The entry for Chris Rodda is a lovely example of lies.
By 30th of April 2014, she gave up her writing presence on Freethoughtblogs due to the repeated cyberbullying by leftist social justice activists, instigated by Freethought Blog’s own head of operations, Paul Zacharias (PZ) Myers.
How many lies can you squeeze into one sentence?
There was no “cyberbullying”. Chris was very highly regarded here. If mere disagreement is “bullying”, then I’m the frequent victim of bullying. (Note: I do not think it is.)
I did not instigate anything. I made one comment questioning whether it was appropriate to treat being called an atheist “libel”. That was really it. Apparently several other people made similar objections.
She spontaneously and independently decided to leave. If I’d had my choice, I’d have asked her to stay — she was a good contributor.
I am not the “head of operations” here. If anyone fits that description, it’s Ed Brayton — who is a good friend of Chris Rodda. I am confident he would have liked her to stay on, but this is not a prison — if people elect to leave, they can.
My middle name is misspelled.
Wikipedia: where any hack can edit anything.
I’d say just be aware that Wikipedia has some editing problems, and just make sure you read the citations.
At least they got your surname right!
“90% of Wikipedia is reliable, 90% of the time” — some guy somewhere
As of now, the lie is not present anymore.
I do not trust Wikipedia without reservation, but it is usefull nevertheless. As far as I can tell, good information outweigh the bad very significantly.
That part about you and FTB is gone already.
I thought they have volunteers who will monitor what edits are made and correct them as needed.
Wikipedia is still a great resource and a good place to start for a lot of basic science. I never let my students cite it in there work, but it is usually a good place to start to get an overview of a subject.
Looks like the lie was taken out in the last revision. You can view the edit history to verify it was indeed there and see when it was fixed.
I tell my students the same thing. Scan it for a quick intro, look specifically for citations at more reliable sources for any details, but that I never ever want to see it cited in any of their papers. Why? Because you can’t trust it — verify everything you find in it.
“Poopyhead of operations”, surely?
With any collaborative project open to public participation, you have vandals. Editors like myself build a watchlist of articles, which reports any and all changes to that article. When we have time, we check the watchlist and review the changes. There are mechanisms to reduce persistent vandalism — prohibiting unregistered editors from making changes, banning registered users, banning certain IP addresses, setting up an article to require approval before edits go live, and a few more — but edits that are made still require that someone verify the changes. That can take time, especially with smaller articles that normally get little traffic.
So while the Wikipedia is generally accurate, problems do creep in: being an editor is often an uphill battle against entropy. As Kevin said in #1, it is best to use the text as a guide and consult with the references for verification. For what it is worth, I am a long-time editor and I’ve put Rodda’s article on my watchlist. I will do my best to catch and correct anything suspicious, but the more eyes the better.
I do not know what went on here, but several times over the course of some weeks (months?) I noted Chris expressing her distress and discomfort with the way people were responding to what she’d said. Possibly, if a person says something, and ‘lots’ of other people react all at once, all complaining, or criticising, in strong terms… well, certainly each of those people individually might not be bullying (I assume), but the effect of being ‘mobbed’ might be so intimidating to some people it makes no difference. Certainly, it seemed Chris felt so. Just a theory.
PS I have no idea what the criticisms were about because due to the way my work pans out I read this network intensively at times, then not at all for long periods.
Wikipedia, where anyone can edit an erroneous page and then put a “freeze” on further edits in less time than it took you to research and write this post.
A very disappointing post, PZ. You need a thick hide to blog and “friendly” fire is the worst, but blaming Wikipedia for this harms the free exchange of information.
Had she found a publication to print her libel, you’d be looking at years of lawyers’ fees to make things write. Wikipedia gives you the tools to correct this for free.
But why can we trust the cited articles more then the wiki article that links to it PZ? That way leads to infinite layers of ‘but why can we trust what’s on the internet’ madness. Common sense needs to apply at some point. If a wiki article has well sourced material, and no clear factual errors regarding the subject, why is it any less of a source then any of it’s sourced articles? Why are you any more of an expert on your subject matter then the texts and papers and studies you may use to support a point?
Outright banning wiki as a source is just a blanket fix for a problem that already exists with any information….’how can you trust this?’.
I looked at the history, and noted that the IP editor linked to Al Stefanelli’s blog. Sadly, that explains the content of the edit.
@otocump #12 – The reason is that you may be reading a particular article after a vandal has snuck in, and before an editor has had a chance to roll the vandalism back.
@Otocump:
“You can’t trust Wikipedia” != “banning Wikipedia”
PZ@7
I agree. You should always look at the citations on Wikipedia and verify the information at more reliable sources. I also tell my students to never trust what one peer-reviewed article has written about another peer-reviewed article and that they should find the original article and read it for themselves. I have found the original article misinterpreted or misrepresented on several occasions. With that said, something like Wikipedia will have a higher error rate on information than the peer-reviewed literature, but neither are perfect.
Surely you wouldn’t allow them to cite any encyclopedia right?
I don’t understand the skepticism of Wikipedia. Articles on many topics in my field (except for the extremely obscure) are usually very good. Of course they have occasional errors, omissions, or unsupported claims. So do textbooks. So do scientific journal articles. So do print encyclopedias. So do blogs.
Here is a comparison of Wikipedia and a print encyclopedia:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4530930.stm
Here are a few criticisms of journal articles (misconduct and statistical issues):
http://www.nature.com/news/misconduct-is-the-main-cause-of-life-sciences-retractions-1.11507
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble
It seems weird to single out Wikipedia for such general good advice. At least Wikipedia articles have citations. They can be corrected. They have a transparent edit history. Politically charges articles are regularly flagged as such.
Sounds a bit like science to me. Should we give up on evolution because of Piltdown Man?
