bad. However, the article is unclear if it violates a Wikipedia rule.
The article paints a fantastic picture of Gerard's edit history as obsessive and calculating. I find the argument plausible but unconvincing, it is functionally a 'just so' story that relies on the above actions to characterize Gerard as the type of person who could act this way. There are people, especially ultra online people, who are obsessive and calculating, people who will dedicate immense time to carefully employ social manipulation and institutional power to advance a narrative over years and years. I sincerely wish the article had spent more time establishing the motive, context, and specific tactics it accuses Gerard of. Instead, it makes an assertion and links to diffs. I understand the author that these are self-evident, but they are not. Showing manipulation on the scale alleged requires step-by-step walk through the interaction. Otherwise, it is too easy to cast innocuous behavior as malicious.
In addition, this section is harmed by being interwoven with tangentially related social commentary and personal disgust.
The alleged behavior is upsetting. However, I don't think the article makes a convincing case for it. It is also the sort of bad behavior I expect in any large organization.
The article makes the mistake many accusations make by being more of a list of the author's grievances than advancing a specific narrative of wrongdoing. However, at least the first two accusations seem well-founded, and a reflective community should critically engage with them rather than reflexively closing ranks against criticism.
I should disclose I occasionally read Scott Alexander's blog, although I think he is overly conspiratorial about the NYT article, also I think yud is silly. I don't believe I feel any significant emotionality in Gerard's fight with rationalists.