RationalWiki talk:All things in moderation

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Anatoly Karlin again

I received an email from Karlin today. In the interest of fairness, I am posting his email and opening up discussion again. Here is the body of the email:

Just noticed there is an email function here. So here's how this episode looks from my perspective:

(1) I do not use socks on RW and never have. But even if I did, why would I do that - with handles such as "Nooceleration" (my blog!) https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User:Nooceleration that are an obvious dumb attempt to link them to me - to edit articles in the full knowledge that any such edits would be quickly reverted?

(2) Why would I choose Aporia as my edit target? I am not affiliated with Aporia. (I am inaccurately characterized as a WN within it, but I am inaccurately characterized throughout RW). I have no interest in editing Aporia beyond any other article on RW.

(3) Most importantly, why would I do this simultaneously with launching an appeal and basically guaranteeing it fails?

It's very obviously sabotage (ODS or possibly Mikemikev being the likeliest culprits). As an editor you are well aware that on Wikis anyone can pretend to be anybody. Many people were aware of the appeal, both here and on the Discord.

So what this looks like from my end is that you conspired to make it impossible for me to appeal the lies about me on my RW page by banning my account on false charges of sock puppeting back in 2019, and continue to keep it banned through this lame dog and pony show. Meanwhile, in the event I do create a second account, it will presumably be immediately banned as well for ban evasion.

Furthermore, you then seem to have decided to punish me for going through the standard appeal procedures in a conscientious and cooperative fashion by adding 7,000 more words of defamatory crap to my article (including implications of pedophilia from actual Neo-Nazi Colin Liddell).

So my modest questions are:

(1) I deny ever running sock puppets on RW (or Wikipedia). Is your position that I am lying and that you will confirm your decision to deny the unban appeal on this basis?

(2) If so, what are my actual remaining options to contest my RationalWiki article? (Knowing that any attempts to appeal the ban the official recommended way will be denied on the basis of sock puppeting claims, while creating a second account would be ban evasion and actual "sock puppeting").

(3) This is more idle curiosity than anything else, but even allowing that I was a White Nationalist in the mid to late 2010s - something I have consistently denied, and which very few people outside the Far Left ever described me as - on what basis do I have an article that is multiple times longer than, say, Richard B. Spencer? That is, the actual founder of the Alt Right (also domestic abuser, etc.), as opposed to someone who mentioned the n word a couple of times in ancient flame wars across millions of words of text on a blog of middling prominence? While it's not very funny to me personally, since RW's lies have substantively detracted from my quality of life, I have to admit it's very amusing from the side.

- Anatoly.

With regard to Aporia, there seems to be only statement that he would be writing for Aporia[1] and a small number of comments that he left on the site,[2] so I would support removing Karlin from the Aporia page at this point.

With regard to whether Karlin is a white nationalist, that is perhaps a bit grayer. The fact-checking site Polygraph.info, which we cited, did call him a white nationalist without elaborating on the label. A peer-reviewed paper, which we also cited,[3] called him an antisemite but did not call him a white nationalist but did refer to his association with white nationalist Richard Spencer. There is also the issue of what "Russian nationalism" means, which Karlin admits he supports. Russia is 80+% white according to Karlin,[4] so is Russian nationalism inherently white nationalism particularly when "Great Russians" (i.e., ethnic Russians) are the focus of Russian nationalism? The Wikipedia page on Russian nationalismWikipedia plausibly states that it has its roots white supremacy, but it is poorly cited.

