"Larry Dunn is still at it!!!" Topic

Academically it's a joke.

Whoa, wait.

Somebody took Wikipedia seriously for academic references in the first place?

If so, yikes.

As said, it's a fun read and a decent place to start finding links for a subject, but that's about it.

xkcd.com/c214.html

I have been reading with interest all of the threads, both here and elsewhere, on Mr Dunn, and I have come to some conclusions.

aka Mikefoster, arrogant, self centred people with huge self confidence issues rarely look at things which would show them in a bad light and require them to discover the truth about themselves.

The reason he has not engaged in any debate is blindingly obvious. He has very little confidence in his own opinions, hence no debate or explanation ("He who shows the least interest has the most power in any relationship" premise) and prefers to remain cloaked in his "fortress of solitude" merely in order to reinforce his own inflated opinion of himself and his ideas. In a public forum, like this, or better yet, the scrum of a University or other higher centre of education, his opinions and lack of defence would be rightly exposed as biased, prejudiced, unbalanced, egocentric and parochial. He has an almost adolescent predelection for "tit for tat" and retreating into a simple silence when confronted with his illogical arguments.

All the insults just reinforce his own idea of his inate superiority to the average wargamer, and serve to convince him not to respond, as that would seem to him to be lowering himself to your level.

More to be pitied actually, than scorned.

But it's fun to poke him with a stick ;-)

At my daughters High School any siting of Wikipedia as a source is a an automatic failure for the paper, as it should be. Just because some crack pot decides it's correct or popular doesn't make it so.

Richard Clarke~

No that's not right!

Larry Dunn~

D*mn wrong again.

Donald~

Ah that's better.

The internet is a cruel world. It sort of reminds me of high school. The thing about TMP cruelty is those that revel in it are also the type that may of been on the sharp end in the real world. Ok I accept reasonable discourse with this chappie has failed but is the crime of being equiped with exceedingly poor social skills that great?

I think in this case you me n everyone else has got their nickels worth with larry. Having not had net for 9 months has made me realise that a website blurb is not really relevent to anything of any great import.

Larry's just deleted Bill Armintrout's entry yet again but it was restored by someone else within 7 minutes and Larry cited with "vandalism". I think some of the members of TMP are watching him closely now and repairing his damage, so it's only a matter of time before he is blocked.

Is there any way to engage this bloke to try and find out what the flip he is on about?

I read these thinking… "I know that name". I've had a Larry Dunn email me recently… but it wouldn't be ethical for me to give out his email address ;-)

Geoff

Go on Geoff, I dare ya!! :-))

geoff,

Was he looking to getting you to mould up some stuff for him perhaps? i don't think he is coming across as the sort of guy i would want to have any form of transaction with.

he seems to be very spifeful for some reason towards the 2fl's. Maybe he bought a pdf, disagreed with something he read in it and blew a gasket when he found he couldn't edit it! the rest , as they say is history.

I have Larry's email address, I think its linked to his profile here on TMP. I have attempted to engage with Larry in a sensible and reasonable fashion, I hope the copy of our correspondence shows that I have been polite at all times and attempted to understand just what his problem is. I have not had a serious answer from him.

Larry continues to edit Wikipedia at will, he is very keen to have the I Ain't Been Shot Mum page removed and is clearly very definite who he things are notable personalities in the hobby and who are not. There is not attempt at finding a consensus position with other contributors. Larry is right, everyone else is wrong.

Wikipedia is one thing, but being called a liar is quite another. I doubt very much if Larry would say that to my face.

Sorry, that should have read "there is no attempt at finiding a consensus".

geoff,(3)

Was he looking to getting you to mould up some stuff for him perhaps? (1) i don't think he is coming across as the sort of guy i would want to have any form of transaction with.

he seems to be very spifeful for some reason towards the 2fl's. Maybe he bought a pdf, disagreed with something he read in it and blew a gasket when he found he couldn't edit it! the rest , as they say is history(2).

