Billionaire ascension and the blockchain.
This year the former CEO and founder of Mozilla and Java creator Brendan Eich raised $35M in 30 seconds for his BAT coin, or “Basic Attention Currency”. This is an “alt coin” that was created on a blockchain, and turned into cold cash in less than a minute.
Brendan hopes the BAT coin will solve many of the problems around the global digital advertising nightmare where users can actually make money when they opt in to view ads. It’s high level architecture.
Finance and tech entrepreneurs everywhere are eager to jump in and explore this dynamic new marketplace of ICOs, or ‘initial coin offerings’.
One of the fun things about cryptocurrencies like BitCoin, altcoins, or Ethereum and all things “blockchain” as an entrepreneur is that it’s not just a wild west “cowboy” – it’s space cowboy. It’s fun to just think about, much less be involved in. It’s the Mars exploration of finance. The potential of the up side, something coin enthusiasts rave about, often reaches utopian levels of excitement. Billionaire ascension for all. With that type of enthusiasm, there is bound to be both extreme criticism as well as lots of misinformed hype.
Trusted, credible, reliable information.
A topic like this is going to be getting lots of searches, and Wikipedia is likely to be one of the first stops for anyone interested in learning more about currencies.
I find crypto currency (bitcoin, altcoin, ethereum) and innovations in the block chain and smart contracts absolutely fascinating. I’d love to learn more about them, but I have every reason in the world to be highly suspicious of what I can learn from them on Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia articles on cryptocurrency and block chain are guarded again by the “skeptic activists” on Wikipedia, especially grand wizard skeptic David Gerard who is also apart of the”RationalWiki” braintrust, a website featured extensively here primarily for its abuse in targeting individuals in misinformation campaigns.
This is exactly where Wikipedia finds itself vulnerable to “wiki wars”.
David Gerard, in real life, certainly has an agenda when it comes to the block chain. He’s not a fan. And the Ethereum community is concerned, and they should be.
Gerard is a virtual and outspoken critic who hypes the blockchain and “smart contracts” up as nothing more than “ponzi schemes or pump and dumps” only good for criminals. And this is the man controlling the narrative on Wikipedia’s Ethereum article.
You all should know that David Gerard has been pushing a personal agenda to trash Ethereum’s image on Wikipedia from ethtrader
David Gerard has been an antagonist, perhaps even a luddite of cryptocurrency for over five years.
He is even writing a book about this innovative technology, warning the world to stay away from it. RationalWiki, for years – has supported this message.
David Gerard is also a political activist, and views cryptocurrency through the lens of a political dialectic as a “libertarian” agenda, completely unable to distinguish between innovations in finance technology and media with his own ideological “liberal versus libertarian” juvenile agenda.
According to his Twitter account, David Gerard now wishes us to consider him a journalist. Sure, in the same way perhaps that one could say former Breitbart News editor in chief and current advisor to our Twitter president, Steve Bannon, is a journalist.
RationalWiki is to the left of the political spectrum (SJW) to what 4chan/pol “alt-right” is to the right of the political spectrum. Don’t let the ideologies fool you.
Both are loud, abusive, toxic, misinformed and aggravated communities who weaponize digital media to promote their agendas. Before you think I am coming at this from an ideological place myself, let me stress – both groups are highly problematic online.
David Gerard, like many skeptic activists I’ve encountered on Wikipedia – is also an abusive and abrasive individual. His skill set lay in being able to navigate in and dominate toxic communities online through creating competitions to see which user can “snark” the other for dominance.
For example, according to David Gerard, cryptocurrencies are for criminals, and are ponzi schemes- and if you buy into them, you’re a fool, an idiot – and you’re likely to get snarked.
Snark has no place in establishing rational or collaborative consensus building. Used in consensus building, it is weaponized – used for shaming those with opposing viewpoints, often using weasel language to lessen their participation or suppress them altogether.
RationalWiki is edited for this purpose.
Set up to look like an encyclopedia, RationalWiki publishes opinion based editorials masquerading as wiki based articles constructed by a rational consensus, but are often just abusive rants and emotional polemics embedded into each article.
It is a “fake encyclopedia”, running off of WikiMedia software (like Wikipedia) that is often weaponized in wiki wars.
It also solves no real world educational problems, RationalWiki solely serves the purpose of information and propaganda from one group of ideologues usually directed towards another group of ideologues.
As someone who is a pro science progressive, probably on the same side of the fence on many issues RationalWiki publishes, I have no problems agreeing that RationalWiki is just a “wing nut” publication.
