So long, and thanks for all the fish

Or, A child's garden of wikipedia, part 2.

I've been banned from WUWT, after exposing too many of his errors. Although naturally AW doesn't phrase it quite like that. Also, he didn't much like me not showing the adoration that he gets from his fanbois either. Indeed, presumably in an effort to pretend that there is no censorship, AW can't even bring himself to say "banned": instead preferring the Orwellian you have been dis-invited from further commentary here. Even that may disappear if it becomes too inconvenient, so you can see a webcited version here.

The cause of all this (dismissing as a smokescreen his nominal reasons "you have summarily and regularly violated WUWT policy. While on one hand you have made some valid points, on the other, your behavior here (with follow up taunting on your blog) is serially mendacious, disruptive, dismissive, insulting, and condescending, and as I've pointed out the threads Mr. Connolley visits get hijacked by his interaction, making them about him and his taunts. In essence, as you've demonstrated on Wikipedia, your participation here is not in good faith either") looks to be his embarrassment over his errors at wikipedia.

I told AW and his people that they were all whingers-on-the-sidelines who, whilst using wiki whenever it suited them, preferred complaining about it to ever contributing. This struck a nerve with AW, who clearly had a long-built-up resentment to get off his chest:

I submitted the original page on the Climate Reference Network to Wikipedia in April 2008 after my invited visit to NCDC. I actually did it from my hotel room in Asheville because no page existed on it and I thought there should be one after meeting with NCDC staff (who I was impressed with BTW for that project division). So I took the description from NCDC and posted it along with the appropriate title and cites. It was then promptly deleted by one of the pseudonym named climate bullies you cavort with. My crime was using my own name....because well, we just can't have that awful Watts person submitting to Wikipedia. Only the anointed get to touch the holy Wiki climate reference book it seems, mere unclean mortals like myself get their contributions deleted wholesale. So I don't bother anymore. I know others that have been turned off by the bullying as well.

[Italics in the original]. The problem is that all of this, apart from his submitting the page, is pure fantasy, as I told him (unpublished comment, oddly enough). To clear away some confusion, he doesn't mean Climate Reference Network he means US Climate Reference Network. The initial version of that was submitted by User:Wattsupwiththat as that user's only contribution ever. As you can see from the page history (or perhaps more clearly in a diff from then to just-recently) it wasn't deleted, nor indeed was it substantially changed (technically you or I as humble users can't see any deleted revisions of the page, but I've asked an admin who has confirmed that there are none).

What probably confused AW was the tagging for speedy deletion as a copyvio. Since it was just a cut-paste job, this isn't unreasonable. But that tag only survived for an hour and a half before it was removed - its a copy of some US govt work, so is permissible, just about. And AW got a note on his talk page explaining this.

So we can now look at AW's claims in detail:

* It was then promptly deleted - this is false
* by one of the pseudonym named climate bullies - since it wasn't deleted, this is automatically false. But the person who added the tag, Bradv, has nothing to do with climate as far as I know. Notice, incidentally, how the nominally-polite AW throws around false accusations of being a "climate bully" so readily.
* you cavort with - false. I've had no interactions with him at all, as far as I know.
* My crime was using my own name....because well, we just can't have that awful Watts person submitting to Wikipedia - false. There is not the least hint of this; the tagging was just an automatic reaction to cut-n-paste, with no hint that Bradv even knew who AW was.
* Only the anointed get to touch the holy Wiki climate reference book it seems, mere unclean mortals like myself get their contributions deleted wholesale - false. For all the reasons given above, or even from just looking at the article history, which has contributions by a number of people, none of whom have anything to do with GW (well, until I merged the two articles just a while ago).
* I don't bother anymore - this certainly is true.
* I know others that have been turned off by the bullying as well - there is certainly a whole group of septics out there who use similar fantasies as their excuse for not editing.

Refs

* Now Anthony Watts Is Calling Me!