Notibility Warning….(larrrry Dunn)

(1) Pure suposition. provide independant source
(2) provide specific date and reference.
(3) Provide birth certifciate to prove his name is Geoff
(4) This whole statement shows signs of biase and if there was an edit/delete function……boy you would be in trouble!

I doubt very much if Larry would say that to my face.

Unlikely as he probably doesn't get out much.
Mind you I can't talk, I'm spending the entire weekend trying to get my Italians painted ;-)
At least this topic is giving me a bit of a break from painting!

No, not at all. That is one of the reasons why I would be hesitant to print his address, as it may not even be the same chap. Just that the name was familiar. The Larry Dunn who got in touch was merely asking about the condition of a range of figures that we produce.

Wikipedia probably needs editing (by Wikipedia) to include some very blatant header that comments provided are personal to the author and may not represent any semblance of reality – it's really little more than a personal blog page attempting to take on the status of an authorised encyclopedia, kind of a lay-man's academia. As we were told in law school last week, "anyone on the street can tell me that, what I want to know is how a GDL student would answer…"

Geoff

Wikipedia does lay that out very clearly. In addition to the link aka Mikefoster recommended regarding ownership, these pages also bear on the current brouhaha:

link

link

Anyone seriously interested in pursuing this issue (rather than just vandalizing) might consult Wikipedia policies and procedures at:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:DR

link

On the other hand, since the TMP stifle count of the person in question is now only exceeded by sock puppets and BME, the disdain of quite a few TMPers seems to have been triggered, and any serious efforts are likely to be frustrated by remarks about elk molesting and wee.

Not elk wee yet, though.

Allen

Not elk wee yet, though.

Oh gthank the lord, do you know how caustic that stuff is? I've seen it disolve a bear at 30 paces.

D~

Oh well, Larry has just sent me the following comment which, apparently is his final word on the subject. No answer to my question as to why some rule sets being mentioned was okay but not others, but then I never expected on anyway. It think it makes interesting reading, and gives us an insight into Larry's personality. Lovely Larry tells me:

To be frank, you seem to be used to dealing with
people of rather limited intelligence. My user
account is now semi-protected, though even before that
the attacks (presumably gamers subscribed to your
yahoo group who you incited to vandalize wikipedia, or
from some other forum you lurk in) were easily
reverted even before it was protected. I barely had
to lift a finger -- other alert editors did it for me,
so I'm sorry to say that you have failed to do
anything but offer a source of amusement.

The only real adverse result has been that your
friends now have vandalism warnings on their IPs,
meaning that if they want to contribute constructively
to Wikipedia in the future, they will have a big
strike against them. You essentially did that for
them; well done.

Anyway, I encourage you to read up on the NPOV
(neutral point of view) and COI (conflict of interest)
policies on Wikipedia, to see why your use of the
encyclopedia for self-promotion is against policy and
this is why your addition of your pretty run of the
mill small company and small product lines is seen as
spamming and rightly removed. You are not the only
person whose attempt to use wikipedia in this fashion
has been edited by me -- for instance, a man set up a
wiki page for his author sister which was basically a
love letter to her and blatant advertisement for her
books. I noted this and edited it down to be factual
-- he was enraged, but ultimately I had the wiki rules
on my side.

Please do advertise in any and all other fashions,
some fashion that does not do damage to a source of
information that is supposed to be encyclopedic.
Whether your products thrive or not is really a
subject of no concern to me either way, but wikipedia
is.

I have supplied you with enough information for you to
understand what is going on, and I have spent more
than enough time on this overall, so this conversation
is now over.

Oh, and having been polite as I could over the dialog, I can now officially confirm that I unreservedly think Larry Dunn is a supercilious .

Well, now there's several people who are watching the miniature gaming page on Wikipedia, and have now (correctly) cited the policy on tendentious editing.

I was the person who on Wikipedia that changed the entry back "in 7 minutes) and stated it was "vandalism" but now I know that I should have correctly cited the tendenjtious editing policy.

