Was the subject of a Wikipedia arbitration dispute here. To see the "dark" debate in all its byzantine glory go here. On Wikipedia it's archived here and here.
The dispute was filed by a user FightingMac. FM isn't one of our lot but we do know him. In brief it concerns his reception at the Wikipedia article on Vincent van Gogh, where he was treated with considerable incivility. Because his comments were constantly being blanked or "archived" or otherwise interfered with, he made his own archive of the debate here but that has been removed by a user called Nikkimaria. At one point he was interrogated by an administrator called John over his editing history. This administrator had been called in by one of the opposing editors called Modernist. Ultimately FM backed out. However he did make some enquiries of his own into the backgound of his tormentors and established that there was a direct professional or personal link between the adminstrator John and the user Modernist. His complaint is that it was improper to call in John in the circumstances and this is what is being reviewed presently by the arbitration committee. Their first step has been to block his account, as well as all ours and apparently they regard that as adequate resolution. However, the days when Wikipedia might be regarded as a private club with no responsibility beyond its own welfare are well past.
What this ultimately concerns is merely the ownership of a Wikipedia article by a cabal, in this case seemingly a group of minor artist and critics in New York and superficially that's a minor affair of course. But its potential ramifications in our opinion are actually quite sinister and we shall enlarge at a later date when we have time for the task and taken some soundings.
Right ... we should declare a possible conflict of interest: Vincent van Gogh is a 1st cousin of the wife of a 2nd cousin 3x removed of mine (William Boyd). Hope that's OK with the wiki boys in blue.
Finally we wish to "out" the Wikipedia administrator John. His name is John C. Mullen, a fact easy to discover since he uploads his website address with each of the numerous photos he has uploaded to Wikipedia. He describes himself on his website as a teacher in Edinburgh and he was formerly a considerable nuisance to me in connection with the sexual abuse of a cousin at an Edinburgh school some 50 years ago. The connection between him and Modernist is that Modernist provided a Wikipedia article for his mother, a minor artist whose only sources are blogs or otherwise self-publicised and whose article certainly wouldn't have survived but for Modernist contributing it.
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| Have you thought about becoming a Wikipedia administrator, John? |
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