More like this

"you have been dis-invited from further commentary here.". Whatts is clearly going soft in his elder days. For me it was something like "disruptive comments by an anonymous greenhorned mock up of a logician are deleted. In fact, you're outta here". I do not remember his words correctly but since he has difficulties in reading comprehension anyway I quite frankly believe he is not offended by this. Anyway, the number of people AW has banned is starting to be quite large, so I do not know if there's any club anymore. And I do not know where to apply a membership card to this.

[Good point. I've created a userbox for this -W]

I'm learning the denialist code, it's not that difficult.

Condescending = you are correct and speak in plain, clear language. The denier fraternity don't like being shown up as idiots.

Bullying = you don't succumb to bullying no matter how much crap denialists dish out or how many names they taunt you with. So they go for banning you instead.

The same code is used by denialists on all climate blogs. On anti-science blogs it's used as a dogwhistle for other climate science deniers. I've noticed that Anthony and a few others often go one further and tell their acolytes where to send the hate mail.

Watts is cunning but not very bright, going by his version of his wiki 'contribution'. It doesn't matter. Many if not most of his readers wouldn't know the difference.

I wonder you ever went there, given the boundless and groundless abuse they heap on you whenever you do. I ventured there myself today - to see what had got them so riled up - and was swiftly reminded what a horrible toxic little rat-hole it is.

I see that at least one of the Watterati claims to believe that, because you made an open offer to bet on sea ice, and then Smokey specified some pretty stringent terms, and also specified that any winnings must go to Watts, then that constitutes a contract and you are held to Smokey's terms and conditions. Just as, if I go into a shop saying "I'd like to buy a toaster", when a salesman says "yes, sir, here's a broken kettle, that'll be twenty grand including your compulsory donation to the tory party," I must cough up or be thrown into debtors' prison. What a strange and twisted reality they inhabit.

I see also that they think you are unemployed. What gives? Projection?

[The bet thing was their way of weaselling out, I think. Its hard to be sure. The unemployed bit is harder to understand. As I've said elsewhere, I left BAS to do software engineering; its possible that they aren't able to read to the end of sentences -W]

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 02 May 2012 #permalink

Right. Anyone who cares to enquire - for instance, by looking at your Wikipedia user page - knows that you are at CSR (and probably earning much more than you ever did at BAS).

Well, just think of all that spare time you will have, now that you won't be wasting it at WUWT. Care to spend it watching the ice melt this summer? There are beautiful leads all over. http://lance-modis.eosdis.nasa.gov/imagery/subsets/?mosaic=Arctic.20121…

[Ah, ice melt. Yes I do need to start looking at that. Though this year isn't looking very exciting so far -W]

By Nick Barnes (not verified) on 02 May 2012 #permalink

"As I've said elsewhere, I left BAS to do software engineering; its possible that they aren't able to read to the end of sentences -W"

Or the actual paper, or the caveats in the abstract, or the axes of graphs, or the papers describing how the data in the graph was compiled...

Actually it's highly likely that they can't read the end of sentences.

Kudos to anyone undertaking the sisyphean task of dragging the horses at WTFWT to water. It's a task I avoid because Watts et al fulfill my most cynical thoughts about humanity.

But note that you're just as wrong as him, because you said he never ever edited Wikipedia :-p

(Addendum: christ the comment software here is atrocious.)

[Yes, and from the host's viewpoint it is difficult to deal with spam etc. I gather we may be changing software soon, though -W]

I admire a well done hissy fit. You didn't see them done with quality and consistency through and through with options to convincingly renew.

Those vocally take natural talent as well as practice. And we haven't had them on stage that I've come across done well by professionals often this past century.

The blogging equivalent, no.

> serially mendacious, disruptive, dismissive,
> insulting, and condescending

_Serially_?

Nobody does that kind of heavy lifting serially, where parallel is possible.

I can relate.

I've been run from 'Skeptical Science' for adding too many facts.

