A better analogy might be a formerly rational neighbor who gets elected to be president of your home owners association and turns into a petty little tyrant. Give some people a taste of having power over others and it becomes a narcotic.
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This provides some more context, thank you.
(The only thing that rubs me the wrong way in this article is the use of the term “fringe science” - an often used term to try to give credibility to completely unscientific ideas).
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I think both Copernicus and Galileo were persecuted for advocating what was considered “fringe science” at the time.
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Plate tectonics is also on that list, but so are many outlandish ideas far from reality. Much starts out as ideas. Once there is good scientific evidence for it, the idea becomes “science” (a supported hypothesis and eventually theory). It may not be popular or quickly accepted, but it’s science. Putting science that’s unaccepted by the people in the same basket as ideas not supported by evidence is very misleading. Labelling ideas that are unsupported by evidence as “fringe science” is either based on the speculation that it will at some point be scientific or based on some other agenda. The former is premature, the latter is problematic. And the latter we see of more and more now . So that’s why it’s a bit of an orange (but not red) flag to read this in a post about censorship.
Happy to chat some more over DM in interest of not derailing the topic.
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The dust won’t settle; Mr. Ollie is anywhere anytime on any Wikipedia page, ready to undo anything s/he does not like. Some people seem to have decided to dedicate their entire life to verbal arguments on wikipedia/reddit pages (or more likely, this is how they make a living).
Reviewing my contribution history, one I had a run-in with was “Magnolia677”. Another was way back in 2009. It seems the page was later merged with another page. Then all of that content was deleted. So I have no idea who it was.
They were prosecuted for doing science, that is for raising knowledge that was in contradiction with the religious beliefs. It was not a dispute between scientists.
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As of now (Sat, Dec 6th, 22:54 UT), MFE is back on Fortran Wikipedia page.
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Removed again. From the existing litterature, Judge Dredd won’t stop deleting it, and eventually people who keep restoring will be banned.
I reported MrOllie’s behavior to Wikipedia’s admin notice board. I am not hopeful about any positive changes, though. Such behavior is among the reasons why I stopped donating to Wikipedia.
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I looked at the details of the history:
The book has been consistently present from at least 2010 to 2024, with some updates when new editions were published.
- Then on 2024-01-18 Mr.Fortran (I don’t know who they are) updated it to the latest revision, and added a link to a site selling the book.
- The same day WikiDan61 removed the link (and I agree on this decision), but he left the book in the list
- On 2024-02-15 Mr.Fortran restored the culprit link.
- On 2024-05-05 mrOllie entered and edited with the reason “→Further reading: rm bookstore link”, but he didn’t only remove the link, he completely removed the reference
From that moment he never stopped removing the entire reference each time someone was trying to restore it, even though it was restored without any link to a vendor.
Mr.Fortran made a mistake by refusing honoring the initial edit on the link (which was a reasonnable, and explained, reason), which raised the attention of mrOllie 
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Thanks. It looks like it did something. An editor stepped in to focus the discussion on the actual matter (something MrOllie seemed intent on avoiding).
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Here is the final verdict from the anonymous Wikipedia administrators in response to me reporting the Fortran Wikipedia page incident (vandalism by MrOllie) to them:
You have been blocked indefinitely from editing for making personal attacks towards other editors.
If you believe that there are good reasons for being unblocked, please review Wikipedia’s guide to appealing blocks, then add the following text to the bottom of your talk page: {{unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}. SarekOfVulcan
This will likely be my last interaction and contribution to Wikipedia, as I am fed up with the narrow-minded, lopsided mentality that governs it, constantly accusing me and others of being “sockpuppets “ for MFE authors. For clarification, I have absolutely no connection to @m_b_metcalf and the co-authors; I am only an enthusiastic reader of the book who has understood and appreciated its value and role as a human-readable version of the Fortran standard.
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Not sure why someone else felt the need to swoop in and ban you after Daniel Case took this forward constructively. This just seems trigger-happy and needless.
Like you, I don’t have a connection to the authors, but “Modern Fortran” (Curcic) and MFE are usually among my recommendations to others.
The last admin completely deactivated my account, so I can no longer contribute to the admin board discussions. But I am not interested anyway. Some people make their living by arguing on Wikipedia pages; I don’t. What I do not understand is why admins calling real people “sockpuppets” for MFE and “spammers” is not a personal attack, whereas raising the possibility that “MrOllie is a Wikipedia Bot” (quite reasonably, given its relentless, around-the-clock actions on Wikipedia) is a personal attack, worthy of indefinitely blocking a real user’s account (and their IP address!).
I’m sorry that has happened to you. When I created this topic, I had no idea of MrOllie and his (its?) nature. I don’t think we are going get anywhere further with this, apologies to all those who have made any efforts here.
What happened here is exactly what is described in the Medium article:
- MrOllie deletes a contribution for some reason (here it was “spam”/“conflict of interest”)
- some people think the reason is not enough to completely delete the contribution and restore it
- MrOllie keep on deleting
- the people who restore the contribution eventually violate some Wikipedia rules, because of the frustration of not being listened even though they have some points, et because they don’t really know the rules
- this gives more reasons to MrOllie to keep on deleting
- people who complain are charged with multiple violations, trials of intent, and get banned
- at no moment the pertinency of the initial contribution is discussed, everything is about procedures
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In my opinion, Wikipedia is one of the greatest achievement of the Web, but as all human affairs is imperfect. They try to have rules for governance, but here we have indeed a sad misadventure. The MFE is probably the most important reference after the standard itself. I can see on Google Scholar that since the 90/95 edition, it has been cited 1110 times which is probably a very good score for an academic book (that could be an objective argument).
On the French page, I cited the 2018 edition, but I guess I won’t update it soon, fearing that some algorithm link the modification to the English page conflict, who knows? My national page is now quite calm with only 8 edits in 2025 (2 by myself). Small is beautiful. The English edition of Wikipedia is crowded and so probably far more difficult to maintain.
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Change that to “makes a clear editorial error” (deleting the whole reference rather than just the problematic link, as the previous editor did).
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Here is the text of my latest request to MrOllie.
#####
Here is some of the publication history for Mike Metcalf and John Reid.
Metcalf, Michael, and John Ker Reid.
Fortran.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Print.
Metcalf, Michael, and John Ker Reid.
Fortran 8X Explained. 2nd ed.
OUP, 1989. Print.
Metcalf, Michael, and John Ker Reid.
Fortran 90 Explained.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Print.
Metcalf, Michael, and John Ker Reid.
FORTRAN 90/95 Explained.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Print.
Metcalf, Michael, John Ker Reid, and Malcolm Cohen.
Fortran 95/2003 Explained.
3rd ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print.
Metcalf, Michael, John Ker Reid, and Malcolm Cohen.
Modern Fortran Explained.
4th ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
Metcalf, Michael, John Ker Reid, and Malcolm Cohen.
Modern Fortran Explained
Incorporating Fortran 2018.
Fifth Revised Edition.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Print.
Metcalf, Michael, John Ker Reid, Malcolm Cohen, Reinhold Bader.
Modern Fortran Explained:
Incorporating Fortran 2023.
OUP Oxford
The authers are well regarded members of the Fortran community and have been in print for a long time.
You need to reinstate the reference to the last edition
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If he doesn’t reinstate I may try getting in touch with the wikipedia admin people.
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