User talk:81.178.38.169

Retired!

Well, almost, give or take a few hours ...

I might still post on my IP a very few favoured topics.

It's been hell. Good luck the next lot. 81.178.38.169 (talk) 06:16, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Welcome to Rinpoche's IP address (even if we are no more)

Hi everyone. Welcome to Rinpoche's IP address, used by him when he was contributing to Wikipedia and occasionally by mistake by any of some 40 or so carefully constructed figments of his imagination who may or may not have any actual basis in real life and a few of these (about a dozen perhaps) do have current accounts with Wikipedia. If you're a wikipedia sock person sort thing who finds themself here you can contact Rinpoche at his website through IrinaOfKamaz, who has email enabled.

The reason we make mistakes by the way is that when we are engaged in our nefarious web activites, which long predate Wikipedia, the very last thing on our minds is to keep the Wikipedia sock police cool and our privacy and security arrangements aren't really dedicated to that end. Occasionally the VPN servers we use break down and we find ourselves at any of several possible addresses including this one. We don't really see why querying the behaviour of administrators such as John below qualifies for the kind of attention we have recently been receiving and we would prefer it if the sock police notified us first before blocking and thus associating a user with us. We would be happy to retire an account should it transpire that one of us has been engaging in anti-social behaviour such as seeking to revert the public outing, as John below attempted to do, of an alleged sex-abuser who was named and shamed as well as whereabouted in the press courtesy of his victim, a film director in the public eye, some 40 years after the abuse in connection with a film premiere of his, but who was never brought to trial for his offenses let alone found guilty. This earned us a two week block and apparently, so it seems, a degree of notoriety on Wikipedia that reverberates still. Thank you. 81.178.38.169 (talk) 14:47, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

February 2011

Please do not add commentary or your own personal analysis to Wikipedia articles. Doing so violates Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy and breaches the formal tone expected in an encyclopedia. Thank you.--John (talk) 01:52, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't be silly John. You've reverted a quite correct remark that the original article was coincident with the premiere of 'My Kingdom' (it actually notes it at the bottom of the article). I shall give you a day or two to reflect and then revert. I would much prefer you to blank the whole reference. It is very far from notable. I wonder at you lecturing me when you were happy to name and shame the teacher involved. 81.178.38.169 (talk) 02:11, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

3rr warning

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Users who edit disruptively or refuse to collaborate with others may be blocked if they continue.

In particular, the three-revert rule states that:

1. Making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period is almost always grounds for an immediate block.
2. Editors violating the rule will usually be blocked for 24 hours for a first incident.
3. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes. Work towards wording, and content that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If edit warring continues, you may be blocked from editing without further notice. --John (talk) 02:21, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

COI warning

Welcome to Wikipedia. If you are affiliated with some of the people, places or things you have written about on Wikipedia, you may have a conflict of interest. In keeping with Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, edits where there is a conflict of interest, or where such a conflict might reasonably be inferred, are strongly discouraged. If you have a conflict of interest, you should avoid or exercise great caution when:

1. editing or creating articles related to you, your organization, or its competitors, as well as projects and products they are involved with;
2. participating in deletion discussions about articles related to your organization or its competitors; and
3. linking to the Wikipedia article or website of your organization in other articles (see Wikipedia:Spam).

Please familiarize yourself with relevant policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to neutral point of view, verifiability of information, and autobiographies.

For information on how to contribute to Wikipedia when you have a conflict of interest, please see our frequently asked questions for organizations. Thank you.--John (talk) 03:01, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Well since the bot asks I will just mention that I've been editing Don Boyd's Wikipedia entry as I've made clear on its discussion page. I don't think there's necessarily any conflict of interest (I'm his cousin but there you go) and I have been very careful indeed not to use any information I may or may not be privy to which is not already in the public domain. My edits have mainly been concerned with his relationship with Exeter university to which I am not related or have any interests in in any way whatsoever though naturally, of course, I may have other relationships with the world of academia in general (I expect wikipedia does allow that).

A number of other editors have made contributions recently; not all of which as it happens I was happy with, recognising some of them as indeed essentially malicious and I did try to provide counter-balances where I was able.

The position is that most of these recent edits have been blanked. In the talk page I have identified four areas where there are lacunas remaining as a result and suggested the blanker might like to fill these in.

Regarding the original article (i.e. as supplied by the contributor Limuru) it was a near word for word copy of the University of Exeter's web page noting the Honorary DLitt Boyd was awarded by the university in 2009. Moreover Boyd's LinkedIn entry refers to his Wikipedia article thus

Don Boyd's Summary

See my Wikipedia entry and the website of The Bill Douglas Centre in the library at The University of Exeter has a database and a collection of my archives over the 40 years of my work in the British cinema as a writer director and producer: See this web link: http://www.library.ex.ac.uk/special/guides/bdc/bdc_002.html

That does rather suggest a conflict of interest to me (because of course he has a vested interest in ensuring that the article remains suitably deferential to his professional interests).

