David Gerard vs. the blockchain, an emerging wiki war | Hacker News Reader

David Gerard vs. the blockchain, an emerging wiki war

wikipediawehaveaproblem.com

62 pointshoofish50 comments

Seeing that this is a continuation in a saga of the author and their issues with Wikipedia, and that many of the comments then take a step back to look at the overall goals and discuss the war rather than the battle, it is likely important to look at the previous submission from this website and the conversation that took place.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14483080

Wikipedia articles are often dominated by fans of the subject. When people have financial interest in driving up the value of their favorite coins it gets worse. It's probably good to have some balance. The author talking about "war" and "battle of information" does not exactly give a sense of objectivity either.

I've skimmed through Bitcoin article on RationalWiki and phrases like

"The use case of the currency is purchasing illicit goods (e.g., drugs and stolen data on darknet marketsWikipedia's W.svg) and darknet scams (e.g., murder-for-hire)[10][11] and extortion (e.g., "ransomware", for which it is the currency of choice[12]).[13]"

make me doubtful.

RationalWiki looks pretty much like a troll enterprise disguised as an encyclopedia.

Poe's law at work. It is quite a genuine extremist wiki, only a bit of troll.

Skepticism is extremist now? Is that because it is not practiced enough or because expressing it hurts people's feelings?

Just pick your side and get polarized into fruitless, shrill conflict like the rest of the world.

This is a misrepresentation, but I still enjoy that you created an account to disparage behaviour that you're exhibiting yourself.

skepticism is not extremist, but RW editors are extremists

it's handy for dodgy medicine, if you see some weird "Miracle cure" or diet etc Rational Wiki usually already has en explanation with citations as to why it's bullshit woo.

It's worth noting that RationalWiki can be extremely biased on certain topics, to outright unresearched and amateur content on others. I would be careful taking anything from RW (or Wikipedia, but to a lesser extent) at face value.

https://xkcd.com/906/

In my experience, when the targets of criticisms based on facts, history, and rational argument claim that facts, history, and rational argument are unfair, and attack the person rather than the arguments ... the criticisms are probably pretty well-founded.

David Gerard seems to be doing something right, and hitting his mark.

The author, or perhaps the author's affiliates, are doing battle with RationalWiki over the right to have PSI research and other nonsense treated as factual on Wikipedia. http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2015/11/how-rational-wiki... Or at least they claim they are. RationalWiki's page seems to suggest that they are not the ones editing Wikipedia to reflect the skeptical viewpoint in this case. This was linked from the article here posted, which is the only reason I know about it. But anyway, it does not do much to inspire confidence.

> PSI research and other nonsense

What is PSI here? The disambiguation page on Wikipedia doesn't suggest a fitting expansation AFAICS.

In context, PSI likely means https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psionics

That's misinformation. I have nothing to do with PSI, i just focused on two biographies of two individuals who are fringe proponents. I specifically only edited basic biographical meta data. My detractors want to paint me as a fringe promoter so as to discredit my study.

He that lieth with dogs shall rise up with fleas.

All I know about you is that you spent some time working on pseudoscientists' Wikipedia pages, including editing Deepak Chopra's page while being paid by Deepak Chopra, and now have some beef with RationalWiki and Wikipedia. This pattern matches a little too well for me to want to spend time looking into it more deeply. Best of luck.

excuse you?

"spent some time working on pseudoscientists pages" IRL means I edited two biographical articles and focused primarily on meta data and non controversial biographical facts.

Since when is someone accused of being a "liar" based on what articles they edit on Wikipedia?

If I edit an article on Germany, does that make me German?

The first sentence asserts that Brendan Eich is the author of Java, which is false.

And then I stopped reading.

So you judge a non-technical article written by a non-technical person on the fact that he doesn't know that two programming language with a very similar name are not the same language?

It shows that the author is not willing to invest a few minutes to fact-check this particular assertion that they're putting in the article. After something like this, one cannot stop wondering how many more assertions in this article are false.

But you should be assuming that all articles you read are full of errors.

You spotted this error because you know the difference between Java and Javascript. But what about the stuff that you don't know? How do you spot those errors?

I look things up that I don't know. Right click -> Search for '<term>'.

Easy: I can't. This effect is known as Gell-Mann Amnesia effect: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

That they're putting in the first sentence.

Well, the author could have looked up Brendan Eich on Wikipedia...

Right, JavaScript.

my bad, javascript. I'll correct it. and yes I know the difference, my platform is programmed in JavaScript.

Fake rationality warriors on Wikipedia is a real thing. I have briefly made the mistake of participating in various nutrition articles before, and run into them. They seem to make extensive use of sources that don't support their claims, especially paywalled ones, with impressive sounding titles, that end up being glossy magazines with opinion pieces. There's a certain irony seeing science and rationalism defended in non-scientific and non-rational ways, and we should make more of an effort to call it out.

