Nuxx:4e236697$0$2485$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!goblin1!goblin.stu.neva.ru!txtfeed2.tudelft.nl!tudelft.nl!txtfeed1.tudelft.nl!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!prichard.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <4e236697$0$2485$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk> From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.rec.cycling Subject: Re: Tour de France inspires new cyclists. Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2011 23:47:50 +0100 References: <11419cd0-ede2-42cb-a8fc-dea59fc296b2@v7g2000vbk.googlegroups.com>   <994e359d-b3e8-4d85-8501-13e0881d7900@a11g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>   <9k03279cdoufn0aie7h45qa6bftgj9d0dt@4ax.com> <4e22f844$0$2495$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk> <1ea714d9-a19a-4d97-bcb2-c78f069b6552@e8g2000yqi.googlegroups.com> Lines: 114 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <1ea714d9-a19a-4d97-bcb2-c78f069b6552@e8g2000yqi.googlegroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: c9819f85.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=\\\oNAJg7Ri On Jul 17, 3:57 pm, Nuxx Bar  wrote: >> On 16/07/2011 13:28, Peter Parry wrote: >> >>> On Sat, 16 Jul 2011 12:52:08 +0100, "Simon Mason" >>>  wrote: >> >>>> http://www.liggettfan.com/main.htm >> >>> 16/07/2011 13:22:11       HTTP filter     file >>> http://www.liggettfan.com/main.htm JS/TrojanDownloader.Agent.NWI >>> trojan    connection terminated - quarantined >> >>> Hmm...That wasn't very nice. >> >> But sadly not all that surprising. I'm beginning to wonder if Mr Mason >> is the "nice chap" he purports to be. Anyone who is in league with the >> reprehensible Chapman (so despised that he has a whole forum dedicated >> to him on Wikipedia Review, and it's not a flattering one) is to be >> treated warily. > > I am not "in league" with Mr Chapman.

Good, so you haven't been exchanging recent emails with him about me (or rather about some poor sod who Chapman is harassing in the mistaken belief that it's me)? After all, you've ignored my email to you, so if you're not in league with him then presumably you've treated any email from him in the same way?

> I am my own man and make up my own mind who I engage with without the > prejudice you have.

One thing I am not is prejudiced. No-one has ever accused me of racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, xenophobia, or anything like that. Prejudice is, for example, assuming that anyone who is driving "shouldn't" be and that they deserve to be given hell by, for example, having their roadspace reduced as a "deterrent".

> All I can say is that in the 14 years of "knowing" him, I have found > him to be pleasant and reasonable

You couldn't be more wrong. As with the "speeding" "debate" I feel you are seeing what you want to see, and are blinkered to anything else.

> and I have found you also, by and large.

Well I had thought the same about you. Then you start needlessly bringing up my previous posts about Chapman at his behest. Why do it for him instead of telling him to do it himself?

> Until there comes a time when that situation changes I will continue > as I am.

You do that. It shows what a man you are, never changing your behaviour or opinions no matter how wrong they're shown to be.

> I had no knowledge at all of any trojan on that Phil Liggett fan page, > I run several anti-spy software programs myself and had no problems. > Plus I apologised to Mr Parry - I did not say "ha ha gotcha".

Fine. Until recently I would have believed you 100%. Now there's a small amount of doubt, and that's a shame. I don't really believe that you did it, but when you associate yourself with Chapman, you become tainted, as honesty is not one of his strong suits (even if you seem blind to that).

> Come to think if it, you seem to see a conspiracy where there is none. > You suggested a fortnight ago that Chapman's cabal had knobbled Google > Groups deleting your posts.

For god's sake, don't you recognise sarcasm/humour when you see it? For the avoidance of doubt, I don't think any such thing actually occurred.

> You have said that you think that the cycling Allied Powers have > Wikipedia in their empire of control

Chapman is, ludicrously, an admin on Wikipedia, which should tell you a lot in itself about the inadequacies of the site and "the powers that be" there (I know of several people who said that they stopped trusting Wikipedia after he was made an admin). He (along with others) has been admonished several times for trying to bias articles towards his point of view, and is one of the most despised editors of all out of the many thousands on there (he tries to censor such dissent on Wikipedia itself, but sites like Wikipedia Review are outside his control).

There is little doubt that Wikipedia is disproportionately full of people like him (although usually younger, not that that's hard) and has a liberal bias. Wikipedia editors (and admins) are not a representative cross-section of society by *any stretch* of the imagination, and with particular controversial subjects, it often comes down to how many editors there are on each "side" and how (often neurotically/obsessively) determined they are (and psycholists, if nothing else, are *very* determined...it takes real dedication to go round on your bike trying to provoke motorists just so that you can video and report them, for example).

It's often acknowledged that one of the fundamental problems with Wikipedia is its bias, and yes, there is an anti-motorist bias there, just like at the BBC (which no doubt you also deny). Wikipedia is great for non-controversial articles, and is still useful for controversial articles, as long as you remember that bias is likely and that just because something is downplayed (or emphasised) on Wikipedia it doesn't mean that its actual level of importance is that ascribed to it.

The fact is that Wikipedia is very famous and is often erroneously regarded as "always right" and as *the* impartial source of information for subjects the world over, and dishonest, unethical and opinionated people like Chapman see that as too important an opportunity to pass up: they figure that if they successfully manage to bias important articles towards their point of view then that will in turn bias everyone who reads the article, politicians, etc. The best way to combat that is to remind people that Wikipedia is by no means the be all and end all, and, being editable by absolutely anyone, is prone to lying scheming sacks of shit (naming no names) making up whatever suits them.