As for socking, It could be the case that he hasn't done this since although there was a sock investigation on Wikipedia that banned a few socks, his main account is still active.[5]

We still have not heard from @GrammarCommie on the reason for the initial ban in 2019, but @Cosmikdebris also reblocked him today.[6]

As to the minor points: I did not add "7,000 more words of defamatory crap". I did add about 7000 characters, mostly cleaning up the page, especially citations. The page needs cleanup and there is substantial redundancy. Why is so much larger than Spencer's page? Perhaps there's more volume fo text to criticize. Bongolian (talk) 01:49, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree with him that it doesn't make sense he would sabotage his own appeal with the sock accounts (unless it was some elaborate trolling attempt but seems like a contrived explanation). Since he was banned for alleged socking rather than bigotry, in principle I see no reason against appealing if his interest is to post on the talk page about himself. Admittedly I'm not the most familiar with his case, especially the thing about the Wikipedia side of it. Chillpilled (talk) 02:07, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
User:Akarlin sent me the following email earlier today:

FWIW, I was advised to raise my complaints about the appeal process on my user talk page on the Discord support server.

I suppose a thank you is in order for confirming that RW's appeals/contestation process, while present on paper, is in reality a farce. This confirmation might be plausibly useful at some point.

cosmikdebris talk stalk 02:59, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Well, I was forced to sit out the last round of this, which kinda stinks. Akarlin's last message on his talk page before he had his access to that revoked seemed polite enough (though it was almost identical to the e-mail Bongolian showed off here). I'd be tempted to suggest giving him self-talk page privileges back so he can actually try to make his case (I'm having my own problems with my Reddit account, so I'm feeling a bit extra-sympathetic to people facing bans), but I was watching the last ATIM conversation about how he's really not showing any actual reduction in alt-right activity, and having now seen the e-mail he sent to Cosmikdebris, I'm noticing the politeness slipping (I doubt calling the appeals process a "farce" will win any brownie points with any mod team), so I'm starting to wonder just how much benefit of the doubt he deserves. Like, I understand his frustration, but come on, does he think he's going to win friends with petty insults?! --Luigifan18 (talk) 04:03, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Here is some sourcing on Karlin's racism.

Don't play this guys game. His claims about having converted to a far-leftist are clearly a scam. Johns (talk) 04:19, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Again, I think the insincerity angle was covered the last time around. I do thank you for finding supporting evidence, though. --Luigifan18 (talk) 04:30, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
I believe this account was Karlin [7]. Some of the other accounts read as Michael Coombs, those were obvious throwaway accounts with a very low intelligence. Johns (talk) 04:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
Are any claims on his page poorly sourced or unsourced? CorruptUser 06:16, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
I've started to clean up the page. So far, the sourcing seems reasonable. As I noted above the white nationalist claim could use better sourcing. Bongolian (talk) 17:43, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I also got an email;

Hi Karma Police,

I just noticed the email function at RW. The sock puppets were not mine. If I was going to use sock puppets, I would obviously not do that while appealing my original ban on sock puppeting charges.

I would certainly not do it under the name of my own blog, LMAO. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/User:Nooceleration

It's a lame dog and pony show whose entire point seems to have been to give Bongolian et al. the pretext to deny my appeal.

So just to quickly respond to Johns who "convinced" you:

> Only a few minutes ago on his Twitter he is defending Nathan Cofnas a far-right race realist who was just sacked from Emmanuel College [1]

I defended Cofnas' free speech rights and in the next very next Tweet criticized his negative attitude towards Palestinian activist free speech rights: https://twitter.com/powerfultakes/status/1781640014805279061

I also support leftist free speech: https://twitter.com/powerfultakes/status/1779485268833148996

> He is currently heavily associated with Aporia Magazine...

How exactly? What position do I have there?

> Despite now claiming to be pro LGBT he still identifies as an eugenicist and is still a proponent of racialism which he lectures on.

I have always been pro-voluntary eugenics (and against coercive eugenics).

My actual current views on "racialism" (and other things) is described here: https://akarlin.com/soypill-manifesto/#Liberal_Race_Realism_and_Open_Borders_under_Rawlsianism

> He is still very much involved with the alt-right community despite his claims to the contrary.

This is why I make fun of rightoids near every day on Twitter.

