Wikipedia Cofounder Larry Sanger Banned From Site for 'Canvassing' (404media.co) 214
Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger has been indefinitely banned from editing the site after editors concluded that he violated its canvassing rules, "or in other words, calling on his followers off platform in order to influence Wikipedia's content," reports 404 Media. Sanger says the ban proves Wikipedia suppresses ideological diversity, while editors argue he was trying to mobilize an outside audience to influence internal decisions and had ignored an earlier warning. From the report: The discussion that led to the decision to ban Sanger concluded with what an editor called a "clear consensus" to ban Sanger. "There is general agreement among participants that he has engaged in off-wiki canvassing and is not here to constructively build the encyclopedia," the editor said in a note closing the discussion. "There is also a significant concern shared by many editors that his actions constitute calls for outing."
While Sanger has been railing about bias on Wikipedia for years, the specific issue here is around his WikiProject Intellectual Diversity. WikiProjects are group efforts among Wikipedia volunteers to deal with certain issues on the site. [...] Sanger's WikiProject Intellectual Diversity, as its name implies, aims to bring more intellectual diversity to the site, mostly meaning more right-leaning perspectives. Sanger's WikiProject Intellectual Diversity and its goals alone do not merit a ban according to Wikipedia's policies. The problem, according to Wikipedia editors, is that during the discussion about whether to allow WikiProject Intellectual Diversity to become an official WikiProject, Sanger invited his 91,000 followers on X to influence that discussion.
Discussions about potential bans are supposed to remain open for at least 72 hours. While consensus that Sanger had violated Wikipedia policies was clear, Sanger was banned at some point before that deadline. He was then briefly unbanned, and then again indefinitely banned once 72 hours had elapsed and the discussion about the ban closed. "Wikipedia has become more of a mob-rule anarchy than ever," Sanger said in a statement sent to me by a spokesperson. "In the kangaroo court in which a mob ousted me, Wikipedia's administrators showed that they don't appear to value details like formal charges, a designated prosecutor, basic decorum, distinction between prosecution and judge, dispassionate adjudication, and so forth. They have no proper system other than triggering a mob to selectively enforce their hodgepodge of vague rules."
"Now that same mob has blocked me for trying to bring an intellectually diverse group of thinkers and editors to the site," Sanger continued. "Subscribing to their groupthink is now an official requirement of being a member in good standing. Something must change, and now. I only wonder if the system as it currently stands can even allow the discourse necessary to fix the system."
While Sanger has been railing about bias on Wikipedia for years, the specific issue here is around his WikiProject Intellectual Diversity. WikiProjects are group efforts among Wikipedia volunteers to deal with certain issues on the site. [...] Sanger's WikiProject Intellectual Diversity, as its name implies, aims to bring more intellectual diversity to the site, mostly meaning more right-leaning perspectives. Sanger's WikiProject Intellectual Diversity and its goals alone do not merit a ban according to Wikipedia's policies. The problem, according to Wikipedia editors, is that during the discussion about whether to allow WikiProject Intellectual Diversity to become an official WikiProject, Sanger invited his 91,000 followers on X to influence that discussion.
Discussions about potential bans are supposed to remain open for at least 72 hours. While consensus that Sanger had violated Wikipedia policies was clear, Sanger was banned at some point before that deadline. He was then briefly unbanned, and then again indefinitely banned once 72 hours had elapsed and the discussion about the ban closed. "Wikipedia has become more of a mob-rule anarchy than ever," Sanger said in a statement sent to me by a spokesperson. "In the kangaroo court in which a mob ousted me, Wikipedia's administrators showed that they don't appear to value details like formal charges, a designated prosecutor, basic decorum, distinction between prosecution and judge, dispassionate adjudication, and so forth. They have no proper system other than triggering a mob to selectively enforce their hodgepodge of vague rules."
"Now that same mob has blocked me for trying to bring an intellectually diverse group of thinkers and editors to the site," Sanger continued. "Subscribing to their groupthink is now an official requirement of being a member in good standing. Something must change, and now. I only wonder if the system as it currently stands can even allow the discourse necessary to fix the system."
Indefinitely abandoned the original design (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Indefinitely abandoned the original design (Score:5, Insightful)
So your definition of a Marxist is somebody who doesn't believe in Marxism, and you can't see your mistake there? Marxists love to talk about the cultural side of Marxism pushing equality and minority rights, it's just that lots of fascists like to pretend that all minority rights are inherently Marxist (which is flattering to a Marxist, but stupid to anyone else)..