As a side effect of all this nonsense, you're now reading my first post on TMP. :) (Not that I don't have enough other ways to spend my time on, like *painting* figures…)

P.S. Whatever bad things you want to call Larry Dunn, I won't be the one to edit them. ;)

Maybe he's fat or his mum was shot. He should cut the crap and come out like a man and say what's on his mind.

His Wikipedia profile looks pretty self-serving in and of itself, so that's a pretty spurious argument. Maybe somebody should edit that.

JW

Larry, if you delete me one more time you will receive a box of all my dried paints and broken Jack Scruby Napoleonic infantry. This is just friendly advice.

Okay, I don't get it. If Larry wants only his opinion to be viewed, then why, oh why did he post to Wiki which is editable by other people? Why not just use a blog or or create a website? At least that way he can be assured that he and his little world wont be assaulted by underlings.

Please tell me this isn't an early April fools joke! I really want to to believe this maniac is for real ;-)
God help his gaming opponents, that's assuming he's not a solo gamer which seems more than likely.
I think this has to have developed into one of the funniest threads I've seen in ages!
It almost deserves a wiki page of it's own "The Curious Little World of Larry Dunn – A case history"

What a poor sod, really. With editor and contributor like him, no wonder wikpedia is such a mish-mash of bull and scarcely usable facts.

Anyaway, talk about "conforming the views" and reducing the IQ pool with "factoids" instead of factual, unbiased information.

Good thing I just go there to have a laugh at the latest UFO and conspiracy bull passed on a "serious" articles about "facts".

Be careful Rich, Larry has his eye on you…

picture

Ah, Mr Ansell, I was expecting you.

I get a bit confused by Wikipedia.

I mean, it has edit buttons all over it, so surely the whole point is to be able to edit it.

There are bits on it like "This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards". If you go to the editing page, you find "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly or redistributed by others, do not submit it."

It seems to me that, once you submit it, it is no longer yours but in the public domain and, as such provided that any edit is relevant and not factually incorrect, it should be permitted to exist.

Is Mr Dunn actually in keeping with Wikipedia's own rules and regulations by continually editing out what appear to be perfectly legal edits?

Is Mr Dunn actually in keeping with Wikipedia's own rules and regulations by continually editing out what appear to be perfectly legal edits?

It's known as "Point Of View pushing" and is a common blocking offence covered here:-

link
everyone has been to well mannered to report him for it

But, somewhat surreally, even that page can be edited… ;-)

I have been reading this thread with interest, particularly the references to Wikipedia as a source of information.

It may be interest to note that in the school where I work at present (one of the largest in SE England) Wikipedia is filtered so that students and staff cannot access it. This was done because it was being treated by some as a main source of information.

As we all know from events over the past few days, anyone can write entries and/or can edit them TO FIT A PERSONAL AGENDA. This is not true of the vast majority of contributors, but even one is enough to render the information as worthy of consideration but not to be treated as absolute truth.

(yawn….) i find wikipedia to be more trouble than it is worth, often inaccurate, and not to be taken seriously. in other words, it's a joke.

I think the main point is not so much that Wikipedia has any validity as source of reliable information, but that one man can cause so much trouble in his efforts to prevent a group of people from trying to add the same information to a Wiki page i.e. his repeated attempts to delete Bill Armintrout's name from the wargames page and his attempts to get the IABSM page removed.

Well, I certainly don't view Wikipedia as a valid source of information, even if I have looked at some entries to get more information, always taken with a grain of salt, or the whole salt shaker.

I view it more as an interesting social experiment, one that can obviously go awry in some situations. And, yes, it's clear that Mr. (using that term loosely) Dunn is violating Wikipedia's policies regarding what they term "Tendentious editing" which (quoting from Wikipedia) is "editing which is partisan, biased, skewed—in other words, it does not conform to the neutral point of view. On Wikipedia, the term also carries the connotation of repetitive attempts to insert or delete content which is resisted by multiple other editors."

As in the case of trying to delete Bill Armintrout's name from the wargames page where he is listed under the "Notable miniatures wargamers" section.