Would John perhaps like to send Limuru a COI botty about that as well?

Finally John can I ask if you have any idea just how annoying and creepy it is to receive these botty things you are firing off right, left and centre? I'm not sure you do; it is akin to something like an invasion of privacy and it is turning people off contributing to Wikipedia in their hundreds of thousands and especially woman (see the recent comments in The Economist and elsewhere, it's a well documenetd phenomenon). It is you I suggest who is new to Wikipedia. For myself I've been contributing significantly to it since it began and I am very committed to the project. [[ 81.178.38.169 (talk) 05:01, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Query

Are you User:Rinpoche by any chance? --John (talk) 03:04, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes I am, or rather was. I wrote an article on Buddhist sex abuse cases that got nobbled by the Wikipedia community and I lost my account. The whole thing is documented on my vanity gutsite if you're curious. Cousin Don knows too by the way. 81.178.38.169 (talk) 03:52, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm afraid you're indefinitely blocked from editing here. If you wish to edit, please post an unblock template at User talk:Rinpoche, as I'm blocking this IP for two weeks for block evasion. Thank you for admitting who you were without my having to effect an investigation, it makes things easier. --John (talk) 05:16, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for advising me of this John. You can be quite certain you need not address me ever again. 81.178.38.169 (talk) 05:41, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

John I see you've restored the reference to Don Boyd's sex abuse at Loretto School in his Wikipedia article. That had previously been blanked as redundant and I'm inclined to agree. I had myself initially thought to blank it and ultimately decided not to though I did edit it to remove the suggestion that the teacher was a convicted paedophile.

But what primarily disturbs me about this edit is that you have actually named him, the teacher who committed the abuse I mean. You had already done this on the Loretto school page and I had redacted it and while you chose to blank part of my edit you (wisely I should think) did refrain from naming him again in your subsequent edits.

In the meantime you used your administrator rights to block me and then to name him in Don's article.

Why are you doing this? He was a deeply flawed man of course. I personally did not know him at all, even to recognise. But I do know that despite his desperate sexual flaws and failings he was an intensely kind and generous man who was genuinely loved and admired by many people. If you read my cousin Don Boyd's memoir it's obvious how deeply conflicted he was over the relationship. It's not at all clear to me that Don would want this to appear today. How can you be sure you're not in fact violating Don's privacy here?

Above all why do you name him? He was never found guilty in a court of law. And he might well still have family, a loving niece perhaps, suicidally mortified for all we know to see him named thus.

What is your purpose here? What are you trying to achieve? Why name him in Don's article and not the Loretto article? I just don't understand the logic of it.

I can add if you imagined that blocking me was a necessary first step in your project of 'outing' him (so that I couldn't revert) I can assure you that was quite quite unnecessary. No way would I have got involved! 81.178.38.169 (talk) 09:25, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

More on John

Continuing with this I note that in the History section of your Don Boyd abuse edit you described it as 'seems well-sourced'. I don't think that's an honest description of the edit. What the edit actually was, the abuse allegation, is not described and short of a close inspection comparing current and previous versions cannot readily be identified.

The interesting thing about Boyd's wiki is in fact that it's not well sourced. It achieves that impression because it drops so many names which are provided with web citations (one of the problems with the article as originally contributed was that it sought to make the cavalier suggestion that Boyd was responsible for somehow furthering the careers of the celebrities he filmed). Strip those out and what you are left with is not actually very much and that is fundamentally because, as I note in the talk section, he is not in reality as notable as his article might seek to suggest with its surfeit of celebrity names. When it comes to the question of critical reviews, not addressed at all in the original article beyond the unconsciously humorous observation that "his films have yet to receive the commercial success of some of his contemporaries", then we do indeed face what I thought best to describe in the talk page as a 'delicate situation'.

And in particular his relationship with Exeter University, what I have been interesting myself in, is not well sourced because they apparently do not publish the information needed to source it. They don't hold registers of Honarary Readers and Professors as other universities do nor even properly cite the honorary degrees they award.

I see that you've also been visiting Don's alma mater the London Film School and left a WP:botty to the effect that it's over-linked. Why not also at Don's, a veritable sea of red and blue?

That an administrator is using his powers in this way (for example to drop the not really very notable fact that Don was abused at Loretto school into the opening paragraphs of this extremely notable Scottish school's Wikipedia entry) seems to me extremely unsatisfactory.