Markgisleson @ #11,
PZ never said that he thought Chris wrote that. What “she” are you referring to?
Chris was never once bullied here. Pointing out ablism is not bullying. WTF, people. Are we really going to have that argument again?
@12 otocump: The key here is that Wikipedia (along with other encyclopedias) is a tertiary source – it compiles information from various reliable secondary sources, which summarize information from primary sources.
To give an example:
A video recording showing that Mrs. X killed Mrs. Y – primary source
A newspaper article detailing the murder, drawing from the video recording and other primary sources, such as witness accounts – secondary source
An encyclopedia article on the murder, summarizing points from various news stories about it – tertiary source
With each step past the primary source, error and bias has a chance to creep it. Therefore, it’s always preferably to keep one’s citations as close to the primary sources as possible. Secondary sources are good for citing overall analysis (for instance, a report on the causes of murders in city Z might cite the newspaper article rather than the primary sources, which are too specific to give information on broader things like causes), and tertiary sources do have their uses as well. But they should really only be used when needed, thanks to the tendency for error to sneak in.
Yup.
Wikipedia has its limitations, of course. But I don’t think there’s a single better way to do a generic source of information on everything notable. If I wanted to do in depth research on a topic, then I’d have to go further. But if I’m just on the look out for an overview on a range of topics, then I don’t think there’s any better model for providing that. Good information on everything is fragmented around the internet, Wikipedia uses crowdsourcing to bring it to one place. The alternative is me trying to track it all down by myself.
@Gregory in Seattle #14: There is a list of edits to see if there has been any recent changes. Also, anything PZ’s students are researching aren’t probably ‘new news and fast changing information’ that wiki is often going to be vulnerable to ninja-edits for sabotage. But…maybe I’m wrong there and don’t really know what he’s asking his students to research.
@Kevin #15: Correct. Not banning. Bad use of word. Forbidding might have been better.
@Infophile #31: Yes of course, that’s absolutely correct, however forbidding a tertiary source on ‘potential for error’ should include a reasonable assessment of why and how that error came to be. It’s not a blanket statement of ‘there may be error, don’t use it’. But a question of ‘how much error is often going to be acceptable’. Would using Wiki as a source on current events be acceptable? No. Hell no. And double no. But how about using Wiki on a source regarding Cell Types? It’s edit history has included no substantial changes other then some updated wording and typo edits since May 2012. What’s the range of error possible on that page? Small? Large? Is it well sourced enough to be considered correct? This is what I mean by some common sense. Whats the range of error in a publicised paper on Cell Types since May 2012 that can’t be updated? Small? Large? Has new information surfaced recently to change that papers findings perhaps? PZ isn’t checking all that, neither is the student, at least in Wiki you can see new changes…
Gregory in Seattle:
I’d like to make a suggestion to you in your capacity as a Wikipedia editor. I’ll leave it in the lounge if you’re so inclined.
In general terms, it works by the following:
1) think about what could potentially go wrong with Wikipedia’s model.
2) filter the results of 1) through a multiple-feet-thick layer of “HURR HURR ONLY STUPID TEENAGERS EVER DO THINGS ON THE ENTERNIT”
3) blindly assume nothing can or will ever be done to correct the issues identified in 1)
4)
get off my lawn!PROFIT!well actually red flags like “leftist social justice activists” givesw one enough info to outright dismiss this particular entry
I expect the biggest issue with the Chris Rodda article is that it fails Wikipedia’s notability test.
The great thing about Wikipedia is you can cite an entry you wrote yourself to back up an argument you are having elsewhere on the internet.
Unless it happens to be factual and gets deleted for being original research.
craigmcgillivary@17
That’s correct. Since I have only taught at the college level, I tend to even limit the number of text books they can cite. Depending on the subject, lower level classes I may allow 1 or 2, whereas upper level classes would usually be none. The exception would be a specialized textbook for the field of study. These specialized books are usually written by the prominent scientist in that field so they may be allowed.
On the bright side, real editors would flag that for no cites, libelous claims and npov almost immediately (and probably did). Even if they are obsessed bureaucratic dingbats some/most of the time.
@Josh #25 – The link for my name here will take you to my website. You can contact me through there, if you would like.
Gregory in Seattle
Although I am skeptical about things that I read on Wikipedia, as noted above, I do think it is a great resource and appreciate the work that you and other volunteers do to make it a fairly reliable clearing house of information.
I like to say that it’s immoral to complain about Wikipedia: just click on “edit”.
The volunteer is you. Just click on “edit”!
If you want to become a registered editor (who gets to sign edits with a name rather than an IP address and gets to have a talk page), you need to do nothing more than create a login just as you did to comment here.
Wikipedia isn’t a “they”. It’s a “we”.
That depends. On scientific matters, it is often a secondary source: it is (in the best cases, of which there are many) based on, and cites, the primary literature.
(I hope it goes without saying that PZ’s students should cite those primary sources rather than Wikipedia. Wikipedia is very useful in making people aware that the primary sources exist – I have used it that way to review manuscripts and probably even to find information for my own manuscripts.)
Nope. That’s not how it works. In the real world most of us live in, edit wars attract the attention of administrators who notice that Einstein cites scientific papers while Diggins cites fuck-all, and then Diggins’s ass will be added to this list if he doesn’t stop. Note how fucking long the list is.
