Wikiversity:Community Review/Moulton's talk page

Note: this community discussion was censored.

Community Discussion of Issues Arising from Moulton's Participation
And please bring up the local deletion. Personal info reposted by him and allowed to stand for 10 (!!!) days.. Please protect that page. Rootology 14:31, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * With all due respect, could you please tell us what, precisely, is the issue? The diff you provided wasn't helpful, and I don't think many of us are paying much attention to that talk page. We've been through all this before, so please be specific. --SB_Johnny talk 22:21, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Counting back 10 days and looking at the edits from that time period my attention was drawn to this edit which included a link to an external website and what appear to be several people's names, one described as "de-sysopped by ArbCom". As I recall, one of the other names may have previously been removed from Wikiversity by means of oversight. I did not take the time to see if the external link associates the names with wiki user accounts. --JWSchmidt 23:02, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * That is it. He keeps trying to hurt people, he's got no right to hang around on WMF sites. Rootology 05:29, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You have not proven that anyone is hurt by an examination of their beliefs, policies, or practices. In academia, when there are multiple schools of thought regarding best practices for solving a given problem, it is customary to examine the competing analyses and methods to diagnose those with weaknesses or problematic failure modes, and to devise provably better models, methods, and practices.  In academic cultures this kind of painstaking research is considered both beneficial and essential to the discovery learning enterprise.  —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Why do we need that talk page at all? I fail to see how it benefits the project, given that Moulton's unblock appeal was rejected by the community. – Mike.lifeguard &#124; @en.wb 01:08, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * You need it to provide a place for scholars to dialogue with Moulton on topics that are not yet ready for introduction into the main discussion forums. —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Mike.lifeguard: do you plan to write a Wikiversity policy for banning participants or will you just make banning editors another casual exercise with no rules, no reason required and no appeal possible like the current system for banning participants from #wikiversity-en? --JWSchmidt 03:21, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Wasn't the ban of Moulton just endorsed by the community? If he wants to appeal (again) why can't he just ask as an IP? Rootology 05:29, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The concept of banning a peer scholar is absurd. This is the 21st Century, not a stone-age tribal warlord culture or a Saturday morning cartoon with Elmer Fudd mindlessly blasting away at Bugs Bunny.  —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I think a tiny bit of ground is better than giving him no ground and having him instead trying to take everyone else's. I don't know. I really don't like the idea of allowing him to post links to such things. The rest is tolerable. Meh. Ottava Rima (talk) 05:14, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Modeling an academic research culture as territorial warfare is not an appropriate model. —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * As a casual observer, I'd say delete it as well, since all it causes is problems for the vast majority of people here. Rootology 05:29, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Research cultures exist to solve challenging problems. —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, it causes problems for certain people who aren't here... I think for most Wikiversity natives it's a lot easier to let him do his blogging on his userpage, since it's clearly important to him and he's proven rather creative in the use of alternate IPs. I don't think it provides any serious benefit (aside from an opportunity for train-wreck-spotting), but no great harm either. Feel free to remove any content that's objectionable, of course. --SB_Johnny talk 09:59, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * There is blogging and there is peer dialogue. I am here to engage in scholarly peer dialogue on serious issues that need to be studied.  —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * On second thought, it is worth keeping the contents of the page for historical purposes. I don't see why he should be permitted to use Wikiversity as his own personal webhost. If he's not appealing his ban, then I see no reason to let him potentially continue to post personal information. Watching the page for such posts is not something the community should have to worry about. – Mike.lifeguard &#124; @en.wb 17:18, 4 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The history is just the prologue to continuing research. —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't think we should use a "why not" reason for protecting (not that you were saying that!), because there are at least some reasons for allowing him to keep his foot in the door here. Trollish though he may be at times, he does have some valid concerns about the direction the wikimedia projects have gone in, and it's rather clear (to me) that he wants to try to bring about some change from the inside. It's also not entirely a question of using his page as a "personal web-host", because he is actually using it to discuss the wikimedia wikis (i.e., he's not blogging about his sex life or coin collection). --SB_Johnny talk 20:45, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Rationalizing the introjection of unscholarly practices is not going to fly, Johnny. Unscholarly practices have no place in a scholarly culture.  —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Mike.lifeguard: Nobody has ever been banned from Wikiversity.


 * "appealing his ban" <-- You certainly do not have the power to unilaterally ban Moulton from Wikiversity or claim that he has been banned from Wikiversity. Vast numbers of false charges have been -and continue to be- made against Moulton at Wikiversity in a way that is a disgrace for what is supposed to be a center for education and learning. Do you enjoy exercising the power to make false charges against scholars and deny them the right to defend themselves against those false charges?