What is your agenda? In the case of Don's abuse allegation what right have you to take on the naming and shaming of his abuser? Is that in fact Wikipedia's policy, the naming and shaming of sexual abusers (so long as they're WP:safely dead)?

Like so very many people presently I am really beginning to wonder if Wikipedia is fundamentally flawed, has empowered a whole generation of adminstrators who are abusing their new-found power.

I really am minded to withdraw from the project altogether. I certainly don't see myself dipping into my pocket next Christmas to fund it as I have regularly been doing since it began. 81.178.38.169 (talk) 18:30, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

That's all very interesting. The fact remains that you are a block-evading sock. I have removed your ability to edit this page; you may still ask for your main account to be unblocked if you wish. Best wishes, --John (talk) 18:57, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

It's interesting to add this administrator is now himself at the centre of a major Wikipedia arbitration spat. The usual suspects involved (I mean who frankly really cares?) It seems an editor notorious for his incivility, who I've always found rather amusing myself the little I had to do with him but he's certainly very sexist and rude, was finally blocked for eternity by a Wikipedia adminstrator to the relief of all and sundry. But not our John, who immediately unblocked a fellow traveller (they came together over the bio of Margaret Thatcher ... hmhh :) ...) and now faces censure. I do think he needs to be debagged or whatever they do at Wikipedia. More than that we frankly don't care. 81.178.38.169 (talk) 02:03, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh I see ... I put a comment on the Arbitration workshop page about the John case (apparently the workshop is in fact closed but I didn't see that when I edited and as far as I can make out the case is still open). This is the diff http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Civility_enforcement/Workshop&diff=prev&oldid=476276689 and my comments were as follows (agreeing with user Elonka that he should be admonished for abuse of admin tools)

At a minimum as Elonka. I would like to record here a very disagreeable interchange I had with this editor. It is recorded at my website (soon to close, catch it quick but it will be archived eventually) at http://www.gutclean.com/johnanddonboyd.html and at the userpage for my IP address. It concerned a relative of mine D, a noted film director I was educated at an Edinburgh school with. Late in life D took it upon himself to publish an account of his sexual abuse by a teacher at the school. John, a former teacher in Edinburgh, made edits both in the school wiki (very prominently in the 'History' section immediately following the lead) and D's bio naming this teacher. However D did not bring charges against his abuser nor was his abuser ever brought to trial on other charges that surfaced. When I took it upon myself to protect the reputation of the teacher (then deceased) and of the school and ultimately D himself, he blocked me for two weeks.

My impression is that there is a handful of administrators and editors who are essentially addicted to Wikipedia and have extremely exalted, not to say deluded, opinions of their worth. Eventually they club together whatever their differences. Thus in John's case I noticed, when I was glancing through his contribution record, that he was quite extraordinarly uncivil to another problematic editor noted for his forthright language often bordering on incivility. Amongst other things he described this editor as an alcoholic quite gratuitiously and with a persistence that frankly struck me as pathological. Nevertheless they patched things up and are now quite the brothers in arms it would seem.

I suggest that Wikipedia really doesn't need these kind of prima donnas. I'm not sure John shouldn't be asked to reapply for adminship or whatever your procedures are for reassessing admimistrators. I suggest this is just the kind of behaviour that cost Wikipedia money in lost donations and good will. I can only 'suggest' here, but if were pressed for a figure in my own experience amongst my own associates I can assure you that it would run certainly into the tens, possibly even hundred, of thousands of US dollars in lost annual donations. That really is so. 81.178.38.169 (talk) 13:41, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Subsequently an administrator deleted this comment and for good measure blocked two editors she identified as 'socks' of mine, of which one ( Skirtopodes) I know only by reputation and the other indeed I most certainly do know (yet another figment of my imagination, so sorry) who has lately been interesting herself in the Abu Qatada affair. It's very spiteful and not a little suspect. There's also, I suspect, the issue of Skirtopodes' ongoing battle with a cabal of Wikipedia editors, including an adminstrator who is a psychiatrist, to stop them stereotyping Vincent van Gogh as a suicidal depressive, famously archived on our website http://www.gutclean.com/wpvangoghdarkdebate.html, involved here.

In the archive of course :).

Banned means banned

Template:BannedMeansBanned--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:15, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

You've been established as a person who has been banned. Therefore you are not allowed to edit from this IP address, and if you continue to do so this IP address will be blocked.--Jasper Deng (talk) 05:37, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Jasper - I don't have time for this. Wikipedia rarely blocks a user's IP address and I repeat mine has not been blocked or banned or however you characterise it. You can have this because I really don't care presently and can't be bothered to deal with it, but if I do want to post on my IP address in the future and I find you reverting me I shall make a complaint. Thank you. 81.178.38.169 (talk) 05:46, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

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