And take a look at the real articles with “relativity” in their name. I’m pretty sure none of them was written by Einstein’s pickled brain, but the ones on physics might as well have been…
+ 1
[citation needed]
I find Wikipedia is often excellent as a rough resource for articles on geography, fine art and history (and in my reading, the older the history, the more reliable the article tends to be), for biographical sketches, and for film and music articles. But it is frequently rubbish for science articles. Yes, articles can be edited by anyone to be improved, but a huge number simply are not edited by knowledgeable experts. I once had a battle (several years ago) trying to get the entry on viruses changed to correct some major errors; the page was edit protected so that you had to ask someone, who was not sufficiently expert in the subject by any stretch, to make a change. If he refused, the change was not made. In this case, poor referencing (e.g. referencing to articles that did not support the statement in question, were out of date, or were fringe ideas reported as widely accepted fact) and false statements were the issue, but despite pointing out the flaws and requesting edits, no changes were made, and those errors still exist. I’ve had similar issues with articles on biodiversity, including some that cite my own work inaccurately (again, errors which exist 3 or 4 years after I first pointed them out).
I agree that other resources such as text books and journal articles can also have errors – but there are many reasons why they are cited by experts more widely than on-line wiki articles (i.e.. articles that may be edited by poorly-informed people, articles which anyone can mess with, and which sometimes have no supporting citations at all).
David Marjanović@34
I don’t think that word means what you think it means
*emphasis mine
@David #34 – Well said.
The current state of the article:
Didn’t take long, did it.
Back to the discussion:
Ah. Probably a kook or several had started an edit war at some point, so the page was protected to stop this, and an incompetent admin happened to get in charge of the page.
No, I really do mean it.
If you feel like an asshole now and don’t have enough time to be part of the solution, stop complaining about Wikipedia. That’s what I have done (I have edited a few articles and written one from scratch, but there are only 30 hours in a day, as I also like to say…).
David Marjanović@34
No it’s not, but it could be. The volunteers that I am talking about are people like Gregory in Seattle (see his comment @9)
For me it is a they, for Gregory in Seattle it’s a we…unless Wikipedia is the first iteration of the Borg, then I must assimilate
I thought the Z stood for Zod.
” If I’d had my choice, I’d have asked her to stay — she was a good contributor.”
Serious understatement. I kind of looked forward to her weekly contributions and was more than a little worried when they became increasingly sporadic. I didn’t know that she was recieving nasty comments (though that’s largely my own ignorance related to the time-old axiom “never read the comments section”), so was dismayed and confused when she related the reason why she was leaving.
David Marjanović@39
Then you better update Wikipedia’s entry on Immorality since it does not include the ridiculousness way you are using the word
Not sure why I would fell like an asshole, but I’m sure you’ll tell me.
As I said previously I think it is a fairly good resource and appreciate the work that people (even you) do for the website, but because it is open source and covers such a wide variety of topics it will always have issues with accuracy. I think Infophile@21 has a good example of why this would be. The closer asummary is to a original source the more accurate (usually) that summary will be.
As for the last part of your quote
Replace Wikipedia with say, crime in my town, I don’t have enough time to be a police officer or create a neighborhood watch so I should stop complaining? That’s an idiotic stance to take on any subject
I find wikipedia most useful for things like dates and other specific information about factual events. Recently I wanted to know who got tossed out of the window at the Second Defenestration of Prague (Count Vilem Slavata von Chlum, Count Jaroslav Borzita von Martinice and Philip Fabricius). All three men survived the 20 metre fall (Catholics claimed they were caught by angels, Protestants claim they fell into a large dung heap). That’s the sort of thing wikipedia is good for.
I also do not allow my students to use Wikipedia (nor any encyclopedia) as a source, although they use them to collect background info and guide their research. This is an ongoing problem though, because no matter how many times I say it, 20% of the students will still insert Wiki in their Works Cited page. *sigh*
David @ 39
I dislike this because it sounds like a silencing tactic, ie “If you aren’t doing Thing I Think is Productive, then stop complaining about Thing.” Agitation *IS* a form of protest, and it is acting towards a solution. And, as many here have said, we are teachers who discuss things like proper attribution and gather source materials in our classes. I do not feel that I need to become an editor of Wikipedia before I have the right to criticize it as a sometimes unreliable (and always uncitable) source.
A friend of mine used to get in stupid arguments IRL, quickly edit a wikipedia article during the argument, and then show the article to the other person to win the argument.
Murphy’s Law, man. If it can happen it probably does happen.
+1. Replace it with anything. Replace it with creationism. Stop complaining about creationism and do something about it.
The reality is that Chris Rodda threw a tantrum at being chided for cartoons that some people viewed as ableist. I don’t remember the details. But I do remember thinking her reaction was bizarrely extreme and seemed to be rooted in IM NOT THAT KIND OF PERSON HOW DARE YOU.
It really is too bad, because she really does do awesome work.
The fact that your friend edited that article is immediately obvious from clicking on “View history”… and using a Wikipedia article as a source for another Wikipedia article is a bit bizarre.
I argue on the Internet :-)
Josh@47:
The details are a little nastier than you remember, I think. The cartoon was definitely a cheap shot at blind people, but the comments to it got downright vile.
The edit described in the post was done on May 1 by an anonymous user (logged only by their IP address), apparently in Germany. That IP has never made any other edits to Wikipedia. This is quite typical for Wikipedia vandalism.
It went unnoticed until now because fewer than 30 people have this particular article on their watchlist. Gregory in Seattle described watchlists earlier in the thread – they are the mechanism for catching stuff like this on Wikipedia. The text was removed (no doubt because of this post) and has since been replaced with a more neutral phrasing that doesn’t mention PZ at all.
IMHO it’s a bit of an overreaction to publicly decry the whole of Wikipedia over one piece of vandalism on a low-traffic article. (This particular article has only been viewed 332 times in the entire month of May up until yesterday). In fact, blogging like this is counter-productive, because you have now brought this piece of vandalism to the attention of thousands of more people who would never have seen it. Tomorrow when those stats update we’ll know precisely how many.
