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Comment by Kim_Bruning | Hacker News Reader

Fivefilters.org is very good at cherry-picking; they are quite ...selective... with the truth. Take everything they say with a barrel of salt, and keep your eyes peeled for what they leave out.

Philip Cross cannot be said to be an agenda driven editor; people checked all the evidence (One person went so far as to hand-check and score large samples of his edits; a hellish job!). The facts just weren't there to support that assertion.

KalHolmann was ultimately NOT the messenger here, and was also not the person who brought the arbitration case. In fact, when KalHolmann was explicitly invited to help sort things out, they couldn't back out fast enough. What little KalHolmann did do brought more heat than light to the situation.

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> Fivefilters.org is very good at cherry-picking

Correct, and if I recall correctly, former threads discussing pages on that website had highlighted that. It does not seem to be the be the case in this thread.

Please feel free to post links to those threads. I did my best to respond to HN commentors in earlier discussions here.

> Philip Cross cannot be said to be an agenda driven editor; people checked all the evidence (One person went so far as to hand-check and score large samples of his edits; a hellish job!). The facts just weren't there to support that assertion.

Philip Cross edits in different areas, e.g. jazz and film. He's highly prolific. He needn't have an agenda in all areas to be called an agenda-driven editor in other areas. And the fact that he's made over a 100,000 edits means someone who approaches an examination of his edits by looking at a small random sample of his total output (as the editor you mention did) is not likely to come up with anything useful (I think this was pointed out to him). So to say "the facts just weren't there to support that assertion" is not really true. We've documented his editing in three articles now:

* https://wikipedia.fivefilters.org/

* https://wikipedia.fivefilters.org/agenda.html

* https://wikipedia.fivefilters.org/evidence/

Readers can make up their own minds.

> KalHolmann was ultimately NOT the messenger here, and was also not the person who brought the arbitration case.

Who was the messenger, then? As far as we're aware, he was the Wikipedia editor who attempted to notify the community to the problems when the story emerged. Only to be shut down by admin Guy - who, it should be mentioned, appears to be an acquaintance of yours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JzG/Archive_155#meat...

> In fact, when KalHolmann was explicitly invited to help sort things out, they couldn't back out fast enough. What little KalHolmann did do brought more heat than light to the situation.

He withdrew because of the way he was treated by Wikipedia admins, including Guy (your friend/acquaintance), and the arbitrators who started censoring his contributions. Anyone can read his contribution to the case here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=845422299&oldid=84... and the edit history which shows editing of his contributions (mostly permanently deleted now by the arbitrators): https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitra...

> Fivefilters.org is very good at cherry-picking; they are quite ...selective... with the truth.

You've not really demonstrated that with your contributions here.

I am basing myself on those pages you mentioned. I already communicated to you about some of the omissions I noticed before. I am explicitly cautioning readers who read those pages that I noticed a lot of unbalanced omissions. They can then be on the lookout for that and indeed check and decide for themselves.

I don't think your earlier comments contained much substance, but were more an attempt to deflect and defend a Wikipedia admin with whom you are perhaps acquainted. But I will link to those earlier comments below for the interested reader. We've had three articles about this story discussed on Hacker News, including this one. Here are your comments on the previous articles, and my replies:

* A Wikipedia editor's long-running campaign: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17109849

* Update: The agenda-driven edits of Philip Cross and Wikipedia's response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17169786

I'm familiar with a lot of wikipedia editors. That doesn't mean I agree with all of them all at once. (Even if that was possible, which it definitely isn't :-P )

As you observed: after reading your first story, I managed to convince JzG to at least consider changing tack wrt Kalholmann. Which they did!

Unfortunately Kalholmann was a very bad choice for a champion. In fact, they decided to post Personally Identifying Information right in full view of the arbitration committee; even after being advised not to! (this behavior is at best unethical, arguably illegal, but definitely against the rules!)

In practice, the ironic fact is that JzG turned out to be more effective for your cause than Kalholmann!

I guess I'm just surprised that you're still sticking with your old story, even despite the added clarity of 20/20 hindsight.

You appear to be rather prone to cherry-picking. I'm not sure whether this is by accident or on purpose. (I'm also not sure if it matters; either way it causes harm!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking

> Unfortunately Kalholmann was a very bad choice for a champion. In fact, they decided to post Personally Identifying Information right in full view of the arbitration committee; even after being advised not to! (this behavior is at best unethical, arguably illegal, but definitely against the rules!)

Care to provide some evidence?

Worth pointing out that Philip Cross never claimed to be using a pseudonym. In fact he claimed the opposite, right on Wikipedia: stating that he wasn't using a pseudonym. He linked his Twitter account to his Wikipedia account. None of this was exposed due to sleuthing/doxxing - it was simply what he himself stated. So there was understandably a lot of confusion around posting personally identifiable information (ie. his name) when he himself claims on Wikipedia that that is what he's called and he's not operating under a pseudonym.

Also, did you see Guy/JzG's own doxxing effort? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests... (he outed someone and another admin had to revision delete his outing). Curious that you don't consider that a big offense, but are happy to accuse Kal Holmann of something without providing any links.

> In practice, the ironic fact is that JzG turned out to be more effective for your cause than Kalholmann!

It's hilarious that you're still attempting to defend JzG. How can we know he was more effective? We can't see how this would have turned out had JzG not interfered. So why speculate? But there's plenty he did wrong, and faced no consequences for, which we are attempting to highlight.

> I guess I'm just surprised that you're still sticking with your old story, even despite the added clarity of 20/20 hindsight.

You've done little to bring clarity here.

Right, so JzG clearly had it in for you. And yet somehow their actions ended up getting the exact result you were hoping for (as reported by you).

In the mean time Kalholmann was your best friend ever... and somehow every time they tried something, they got themselves in more trouble and ultimately got sanctioned by the arbitration committee. (also as reported by you)

Yup, right, clearly your narrative makes perfect sense here. Good job, well done. ;-)

( Just because someone doesn't immediately prostrate themselves and profess their undying loyalty to your cause, that doesn't mean they can't effectively be your friend-du-jour. Vice versa, just because someone does say they support you doesn't mean they're automatically competent and able to help.)

> Right, so JzG clearly had it in for you. And yet somehow their actions ended up getting the exact result you were hoping for (as reported by you).

We never said JzG had it in for us. We highlighted problems with his conduct in relation to the case. And what we consider the double standards of the arbitration committee when it came to certain parts of their decision.

> In the mean time Kalholmann was your best friend ever... and somehow every time they tried something, they got themselves in more trouble and ultimately got sanctioned by the arbitration committee. (also as reported by you)

Your comment here suggests that you think the arbitration committee can do no wrong. We're highlighting what we think is unfair treatment in this case (with supporting evidence). The fact that the story got voted to the front page of Hacker News shows that many others find it convincing too. The many comments here also show that people have had their own experiences of unfair treatment participating in Wikipedia.

> ( Just because someone doesn't immediately prostrate themselves and profess their undying loyalty to your cause, that doesn't mean they can't effectively be your friend-du-jour. Vice versa, just because someone does say they support you doesn't mean they're automatically competent and able to help.)

You're stating the obvious here, but we don't need to talk about hypotheticals. We can examine the conduct of everyone involved. We've tried to support our position by showing evidence of what we consider is unfair treatment. I haven't been convinced otherwise by your contributions, but maybe others will be.

And you know that I prodded JzG on the basis of your story, I initially said so here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17109849 , and you replied to it!

Yes, I'm aware of that, but it bears mentioning in this discussion for other readers who perhaps did not follow the discussion from over two months ago.

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