Re: Indefinitely abandoned the original design (Score:3)
Re: Indefinitely abandoned the original design (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Indefinitely abandoned the original design (Score:4, Informative)
https://battlepenguin.com/poli... [battlepenguin.com]
Don't jump to conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're not a regular Wikipedian and you're not familiar with Larry Sanger, I encourage you to read up.
His history speaks for itself.
Re: Don't jump to conclusions (Score:4, Insightful)
Them prematurely banning him in this instance proved his point.
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You don't get to define your political ideology, I DO!
Re: Don't jump to conclusions (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Don't jump to conclusions (Score:5, Informative)
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The Wikipedia article on socialism isn't great, being very US centric and seeming to have little input from countries that actually practice it. But the last thing it needs is what he is suggesting.
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... and when the word socialism comes up he demands it be bad mouthed by Fox News ...
Said a person who never lived under socialism.
Re: Don't jump to conclusions (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't "bad mouthing" an ideology to clearly indicate the consistent ideological association of that ideology with state-sponsored genocide.
Yet another person doesn't know what Socialism is. May I suggest reading the Wikipedia entry instead of Fox News?
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The term "National Socialism" arose from attempts to create a nationalist alternative to Marxist socialism and free-market capitalism. Nazism rejected Marxist concepts of class conflict and universal equality, opposed cosmopolitan internationalism, and sought to convince the social classes in German society to subordinate their interests to the "common good".
The majority of scholars identify Nazism, in both theory and practice, as a form of far-right politics.
Nazi economic policies were in many respects a continuation of those from the German National People's Party, a national-conservative party and the Nazis' coalition partner. While other capitalist countries strove for increased state ownership of industry during this period, the Nazis transferred public ownership into the private sector and handed over some public services to private organizations, mostly affiliated with the Party.
Re: Don't jump to conclusions (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest of the planet operates on socialist policies like healthcare and better protections for workers and new families. That fucking terrifies republicans.
Re: Don't jump to conclusions (Score:5, Informative)
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It's pretty clear that your own personal definition of what socialism means doesn't align with what the generally accepted meaning is.
Those types of policies would be undoubtedly "Social Democrat" policies which is a form of socialism. From the Wikipedia article: [wikipedia.org]
Social democracy is a broad, centre-left social, economic, and political ideology within the wider socialist movement that supports political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achieving social equality. In modern practice, social democracy has taken the form of a predominantly capitalist, yet robust welfare state, with policies promoting social justice, market regulation, and a more equitable distribution of income.
Socialism does not automatically mean Marxist-Leninist centralized planned economy. Nor does it automatically mean single party authoritarianism. If your personal definition of socialist means just means that it's like Stalin's USSR, you are goin
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Many commentators on the political right point to the mass killings under communist regimes, claiming them as an indictment of socialism. Opponents of this view, including supporters of socialism, state that these killings were aberrations caused by specific authoritarian regimes rather than socialism itself. They draw comparisons to killings, famines and excess deaths under capitalism, colonialism and anti-communist authoritarian governments.
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Re:Don't jump to conclusions (Score:4, Informative)
According to his wikipedia page [wikipedia.org], he was laid off and left Wikipedia one year after its creation in 2002, and since then, he's been either working on a competing project or attacking Wikipedia, or both. Yet he seems to refer to himself as "Wikipedia co-founder" in his book.
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It's possible to help create something and yet hate nature the creation.
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> It's possible to help create something and yet hate nature the creation.
Sure, but people who hate their creation tends to not claim credit for it.
For that matter, I find that people who can create don't tend to get hung-up on their old creations, be they good or bad - they're just busy creating new things. On the other hand, if someone can't create, and they were lucky to be involved in the creation of something big but lost control - they can spend a lifetime being bitter.
The Hive mind (Score:2, Informative)
If you look at the climate change denial page you can see the hive mind in action.
Re:The Hive mind (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems pretty factual and unbiased to me?
People keep thinking truth and science should be "balanced" and "fair" , but reality doesn't work by that. A scientific truth doesn't have sides and it doesnt function by debate. A thing is true or it isn't, and while the scientific process is a fundamentally statistical beast, its always been a process of pushing the knowledge curve against well defined asympotes. Its never had an obligation to pay attention to the opinions of the illeducated or dishonest. Because science doesnt deal with opinions, it deals with experiments and results.
Debates are for social media not scientific discourse. Sure there are robust exchanges of conflicting papers and studies where uncertainty exists, but it bears no resemblance to the shouty name calling and exchange of thought-terminating cliches that dominate social media. Science doesnt debate, and neither does wikipedia. The truth is not democratic.