There are a group of editors who focus on skeptic-relevant Wikipedia articles, one of the things they do is remove vandalism like this. They are called Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia. In the future, if you merely send a tweet to @SusanGerbic, she could have one of her people fix something like this and take care of this much more efficiently. All you have to do is ask.
Looks like that page has had a bit of vandalism over time. I am not familiar with how the system presents the revision history but the bogus entry has appeared twice in the past. There is also a record of the user who made the change(s). Sometimes the ‘user’ is just an IP address.
Tim Farley, ever at the ready to chide people for speaking in public rather than being what I assume he thinks is “collegial.” Thank you for helping.
Nich—I don’t read the A+ forums so my memories were only of what happened in Chris’ own thread here at FtB. Without a doubt my memories are incomplete. They may even be inaccurate.
I’ve never had a problem with Wikipedia when it comes to straight facts. When opinions creep in, however. . .
Since there is, to my knowledge, no clear definition of what does or does not constitute “cyberbullying”, the Wiki entry is an opinion.
Hah. I also tell my students they don’t get to cite blogs or print encyclopedias — they’re too far removed from the primary sources, and therefore unreliable. And wikipedia is like a giant print encyclopedia, except there are no standards for who gets to write the articles, and the content is constantly shifting.
I do tell them they can do a preliminary scan of wikipedia to get the gist of a topic, but only to get a starting point to dig deeper into more reliable sources. I stand by my point: you cannot trust wikipedia.
Krelnik: are you seriously suggesting that the appropriate response to serious errors that are a consequence of the intrinsic properties of wikipedia is to be silent, and slip notes under the table to people who will quietly clean up the superficial expression of the problems with no effort made to address systemic issues? Have you considered the possibility that I might have wanted to call attention to the untrustworthiness of wikipedia (hey, what do you know, it’s even in the title!) rather than to get an entry corrected?
Rex Little:
While that may be true, ‘bullying’ is well defined:
Although the second definition (from stopbullying.gov) limits the definition to school aged children (given the extent of the problem among those who are school aged, I can see why this definition is limited; that said, bullying can and does occur among adults as well).
Do you have a problem applying the definition of bullying to online activities?
#49, nich:
Whoa. But where is the vileness coming from? Not the critics of the cartoon, but from Paul Loebe, who charged in with his agenda and amplified the bad sentiments.
There appears to be some consistency in the definitions.
I looked up a Wikipedia article on Obama not too long ago and it described him as a communist. When I went back to look at the article a few hours later, noticed it had been edited out. Wish I had made a pdf of it at the time just for the record. So yes, Wikipedia is subject to a lot of flux, depending on whoever likes or dislikes the particular subject or person at the particular time it is being edited.
PZ@58: Oh yes. Most definitely. The criticism of the funnies was basically, “That’s not funny.” The reaction to that mild as ketchup criticism was mind boggling and pretty damn vile. My apologies if I implied the vileness was coming from the opposite direction.
Rex Little, Giant Douchweasel wrote:
Since Tony took care of the “cyberbullying” part, I’ll tackle the “is an opinion” part. In the context of Wikipedia, an opinion is rarely a neutral point of view. Using words that are loaded with negative meanings, like cyberbullying, is another violation of Wikipedia’s neutral point of view goal.
However, even if the word cyberbullying wasn’t loaded, an opinion isn’t necessarily valid. My opinion may be that the sky glows a brilliant red at midday with the sun directly overhead, but my opinion would also be completely wrong. You may be entitled to wrong opinions, but that doesn’t mean others should treat them as if they were true.
Short of threatening harm to someone’s physical person or property, and demonstrating the capability to carry out the threat (*), I don’t consider anything said online to be bullying. However, if “mean text messages or emails” are deemed to be bullying (per your citation from stopbullying.gov), the door is open for any online criticism to be so considered–in someone’s opinion.
* – You could say, over and over, that you’re going to kill me. But unless you show that you know my real name and where I live, I’m not harmed.
Rex Little, Giant Douchweasel wrote:
Only if you ignore the words “bullying” and “harassment” in the three definitions, which both have clear meanings, too. You’re sounding like a Freeze Peach warrior, Rex.
ck:
If you follow the link in my post #54, you’ll see that’s exactly what I was saying. The URL itself might be sufficient to make the point.
Giant Douchweasel@63:
Lord help you if you have teenagers. If you don’t consider anything said online to be bullying, I’d love to see what you’d tell your crying child when they hand you an iPod and you find that some creative non-bullies have photoshopped her face onto a porn star with “Janie likes it in the butt” for a caption. Maybe she should just grow a pair, amiright?
Nich, I’d fall back on a saying from my childhood which I took to heart whenever I was teased, which was quite often. It begins with “Sticks and stones. . .”
Rex Little@67:
Stick and fucking stones? Sticks. And. Fucking. Stones??? Please tell me you don’t have kids. If you do, I hope to god they are not LGBT.
Your handle is apt.
David Marjanovic @48:
That someone recently edited the article will be obvious from “view history” (though not everyone realizes how Wikipedia works even enough to do that). Who edited it might not be, if the person is arguing with someone who doesn’t know their Wikipedia handle (mine is my full name, but most people’s aren’t), or if the edit was done while not logged in.
Rex Little:
You might not consider anything short of that to be cyberbullying, but you’re not the one defining the term. You’re also not the one facing this problem:
You’re also conveniently forgetting that
emphasis mine. The definition of cyberbullying does not mean that “anything said online” is bullying.
• aggressive
• unwanted
• actual or perceived power imbalance
• repetitious or the potential to become repetitive
For some reason, you’re drawing a distinction between bullying in meatspace and online without explaining why you’re making the distinction, nor why that matters.
Why? And on what grounds do you dismiss the evidence that shows cyberbullying is real and harmful?
