von S jumps the shark

Many thanks to commentor Bam who alerted me to A comment by Alex Harvey: CLIMATE CHANGE ARBITRATION BIAS AT WIKIPEDIA by Hans von Storch CLIMATE CHANGE ARBITRATION BIAS AT WIKIPEDIA complete with big shouty letters.

[This is a copy from back-up of a post that was on the old mt site, and didn't get auto-moved to the new wp site. It will have lost any comments made then, sorry.]

Before you read that, you probably need to at least see Junk from von S (especially if you're a von S reader, because he has previously censored links to that post). If you read the comments there, its clear that von S is clueless about wikipedia. And what do you do if you're clueless? That's right: you publish twaddle from a septic who is pretending to be neutral, which is von S's most recent post. In the comments, von S uses the "Curry defence": that he hasn't got a clue what is going on, but is publishing this out of interest. Or something like that.

Probably the most important point to make is that anyone trying to understand what is going on from what AH is saying to von S will not succeed. Just about everything written by AH is either lies or deliberate misrepresentation. Please don't expect me to correct it all. My own view of the original case is here, if you're interested. You might also want to read my rather disorganised on-wiki page.

von S's post relies heavily on Lawrence Solomon. As any fule kno, Solomon didn't and doesn't understand how wiki works, so pretty well everything he posted, and AH regurgitated, was wrong. I say "so", but that is being generous: Solomon is not accidentally getting things wrong, or perhaps better has taken no trouble to get things right. By contrast AH does know how wiki works (well, a bit); he is deliberately lying to von S. See for example a child's garden of wikipedia.

On the substantive point, which is the odd suggestion that arbcomm is biased pro-science, it is interesting to read the actual ban appeals. AH doesn't provide you with convenient links to those, preferring to provide his own inaccurate gloss. Mine is here. The basic point is, I know what I'm talking about wrt GW and have something to contribute, and have a very long history of contributing worthwhile content. Cla68's is here. The basic point is that he doesn't know what he is talking about and has nothing to contribute except disruption (that's my gloss, BTW). Don't miss the "statement by MastCell" on that page. Its not a one-off; that is typical Cla. Taken together, this suffices to explain the difference in our treatment.

Update: its nice to see that not everyone is convinced by von S, see e.g. this comment which makes an explicit connection with one of von S's hopes, the "honest broker" stuff: In my opinion giving Alex Harvey a platform for charactar assassination was a bad idea, far away from any honest broker ideals.

Refs

* Curry jumps the shark
* Jumping the shark?
* Webcite of Storch's post as of writing
* Morano madness
* The IPCC May Have Outlived its Usefulness?
* MONCKTON AND THE MOB

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Actually it turns out that this is part 3! But I'm not going to revise the title now. Part 1 and Part 2 refer, as does some digging. [Update: this made the [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-12-28/In the news]] ] So, Lawrence "beany" Solomon does me the honour of a full-out assault. I'm a bit…
No, not the US in Iraq, but a smaller matter: the recent arbcomm case. The case is now closed, and the the usual idiots are as usual getting it wrong (hint: the bit about admin is totally wrong). But then again, no-one from the outside ever understands wikipedia. At some point I'll do a long post…
My previous post refers. There are lots more things to say; this post doesn't really say any of them but veers off at a tangent. Let me know if you get bored. The tangent to start with is "no-one from outside understand how wikipedia works". An obvious example of this is Lawrence Solomon (my…
[Update: June 6th: Chase-Me has definitely been a very naughty boy indeed. The only question is whether he'll hang on to his sysop bit.] By popular request. And I've not seen anyone else wiki-literate discussing this, so I will (update: Wikipedia sockpuppetry is a problem, but baseless accusations…

William,

nice to see you quoted me in your update. Next time feel free to correct the typos ;-)

Andreas

> either lies or deliberate misrepresentation
Eh, are they different things?

[I had in mind a distinction. For example "you robbed a bank" is a lie. "You and the notorious bank robber went into the bank on Friday and the bank was robbed" is deliberate misrepresentation, if in fact I went in earlier in the day and had nothing to do with the robbery -W]

By Martin Vermeer (not verified) on 23 May 2012 #permalink

That's what you say

By Eli Rabett (not verified) on 23 May 2012 #permalink

I think it's called innuendo

By Martin Vermeer (not verified) on 24 May 2012 #permalink

Alex is ever so amusing. His whole rant about Cla68's topic ban is so indignant that it makes me think he really believes what he's saying. But then that's Alex - very earnest, but not all that bright...

Truth is that except for the odd occasions Eli does not edit Wikipedia for fear of entrapment by the weird patois and rules of the natives. To have let this out of the box is a crime of the highest order. Bad Klima Zweibel.

By Eli Rabett (not verified) on 25 May 2012 #permalink

This is my first time reading this blog. I'm just a lurker with very basic education, so I don't have anything to say science-wise, but I do enjoy reading climate blogs and the comment exchanges in them. I want to commend you and others (Tamino, Tim Lambert, John Cook etc., whose blogs I also visit), who have expertise or sound knowledge of climate science and fight the good fight against denialism. I wish more experts would join in through blogs or opinion pieces/letters to newspapers etc., although I understand why they don't. Besides the time taken from research and the reluctance to take political side if only by association _ denier=right-wing, warmist=left-wing _ there are the attacks on their integrity and even physical threats. I despise deniers; not because they hold an opposing point of view, but because they're mostly intellectually dishonest. They resort to sophistry, they lie, they go around in circles or off on tangents with their arguments etc. From everything I've read online, there appears to be very little, if any, genuine skepticism out there: the denier arguments seem to be politically/ideologically based and resort to disinformation, misinformation or arguments from incredulity. There's nothing of any substance; just sophistry and bullshit. I'm not revealing anything new, but I just thought you might like to know what an interested layman, who has only a very basic knowledge of the issue but is open minded, thinks about the whole thing and most importantly, I want to encourage you and all climate scientists to continue in your efforts against the deniers. And one last comment, which is actually related to this thread: I remember Alex Harvey from Deltoid, where he was arguing with Lotharson a few months ago (I looked for it but because of the new format, all the old comments have disappeared). The bloke was totally clueless about climate science, but what really struck me was the level of hubris and intellectual dishonesty he displayed; he was constantly shifting positions, never acknowledging when proven wrong, lying about comments he had made or not made or stances he had taken about certain things, even though he must have known how easy it is to look back at previous posts. Basically, I think he's pathologically dishonest.