It's all about hostility

A few years ago, I was chatting on IRC with a Wikipedia Bureaucrat about some of the problems arising from their over-reliance on a "Police Culture" to keep unwanted material out of Wikipedia and its sister projects.

The problem was that they couldn't distinguish between pointless vandalism and someone sincerely and prophetically speaking the meaningful truth to their over-reliance on administrative power.

In the course of this conversation, I quoted a relevant passage from Genesis — probably the most famous passage of all — about eating the "Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." The warning in Genesis is that it's a deadly mistake.

My correspondent evidently was so unfamiliar with the quoted passage that he imagined I had just leveled a death threat at him. And so he committed the very mistake the Biblical passage warns against. He summarily (and erroneously) adjudged me to be an existential threat. He unceremoniously booted me off the system, thereby eliminating my presence from the project and effectively assassinating the avatar that represented me in his curiously cloistered world.

Dear Moulton, please come back.

From Moulton's Facebook Page...

An IP address at the MIT Media Lab engages the Keystone Kops ("Respect Mah Authoritah") in an exercise in Scientific Hypothesis Testing. As expected, Barney Fife's gun goes off, fatally wounding the hapless Visiting Scientist from the MIT Media Lab.

Moulton says, "File this one under Alienation and Disaffection."