For the people dealing with cyberbullying, the shit they face is real. For some, it has resulted in them committing suicide.
Denying that cyberbullying is a form of bullying denies the reality that it *does* exist, and causes harm.
Here is a list of 9 teenagers who committed suicide due to cyberbullying.
To
Ciara Pugsley, 15 years old
Erin Gallagher, 13 years old
Jessica Laney, 16 years old
Shannon Gallagher, 15 years old
Anthony Stubbs, 16 years old
Joshua Unsworth, 15 years old
Daniel Perry, 17 years old
Hannah Smith, 14 years old
and
Rebecca Sedwick, 12 years old
cyberbullying was very real.
You deny that what they experienced was bullying and I find that reprehensible. These kids took their own lives bc of the bullying they experienced.
nich is right-Rex you *are* a giant doucheweasel.
An undemocratic Wikipedia? What could possibly go wrong?
Yes, yes, yes. If you don’t like it, it’s your responsibility to change it. That’s why Wikipedia is, according to its supporters, the greatest source of information in the world. It’s also why Open Source Software is so great. (*cough* Heartbleed *cough*)
and still do?
tell me, do you also still employ the rubber-glue defense?
what other neotenous traits do you possess?
Inquiring minds…
btw, for the apparently dense to comprehension crowd, PZ complaint was, literally, that Wiki should not be trusted.
the first objection to that comes from someone who agreed that entries can be randomly edited.
….which means, by FUCKING DEFINITION, that the information on any given page at any given time… cannot be trusted.
IT DOES NOT mean that wiki is not a valuable resource, it means that, like ANY specific source of information, one should not solely rely on it.
it also means that people are rightly concerned with how editing works on wiki, and while wiki has indeed taken steps to improve the control of the editing process… being what it is, it simply cannot employ a strict enforceable method to achieve perfect control.
so, bottom line:
nobody said:
DESTROY WIKI!
people ARE saying:
There is a problem here that needs to be addressed.
frankly, I’m 100% sure it never will be addressed, and wiki will ALWAYS remain a source of information that is good as a starting point, but not an endpoint.
It should be treated like any other encycopedia always has been… with a grain of salt and a nod towards going further to look at primary sources of information any time you actually want to know more information about something.
I mean, really… at what point in your education did your instructors stop allowing you to use enclycopedias as primary references for any paper you wrote?
I think it was 5th grade for me.
That was established months ago. I forget who first called me that, but I know it was here.
Actually, the distinction I make is between actions and credible threats of action on the one hand, and words on the other. Words by themselves carry the same weight in meatspace as in cyber (IMO, of course).
It doesn’t to me. My original point (which we’ve strayed rather far from) was that Wiki articles tend to suck when they deal with opinions rather than facts. I used the claim that Rodda was cyberbullied as an example of such an opinion.
What they experienced was what it was, no matter what label I, or you, put on it. Your finding is noted and given the weight it deserves.
ObSticksAndStones:
https://xkcd.com/1216/
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can permanently scar me.”
The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) wrote:
Utterly off-topic, but what makes you think that problem is unique to OSS (*cough* known NSA backdoored Dual_EC_DRBG was the default PRNG in RSA BSafe *cough*).
an opinion which very few share.
oh, this is good…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_threat
heh.
Rex Little:
Why do you adhere to such a narrow (and unrecognized) definition of bullying?
Why do you believe your definition is preferable?
Why do you discount the effect words can have on people?
’cause they’re an internet tough guy!
you can’t say anything that would bother them, I’m sure….
of course, the lack of empathy is overwhelming, but who cares, right?
78, ck:
I don’t. But it’s very interesting that the whole “written by amateurs and anyone can make changes” thing leads to… tadaa! bad code, which is supposedly going to be improved by having large corporations pay to have people work on it. If money solves the problem, then hey, this problem was actually solved a long time ago, it’s called “proprietary software” and it is certainly no worse than the garbage the open-source movement keeps pushing out. If they’re both insecure, and the non-open-source version comes out first (as it usually does), ends up being faster (as it usually is), and has a better user experience (as it nearly always does), and at the same time lets the people who write it make a living by writing good code (which open source explicitly fails to do), why put up with the open-source ripoffs of proprietary software at all?
Ichthyic:
I suspect you’re correct on both points and since no words can bother them, these tough guys think the same should hold for others.
****
Rex Little:
How much weight would that be?
Do you even believe that words have power?
Rex Little:
So…that would mean you think verbal abuse* isn’t a real thing at all, wouldn’t it?
*Yeah, yeah, I know.
I use it myself because it’s what I believe. If it were relevant to a conversation I was involved in, I’d either use the term the same way as those I was talking with, or explain what I meant by it, without claiming that my definition was “right”. If it were relevant, I’d explain why I believe that a particular behavior should or should not be considered bullying. It’s not relevant here, at least not to the point I was making originally.
I prefer mine. You prefer yours. I will stipulate for the sake of argument that 99.99% of those who have ever considered the matter prefer yours. I’m fine with that.
To a much greater extent than actions, words have only as much power as those who hear or read them are willing to grant them. If you punch me in the nose, I can’t choose not to hurt and bleed. If you call me a giant doucheweasel, I can choose to smile and include it in my handle.
Mao Tse-tung did not famously say “Power grows out of the mouth of a bullhorn.”
Mao was wrong.
And so are you.
It’s a good point. To at least some extent, you choose how you take words, however intended.
wait…Mao was wrong because he did not say that? (I’d disagree…how many bullhorn-weilding blowhards have you seen with zero political power? I’ve seen plenty.)
Or he was wrong for what he did say (i.e. that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun)? (I’d disagree again…seems pretty empirical.)
wielding
Chas
To which extent you can choose that differs significantly from person to person (and I mean significantly, including not at all), which doesn’t make the point good, just… oblivious.
