“Reliable Sources: The Story of David Gerard” by TracingWoodgrains

This is a linkpost for https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/reliable-sources-how-wikipedia-admin, posted in full here given its relevance to this community. Gerard has been one of the longest-standing malicious critics of the rationalist and EA communities and has done remarkable amounts of work to shape their public images behind the scenes. Note: I am closer to this story than to many of my others. As always, I write aiming to provide a thorough and honest picture, but this should be read as the view of a close onlooker who has known about much within this story for years and has strong opinions about the matter, not a disinterested observer coming across something foreign and new. If you’re curious about the backstory, I encourage you to read my companion article after this one. Introduction: Reliable Sources Wikipedia administrator David Gerard cares a great deal about Reliable Sources. For the past half-decade, he has torn [...] ---Outline:(00:55) Introduction: Reliable Sources(06:00) Gerard's Standards for Reliable Sources(13:48) Who Is David Gerard?(16:49) The Early Romantic Years(27:52) Gerard's fling with LessWrong in the twilight of the old internet(37:44) The bitter end(45:19) The Vindictive Ex(49:53) LessWrong(01:04:08) Effective Altruism(01:07:47) Scott Alexander(01:16:14) Conclusion(01:21:49) Companion article: A Young Mormon Discovers Online RationalityThe original text contained 24 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. The original text contained 13 images which were described by AI. --- First published: July 10th, 2024 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/D8GmTE9jvJg44GTAg/reliable-sources-the-story-of-david-gerard --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.