Kelly Martin/Wikitruth

Wikitruth on Kelly Martin, before deletion. The only things changed were the reference formatting, because I don't know how to do that :-(

Kelly Martin

From Wikitruth

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

Kelly Lynn Martin (born Scott Charles Goehring) was an ordinary Wikipedian for a long time: rude, stupid and almost entirely lacking in a sense of humour. She was more than willing to fight stupid battles over close to meaningless pages and in the course of these battles developed the habit of talking about Wikipedia as "we" (a common tic among longer-term editors, who come to believe that they're speaking for everyone whenever they pronounce). She became a reasonably uncontroversial Wikipedia administrator, another wikibod whose overall contribution was positive, but not very much so.

Martin would never have come to notice had she not, seized by the urge to trip on her power as an admin and an ensconced member of the establishment, decided that users could not have userboxes on their pages.

Martin deleted many userboxes, which naturally enraged many users, who found they had unexplained holes on their much loved user pages (some Wikipedians spend hours decorating their user pages: they put lists of articles they have made or edited on them, scads of boxes that say they vote Republican and like ice cream, and little essays about why it's a cruel world when you're a fat nerd with no social life).

A request for comment (a page set up so that interested parties can slag each other off) on Martin turned into a huge, sprawling brawl, involving hundreds of people with nothing better to do than argue over whether Martin should be punished or praised for being a rank shithead and the usual shitstirrers, political types and the silly schoolboys who consider every half-decent fight an opportunity not for wading in and settling scores like a good Wikipedian but one for telling everyone to be nice and hug each other.

Martin argued that those who wanted her punished/flogged/hanged for ignoring their feelings were just a bunch of newbies who simply didn't understand how things are at Wikipedia, an interesting view in a place where consensus purportedly reigns, so that if you are outnumbered by hundreds of clueless newbies, you are the one who simply doesn't understand what's what. Martin scoffed at those who suggested she had overstepped her powers (purportedly she was empowered to pursue the communal will, not to delete things she personally didn't care for, see MarkSweep for another interesting case). She claimed they were whining because she was "pissing on their playground". She said that on the #Wikipedia IRC channel, where the rules about pretending to be nice don't apply and you can savage other editors as much as you like.

Were this not enough to convince onlookers of Martin's overweening arrogance, she obliged them by asking to be elected as an arbiter. The community responded by heavily disendorsing her. A further powergrab, when the arbitration committee installed her as "head clerk" (a Wikithug whose job is to rewrite evidence so that it fits the outcome required in an arbitration case), was defeated by howls of protest, some from establishment editors.

Martin is a beautiful case of hubris: an untalented editor, rarely able to convince others of the rightness of her positions, who let power go to their head and decided to bludgeon those she took to be powerless. Where this happens in isolated instances, the established editors close ranks. It is very hard to overturn an administrator's works. But Martin oversteps even the very wide bounds for admins.

Friendly quotes

"The fact that you believe that a handful of deletion-obsessed process wonk on DRV can determine "consensus" for Wikipedia indicates to me that your logic and commonsense is so absent that it would be criminal of me to even pay any attention to anything you might say. Given that, I have decided to simply ignore you and your opinion on this, and on all other matters, until such time as you show signs of actual complex thought. Please consider a different pastime; you may find Agora Nomic more your style." — Kelly Martin

"Might I suggest that this discussion is pointless and irritating and should be terminated? I've already admitted that my intention were to intimidate. Of course they were. One doesn't threaten a block unless one's intentions are to intimidate. Anybody who says otherwise is lying (possibly to themselves). Since it is generally accepted practice that admins are expected to intimidate malcontents prior to blocking them, I would hope that we all now agree that intimidation of users is acceptable practice, under at least some circumstances, on Wikipedia. Can we now stop beating that particular equine? I'm getting really tired of the juvenile verbal jousting that is passing for debate here. It's not interesting, it's certainly not helpful, and it is neither appreciated nor welcome. Thank you, and have a nice day." — Kelly Martin [1]

"I am above all process. So are you. So is everyone else on Wikipedia. Process is something we have for convenience and for the sake of convention. It can also be ignored when it interferes with doing the right thing, when it creates more problems than it solves, or when it's just bloody stupid.....As to my ability to guess what Jimbo and the ArbCom would like: I think I'm slightly closer to Jimbo and the ArbCom than you are, Karwynn. Must I remind you that I used to be an Arbitrator? I'm still on their mailing list, I still talk with them on a frequent basis, and I still participate in their discussions. I think it's safe to say that my personal experience and access gives me a better perspective on what Jimbo and the ArbCom consider desirable and undesirable on Wikipedia. Note that this doesn't mean that I have any more authority (for I don't); it merely means that I am better informed than you are, and that lets me act with more certainty as to the appropriateness of my actions. If you think I'm doing the wrong thing in any particular situation, you should probably spend more time entertaining the possibility that your conclusion is based on incomplete or inaccurate information." — Kelly Martin [2]

"...this reflects a fundamental schism within Wikipedia: there are people who believe that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia being written by a community, and people who believe that Wikipedia is a community that happens to be writing an encyclopedia. (Both of them are wrong: by and large, the people writing the encyclopedia are not part of the community at all.) The communitarians grossly overvalue the importance of the community in writing the encyclopedia, because they are either ignorant of, or choose to ignore, the fact that most of the edits to the encyclopedia come from people who are not members of the community. Most editors edit a small number of pages, rarely participate in talk pages, and almost never participate in discussions other than on talk pages. The community does play a significant role in maintaining the encyclopedia (in that they are responsible for most of the vandal management), which is important, but they are not the primary editors. Of course, at this juncture someone will point to some prominent Wikipedian who does both -- but that's one in a drop. Simon Pulsifer, who has some 80,000 edits and is somewhat active in the community (although not all that much!), is still a tiny fraction of all edits committed to article space. Based on my experience and the statistics I have seen, I would conclude that most of the people yelling for more respect for the community are more interested in the community as a community, rather than out of any true concern for the encyclopedia itself. We could destroy the entire community and Wikipedia would not stop as a result. We'd have some vandalism issues for a while, but those would sort themselves out over time. I am simply tired of the widely-spread but false belief that the "community" represents all editors of Wikipedia; it doesn't, and its members need to stop pretending that it does." — Kelly Martin [3]

Footnotes

• [4]
• [5]
• [6]

External links

• Arbitration Committee Elections: January 2006 commentary regarding Kelly Martin
• Requests for comment: Kelly Martin (primary)
• Requests for comment: Kelly Martin (secondary)