User talk:Toby Bartels

Do you really want to encourage Sanger by accomodating him? Have you actually *read* his various exchanges with The Cunctator, 24, etc., etc., etc., etc.? It is pretty clear that when he was actively involved he was pushing an agenda of his own, and anyone that pointed this out got effectively slandered and censored to a degree I don't think we want happening around here any more. And this agenda extends into his articles -- his ethics article for instance had one link to an actual ethical theory, that being an obscure Jewish one, and it appears that he resisted at least some attempts to edit it or other of his articles -- treating some fields as his own personal editorial domain.

More dangerous to the project, he also insists that he knows people's identity based on some evidence he doesn't reveal (a kind of Bush League ethics I guess, maybe 'national security' prevents Larry revealing it ;-)) and engages in rude forms of "outing" that can endanger the project. What if these people that he names show up with lawsuits in hand, claiming Larry's unwise statements as evidence that their work was plagiarized, and suing the project out of existence? There are good reasons not to "out" any people who have made substantial anonymous contributions -- even if you hate them -- to further some personal agenda or bias.

Since he's unwilling to cooperate in any form of governance including even the original Wikipedia Governance norms laid out by Wales, or naming anyone he likes to the the ideal Wikipedia board, it's fair to question what kinds of powers he thinks he should have here, and why he thinks he'd be able to fit in at all. Perhap's he's just coming back to fuck up processes that are working and to harangue people who disagree with his own ethical or political views -- he for instance attached a lot of labels to the tops of discussion pages on meta that accussed people participating in discussions of either being trolls or pandering to them. Is that kind of practice really appropriate on the meta?

Larry appears to be a troll of the worst order, and the project is better off without him. He appears to have no capacity to cooperate with anybody, and a 'my way or the highway' attitude that is incompatible with the scale and diversity of the project these days. What domain will he claim is his next? Who's he going to go after next? What name will he hang on what IP number(s)? How will they take what he says? How long before this childish behavior backfires? Not long I suspect. -- 142

I put the material on Larry Sanger just as a kludge; I think that it actually works better linked to from History of Wikipedia. (I'll respond to the subpage comment at Talk:Larry Sanger.) I do think that Larry's edit of my introductory text was POV, so I tried to NPOV it; take a look. But in general, I don't think that moving it off of Larry Sanger is caving in to him -- the important thing is that the essays are easily accessible from Main Page by following logical links, and the link from History of Wikipedia does this, IMO. (BTW, what name do you go by on Wikipedia, or which language do you work on?) -- Toby 01:39 Feb 27, 2003 (UTC)

I don't go by a "name" here, because that simply encourages ad hominem attack. I use an IP number because that provides an ethical degree of body accountability -- anyone who actually believes there's some threat to themselves has the option of oh say tracking me down and killing me. That obligation being satisfied, I feel I can say what needs to be said, despite people like this:

I asked because I wanted to see if you were somebody whose work I was familiar with from [[en:]]. (Remember, I didn't recognise who LMS was when he started editing Larry Sanger.) It's no big deal. -- Toby 07:54 Mar 2, 2003 (UTC)

142 = 24 the same person who threatened LMS and mav -- dan

That is libel. Look up the penalties for libel, "dan". Seems you realize the value of anonymous authorship while revealing IP. But not much else. A lot of people share these beliefs that you seem to attribute all to just one person. -- 142