Talk:David Gerard (author)

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Evrik (talk) 17:46, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

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Gerard in 2011

• ... that David Gerard (pictured), a Wikipedia administrator, has written two books about cryptocurrency? Source: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/about/
  • Reviewed:
  • Comment: I'm excited to highlight a Wikipedia administrator!

Created by Maine Lobster (talk). Self-nominated at 03:15, 30 May 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/David Gerard (author); consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

Image: Image is freely licensed, used in the article, and clear at 100px.
Freely licensed: Used in article: Clear at 100px:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: @Maine Lobster: Article looks good. Onegreatjoke (talk) 01:44, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

• @Maine Lobster and Onegreatjoke: I'm not sure I agree that this passes the interestingness criterion. Many people write books, and it's not very surprising that a Wikipedia administrator would be among them. Perhaps

  ALT1: ... that David Gerard (pictured), author of Attack of the 50-foot Blockchain, a "'no holds barred' attack" on cryptocurrency, volunteers as a Wikipedia administrator?

• -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 05:48, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

This still looks like we're trying to shoehorn him in because he's an admin and not because this is inherently interesting and something the wide world would like to know. I really like David Gerard and this has absolutely nothing to do with them personally but I think it would be delusional to assert that we would be having this discussion for an identical author who was not an admin here. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:03, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

@Horse Eye's Back: Do you mean with respect to the proposed hooks, or to running a DYK at all? Articles that are new enough, long enough, copyvio-free, and QPQ'd are almost never rejected, as long as the nominator sticks around to address any content and hook issues. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 17:02, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Originally both. Consider me reeducated on the second, I had thought the bar was higher than that. Maybe "... that author and Wikipedia administrator David Gerard's 2017 book contended that ____________ " is a better format? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:26, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Article is at AfD now so this nomination os on hold. Bruxton (talk) 01:42, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

• AfD has closed as keep so the nomination can proceed. With that said, I'm not really a fan of how both hook proposals so far involve his Wikipedia career when he's best known outside of Wikipedia not for that. It feels too navel-y for me. Can a non-Wikipedia hook be proposed? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 11:34, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
  • He has frequently (rather too often, some might say) been used by the UK media to comment on Wikipedia. WMUK used to offer him up for this, though I don't know if this continues. See eg ref1, from the BBC. So I think this ok - many readers will find this more interesting than cryptocurrency, especially these days. Johnbod (talk) 14:14, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

That makes sense @Johnbod:. But now there is a big ugly tag in the article. :( Lightburst (talk) 23:13, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Lightburst, the issues have been addressed and the tag removed. I'm in agreement with Johnbod's defense of a lightly Wikipedia-related hook; is anyone ready to approve one? I'm now too involved to be a reviewer. Throwing out a couple other alts in case it helps:

• ALT1a: ... that author and Wikipedia administrator David Gerard (pictured) wrote a "'no holds barred' attack" on cryptocurrency?

* ALT2: ... that author and Wikipedia administrator David Gerard (pictured) writes that smart contracts are not smart and are rarely legal contracts?

1a is a trim on Tamzin's proposal. 2 is supported by this source. Finally, I'd suggest that we use the image that now headlines the article, it may need to be recropped to a ratio that suits the main page. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:25, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Gerard in 2020

I can promote when approved. Lightburst (talk) 00:47, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

If Lightburst is wearing their prep hat, maybe Onegreatjoke or Narutolovehinata5 can re-review? NLH5, I know my alts still mention Wikipedia, but hopefully the gaze is less firmly nazel-focused. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 03:41, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I am fine with ALT1a: short and sweet. Drmies (talk) 03:45, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I've boldly demoted and retranscluded this to discuss the hook. Per my comments at WT:DYK:

This is the hook we're running? In the image slot and all? The nomination complains about navel-gazing, but this is if anything the opposite problem. Readers do not understand that Wikipedia lacks editorial control and has a flat hierarchy; you can look just about anywhere where they interface with the project to find out they understand 'admins' as Wikipedia's editorial team. If you put "This Wikipedia admin wrote a 'no-holds-barred attack' on X subject" on the main page, it will be understood as "Wikipedia admits to bias about X subject". This is incredibly poor optics, and unbelievably so while the project is facing existential threats in the UK due to a bill based around misunderstandings of Wikipedia and editorial control. Is there no other hook that doesn't give four and a half million people (before the news orgs pick it up, of course) the impression we're admitting to a whole subset of our articles being 'no-holds-barred attacks'?