Even several years ago my involvement with the Alt Right was marginal. Contra the lies on my page, I only ever met with Richard Spencer once (let alone attended "multiple" Neo-Nazi conferences with him or served as a "poster boy" for him).

> I have not looked into his ban here but it should be noted this guy has been blocked hundreds of times on Wikipedia.

That sock puppeting investigation Johns links to is not me. Anyone can pretend to be anybody on Wikis. I only have one Wikipedia account since 2009, User:SublimeWik.

I suspect that Johns is Oliver D. Smith, who has a well known obsession with me (by way of Emil Kirkegaard). https://akarlin.com/rationalwiki

And my 'open response' is this;

A Karlin;

The crux of my problem is that while I don't deny the possibility of a person's views changing over time, the issue appears to be your belief that all your prior history should be wiped clean immediately. Alas, this isn't true in either real life or here at RationalWiki. I will say this; if your change is genuine, and you stick with it, sooner or later someone at RW will note this and your mainspace page will change accordingly - it won't remove the earlier history, but it will note that you no longer publically support them. Johns convinced me of only one thing; that 'there has been a recent grift by alt-right/far-right influencers who have come out and tried to deny their racist past and now claim to be left-wing in recent years' [which I had vaguely noted before this] and due to your past history I think we're justified to be suspicious of claimed Damascene conversions.

I do accept you have a point about the sockpuppets. However, as I've recently seen people appeal against claims of sealioning by more sealioning I don't rule anything out. Your claim about Johns basically having a vendetta against you may or may not be true, but even if they're motivated by selfish reasons it doesn't mean the stuff they dig out is wrong. I will also highlight that Bonglian was the one who did point out earlier that you'd not actually done anything to warrant a ban - if they'd been trying to achieve this, it would be a little odd for them to effectively provide evidence against the case.

I am going to make the assumption here that your main reason for wanting a ban lifted is to edit your own page. I think I speak for most folks here to say at best this would be somewhat a conflict of interest. However, I will ask for someone to review the RW page on you and check if any claims made about your views don't have evidence to support it, as well as making sure various claims are dated so readers can come to their own conclusions to whether things from several years ago are still relevant.

Yours, KP.

Therefore, I suggest that we do roughly what we did after the City Journal hit-piece on us last year; that somebody [not me, I don't really know much about this topic] goes through the offending article and makes sure that every single claim is firmly backed up with decent, solid refs. Personally, I do think the page is a little on the long side when we consider their relative lack of notability - I mean, it appears some 90% of the refs are from their own stuff.

Now, on being a 'white nationalist'; well the issue is that Russian perspective is a bit different here - for example, 'Blacks' is often used [if I remember right] in connotation with people from the Caucasus. I would guess [from his positive mentioning of Solzhenitsyn] that Karlin's position would be as a 'slavophile'; which sometimes [but not always] shades into anti-semitism, pan-slavism [that Russia should rule all the slavs], autocracy and a general rejection of the Enlightenment. However, I will argue that it is not white nationalism because the more hardline slavophiles reject other 'whites' too, esp Germans, Scandanavians and Anglo-Saxons as 'aliens' - so it's more simple xenophobia and 'Russian exceptionalism'. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:18, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