One of the core problems with Wikipedia editors like David Gerard are not his ideology as much as his psychology and behavior.
If you’ve had the pleasure of having to attempt and build a consensus with this crowd like I have, you will quickly find that the core at all of their arguments tend not to be sources, logic, or open questions as much as snark. Get them to remove the snark from their argumentation and usually their arguments collapse like a house of cards.
I’m fine with having that as one voice in a consensus, however the other problem with this collective of editors is their intention to dominate, not collaborate. They practice editor suppression on Wikipedia.
“Skeptic activists” on Wikipedia have been emboldened by their success in other areas on Wikipedia like medicine and biographies. The blockchain and crypto currency community should be concerned.
How it starts
The cryptocurrency communities will naturally find the fact that Wikipedia articles are guarded by critics of the block chain a serious issue. Some members of that community will eventually attempt to balance the articles related to cryptocurrencies.
The skeptic activists on Wikipedia will do what they do in other verticals, they will get these blockchain editors sanctioned, banned, or removed from those articles.
Next, those individuals sanctioned from Wikipedia will either attempt to game Wikipedia in return, or go off to create their own “wiki”, running of course on WikiMedia’s software, and continue the informational down spiral as so many other niche communities who get involved in wiki wars.
Who gets to control the narrative of the blockchain on Wikipedia?
Should it be disinterested editors? Yes. Is it? No.
On Wikipedia, in many cases it is the critics or the proponents of a subject that can control the narrative and context of the article. You either get one side of the argument, or the other.
This happens often on biographies. This website details a year long case study where I intentionally attempted to edit solely basic, non controversial biographical facts about two individuals extremely and passionately hated by “skeptic activists”. I worked directly with two individuals who had to deal with the reality that their Wikipedia biography articles were literally controlled by their detractors.
When detractors of an individual or subject control the narrative on Wikipedia, it will guarantee a “wiki war” just in the attempt to return an article to neutrality.
This is the initial cause of all wiki wars, and why left uncorrected only insures that Wikipedia will eventually be nothing more than a “DIY” propaganda engine masquerading as a global knowledge center completely dominated by agendas and POV’s in a continual war and battle of information.
Rome Viharo
Los Angeles, June 2017
Responses, notes, and follow ups:
Response from RationalWiki?
Found at the “RationalWiki Saloon”
Rome Viharo attacking David Gerard
Rome Viharo‘s latest hit piece is attacking David Gerard and Rationalwiki [3]. Is there any chance you can add a section about this to his article? 166.88.123.6 (talk) 05:16, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
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“But I thought this was supposed to be RATIONALWiki!” Drink! RW wasn’t founded by David Gerard and we don’t claim to be an encyclopedia. This guy’s an idiot. Christopher (talk) 12:57, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
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In general, drama is not a goal of ours to document, unless that drama happens to represent something important in terms of: pseudoscience, woo, or authoritarianism. Drama focusing on one of our editors seems to double-down on bad-idea stuff. ikanreed 🐐Bleat at me 15:54, 12 June 2017 (UTC)
David Gerard may not be a founder, but he is on the Board of Trustees of the RationalWiki Foundation. RationalWiki doesn’t claim to be an encyclopedia? Does it need to when it looks just like Wikipedia? Is there a disclaimer on the website anywhere that says all articles are not intended to be used for research? Even if I allowed RationalWiki that grace, it still changes nothing in the point of this article.
Response from David Gerard?
Somewhat typical David’s response on Reddit, and why I wrote this article about him in the first place.
This is banned Wikipedia crank Rome Viharo, who tried the same on RationalWiki and we told him to go away too. He musta seen the /r/ethereum post that was outraged that I edited Wikipedia according to Wikipedia rules.
This is all because I am totally acting in my rational interest to secure the entire annual Paycoin bonus from our Goldman Sachs (((corporate masters))).
Note David’s only response was “snark”, and he is trying to force my position into that of an “internet crank” accusing him of being a “shill”, which is so far removed from my actual position it is predictable to my point.
Remove the “snark”, and they often have no rational responses. RationalWiki is vapor ware.
Reddit notes:
Note: David Gerard abusing/deliberately misinterpreting "links normally to be avoided" to remove items from list of Ethereum applications from ethereum
"David Gerard on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: ‘You Can Get a Long Way on Just Buzzwords and Big Claims’" – pumping those butts! from Buttcoin
Who is David Gerard and why does he keep editing the Ethereum Wikipedia page? from ethereum
Why do we keep letting "David Gerard", who obviously has a negative agenda against Ethereum and crypto in general, curate the Ethereum Wikipedia article? from ethereum