I don't believe this is appropriate to run on the main page; I think it would be widely misunderstood as a statement of/confession to skewed editorial control, which is a bad misconception to perpetuate at the best of times and especially poor in the current circumstances. Pinging Maine Lobster, Horse Eye's Back, Tamzin, Firefangledfeathers, Drmies. Vaticidalprophet 16:23, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

• Well that certainly was bold. Make it "a book in 2017 with a "no holds barred" etc. Book. Not Wikipedia article. I think this is exaggerated. Drmies (talk) 16:30, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

  To prevent this from being moved back to Approved by the bot prematurely, I'm superseding the tick with the ? icon until the discussion reaches consensus. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:57, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

  Drmies Yes bold... I pretty much said the same to Vaticidalprophet here. Lightburst (talk) 16:59, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

  Good catch VP. I like Drmies' solution. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:33, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

• I had worded ALT1 to treat Wikipedia adminship as a curious quirk, not the main thing. I think the attempt to move away from that, ostensibly to avoid navel-gazing, has just made things worse by blurring the boundary between Wikipedia and non-Wikipedia stuff. I could easily imagine a hook that ended "... volunteers as a Reddit moderator", "... volunteers as a Linux developer", etc., so I don't see it as navel-gazing to frame it the way I suggested. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 17:16, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Let me know where we are with the nomination. Seems we need to hear from Vaticidalprophet before we can promote a hook. Lightburst (talk) 23:32, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Restoring the tick for ALT1, as the hook is compliant and appears to resolve the concerns stated above. I advise not placing this in the image slot to avoid another accusation of WP:NAVEL. Edge3 (talk) 03:18, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

• I'd still rather avoid mentioning Wikipedia. I don't see a compelling reason. Valereee (talk) 14:54, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

This article appears to be ineligible due to age? Valereee (talk) 15:30, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Pinging Maine Lobster Valereee (talk) 15:30, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

• Valereee, this was properly nominated on May 30, the day it was created. Articles that are deleted at AfD (as happened in December 2008) are eligible for DYK if newly created on a later date, and certainly after over 14 years. Incidentally, when Vaticidalprophet pulled it from prep, they placed it under June 29 rather than May 30. I will be moving this transclusion to its proper date, but leaving it on the Approved page since this is not a valid reason to refuse approval. Someone may want to check to be sure the new article does not reuse significant portions of the 2008 article, since those portions would require 5x expansion. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:46, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

As I am promoting this, I have changed the hook to read:

• ... that David Gerard, is the author of Attack of the 50-foot Blockchain, a "'no holds barred' attack" on cryptocurrency?

--evrik ^(talk) 17:46, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Sources

Article subject here. I have some clippings piles here, if this helps: [1] [2] [3] Note that a lot of these may not pass RS muster, but many probably do? Up to you - David Gerard (talk) 09:41, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

My wife also released my official author photo on her professional Flickr account under CC-by-sa, so there's a photo that isn't me exhausted in an airport bar if editors think that appropriate - David Gerard (talk) 12:21, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Personally feel it is a bit promo with the book - is there one without the book? Aszx5000 (talk) 14:36, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

It's CC-by-sa, so it is quite permissible to hack away - David Gerard (talk) 18:28, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

I've added a cropped version. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 17:24, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Personal life

Obviously David Gerard is hated by the online sites that promote crypto (e.g. here), and some seem to use aspects of David's personal life to disparage him (and thus his views). Are there any good RS on David's personal orientations to clarify things, or is this best left off this BLP? Aszx5000 (talk) 14:42, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Source

I (martin walker)wrote the article for London School of Economics Business Review. Helena is the editor. Scroll down to bottom of article and your see I was the author Martincwwalker (talk) 23:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

 Fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 23:30, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