All this nutpicking about whether or not this individual is a "white nationalist" or "white supremacist" is complete bullshit. I did some internet searching and found literally pages and pages and pages linking Anatoly Karlin to white supremacy and/or white nationalism. If you sleep with white nationalists and white supremacists, then it's completely fair to say that you are one. This pointless bickering about semantics is one of the tactics of this abhorrent crowd, like how some of them say they they are "alt-center" and not "alt-right." Big fucking deal! "Oh I was one before but I'm not one now I refuted my beliefs" Yeah, right. The evidence isn't with you on that one, either. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... This is like the trollchild who came on here a few years back and said "Unblock me, It was my son that did it". —cosmikdebris talk stalk 21:08, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
I have also come to the conclusion that he is not worth unbanning due to trolling and general bad-faith arguments. If anyone feels that a vote is needed, it can start tomorrow. Bongolian (talk) 23:25, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
As it's already been 24 hours, a vote can start now. Plutocow (talk) 03:21, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
Above, Wikipedia and the question of Karlin's possible socks there was mentioned. There's a current discussion on Wikipedia about that, with Karlin denying all much like here, and some of his claims about his larger activity elsewhere being disproven, but no definite evidence of socking at present. Given the parallels, may be worth a read. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 09:06, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
Cosmik; I think you're forgetting [or don't know] that hardline slavophilism is in itself an odious ideology which is fit for a RW page [puts on my to-do list] - it's the underpinning for Putin's regime and by extension the invasions [his line that Ukraine isn't real is right out of their playbook]. I just saw the spectre of 'anglosplaining' raising it's head - ie trying to shoehorn something to fit Anglo definitions - and wanted to make people aware of the differences. The point that 'if you hang about with racists and Nazis and don't complain, it's reasonable comment to say you are one' is what I would chalk up to be 'fair comment', though if I was writing that article and could be bothered to do research, I may also present the alternative theory that they're just a hardline slavophile and their Venn circle overlaps fairly well with said people. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:15, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Vote on affirming Anatoly Karlins's ban once and for all

While it's obvious which way this site is leaning, Anatoly Karlin seems like the type to rules lawyer so it's probably for the best that we put this to a vote to make this official. This will be a simple two thirds majority vote to keep Anatoly Karlin permabanned. Plutocow (talk) 03:21, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Yay

  1. Has pretty much just been trolling. Plutocow (talk) 03:21, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
  2. Bongolian (talk) 04:37, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
  3. Scream!! (talk) 08:29, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
  4. Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 18:54, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
  5. 'Wanting to edit own ('lying') RW page' is hardly the best argument for returning. Their emails show that even if banned, they *do* have the ability to raise complaints, while the fact folks are giving said page 'attention' shows we do listen (though the net result is unlikely to be one that Karlin desires). KarmaPolice (talk) 19:09, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
  6. Been observing this stuff for the past while. -- Techpriest (talk) 22:27, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
  7. cosmikdebris talk stalk 22:48, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
  8. Spud (talk) 14:02, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
  9. Karlin is a well known alt-right troll, he's still complaining about RW on his Twitter [8]. Just ban this guy, it's time to move on. Johns (talk) 22:18, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
  10. Demonstrates through his behavior that he would only be a burden on this community. This is true regardless of whether he renounced his alt right views. Pizza SLICE.gifChef Moosolini’s Ristorante ItalianoMake a Reservation 10:33, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Nay

