RationalWiki:Chicken coop/Archive138

Accumulator appears to be a troll

I was holding off on making a coop case on this (Perhaps this is better as something in ATIM, I'm not sure), as though their behavior in a recent Saloon bar thread seemed trollish (They started the discussion but then seemingly refused to listen to counter-arguments, going as far as outright ignoring a fully sourced one, instead replying with 'Yeah, right'), I wanted to make sure this was a recurring pattern of behavior before doing this; However, now that I have been informed that they have engaged in this type of behavior twice before under the talk pages for Gender and The Confederate States of America, I feel like it is worth doing something about them. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 21:34, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

I would agree that this user is here in bad faith, although I have no proposals on what to do about them. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Try our pumpkin spice lasagna!} 22:46, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

This is not really a coop-worthy situation, it would have been better to raise it in ATIM. Typically for long-term Saloon Bar trolls the solution is a long-term ban from the Saloon Bar, although since this user isn't restricted to said page perhaps topic bans can also be used. Plutocow (talk) 00:25, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, it's just my first time doing something like this. TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 00:35, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Don't worry, you did the right thing. Next time you can use rw:ATIM to report disruptive users that aren't sysops. GeeJayK^{Where all evil dwells} _{Where every lie is true} 00:36, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I am aware of the situation [bloody should be, due to being in the middle of it]... KarmaPolice (talk) 02:31, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It would probably have been better in ATIM. For now, troll banner and/or troll collapse. Bongolian (talk) 02:46, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

If this user is trolling and acting in bad faith, I feel it would be best to just ignore them and leave them be (or at the most warn them or tell them to knock it off), then wait and see what they do, if they cause disruption or try to create more drama, at that point I would say a ban or sanction would be appropriate. The MoR (talk) 17:32, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Anyone can be called a "troll". It seems to serve as a pretext to censor people one disagrees with. If you don't want to talk with me then don't. Accumulator (talk) 07:05, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

You've been accused of being a sock of a banned user by a BoN who did not present evidence.[1] Bongolian (talk) 07:16, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't even get why that BoN thinks Accumulator is a sock of an account that, as far as I can tell, made one edit and then got banned for seemingly no reason? TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 16:23, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

DMorris is a long term troll and ban evader who has edited under many accounts (User:What a Wonderful World, User:Irritating cheerleader, User:Silver Belle, User:King Bowser K. Rool, etc., plus a countless number of driveby troll/vandal socks). I don't really see the case that this troll is DMorris, given that they were active at the same time as another DMorris ban evasion and they don't seem to have any of their obvious tells like ranting about Oxyaena and Dysklyver and the way they reacted to this accusation is different from how DMorris typically reacts. Nevertheless, I can't completely put such a thing past DMorris given his debauchery and large number of sleeper socks, but I'd need actual evidence before pushing this line. Plutocow (talk) 19:55, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

This user has trolled my talk page before. Carthage (talk) 16:26, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Can we know what your motivations are for contributing to RationalWiki, please? That might help to dispel any allegations of you being a troll. IntrepidSkeptic (talk) 16:28, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Improving articles and participating in serious discussion. I had always thought of rationalwiki as a neoliberal echo chamber, but I realized this was just a superficial impression and decided I ought to give it a try first. If everyone wants me to leave then I'll leave. Accumulator (talk) 17:05, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

What exactly do you think neoliberal to mean, in context? ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:17, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Does it matter? Again, if you want me to leave then fine. I'm not going to spend hours trying to defend myself if you've already made up your minds. Accumulator (talk) 17:22, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I know it's hard to think this way when several people are accusing you of things, but I haven't said a word to that effect. I want to tease out what I can from your response here, because I think it's pretty relevant to whether I agree with the charges.

And separately, if you want to help establish good faith, usually the best thing you can do is meaningfully contribute to real articles(ikanreed is a hypocrite). ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:28, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I have no opinion as to whether you should stay or not. We do welcome a diversity of views that are not bigoted or trolling. The capture of the Republican Party and other right-wing parties by conspiracy theories in recent years does mean that we are skewing leftward in recent years. Bongolian (talk) 17:37, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

"Recent years" doing some heavy lifting there. It's maybe gotten a bit worse with q and the metastasis of antivax and the like, but the 2000s were not an era of hinged conservatism. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 17:40, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I want to piggyback on this point and say that there were plenty of reasons to skew left during the 2000s. The 2000s was the era where Islamophobic bigotry was not only encouraged, but expected. We saw the Iraq War. The Patriot Act. The revelations about CIA black sites, extraordinary rendition, and literal torture (anyone remember the John Woo memorandum?). As Ikanreed says, the 2000s was not an era of sanity by any means. It's also that the skeptic movement had different targets back then. In the 2000s the big names of the anti-science movement were the creationists and New Agers, not antivaxxers or the Nazis come again. Carthage (talk) 17:46, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