"Personal life" content

Hi @Alalch E.: If you can come up with a solution that avoids a dedicated section heading, that's fine. But the content has no place in the MOS:LEDE. Kind regards, Robby.is.on (talk) 17:24, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I hear very much what you're saying, but consider the following: There is no section in the body about personal life, basically about Gerard's family, because a literal ten words do not make a section. It's just not a section of an article. It's formatted as a section, using technical means, but functionally it it's not that. When we take ten words and give them a heading we just visually highlight those ten words, but do not really subdivide the article in any meaningful way. Highlighting short sentences with comparatively gigantic letters and a horizontal line is not what sectioning is for. Per MOS:BODY, Very short sections and subsections clutter an article with headings and inhibit the flow of the prose. Short paragraphs and single sentences generally do not warrant their own subheadings. There is not enough content in this article in general for it to be conventionally sectioned. The content about Gerard's personal life is unlikely to expand in the foreseeable future. This is true for all the other aspects of his life and work, except for his crypto criticism. That is the only element that is expansive enough to warrant coverage both in the lead and in a dedicated section. The only element that can actually be summarized. With this in mind, WP:PYRAMID applies. This is basically a stub with a single outlying aspect which we can zoom in. This article can not be conventionally sectioned in its entirety. It can only be partially sectioned. Sincerely —Alalch E. 18:06, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed explanation. It's unfortunate. Robby.is.on (talk) 19:51, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia editing section

My edit at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Gerard_(author)&oldid=1233960177 to add this information:

"Gerard was the first editor on the site able to see IP addresses of other editors ("checkuser"). Following a feud with an Australian political blogger, he abused this power to post the blogger's personal information in a blog post,[35] leading the Wikipedia arbitration committee to strip him of the checkuser privilege.[36][37]"

was removed.

This information is true and highly relevant to the article. The fact that Gerard was the first editor on the site to have a certain power, and then had it stripped for misusing it, is clearly relevant to a section called "Wikipedia editing".

The edit was removed by one of Gerard's friends because the sources were "a blog, a forum, and a biased source?".

I'm not a veteran editor like Gerard. I understand that blog posts are not considered reliable for articles about living subjects, but in this case the post is not a source of the information in the edit, it is simply the post he made that got him in trouble.

Even if the blog source is not acceptable, the source cited as [36] should be according to Wikipedia policies. It is this Register article: https://www.theregister.com/2009/12/02/the_end_of_the_wikipedia_good_old_boys_club/

As far as I can tell, there is no consensus that The Register is unreliable based on past discussions such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_79#The_Register_article_on_physicist%27s_resignation_from_the_American_Physical_Society and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_102#The_Register_at_Santorum_(neologism)

I suggest the paragraph should be restored using The Register article as the source. I am not a power user of Wikipedia like David and his friends, but I believe that there is no Wikipedia policy against citing a news article by a respected journalist in this article.

MedianJoe (talk) 05:17, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Among other problems, this fails verification. You say in wikivoice that Gerard misused CheckUser tools, whereas the source you are using attributes that claim to the Arbitration Committee. At the very least, you should too, and then it would paint a misleading picture not to include the later rebuttal of ArbCom's claim that that very source cites. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 05:48, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

—

Ok so how about :

"Gerard was one of the few editors on the site who had the administrator privilege to see IP addresses of users ("checkuser"). According to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee (ArbCom), he publicly disseminated what appeared to be private data gained via his checkuser privileges in a post about an Australian blogger he disagreed with, as well as "repeatedly failing to maintain proper decorum in public fora." This lead the Wikipedia arbitration committee to strip him of his admin privileges.

"Wikimedia Foundation general counsel Mike Godwin intervened, citing concerns of a possible defamation suit by Gerard. As a result, ArbCom agreed to delete its decision against Gerard from Wikipedia, and Gerard agreed to give up his admin privileges."

This is fully supported by the source and, I'm sure you would agree, is highly relevant to a section on Wikipedia editing!

MedianJoe (talk) 07:53, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Our bar for inclusion of this sort of material about living people is high, and it seems like the Register is maybe the only halfway decent source available? If so, I oppose inclusion. The article does not have the trappings of a reliable source, and the publication does not appear to distinctively mark a difference between news and opinion. From the title to the conclusion, the article makes it clear that it's an opinion piece. Our RSP listing notes that many consider the source to biased particularly when it comes to Wikipedia topics. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 12:19, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

References