Also, define “take words”.
Rex Little said:
The words might make me cry and deplete my self-confidence and I could pretend they don’t bother me since you can’t see me cry, putting them in my handle just to spite you.
@85 Rex Little [badge of defiance]
Indeed. Or you could have it tattooed on the small of your back, with curlicues and butterflies, and it would have a similar effect. Which would be saying to the world something along the lines of “I am so completely unaffected by words that I will affix any which are used in an attempt to insult me directly to my person, which will prove a point… because even though such words mean less than nothing to me and have no value of any kind, my use of and reference to them proves my superior ability to engage in behaviors which mean nothing whatsoever to me.”
Or you might be some “lite” variation of the sort of person who welcomes being called a sexist, or racist, or whatever, because it makes them feel so Brando.
Or you might find “Douchweasel” to be such a baroque confection of an epithet that you simply wished to honor it (though the bragging gives the first two possibilities an Olympian head start).
Mao also did not call himself “Mr. Opium Head” to taunt various Imperialists and their assorted ilk.
The meaning of this is opaque. To me anyway.
Do you mean:
“If I were accused of bullying, I would use the same definition use by the accuser to argue that… um… something…”
or
“If I am accused of bullying, I will either admit it, or explain why words and/or phrases used intentionally by me that were perceived as bullying were, by definition alone, not.”
or what?
I am honestly not saying that you mean this, but, as written and altogether, all of this sounds more like a “blow me, I’ll say what I want” statement rather than the argument that “we could all use a bit more of a New York skin,” which seems rather weakly implied. (I am biased to think that there is actually a difference between the two, and to agree with latter when intended honestly, even though a great many folks are simply not going to be able to acquire it.)
73/Vicar: Note that Wikipedia really does not resemble the typical open source project. It does resemble the “bazaar” from Eric S Raymond’s analogy and provides a very good illustration of why almost all open source projects still follow a “cathedral” model (just like proprietary ones). In open source software development, anyone suggesting “how about we allow anonymous commits to our production code; y’know, like Wikipedia” would be considered ridiculous (or dangerous, more likely).
@87 ChasCPeterson
Mmmmm. And what virtually always gets left off – because it’s easier – is some attempt to look seriously at the question of the magic quantity used here: “some extent.”
It may be obvious (though I would no longer be surprised if it weren’t) that if a police officer in riot gear states that further actions of a given kind will result in tear gas, tasing, or deadly force it is as of that moment such actions are unadvisable regardless of the emotional valence one attaches to the statement.
By the same token, if you were to threaten my niece with rape in an online venue, I would tend to take you seriously. Not least because in the this modern world there is nothing known to me that negates the “capability to carry out that threat.”
Further, if I were to find that her stocks-and-stones-repulsion-field were lacking power, and repeated threats of this kind causes emotional harm, I would take you still more seriously.
And at this point we would need to quantify “some extent.”
Knowknot, I hadn’t thought at all about being accused of bullying; in such a case I’d probably ask the accuser to specify what I had done that they considered bullying, and go from there. I was thinking more in the context of a discussion about what should be done to combat bullying. For instance, if someone wanted to make it a criminal offense to send an insulting text message, they and I might get into it concerning definitions.
True.
One might inquire further whence such diversity originates. Three people presented with the same dire insult to their person: one shrugs, one cries, one suicides. How come?
Not oblivious, but also not universal. For some people, some times, there is an element of choice involved. I’d like to think there was always an alternative choice to suicide. Maybe that’s oblivious.
um…to take words = to react to words, to behave in manner X subsequent to hearing words Y.
(was there really ambiguity there?)
Oh… and I was just wondering… might we say that the hypothetical statement “interpretation is not magic” is related to a similar statement regarding intention (in a way I lack the skill to parse)?
@94 ChasCPeterson
As with the mysterious quantity of “some extent,” the question is left hanging.
Since you are taking the exception, and since you are not offering an answer of any kind, it appears (appears) that you will likely not give a bloody damn until the internal state that results in these variations is shown to have a verifiable, valid and excusable cause.
Because, even having gone so far as to include suicide (which will admittedly not take the question out of the realm of “personal weakness” for some), the fact of behavioral reaction to the internal state, much less other’s reports / explanations of their internal states simply isn’t enough to bother with.
?
@93 Rex Little
Thank you. Being an official arbiter precisely nothing, I get that.
Still, re any circumstance related to threat, the idea that a hard extension of “sticks and stones” can be meaningful (or even benign) as anything other than a strictly personal maxim continues to jitter in my craw.
Chas,
The ambiguity should be obvious from my example.
Behold, for I am error incarnate.
@92, Incomprehensible bit; should have been: “It may be obvious (though I would no longer be surprised if it weren’t) that if a police officer in riot gear states that further actions of a given kind will result in tear gas, tasing, or deadly force, as of that moment such actions are unadvisable regardless of the emotional valence one attaches to the statement.”
@93, Only “It’s a good point. To at least some extent, you choose how you take words, however intended.” should have been attributed to ChasCPeterson.
@97 Should have been “…arbiter of precisely nothing…”
blablabla sorries.
@94 ChasCPeterson.
Yes… there was ambiguity, only because of the “sticks and stones” implications of the conversation.
You could have meant “the way in which you understand and interpret the words / statement,” or, given the subtext (not necessarily or exclusively from you) that some people are just too “thin skinned,” you could have meant “how you take the hit.>
The latter may be less obvious to some, but it was the usual meaning where I came from, and various elsewheres. It is intended to bear the scent of “what’s your problem, Bud?”
Just saying. Things twist in the vernacular. .siht ekiL
I’m sure this has been covered, but general insults tend not to be triggering. You can, in fact, severely injure people with just words.
you haven’t thought very much about this, this much is clear.
