
David Gerard vs. the blockchain, an emerging wiki war - hoofish
http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2017/06/david-gerard-versus-cryptocurrency-a-peak-into-an-emerging-wiki-war/
======
saurik
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](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14483080)

------
TorKlingberg
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.

------
avmich
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.

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

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

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

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

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

------
dredmorbius
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.

------
obstinate
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...](http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2015/11/how-rational-
wiki-abuses-its-google-page-rank-for-personal-attacks-slander-and-harassment/)
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.

~~~
majewsky
> PSI research and other nonsense

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

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
In context, PSI likely means
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psionics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psionics)

------
31h
The first sentence asserts that Brendan Eich is the author of Java, which is
false.

~~~
mikeycgto
And then I stopped reading.

~~~
klez
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?

~~~
majewsky
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.

~~~
DanBC
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?

~~~
majewsky
Easy: I can't. This effect is known as Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:
[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-
ge...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-
amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you)

------
peteretep
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.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
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.

~~~
ue_
>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.

------
tzs
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...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PB6s--
EKFz4J:wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2017/06/david-gerard-versus-cryptocurrency-
a-peak-into-an-emerging-wiki-war/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

Here is a text-only cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PB6s--
E...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PB6s--
EKFz4J:wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2017/06/david-gerard-versus-cryptocurrency-
a-peak-into-an-emerging-wiki-war/&num=1&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

------
MilkyBar
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.

~~~
MilkyBar
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?

~~~
MilkyBar
There's at least 5 sock-puppets of Rome Viharo banned on his Rationalwiki page
talk
([http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rome_Viharo](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&page=User%3ARomeViharo)
[http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&...](http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3AWikipediaWEhaveAproblem)
[http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&...](http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3ALaird)

[http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&...](http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/block&page=User%3A104.175.42.84)
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/216.230.2...](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/216.230.226.42)
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/158.58.17...](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/158.58.172.99)
[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User_talk:FullyInformed](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User_talk:FullyInformed)

------
davidgerard
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_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6dkc8w/why_do_we_keep_letting_david_gerard_who_obviously/)
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!

~~~
davidgerard
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](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rome_Viharo)

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

~~~
davidgerard
The RationalWiki article turns out to include checkable cites.

~~~
hoofish
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.

------
dk8996
Looks like its down.

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

~~~
mirimir
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.

~~~
MilkyBar
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](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...](http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?s=9ae48ef7ed3f572ec527d02d0a548dec&p=7338655#post7338655)

"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.