 * "no reason to let him potentially continue to post personal information" <-- If you truly believe this then why not help develop Privacy policy and make it official Wikiversity policy? Why do you collaborate with and support custodians who have impeded the development of needed policies like the privacy policy? Wikiversity has custodians who violate policy and say they are free to ignore proposed policies while they invent reasons to block and ban other participants. What Wikiversity policy has Moulton violated? Why are you, a violator of Wikiversity policy free to block and ban Moulton when he has not violated Wikiversity policy? Why is a policy violator like you banning a scholar like Moulton, someone who has created far more learning resources at Wikiversity than you?


 * "I don't see why he should be permitted to use Wikiversity as his own personal webhost" <-- I find your penchant for gaming the system to be truly sickening. It does not matter how many times people like you falsely claim that Moulton was not here to participate in learning projects and fulfill the mission of this project; it is simple for any objective observer to look at his edits and see that he was. Your false charge that he is using Wikiversity as a "personal webhost" is absurd and offensive to anyone who values truth and fairness. Moulton came to Wikiversity and participated honorably as a scholar and was attacked by people who can't stand to have the truth explored. He has made use of his user page to defend himself and continue to speak the truth while suffering under a barrage of false charges. You now falsely try to depict his participation here as using Wikiversity for "his own personal webhost" while trying to invent a way to ban scholars from Wikiversity. If you want Moulton to stop using the names of people who have made false charges against him then why don't you write the Wikiversity policy that will say it is a banable offense to use the correct name of a person who has made false charges against you? Stop gaming the system and be open about what you are doing. --JWSchmidt 14:55, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * John, please discuss the issue, not the people discussing the issue. --SB_Johnny talk 20:45, 5 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It's the policies and practices that JWSchmidt is calling into question. Those questionable policies and practices are frankly unscholarly, unethical, unbecoming, corrosive and disruptive of an academic culture. Moreover, it's just plain tacky.  —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that the issue is people. The issue here is a scholar who was doing research and creating learning resources at Wikiversity and other people, from outside, who want to censor, delete, block and and ban if Wikiversity participants investigate past problems at Wikipedia. The related issue is that Moulton insists on using the real world names of people who have accused him of something. I have tried to address this pair of issues by policy development. I think that Wikiversity should either make Privacy policy or Respect people official policy and then see if Moulton will stop using the real world names of wiki editors who do not want their names mentioned. (paragraph break added by --SB_Johnny)


 * Authentic scholars engaged in authentic scholarship don't wear silly animal costumes and behave as if they were acting in a Saturday morning cartoon show. —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * We also need to update the research policy to formalize the imposed ban on research that mentions wiki editors. Alternative proposal: we could make official Censorship and write down the unwritten rules that are already being enforced. Here is a start for Censorship: When dealing with scholars you are free to make false charges against them. When convenient, block them from editing and ban them from #wikiversity-en so that they cannot be heard. Feel free to remove their scholarly biographical information from their user pages. If anyone complains you can always delete their talk page just as easily as you have removed every other possible avenue for the scholar to exercise self-defense against censorship. --JWSchmidt 18:30, 6 December 2008 (UTC)


 * John puts his finger on the problem, and appropriately invokes satire to expose just how ridiculous the blocking/banning/baleeting practices are. Such ridiculous practices do not bring any glory to a project that purports to compile the sum of all human knowledge.  Wikipedia has a problem publishing 21st Century advances because they may not yet be widely published in the popular press.  But Wikipedia can study 20th and 21st Century advances that comprise important aspecs of the sum of all human knowledge that WMF wishes to disseminate to scholars around the world.  —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I can respond to the first part of that (separated out because the second half only serves to lose the point). For one thing, we don't have "inside people" and "outside people", but rather "veteran contributors" and "new contributors", and it doesn't help us grow if you're hostile to new contributors. Moulton's insistence on name dropping is indeed the issue, and he has been asked repeatedly not to do this. He is quite aware that people find this offensive, and since he doesn't need to do this in order to say what he wants to say, it's clearly an intentional breach of civility. If he could make the small gesture of promising not to do that any more, we'd be discussing the removal of his block rather than the protection of his talk page.