@87 ChasCPeterson
.
Seriously. You think it was being argued that political power does not grow out of the barrel of a gun? Maybe if Ramtha was involved in the conversation… but otherwise, this is honestly a very O’Rielly / Teaparty / Cliven Bundy / “mutually assumed density” response.
The wrong was the implication that political power grows only ever from the barrel of a gun. Which is sometimes wrong, thankfully.
And that wrongness was important in this context due to the simultaneous contrasting of the powerlessness of words with the “hurt and bleed” of being “punched in the nose.” Implying (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) that the only options in conflict are impotent verbiage or violence.
And given all that, the way in which the statement is wrong is extremely important to bear in mind, because militia freakout, because guns everywhere dammit, because local police with tanks.
See vandalism?
Click “View History” upper right of every article
Click “Undo”
Done.
It’s not hard people.
But it’s not your responsibility?
Neither is the peice of trash you see on the sidewalk. Pick it up anyway.
it’s also not relevant to the argument.
or not thankfully in some cases.
some pretty damn evil folks have managed to talk their way into power.
what information tells you that when you see a wrapper on sidewalk, it is trash and should be picked up?
now, if you go to a random page on wiki, what information tells you that there is a piece of trash that should be removed?
I go to a page on Obama, and it says he is a Christian. I decide he’s really an atheist, and so clean up the page to reflect the better choice. Billyjobobjeter goes to the same webpage, sees Obama is Christian, says to himself: “That’s not right, my preacher told me he’s Muslim”
and changes the page.
if you, random visitor, go that page not knowing anything about the man, and you catch the page while either my or billy’s edits are up….
You have an authoritative source telling you that Obama is either an atheist, or a Muslim.
can you see the problem now?
I cannot search references right now, because my lunch break ends, but I want briefly adress this, as mentioned by giant doucheweasel:
“Sticks and stones…blabla”
Words do have qn effect. Physical effect. Brain is a physical organ. Giant part of our brain is dedicated to interpretting words, and this interpretation involves emotions, associations and physical response, even in form of pain and long term metabolical responses. Not only by triggering known unpleasant memories, but even by invoking unknown but unpleasant associations (there goes empathy again, look it up).
People differ widly in this regard, just as well as they do with regard to their physique, and they have limited ways to influence their mental states just as they have limited ways to influence their physical state. You cannot simply “choose” not to react to certain words, if you are predisposed to it, just as you cannot “choose” to lift a 100 kg weight if you lack the (ability to grow) the muscle. Your condescending of people who suffer of online bullying is just as stupid as if Arnold Schwarzenegger condescended those who cannot lift 60 kg in one hand because he can do it easily.
I certainly hope I would never be arrogant, insensitive, and generally ignorant of the real world enough to assume that my level of tolerance for negative speech is typical or normal, or – even worse – the right way to look at things.
I also was taught the ‘sticks and stones’ bit when I was young, and it’s helped me substantially.
Fortunately, I’m not enough of an ass to think that my experiences are, or should be, universal. I have no idea if the lack of effect on me is heroic strength of will, or general lack of empathy, or if it’s just that I’ve never really been exposed to honest-to-god bullying.
Even though I don’t know if I’d feel the same way, I certainly am sympathetic to victims of bullying, face-to-face, electronic, or otherwise.
I guess that means I’ve failed my Kolinahr.
@105 Ichthyic
Indeed. In a perfect world all evil would be violent.
See also this handy comparison chart.
He did, however, make sure the Little Red Book was handed to everyone and their surviving brother.
It’s not directly relevant to PZ’s argument, I suppose, if that’s what you mean; it is, however, relevant to the argument I had made, which in turn is relevant to, at least, PZ’s presentation of his argument.
What actually happens with such well-known topics is that someone comes in and cites a primary source or five. This has an intimidating effect on most cranks, because they know their inability to cite anything in response makes them look wrong; the most determined ones start a short-lived revert war and end up banned within a day.
This is why an article like the one on DDT cites one or two sources at almost every comma or period, for a total of 146 in this case.
There are obscure topics where the crank makes their edit and then nobody notices for a year or three. But anything related to Obama is not one of those.
Well, it was actually me who ‘gave’ Rex his current handle, and much deserved it was, and apparently still is.
If I recall correctly, the general issue then was a total lack of anything resembling empathy. And REx still seems lacking in that regard.
But yeah, I guess a kid getting verbally abused by more than a dozen of his peers during the entirety of a breaktime in school, almost each breaktime again, almost each day again, during a couple of years, is not bullying, because it’s just words. As someone who has been there, fuck you very much Rex.
Re: the “sticks and stones” debate:
Words are, indeed, not weapons. But they can hurt.
Let me relay a real-life event.
A few weeks ago, a guy I know socially told me the following: “It’s a pity you’re a lesbian, because otherwise I’d hit on you.”
I was offended and more than a little upset.
Now, let’s look at why.
The fact that this guy is a poor judge of boundaries is a problem. Most people, by the time they reach adulthood, have at least once had a crush on someone unattainable. The mature, adult response is to swallow it.
The fact that American society is patriarchal, with non-insignificant levels of people believing that men are entitled to women’s bodies/affections/attention is a problem. A non-insignificant number of men display a marked tendency to discount and flat-out ignore women’s desires.
The fact that homosexuality – and lesbianism in particular – is believed to be aberrant and “fixable” is a problem. The fact that many lesbians are subjected to sexual aggression and rape by men who want to “fix” them is a problem.
Now. Do I think this guy wants to rape me? No. Do I think myself in danger when I’m around him? No.
It’s just that I cannot ignore this context. And that context is profoundly upsetting and worrisome.