@Carthage Wasn't the whole MMR and Autism controversy a major thing in the early 2000s? Wasn't that technically an antivaxx movement? The MoR (talk) 17:48, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It was, yeah, but I would argue it didn't grow the beard, become mainstream, until the Trump era. There was also like a political shift. In the 2000s antivaxxers were commonly thought of being, you know, on the left. Moonbats. At least to the best of my knowledge. I may be talking outta my ass here. Nowadays, be honest, how many prominent antivaxxers are leftists? Also, this is like, anecdotal, but all of the leftists I know are firmly pro-science. I can't say the same about the conservatives I have the misfortune of being acquainted with. Carthage (talk) 17:50, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I can't say that this editor has really pinged my radar, but our mianpage says: "We welcome contributors, and encourage those who disagree with us to register and engage in constructive dialogue. So, unless someone can point to some specific very egregious posts - I'm not sure what is being debated.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 17:52, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘As to the "heavy lift", there used to be conspiracy theorists of different sorts on both the left and right. As to the left, some notable ones are: Mae Brussell, and her successors Alex Constantine and Dave Emory are notable. Emory was active at least into the 1990s. Brussell had gotten a boost from her being given the last issue of the first series of Yippie Paul Krasner's zine The Realist. I believe that anti-vaxxers were for a while considered mostly left-wing before 2015, part of the natural-must-be-good hippie ethos. Anti-fluoridation activists were once both left (Portland, Oregon) and right (Dr. Strangelove). Bongolian (talk) 18:05, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Alex Jones is also evidence of this shift to the right. While I would argue that Jones has always been right-wing, he wasn't always partisan. During the 2000s the Bush Administration was a heavy target of his ire. I would argue that a huge impetus for the political shift to the right in the conspiracist movement was the election of Barack Obama as POTUS. What cemented this shift, IMO, was the rise of Trump. On a related note, the election of Obama also saw the reinvigoration of the previously-moribund militia movement in the US. That's not a coincidence. Carthage (talk) 18:11, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

The New Age movement is a prominent movement that both embraced conspiracy theories and lots of esoteric / Asia-mangled woo in the 1970s-1980s, and was considered "left" at the time. This has not completely gone away, but there is a portion of this group that has actually embraced Trumpism and QAnon and the like (conspirituality). In the mean time, I have noticed more fundamentalists hawking wellness movement type stuff, which the New Age folks were big on. Essentially, the sum of this sort of movement has shifted "a little to the right", although not completely. Obviously there was some right-wing anti-vaxx as well back then so it's not like this was a binary shift.

An extreme example of this shift is Robert Kennedy Jr., who once was considered a bona fide leftie establishment Democrat with environmentalism roots. Thanks to his embrace of anti-vaxx and COVID-19 conspiracies, he now pals around with prominent alt-health scamsters and, while perhaps not 100% Trumpism, is enough of such to desire to ratfuck Kamala Harris in this year's presidential election. BobJohnson (talk) 18:53, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Ikanreed posted on my talkpage evidence that, contrary to popular perception, the antivaxxer crowd has always been predominantly conservative. Carthage (talk) 18:56, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

The problem here is finding data with numbers for anything older than the 2000s. I didn't see any in the links Ikanreed posted, and I couldn't find any percentages myself. Nonetheless, there was definitely plenty of fundie anti-vaxxers who have opposed vaccination for religious reasons. Christian Science being an example of one prominent group who, while not *forbidding* vaccines per se, emphasize "prayer" over any medicine. Back when vaccine mandates started rolling out for schools, I guess it is telling that the prominent non-medical exemption was religious oriented. So it's definitely possible that this was more of a "right wing" thing even then.

I guess one other issue in "older times" on anti-vaxx specifically was that, from what I can tell, anti-vaxx was a much more minority position... perhaps because some truly scary diseases like polio and smallpox that vaccines largely neutered were still in living memory. Obviously the anti-vaxx crowd existed, but it didn't have such high popularity among certain crowds. (Although based on what I'm Googling, even today, in groups with high vaccine hesitancy like white evangelicals, vaccine hesitancy *still* is a minority position.) BobJohnson (talk) 19:53, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

@Bob It isn't the fact that they disagree with the other editors, it's the fact that they start discussions but seemingly refuse to consider the opposing viewpoint; I have already used this example, but once again, they saw KarmaPolice's fully sourced response to their arguments, and instead of coming up with a proper counterargument or, God forbid, reconsidering their viewpoint, they just replied with 'Yeah, right'. The other threads I linked have more examples of what, to me and others, reads as more of this type of behavior (and are significantly shorter). TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 18:22, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Then other users can judge them personally. Not everybody replies to everything. For my part, if I feel that interacting with a particular user is a waste of time, then I just stop interacting with them.Bob^{"Life is short and (insert adjective)"} 19:25, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, though it seems they want me out. It's practically impossible to contribute or have a serious discussion when one is constantly called a "troll" and dragged into disputes like this one. Accumulator (talk) 12:10, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

I told them that I had COVID and felt like I was dying, and their response was to "get healthier lol." They've also trolled my talk page, as I've stated (and provided relevant diffs) previously, but that got ignored. Carthage (talk) 18:25, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

That's not what I said. Accumulator (talk) 12:10, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

This user had a similar response to my extensive arguments on Talk:Confederate States of America. At the time, I just thought they were extremely stupid, but seeing this pattern of behavior crop up again brings me around to the idea that this user is a troll. Chef Moosolini’s Ristorante Italiano^{Try our pumpkin spice lasagna!} 18:44, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm tend toward the generous side of these coups, but I'm coming around to the idea of a well-stated official warning that identifies that problem behaviors that need to stop. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 18:56, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

You are shitting me, I pinged the wrong Bob AGAIN (First time was when I wanted the Pascal's Wager article to get demoted to Silver) TheOneAndOnlyCirrusMan (talk) 19:30, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Treat as a troll until shown otherwise is my view. Bongolian (talk) 20:30, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, best to ignore them and see what happens, or formally warn them, if they cause any more drama or disruption I think it would make sense to bring this up at AITM The MoR (talk) 13:20, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

That would be observing, not ignoring. However I sense we're not going to get along, so I bid you farewell. Accumulator (talk) 12:10, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘I'm going to archive this coop unless there are any objections. Bongolian (talk) 23:31, 19 October 2024 (UTC)