  1. I really want to believe Karlin's change of heart is genuine, so I don't want to tell him "leave and never, ever, EVER come back under any circumstances"; I've been on the receiving end of that myself at Know Your Meme (and may be facing something similar at Reddit), and it still freaking hurts. With that said, I'm still extremely skeptical of Karlin's claims of not being a bigoted shithead (and what I've heard here doesn't help his case), and I'd like to be able to verify that he's actually working to redeem himself before I advocate lifting the ban we currently have in place on him. In short: I don't want to weld the door shut on him, but I'm not willing to open it at this time, either. For the time being, I support the status quo of keeping him locked out and at arm's length… specifically a Gundam's arm's length. Luigifan18 (talk) 22:04, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
    You want status quo? He's already permabanned, that's status quo. This vote is just to confirm permaban since there was never a vote before. Bongolian (talk) 23:42, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
    I already answered this in my 'open reply' to them; that if their change is genuine and they stick with it, soon enough their RW page will be changed to reflect this. That is what they care about. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:35, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
    Again, maybe it's my experience from Know Your Meme and stuff I've read on TV Tropes' suspension appeal forum talking, but "permaban" to me implies "kicked out forever, will be re-expelled on sight, not subject to further discussion or revision under any circumstances, get the fuck out and never, EVER return". (See also the bans we have in place on Kenneth DeMeyer and Michael Coombs, both for damn good reason.) That's what I'm opposing in Anatoly Karlin's case. I'm in full support of an indefinite ban (i.e. a ban that will remain in place unless and until sufficient evidence emerges that the subject's bad behavior that warranted a ban has been changed for good). If Karlin has changed and can prove that he's changed, I'd like to be able to welcome him here. (We could certainly use an ex-alt-right perspective.) But if he's just trying to rebrand himself while still treating people who aren't like him like subhumans, he has no place here, and won't have a place here unless and until he learns to treat other people like, well, people. Luigifan18 (talk) 15:50, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
    I've read this argument just a couple of days ago. Your argument is basically a pedantic/linguistic one - that in reality yes, 'permanent' should read as 'indefinite'. But the truth is that from my experience some 98% of people online know what 'permaban' means in reality and it's the common terminology. Sure, bring up changing the term if you want as another ticket but to be honest I don't think it will get far on a 'does it actually matter?' response from other RW'ians. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:39, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
    Ah. What "permaban" "usually" means isn't really relevant to my experience; I have in fact seen (and been subjected to, hence my sympathy) it used to mean "absolutely permanent ban with absolutely no room for negotiation or adjustment" on other websites (Know Your Meme and TV Tropes, specifically; TV Tropes in particular has both permanent bans that will stand until the heat death of the universe and indefinite bans that are open to being lifted once the subject demonstrates understanding of why their behavior was wrong and commitment to not repeating said mistakes, with the latter actually being the default by their own admission and only escalating to the former in the event of stubborn refusal to improve). If "permaban" and "potentially re-negotiable indefinite ban" are treated as equivalent on RationalWiki specifically, then my complaint is mostly nullified (maybe own talk page access could be re-granted, but that may be a discussion for another time). Really, I became concerned because the name of this vote was "affirming Antony Karlin's ban once and for all", the wording of which strongly implies absolute permanence. Luigifan18 (talk) 19:21, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
    I read the last bit to be from a person who believes the person in question won't ever change. If Karlin doesn't change, yes this ban would be 'once and for all'. Permabans can be appealed and I suspect there have been times successfully - Karlin's main reason for appealing theirs was that it was done by fiat by an individual, not by a 'legal' vote by the mob. The term 'perma' may in fact stem from some now-dead forum programming system in the mists of time where the options were [say] 'a day', 'a week', 'a month' and 'perma' - ie it has no end date and thus needs a manual change from an admin rather falling off due to expiring.
    But the issue is that if you object to Karlin's perma on a technical point re: definition of 'perma' you'd have to also dispute say, KenBot's permaban. After all, it is theoretically possible at least they might get a software update and not be a stupid, lying, poorly-writing monomaniac who is impervious to reason, facts or responses from other users. Your main issue [which I fully get, as I've been driven off from a few places over the years] is prior experiences with arsehole mods who never actually self-reflect on their decisions or reconsider things like say, bans [one forum which shall remain nameless only will deign to even look at your appeals on very technical grounds ie 'you banned the wrong account' and never ever accept possibilities such as 'the mod who did this is an arsehole/idiot', 'caving in to the complaints of anonymous person(s) with no possibility of answering' or 'you cannot ban facts simply because you do not like them'.]
    So the question ultimately is 'do you trust the RW mods?' The mods here aren't some self-replicating clique or the flunkes of some God-King - if you don't like what you're seeing, you can vote them out and campaign against them. I mean, it was raised here again, wasn't it? Bonglian and I could have remained silent on the emails, memory-holed Cosmic's email and well, you are discussing this topic in the 'mods section' [I have to tell you, being a mod doesn't grant you any secret clubouse access or anything].KarmaPolice (talk) 20:28, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
    No, I trust the RW mods; the question was more "what is meant by 'permaban'". And now I'm very curious what forum you're talking about… --Luigifan18 (talk) 20:37, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
  2. See the above. New world (talk) 20:19, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Goat