To make myself perfectly clear: I don’t think I’m in danger from this guy. It’s just that the only way I can ever be sure of his intentions is when he either (1) attempts something violent or (2) he permanently exits my life.
Such is life as a woman (see also: “Schrödinger’s Rapist”). The fact that he thought that comment was okay is alarming because it edges him somewhat from one category (“probably safe”) to another (“questionable”).
I have to be leery.
Because the alternative is to make myself vulnerable to someone who does have violent intentions.
So… did you fix it? ‘Cause the fact that any expert can also edit Wikipedia is a reason to trust it… :-P
@107 Charly:
You are right. People can’t actually choose how they react to the things other people say. Sure, to some extent they can choose how to act in response, and they may be able to train themselves to react differently (perhaps more like those lucky people who happen to be less sensitive to those specific words/statements, or just less sensitive in general?) – but the immediate, emotional, physical (!) reaction is not something you can control. That’s why swear words “work”, why obscene words give even people who pride themselves on not being prudish a little thrill, why you should avoid using certain words even if you think it looks silly to write “the n-word”: because saying things to someone is “doing something to them”. By the time they get around to consciously deciding “how to react”, the damage, if there is any, is done.
It’s changed now, the less partial editors are pretty quick.
By the way, I’m pretty sure someone at Conservapedia just went to Wikipedia under a different username (and possibly IP address) and pulled it out of his ass.
All “sticks and stones” ever did for me was let me know I was a failure when I couldn’t ignore what the other children called me.
sweet fist of jesus you clowns are really not getting this.
what happens if it’s NOT a well known topic?
not that the popularity of a topic is even really relevant, since it hardly affects my argument now, does it.
I keep being impressed at how many words people will use to argue that words don’t have an effect.
Rex Little:
This isn’t a matter of preference. I used the definitions of bullying and cyberbullying provided by the American Psychological Association. Do you recognize that bullying and cyberbullying have psychological effects on those experiencing that behavior? Do you recognize the expertise of the APA on this subject?
You know what, define the words how you want to. That doesn’t change the reality of what many people face:
I don’t think anyone should have to deal with the above, whether you call it bullying or not (the same holds true of cyberbullying).
Re: sticks and stones-
I’m glad that worked for you, but you can’t expect everyone to be just like you. Not everyone is able to react in the same manner you do upon being bullied. Worse, you’re basically telling victims of bullying to suck it up and deal with it, rather telling the bullies to stop their behavior.
The “sticks and stones” thing is bizarre. It is supposed to rob words of their power, but it does so by using words. “Their hateful, hurtful insults can’t hurt you, but this little rhyme can fix everything.”
I think “sticks and stones” might be useful if taken as a reminder to not escalate a verbal confrontation into a physical one. But more often than not, it is a trite little phrase used to dismiss emotional abuse, wholesale.
Tony:
I’m not telling anybody to do anything. Everything I’ve said on this subject has been in response to direct questions, mostly from you, asking what my opinions were and the reasons for them. My opinions are opinions, not advice or prescriptions. And on the general subject of opinions, I refer you back to what I linked to @54.
Rex:
My apologies. I misread your hypothetical. I thought you were giving generalized advice on how to deal with bullying, rather than advice for your hypothetical child on how to deal with “aggressive behavior that is typically recurring and is intended to cause distress and/or harm, involving an actual or perceived imbalance of power” (said advice being a childhood saying about “sticks and stones”; how this is intended to diminish or eliminate the aggressive behavior directed at the victim-which they have no control over-is unclear).
You haven’t given your reasons for having this opinion:
Cyberbullying *is* real, has been defined, and has caused demonstrable harm (remember those 9 teens I listed that committed suicide as a direct result of cyberbullying?). I’ve formed my opinion on bullying (and its subcategory ‘cyberbullying’) based on evidence. What is your opinion based on and why?
Btw, your link @54 is not helpful in this discussion. I *know* that opinions are like assholes and everyone has them. In this case, though, your opinion is dismissive of the experiences of a great many people:
There are people (not just kids and teens) that deal with cyberbullying on a recurring basis. There are parents who have lost their children as a result of cyberbullying. Your narrow definition does nothing to help understand or resolve the problem of internet bullying. It does, a spectacular job, however, of treating harmful behavior as if its “not that bad”.
It’s not intended to do anything about the behavior; it’s intended to help the victim react to the behavior in such a way as to reduce or eliminate her psychic pain. (Recall that the behavior in the example was humiliating and demeaning, but not physically aggressive.)
Of course, the assembled multitudes have expressed some reservations about its effectiveness. . .
Was I asked to? I checked back through and couldn’t find any such request, but I might have missed it. In any case, I did say “the distinction I make is between actions and credible threats of action on the one hand, and words on the other.” That’s the basis of my reason, but it does need some elaboration.
In a meatspace bullying situation, the very presence of the more powerful bullies, combined with the hostility of their words, constitutes a physical threat. (I never said the threat had to be overt, just credible.) I did also say that words by themselves carry the same weight in meatspace as in cyber, but what I neglected to add was that in meatspace bullying the words are rarely if ever “by themselves.” In cyber, they are.
(The preceding paragraph is, of course, an opinion. Nothing in it should be taken as an attempt to state a fact.)
I beg to differ. It triggered you to present a great deal of information which surely increased some people’s knowledge and understanding.
Rex, #76:
This is a nonsense distinction.
It seems pretty plain that expressing words – either speaking or writing them – is an action. Actions, famously, have consequences. It may be that those consequences are sometimes trivial, but it doesn’t follow that they always are.
And #125:
Is it only threat or actual detriment to our physical well-being that can constitute bullying? Do you accept that there are forms of harm that a bully might seek to inflict other than physical harm (or the threat of physical harm)? If so, is it possible that these other forms of harm can be inflicted merely by expressing words?