 * A specific policy on outing would also be good, but he's established a record of violating the Wikipedia policy on that, so there's no reason to think he would heed to it here. --SB_Johnny talk 13:51, 7 December 2008 (UTC)


 * To the best of my knowledge, no one has cited the policy that is alleged to have been breached. Moreover, there has not been any due process to determine if an applicable policy has been breeched.  And in any event, there are better practices for remediating such problems than the absurdly draconian ones adopted by Mike, Rootology, Ottava, and others.  —Moulton 15:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

"the second half only serves to lose the point" <-- I don't agree. The point is people who make up "rules" out of the blue, rules that are then used as excuses to censor Wikiversity content. You can't even let me discuss the matter without inappropriately stepping in and editing my comments while trying to rule as "out of order" what is under discussion. I find the interpretation of the civility policy that you offer (above) to be questionable. You are happy to call people "troll" and suggest that I go fuck myself and you have publish false charges about me in order to provide excuses for blocking and banning me, which are clear violations of civility, and then you want to claim that using someone's real name is not civil behavior. As far as I know, Moulton only uses real names of wiki editors when someone has made false claims about him and he is trying to engage them in civil discussion in order to ask for evidence to support a false claim that has been made about him. You seem to be participating in some "New Speak" exercise by which you promote incivil behavior while placing the label "incivil" on a person who has actually been the target of incivility.

"you're hostile to new contributors" <-- Can you be specific about what you are saying here? Are you talking about objecting to "new contributors" who come to Wikiversity in order to get another Wikiversity participant banned? Are you talking about objecting to abusive Wikipedia admins who come to Wikiversity just to censor Wikiversity and make false charges against Wikiversity participants? I know you like to welcome such "new contributors" to Wikiversity, and you even made one of them a custodian, but I still do not understand why. I see no evidence that such "new contributors" have an interest in Wikiversity and its mission.

"he's established a record of violating the Wikipedia policy on that" <-- Are you talking about Wikipedia:Harassment? Do you really think Moulton harasses wiki editors? Moulton tried to remove false information from some Wikipedia biographies. For his trouble, he was blocked from editing. The people who blocked him went to Moulton's personal website to taunt him and came to Wikiversity in order to make false clams about him and get him banned here. Moulton has tried to defend fellow scientists against lies published in Wikipedia and defend himself against false charges. Who has been involved in the harassing behavior? Who has been the target of harassment? You can define the use of someone's real name as harassment, if you like, and claim that using someone's real name is "outing" them, if you like, but in my view, if you want to prevent a Wikiversity participant from using the real names of wiki editors then you should just put that in Privacy policy and make it an official policy. Until you do that (or at least make it official somewhere like Respect people or Censorship) then you have no real basis in Wikiversity policy upon which to base a war against Moulton. And even if you make the use of editor's real names at Wikiversity a blockable offense, you have not yet done anything about the existing ban on research projects that involve study of wiki editors. You say that Wikiversity does not have "outside people", but that ban was imposed by outsiders and it has never been codified in a Wikiversity policy. I still feel that it should be made official by the community if it is really going to be how things are done at Wikiversity. I do not understand how you can complain about me marking policies as official, and charge me with "policy manipulation" while you enforce a "policy" that was proposed by an outsider and that has never even been written on a Wikiversity policy page where it might become a topic for community discussion. You even turned into an excuse for blocking me my attempt to put into policy the existing ban on research about wiki editors. How is it that Wikiversity has turned into a freak show where policy violators are made custodians and then they try to impose bans on editors who have not violated any policy? How is it that I get blocked for trying to write into policy an unwritten rule that has been used to justify blocking a scholar who was engaged in scholarly research at Wikiversity? Why do we have to engage in double-speak by which using someone's name is called "incivil" while we cannot even make an official privacy policy to address the issue of using real world names?