You should read RationalWiki, various pomo terms and theories are written about as if there were anything behind them. The degeneration of the atheist community is making me seriously consider the unpleasant idea that religion serves the vital purpose of filling the "obviously irrational belief over which we bond" whole in our hearts, and we've abandoned it to our perdition.

> various pomo terms and theories

Care to be more specific?

>various pomo terms and theories are written about as if there were anything behind them.

What do you mean? Because I don't think there's anything wrong with post-modern theory; it's a topic that's actively discussed in philosophy. I think it's unwise to dismiss something just because it's post-modern, it it given credence to post-modernism.

Perhaps there is something behind Derrida.

    > that religion serves the vital
    > purpose of [snip]

I mean, the simpler explanation is it -- religion proper and worship of cargo-cult sciencey-sounding stuff -- makes people feel superior to others. Real science and rationality doesn't, but a vague appeal to authority, purity of thought, and being better than others sure does.

The site seems to be having problems at the moment. Here's a Google cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PB6s--E...

Here is a text-only cache link: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PB6s--E...

Wikipediawehaveaproblem is a harassment site. Rome Viharo got banned from Wikipedia in 2013 and for the past 4 years has been stalking, threatening, doxing, blackmailing and spreading misinformation about those Wikipedia editors he holds responsible for his ban. He never moves on and has an ongoing grudge against those wiki editors. Viharo claims to be the victim of harassment, but if you read his website all he does is attack and smear Wikipedia editors.

Viharo has been described as pedoish and a stalker because he's doxed and stalked Wikipedia editors who are far younger than him, including teenagers. He's 50 years old, but his website stalks editors in their teens. Viharo has whole sections on his website following these editors, recording everything about them, even their taste in computer games. Its creepy. He should just move on and stop stalking wikipedians he holds responsible for his ban. Why take Wikipedia so seriously?

There's at least 5 sock-puppets of Rome Viharo banned on his Rationalwiki page talk (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rome_Viharo). These accounts were blocked for doxing, personal attacks, (fake) legal threats and impersonation. Concerning the latter check one of the accounts/IPs below where he said he was a "neutral" university/research institute doing an analysis into cyberbullying. Of course no such study exists. So he was even pretending to be others to post; this is deception like his Wikipedia sockpuppetry.

http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&... http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&... http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&...

http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/216.230.2... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/158.58.17... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User_talk:FullyInformed

um, wat.

From my view, this is persistent crank Rome Viharo complaining that someone from RationalWiki (me) is mean yet again.

He seems to have launched the Ethereum bit off this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6dkc8w/why_do_we_... in which Ethereum advocates are upset that a non-fan edits the article on Ethereum and actually applies the Wikipedia content rules.

but hey, AMA!

His website name is because he was banned from Wikipedia in 2013 for persistent sockpuppeting. Here's his RW article: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rome_Viharo

I wasn't banned from Wikipedia for sock puppeting, you're stating misinformation from RationalWiki.

The RationalWiki article turns out to include checkable cites.

then check them, transparently, with me in this discussion.

because they are references sited out of context in an intentional misinformation campaign to attack my reputation and status.

you're not being forthcoming.

There are many ethereum sub reddits mentioning concern about your presence. Shrugging me off as a "Crank" is not something you can continue to do every time someone criticizes you or RationalWiki.

Yes, they're upset that I dare edit the Ethereum article according to Wikipedia sourcing rules.

2016: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4b76i4/who_is_dav...

2017: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6dkc8w/why_do_we_...

I tried to be helpful https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6dkc8w/why_do_we_... but advocates are really bad at understanding that Wikipedia isn't a platform for advocacy, much as you are concerning Rupert Sheldrake advocacy.

Looks like its down.

I read a few paragraphs while it was up. It's just a poorly written hatchet job.

I don't have an opinion re Rome Viharo vs David Gerard.

But I do agree that Wikipedia is a clusterfuck. It seems OK as a source for basic factual stuff. But otherwise, I have no time for it.

How a forum admin described Rome Viharo before banning him: "Following all this are descriptions of his trolling adventures, which are, as one might expect, kind to forums which fell for his shit, and nasty to those which saw him for the troll he is and banned him." https://archive.is/w924h

He never takes responsibility for his internet disruption/trolling. If you merely quote his Wikipedia & forum bans, he claims he is being "harassed". His issue with his Rationalwiki article is it logs his toxic internet history under his real name. Before people knew his real name, he had no problem admitting he is a troll. He even bragged about it. He didn't though want people to know what mischief he gets up to online; that's his issue with the RW article.

Rome Viharo in his own words back in 2011 (that is prior to his real name was connected to his trolling): http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?s...

"haha i was just using a sockpuppet... In case you all have not noticed, I like playing tricks - but I am very open and transparent about that."

Admits above to being a trickster (troll) & sockpupeteer, but if you quote that now his real name is connected to these accounts he denies both.

http://archive.is/rx20S

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