Is Bill a notable wargamer, or just a notable editor? I know of him as an editor, but know nothing about his wargaming :-)

I think Wikipedia is a great thing and a nice experiment. Surely not academic, but nice for easy-accessable, free introductions into subjects I didn't know anything of.
And the concept is admirable, even with the obvious flaws.

But as with most well-intended revolutions, some people pull all the power to themselves and use it as they see fit, without being open to dialogue, for the greater good. Often without even being aware of it themselves.

Is this Larry guy one of the founders? or just a long standing editor?

Dear all,

keep on eye on this Mediation Request:
link

"seek the truth and the truth will set you free", wikipedia won't…
or to put it another way,
"power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely". big salt-shaker notwithstanding, i agree with R.A. (and others). the concept is flawed as a source of information…
there are so many other sources for information, most much better. i'll wager a good percentage of our community here can read between the lines there, psuedo censorship and all.

Holy crap- he is as deluded as BME and as arrogant as Stalin. All he needs is a hairless cat called Mr Bigglesworth and his persona is complete…

Well, my favorite wargame painting, Mona Lisa (she's really joe stalin) wasn't mentioned in the article. But am I demonizing the guy?

It's rather amusing that somebody who has many more TMP posts about renaissance gaming than about WW II gaming, and whose WW II threads have tended to start by asking for opinions about one WW II ruleset versus another, should pretend to be an expert on WW II rules …

I know nothing about wikipedia, but if there is an offical complaints forum, I'd be more than happy to lodge one against this idiot. I have no rule set to sell, and I actually play Crossfire, so none of the sets in question are of immediate concern to me.

What is of concern to me is the behaviour of this individual.

You know for a while I was thinking about contributing to Wikipedia but this episode has put me off of it. It is not a matter of being afraid of dealing with self proclaimed experts like Larry but it is more of an issue of not wanting to have the hassle of it.

I actually play Crossfire

Is Crossfire on there? That has quite a large following.

(yawn….) i find wikipedia to be more trouble than it is worth, often inaccurate, and not to be taken seriously. in other words, it's a joke.

For some subjects it's very good indeed. Want to find out about RSS feeds? Then Wikipedia is the place to start.

You're all (even Bill!) TFL sockpuppets controlled by the nefarious Richard Clarke ;-)

"Larry Dunn Response
No "vendetta" here. I have 1) removed link spam to website of this small company, which here and elsewhere in wikipedia has been inserting references to their own products (and links to their sales page on their website) in violation of the Wiki COI/NPOV policy. I have also reverted the company's removal of a notability tag inserted, IMO rightly, by another user to a page the company put up for its own product. This page seems a prime candidate for notability assessment, based on notability guidelines.
There is a vendetta here, however. This company has used its customers and/or sockpuppets to attack my user page (see my user page -- it is currently semiprotected to stop these vandals operating at the company's instruction) in retaliation for my removal of their linkspam from a wiki page. Right before the vandalism of my user page began, the proprietor of the company threatened me that he would "consider his options" if I persisted in removing his spam. I can post the contents of the e-mail on request.
Bottom line is this company and its various sockpuppets has been engaged in blatant spamming of the wargame miniatures pages on wikipedia, and I am trying to bring these pages back to planet earth, despite the attendant hassle. Thx. Larry Dunn 02:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)"

link

link

I'll just say that while we should probably feel free to say whatever we like about Mr (sic) Dunn here (barring threatening him with physical violence), we should also avoid editing his Wiki pages to say that he "smells of wee" or what have you. (Well, I don't know, maybe this is verifiable by multiple independent sources…)

In any event, as you can see there's an effort now to get him stifled (to a certain extent) on Wikipedia and so I think we shouldn't stoop to his tactics of bullying, misdirection, and misinformation.

Just my $0.02… <shrug>

what seems funny is that he claims to have initiated the Wikipedia article about OSG, operational studies Group, a boardgame company. This is another proof of his bias.

link

Another proof of his bias is that in his profile he claims to have initiated the stub on Wikipedia about OSG, operational studies group, a boardgame company.

link

No real idea what this is all about – I just fancied making this the 100th post.

Its been a slow day.