Rational Dude and unformatted citations

So @Rational Dude has been asked multiple times, including by myself, to properly format his citations. And yet he's still doing it (see here for the latest example). I myself have had to do his work for him several times (for examples see here and here, I've also had to replace paywalled links with archived versions and replace a goodreads link with a proper citation). It's honestly tiresome and dragging down the quality of our articles. What should be done about this? Carthage (talk) 11:03, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I’m about ready to start rolling back and blocking over this myself. Pizza SLICE.gifChef Moosolini’s Ristorante ItalianoMake a Reservation 11:05, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
Q1; is there actually a RW page to provide a ref/style guide for this kind of thing?
Q2; is it mandated anywhere that a person adding new content must also make it all pretty too?
Q3; is it inherently wrong to think that some folks contribution to RW might be by making citations pretty, proofreading etc?
I will confess this; I have been guilty of leaving a welter of bare URLs on pages too. But you know what? I put a butt-load of effort into researching the topic, in producing content for the page, ensuring it's actually readable as a single article, locating as many decent refs I can and so on. I have tried in the past to pretty-fy refs etc, but 75% I end up doing it wrong. I hate to say it, but I suspect my talents with the codes etc are minimal and my skillsets are better served in producing actual content. After all, when building a house, the bricklayer needs the plasterer who needs the painter. You cannot complain about 'ugly refs' if the article in question doesn't exist, can you?
I will again point out that there appears to be no RW policy regarding using paywalled links. Now, I personally think it's total BS [a paywalled link is about as 'accessable' a source as a text out of print for 25 years and the nearest copy is in a closed building 100 miles away] but I have been told in the past 'theoretical' access is good enough [something which I think betrays the academic ancestory of RW]. KarmaPolice (talk) 14:35, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
To answer your first question, there is a section in the Manual of Style that addresses reference formatting. Given that this is RationalWiki, there is no mandate to follow these guidelines. The help article on references says that it is "bad practice to give a URL with no other information as a reference." And it is just plain lazy to stick a direct link to a paywalled site into an article without checking to see if the link has been captured by archive.is or archive.org. That's just my opinion. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 15:26, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
I've recently extended my grammar-checking activities into making references look a bit better, if that helps. --Luigifan18 (talk) 16:16, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
I'm fixing this right now, I wasn't purposely trying to neglect my responsibility, I've just been rushing. Rational Dude (talk) 18:31, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
I question the assumption/theory that it is 'your responsibility'. RW is not your employer, nor is it some kind of educational institution which demands submissions of work to pass a grade or something. And as Comsic points out, there is no mandate in RW for you to do it either. I suspect being blocked over this would end up being laughed out of the coop too [and totally unproductive to boot; I mean driving off productive editors because they don't conform exactly to your 'formatted citations' desires? Do you not see an issue with this?]
Let's cut to the crux of the issue; Carthage and Duce feel that bare urls 'reduce quality' of mainspace articles. I can understand that it can be annoying to that kind of user as there is no automatic manner [to my knowledge] to sniff these out without manually looking at them page by page. Therefore, I suggest we get a new Category for RW's 'Articles requiring attention' - 'Articles requiring polishing' [or similar]. I am sure there are folks on RW who'd like to/are willing to do said polishing as 'their bit'.
As for the paywalled refs; I do think we at RW really do need to have a discussion regarding what counts as a quotable source and what isn't. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:58, 26 April 2024 (UTC)
Thank you to KP for mentioning this, they're right that this isn't really something that's punishable with a block. I do think Duce and Carthage have a point that I have to clean up and format my references, However I don't think they should punish me with a block, since that' reserved for serious offenses. I'd much rather get another opportunity to fix any linked references that need formatting. Rational Dude (talk) 20:22, 26 April 2024 (UTC)