Dude, read Kuhn. Please. (was Re:The Hive mind) (Score:3)
You are right that science has no obligation to give every crank theory equal time. Climate denial does not become a coequal scientific position just because someone demands “balance.” That is exactly what sensationalist media and cable news (looking at you, Fox News) has been doing for decades—fooling low-information viewers into thinking crackpot conspiracies belong on the same stage as rigorous scientific research. On that point, you'll get no argument from me.
But you are smuggling in a
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People rarely recognize their own biases and are thus very bad at stripping it from their writing. Editors are supposed to recognize and excise the biases of the writers they supervise. If all the editors share a bias, they won't realize how biased the writing is.
Re: Don't jump to conclusions (Score:2)
"Yes, comrade Stalin"
The truth has no bias ... It is equally for and against left and right.
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Tell me what is truthful about obscuring negative associations with an ideology?
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Tell me what is truthful about obscuring negative associations with an ideology?
“Obscuring negative associations” is doing a lot of unpaid labor there. First establish the association. Then establish that reliable sources treat it as significant. Then establish that Wikipedia is suppressing it rather than applying due weight. Until then, this is Russell’s teapot with a swastika armband.
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Truth has a well-known left bias.
A common lie told by the indoctrinated, to justify their shitty behavior. When no other opinion is valid, you can reduce people to subhuman status and treat them accordingly.
Where in this thread was the implication that "no other opinion is valid"? You're just mad that OP is generally correct, and instead of responding with anything that resembled a coherent well thought out reply that supported your opinion you just shouted "NAAAAH AAAAAAAAAH" and confidently hit submit.
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I highlighted the obvious lie
No, you made some shit up that wasn't said, then used that made up shit to try and further your point. The rest of your last reply? I don't have a clue what point you're trying to make.
Re: Don't jump to conclusions (Score:5, Interesting)
Science is intrinsically progressive and anti-conservative. It is used to develop new knowledge that overturns existing knowledge. Inasmuch as progressive=left and conservative=right, truth has a left leaning bias. That said, left does not always equal progressive and right doesn't always equal conservative.
More right-leaning perspectives (Score:3, Interesting)
Just to clarify one point (Score:4, Interesting)
should read:
"Sanger invited 91,000 racists, misogynists, bigots, homophobes, xenophobes, and fascists from a well-known Nazi bar to influence the discussion."
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The moment I hear it's from 'X', that's exactly what I presume, because if you have any decency at all you don't choose a site that protects Nazism for your social media fix.
Guilt by association isn't perfect, but some times the choice of associates speaks so loudly you can't ignore it.
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Hey now... not everyone on X is a racist or a bigot. They also have crypto fanboys and engagement bait trolls as well!
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Can't forget the bots!
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I miss the liberalism of my youth (1970s and 1980s). You fucking kids have lost your minds.
Re:Just to clarify one point (Score:5, Informative)
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But you clowns never read your own source, in which Popper said:
âSIn this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.
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That this vomit posing as a rational comment is moderated as "Interesting" just confirms that I made the right decision to abandon slashdot several years ago now. I occasionally drop in to see if anything has changed for the better, but so far, no, it has not.
There is nothing interesting about the parent whatsoever. It's not even very original, just the same old groupthink.
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How authoritarianism starts (Score:2)
News at eleven.
Sanger's Wikipedia page (Score:4, Insightful)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
> He has argued that, despite its merits, Wikipedia lacks credibility and accuracy due to a lack of respect for expertise. Since 2020, he has also accused Wikipedia of having a left-wing ideological bias in its articles.
[9] Sabur, Rozina (July 16, 2021). "The Left has taken over Wikipedia and stripped it of neutrality, says co-creator". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022. Retrieved December 2, 2021. Mr Sanger added that "very little" reference to scandals and allegations against the Bidens, for instance relating to their business dealings in Ukraine, could be found on Wikipedia.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/wo... [telegraph.co.uk]
[10] Sayers, Freddie (July 14, 2021). "Wikipedia co-founder: I no longer trust the website I created". UnHerd (Podcast). UnHerd. Archived from the original on May 27, 2022. Retrieved May 25, 2022.
"Wikipedia co-founder: I no longer trust the website I created"
My opinion: It does seem there's plenty of tribalism these days. More than enough to go around and make it questionable as to what is truly neutral anyway. Common context & shared beliefs/views/integrity and whats important are viewed very differently by a lot of groups -- including here on slashdot too.
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Wikipedia lacks credibility and accuracy due to a lack of respect for expertise.