"no reason to think he would heed to it here" <-- please do not use that as any kind of an excuse to avoid making official a policy that clearly makes Moulton's behavior a blockable offense. It is important that the world know if Wikiversity, as a center for online learning, has decided that using someone's real name is a blockable offense. --JWSchmidt 16:32, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * A simple policy on respecting preferred pseudonyms would be much easier to get consensus on than the wider policies, and could be merged into a wider policy when we can get the wider ones done (too many issues are being conflated lately). I'll add a few notes to Respect pseudonyms in a few minutes, feel free to help. --SB_Johnny talk 16:44, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I have long advocated a Social Contract in which the signatories work out mutually agreeable terms of engagement. Normally, a Social Contract is crafted before hostilities have broken out over breaches of unarticulated expectations.  It's harder to craft such an agreement after the fact (it's called a Peace Treaty when it's written after war has broken out, and when the warlords finally tire of the bloody game).  As John rightly points out, I have no problem engaging in play-acting in universe in service of an educational exercise.  However, there needs to be an escape route when the play gets too rough.  Even in B&D cultures, there is a SafeWord that can be uttered to stop the action when the abuse gets too rough.  Where is the SafeWord here, when an outsider comes in and starts up the Stanford Prison Experiment, complete with abusive treatment reminiscent of Abu Ghraib?  —Moulton 17:07, 10 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm OK with creating specific rules when necessary, but we don't need to have a rule before someone is blocked for causing problems. He was told by multiple people that what he was doing was rude, and his offending posts were removed.  Rather than do the intelligent thing and talk things out so he understood the problem, Moulton reinserted offending comments.  He was warned that he was doing the wrong thing, and his posts were corrected for him, yet he persisted in the behavior.  Of course he was blocked, and a ban instituted. Sχeptomaniacχαιρετε 18:02, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Deleted and protected
Moulton's talk page was deleted and protected last night by User:Jimbo Wales, apparently following up on a global block. AFAIK he didn't get in touch with anyone here directly about this. --SB_Johnny talk 09:24, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Yet another cameo appearance by the God-King, without any discussion, community review, or deference to the roles of the responsible officials here? What the devil is Jimmy teaching the impressionable youth of the 21st Century about modern concept of ethical governance, due process, civil rights, scholarly ethics, etc.?  —Moulton 16:43, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Moulton should be blocked on sight and all his edits reverted. He is a banned user by this community and globally across all projects.  Allowing him to continue trolling here and engaging in his endless absurd debates is a drain on the real work of the community.  Moulton, here's your peace treaty.  Go away and leave these people alone.  If you want to engage in this kind of behavior, do it somewhere else.  Wikiversity has important work to do and I will not allow you to use it as a platform for harassment and outing.  Goodbye.--Jimbo Wales 15:13, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Who is going to enforce the edict of the God-King? 21st Century concepts of Due Process, Evidence-Based Judgments, Civil Rights, Ethical Governance, and Scholarly Ethics are not going to go away.  Those concepts are the painstaking result of four thousand years of human learning, bringing Homo Schleppians out of stone age tribal warlord cultures into one based on functional reasoning and peaceable methods of creative problem-solving.  This is cyberspace.  You can't burn people at the stake in Cyberspace.  Elmer Fudd can't blast Bugs Bunny into shredded bits of rabbit fur.  Ideas are indestructible.  But people can stop believing in anachronistic ideas that have run their course and have yielded to more modern thinking and ideas.  I'm not a big fan of histrionics, but it's undeniable that all the major advances in civilization have been moments of high drama.  Those dramas are recorded in the sum of all human knowledge, in legends and myths and scriptures and literature and history and the performing arts.  What better way to review and relearn these lessons of history than by reprising the classic dramas that highlight the ascent of man down through the ages.  —Moulton 16:43, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * "I'm not a big fan of histrionics." Thanks for the laugh, since most of your actions are tailored for maximum drama.  "Ideas are indestructible." This, on the other hand, is one of the more sensible things I've ever seen you post.  Too bad you don't act based on that opinion with any consistency.
 * Not a fan of Jimbo's swoop-in action, but I just don't care enough to do anything about it. You've burned most of your bridges, Moulton, which wasn't smart. Sχeptomaniacχαιρετε 17:50, 12 December 2008 (UTC)


 * For the longest time (literally many decades) I ran away from drama of any kind, especially political conflicts. I'm still not a fan of political drama.  But it's a fact of life in politicized cultures.  I was perplexed that an academic enterprise ostensibly created to compile the sum of all human knowledge devolved into political theater.  But then Drama Theory is also a module in the sum of all human knowledge, and the Wikisphere is arguably the most popular drama engine on the Internet today.  Drama Theory goes all the way back to Aristotle, who provided one of the first analyses of drama.  And Drama Theory is also a current frontier of research, being an extension of modern Game Theory.  One of the features of drama is that it provides a vehicle for exploring competing ideas, typically embodied in central characters known as the Protagonist and Antagonist.  By definition, characters in a drama are precisely those who care enough to engage the issues that divide the antagonists.  The rest are either in the audience or absent entirely from attendance and attention.  The ideas I'm promoting &mdash; Due Process, Civil and Human Rights, Ethical Best Practices &mdash; are not exactly new ideas, but they have always been dangerous ideas to promote.  In the 20th Century, some 200 million people lost their lives in political violence that swirled around those issues.  I wouldn't dream of asking anyone to take up those causes, as history has shown that doing so is an invitation to be assassinated by the more fascistic agents in the milieu.  But then this is cyberspace.  Jimbo's cabal can assassinate me six times a day without much permanent effect on me.  But what is the effect of that culture on the impressionable youth who wandered into the Wikisphere in search of the 21st Century Edition of the Sum of All Human Knowledge?  —Moulton 21:28, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Except you're not the martyr you make yourself out to be. Your behavior, particularly your single-minded focus on particular persons who aren't even particularly active in some cases, has made it abundantly clear your only interest is revenge. I have no patience for vindictive people.  So long. Sχeptomaniacχαιρετε 00:00, 13 December 2008 (UTC)