[That would be interesting, if you had any examples. But without them its empty -W]

By Climate Weenie (not verified) on 03 May 2012 #permalink

Getting banned from web sites is a badge of honour, I get banned all the time from climate alarmists sites much like this one.

Just make up a new web name and email address, then go back and hassle the web site as usual. C'mon, how hard is that?

Just helping you out. Don't say I never done nothin' for ya.

cheers

Tony needs to broaden WUWT's appeal.

Though 150 million Americans boast two digit IQs, he's only reaching 150 thousand of them.

Mr Stoat,

I have to take issue with you regarding your casual throw away remark, to whit "[Ah, ice melt. Yes I do need to start looking at that. Though this year isn't looking very exciting so far -W]"

Actually, it's looking quite interesting already :-

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeser…

[That may depend on your interpretation. If you're reading it as "there was a lot of ice over the winter, it will be interesting to see if that translates into more than we've got used to in the summer", though, you'd be right -W]

Real Climate doesn't seem to ban anyone, just not include their posts. 'SS' bans civil discussions which raise the fact that warming as at or below the low end of most projections.

Power corrupts, it seems, including the power to 'moderate' blogs.

[This is just more content-free accusations. I think the best thing for anyone like you, with all your no-doubt-exceptionally-valuable-but-mysteriously-suppressed comments, is to put them somewhere publicly visible, so we can all judge you wondrous insights. Its what I do Otherwise, you're just mumbling into your beer -W]

By Climate Weenie (not verified) on 03 May 2012 #permalink

Russell --- Can he actually count that high?

By David B. Benson (not verified) on 03 May 2012 #permalink

I can deduce from your attitude that being banned is not a problem, because you, like many others, would prefer to sit in an echo chamber.

Kind of a step back from usenet days.

Have fun.

[Still got nothing at all to say? If this is what you were "banned" for elsewhere I can see why they got bored with you -W]

By Climate Weenie (not verified) on 04 May 2012 #permalink

I must say Romm, or perhaps his Progressive webmaster, can be as censorious as Watts.

Ah, but Russell, Romm et al don't proclaim to not censor. The most frequent complaint from Wattsians (see also Climate Weenie) is that the 'pro-AGW' sites censor inconvenient comments, but WUWT most assuredly does not do so. Seems to contradict the facts...

Banned, hell I got into one of his blog posts today! Just for digging out an old BNP blog he reposted a few years ago and putting it on Joe Romms blog about the Heartlands new poster campaign.

As corperal Pike used to say "they dont like it up em".

I suspect I am about to get banned from WUWT for the following comment:

I just checked Mannâs book, pages 160-175 â the chapter which deals with the NRC and Wegman reports â and can assure you that he neither quotes nor refers to any emails obtained by Vergano from Wegman. Schnare just flat out lied to the court.

I have to say that this was a pretty ballsy lie by ATI, but Tony the liar probably will expunge the exposure.

By Rattus Norvegicus (not verified) on 04 May 2012 #permalink

Tough to know what makes me more cynical, people who lie or people who are hypocrites. Nice to know I'm making a good choice to avoid Watts -- I couldn't handle the heaping dose of both.

"Don't panic!", dorlomin, but Lance Corporal Jones (the butcher), not Private Pike (the bank clerk), had the line "They don't like it up 'em!"... and Watts and his amoebic-brained cohorts could do with a bit of Corporal Jones's bayonet about their nether regions, methinks.

17

Joe is not paid to let his competitors advertise.

Going K-Street, like Going Emeritus, is a bipartisan hazard of the course.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/may/04/heartland-instit…

I'm surprised there haven't been more posts about the Heartland poster campaign (e.g. "Charles Manson & the Unabomber Also Believe in Global Warming"). I did see a half-baked outage letter from McKitrick to Joe Bast of Heartland angry that it "cheapens" the Heartland reputation and will lose sympathy points from Gleick. Such in inane poster campaign shows they're even more the corporate shills than Gleick thought! :-)