Right wing lies and bullshit are not expertise.
Since 2020, he has also accused Wikipedia of having a left-wing ideological bias in its articles.
Funny how that works. Facts and reality are almost never in agreement with people like Larry.
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He's right expertise does not get you anywhere in itself. Of course if you are an expert you probably have some obscure references to back your statements up.
Re: Sanger's Wikipedia page (Score:3, Insightful)
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Since 2020, he has also accused Wikipedia of having a left-wing ideological bias in its articles.
When one believes they're the center of the world, then the real center is always in a side-wing.
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Try the climate denial page.
Re: Sanger's Wikipedia page (Score:2)
Re: Sanger's Wikipedia page (Score:5, Insightful)
Couple-three answers:
1. No, of course not.
2. More and more it describes where Republicans are being let by the nose, away from traditional conservative topics, which _certainly should have a place in any informed and putatively neutral discussion. Why the right has turned to bullshit sauce lately is beyond me. They used to have ideas worth discussing. Not just lies, hate and bigotry. Look at the leaders. They're flacking this.
3. These lunatic topics (including climate change denial, which someone else was kind enough to point out) are what's being excluded when someone plays the "left-wing-bias" tune. For people making this noise "left-wing-bias" is stiff that looks like factual science-backed fairly neutral reporting. Y'know, like we used to have before the world went nuts.
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It's ebbed and flowed since then, but you're basically right. In the '90s we had welfare work reform, don't ask don't tell, NAFTA/free trade, bipartisan fear of Satanism, and no legitimate talk about decriminalizing drugs. Everyone went to church, atheists were controversial, and you could still ruin your career in Hollywood by coming out.
It's understandable that people aren't super interested in returning to that, even if might mean winning back the South or keeping the Rust Belt. Still, you have to meet p
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Mob-ruled Anarchy (Score:4, Interesting)
Dude... really? That's exactly what you were trying to do with your followers before you were caught red-handed.
Re:Mob-ruled Anarchy (Score:4, Interesting)
Dude... really? That's exactly what you were trying to do with your followers before you were caught red-handed.
At some point, it stops being a mob and starts being a vote. And while it makes sense to not allow people to drag random folks onto the platform just to vote your way, it doesn't make sense to limit voting on an important issue to the 0.1% of users who pay close enough attention to notice. So I can see both sides on this one.
Maybe the right thing to do is to require a certain level of activity to earn the right to vote, then dump the canvassing rules. That way, any canvassing would only serve to increase turnout, rather than truly padding the ballot box.
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Maybe the right thing to do is to require a certain level of activity to earn the right to vote,
I can vote with my donations.
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canvassing turns any vote into a popularity contest, I don't think that's how it should work
Not necessarily. Canvassing can also bring broader attention to something. For example, I'm hearing about this, and my politics don't align with his, but now I'm curious what the issue is about, and might actually pay attention to it.
How would you "break up progressive groupthink"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Two things both true (Score:2)
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Dear Duffus,
He doesn't even deny it, he just makes procedural arguments why he shouldn't be punished for it.
And you're either not smart enough to understand the words, or you're too much of a dingus to stick to actual arguments instead of yelling, "Squirrel!"
(The canvassing rule doesn't say that people involved in activism can't be editors. It says that people who are editors can't use activism to gain support for their edits.)
The implications go way beyond Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
Ideologues like some of the nutjobs that devote their lives to editor wars at Wikipedia know this and there is growing concern about the kind of "supply chain" poisoning they can do and probably are doing.
Disclaimer applies since Slashdot is full of similar drooling clowns: I'm a Green voter and/or usually a (D) voter--mainly because the local candidates on the (R) side are even crazier. This isn't about my wanting rightwing views, it's about extremism of any kind infiltrating the tools we use to get insight.
Wikipedia functions as a tyranny of the dedicated (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia’s governance is fundamentally broken, operating less like an open meritocracy and more as a tyranny of the dedicated. The platform purports to represent a massive global community of editors, yet its most critical systemic policies are routinely captured by a fraction of a percent of that pool. A stark case in point is the ratification of the English Wikipedia's binding AI content guideline (WP:LLM), which was enacted following a Request for Comment that closed with just 44 votes in favor out of tens of thousands of active contributors. This structural failure stems from an intense "time tax": navigating dense internal bureaucracies and litigating talk pages requires a massive, asymmetric availability of free time. Domain experts and casual contributors are systematically filtered out, leaving policy-making to a self-selecting oligarchy of hyper-active insiders. Ultimately, the system fails because it treats sheer endurance as a proxy for consensus, allowing the rules of the web's primary reference engine to be dictated by whoever has the bandwidth to outlast everyone else.
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It settled into a metastable state, but I don't think people with a stick up their ass are necessarily always the most dedicated volunteers. Just the most dangerous ones.
If the deletionists had lost and the freaks who just want to summarize every anime episode from primary sources had won, I think it could have gone differently.
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LLM-based articles are a hill you want to die on? Seriously? It's easy to accidentally prompt an LLM into producing something that's full of factual errors. Heck, it's basically impossible to prompt one into producing a decently long Wikipedia-style article that's factually correct.
And it's easy to produce large volumes of LLM output, much harder to fact-check them. Forbidding LLM articles is a means of spam control.
Just make your own website. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately every time Conservatives try this it turns into a shit hole, and no one uses it. Or it becomes like twitter - also a shit hole.
Reality is left leaning and no amount trying to distort it will change that.
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That's why Bluesky exists. Crybabies who won't play unless they get to make all the rules, and break into tears if they don't get their own way all the time.
The Left has become unbearably childish.
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And the right has become unbearably dangerous.
What's your point?
Mobs (Score:3)
"Now that same mob has blocked me for trying to bring an intellectually diverse group of thinkers and editors to the site," Translation: "That mob blocked my mob!!!!". Sorry he lost me there, I was sympathetic earlier, but he blew it with that.
clueless (Score:2)
Wikipedia's administrators showed that they don't appear to value details like formal charges, a designated prosecutor, basic decorum, distinction between prosecution and judge, dispassionate adjudication, and so forth.
of course they don't. They are not a court, you aren't entitled to formal charges or a prosecutor or even a trial or the concept of innocent until proven guilty. you are entitled to exactly what the terms of use say you are entitled to and nothing more. Having said that I am not sure why he is trying here, wikipedia is not redeemable beyond a ground up rebuild with proper editors and any such rebuild with Sanger involved would be a disaster.
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Join a competitor. (Score:2)
I'm sure Metapedia will welcome his contributions. They're good at whitewashing.
Wikipedia is incomplete ... (Score:3, Interesting)
... in some parts, contains bucketloads of over-the-top excess trivia in others and has sections that are flat-out provably false. If the sections chiefs don't think an article is important, they delete it. That's why poets important to the development of a language and culture sometimes don't even have an entry, let alone more that 3 lines while some third-grade rapper that made some noise 10 years back has an essay with 10 000 words covering every detail of their private life.
I've seen flat-out bullshit on wikipedia more than once, I've corrected some things, roughly 30% get rolled back. If an area of expertise has asshole/dimwitt chief editors (or whatever they are called in wikipedia-speak) I often just give up and don't bother.
Wikipedia is a reflection of our times and what's important to us. And it should be viewed as such. With a pound of salt.
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If you make a good faith edit, it is rolled back, you challenge the rollback again in good faith, and are then told "You are not here to build an encyclopedia", that's how you know you've run into the duke of a little fiefdom.
Sander is woke? he wants diversity... (Score:2)
Funny how right wants diversity when it suits them...
when not - it is woke...
Intellectual conservatives (Score:2)
Seriously? Never met them
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As a long former conservative who left because the idiocy was becoming the platform; I'm sure one, or maybe two, exist somewhere. Something about broken clocks being correct twice a day or other such nonsense.
Kangeroo court (Score:2)
That is basically rule by Kangeroo court.
The WP MMORPG is a joke (Score:2)
"not here to build an encyclopedia" is code for "you do things that defy approved thought".
Canvassing? (Score:2)
Do I understand it right, that his fault is basically informing the wrong people that they can participate in elections/votes?
The decision (Score:2)
The decision was to ban Sanger, not to bang Sanger, for those with limited speed reading skills
Isn't that what all wiki editors does? (Score:2)
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you can post on /. with js disabled. that's probably a remnant from the original design of slash that the current "owners" aren't really able to address but for all the whining and teeth gnashing about unicode support one has to give them that.
Re: Brendan Eich (Score:4, Informative)
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Did you get your statistics from Grokipedia?
Re: Brendan Eich (Score:2)
Most of California did not donate money to any campaign or candidate.
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Should've been fired for creating Javascript.
Re: Does anyone trust Wikipedia? (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia is far more reliable and unbiased than a typical search results page. Your crazy politics are glaringly obvious.
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They love each other... almost too much... some might need therapy. But if you don't listen to them, you're silencing them. They don't like being silenced, so they're not satisfied running their own thing if it isn't popular.