I was going to present as evidence the block of that IP range that effectively shut down IP editing by an entire town in Utah but have no idea where to find it. Where are the logs that record actions like that? Cla68 (talk) 00:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are these any use?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:204.15.84.2

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&type=block&page=User:204.15.84.2

Whitstable 00:07, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Cla68 (talk) 00:26, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Those who were properly taught typing during the typewriter era use two adjacent hyphens--as representation for a dash as a matter of course. Many word processing program offer to convert them automatically into a true dash—but I don't let them, and I'm sure there must be a number of other archaic typewriter-mindset individuals who do similarly. DGG (talk) 00:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I go back and forth. for my own writing/word processing I usually make it do '--' for other stuff on computer/email/websites I usually let it go. I'm inconsistent, in general. I wonder how I would fare in a comparison with other users as far as CHL's interesting evaluation goes? --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:59, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the string being analyzed is "space, hyphen, hyphen, space", not simply "two adjacent hyphens" alone. Whether that makes any difference, I don't know. —Random832 03:58, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's right. hyphen-hyphen is much more common than space-hyphen-hyphen-space. These accounts use the latter almost exclusively, as have the previous socks. Cool Hand Luke 06:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

DGG is correct about the space-hyphen-hyphen-space style. But the point is limited. Cool Hand Luke's point in bringing it up was that it was an unusual feature of edit summaries. I use " -- " all the time too, but if I ever use it in edit summaries, I doubt I do it nearly as much as these accounts do. Space-hyphen-hyphen-space appears to be rare enough in edit summaries that it can be called an identifiable quirk. It seems to me that if it could be demonstrated that the quirk was not rare, then CHL's point would be undermined. Overall, the case rests on identifying (a) an unusual number of (b) shared rare habits (the rarer the habit, the better). Interestingly, " -- " is Associated Press style, which would be permanently drilled into the head of anyone, say a certain New York financial journalist, who previously worked at newspapers. But we could expect to find it among many, many other Wikipedia editors, those who worked for newspapers and the even larger population of "archaic typewriter-mindset individuals". Noroton (talk) 16:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I thank Nototon for pointing this out; I was unaware of the old styleguide preference. It looks like most Wikipedians do not use this style, but those who do use it do so exclusively. I thought it was remarkable that these four accounts used " -- " more often than anyone else, but I see not that's not the case. e.g.

However, considering that only a minority use this style, I still think these and other traits add up to something in conjunction. Cool Hand Luke 22:38, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• The above thread will stay closed and I hope we don't see any more similar threads. There is no need to hypothesize about RL off wiki interaction. Absent a specific request from an arb to provide such input, contact myself or an arb if you truly feel a need to bring this material up-you could also email it to the arb email list. User:Jayvdb will be making a workshop proposal on this issue. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:27, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I did not call anything silly, see the edit history, that was someone else. — Rlevse • Talk • 03:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A number of the statements of evidence (at first pass, those from Jimbo Wales, JzG, Durova and LessHeard vanU) seem to be less evidence, and rather opinions. Per the header ("This page is not for general discussion", should they be excised to this talk page? Neıl ☎ 11:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some are descriptions of personal experience of interacting with the relevant editors and so forth, and these broadly fall under the description of evidence. Analysis of evidence is better suited to the workshop (indeed, there's a section for it) so feel free to suggest that people move some of their material there if it's more analysis of evidence than actual evidence per se. --bainer (talk) 11:28, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent, Bainer. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:00, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or you could wait for diffs... LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well yes, people do tend to work on their evidence :) --bainer (talk) 14:04, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, there is a good point which I allowed to slip past; opinion is used as evidence in Court - the use of expert witnesses. Now, I'm not saying that the opinions presented are to the level of expert witnesses but then this is not a court of law either. I will ferret out a few diffs to support my contentions, but the conclusions I am presenting as evidence (that is, evidence of the opinion of an individual) will have to stand as it is and be given such weight as the ArbCom believes it due.LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:41, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I said above, from my point of view, input is welcome from any editor, particular if it is well-organized and non-duplicative. The dividing line between a "statement" and "evidence" is not always clear, and policing which presentations belong on the evidence pages versus the case talkpage is generally not the most productive use of time as the arbitrators weigh the comments made based on their content (with concrete evidence being given the most weight) rather than how it is labelled. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest (humbly) that absence of a single diff or link to back up a contribution is indicative of a "statement" rather than "evidence". But if you're happy, Brad, then I'm happy. Neıl ☎ 00:15, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There were in fact numerous diffs referenced in my statement. I linked to the pages where I had previously provided them. Durova^Charge! 04:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Heh, this is why I said "at first pass" - didn't click through to those. Neıl ☎ 13:52, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

from Jan 19 or so 6 of the last 20 edits to the article are reverts, or move backs. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 06:33, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gary Weiss is a writer and some people here question whether or not he is capable of talking as if he were someone else. Well, duh. Writers do that all the time. Gary is an investigative journalist. Some question whether he would lie or be sneaky. Well, duh. That is a prerequisite for being an investigative journalist. Some wonder about motivation. He has written books. To sell books, you need a topic people care about (like wikipedia) and a hook or two.

"Tombstone’s most famous tourist site is the Boothill Graveyard, where many of its legendary gunslingers and historical personalities are interred. Boothill has within it a Jewish section, which went unnoticed for over 100 years; a memorial was added in 1984. [148] [149] The small Jewish burial ground has no remaining headstones, and only one grave – that of a child. [150] He died in 1889, when he was one year and four days old. There is still a small stone marker for the child in the burial ground today, next to the memorial. His name was Sam Harris. I would like to be able to say that User:Samiharris was created one year and four days after Mantanmoreland was created, but he wasn't. He was created – for what it's worth – one year, three days and ~three hours after Mantanmoreland.

You guys were so set up. He's gonna make a lot of money with his next tell all book called Corruption at the 'Pedia. WAS 4.250 (talk) 02:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

G-Dett's evidence made me immediately think of Foucault's Pendulum (which, come to think of it, should probably be required reading for any Wikipedian about to embark on an investigation of complex sockpuppetry - hell it should be required reading for everyone). It also put me in mind of Keith Jenkins' concept of "imaginaries" as a replacement for for traditional Rankean history. I like the way G-Dett chose to lay this out, and I hope other editors don't dismiss this evidence because s/he chose to present it in a form more in keeping with the practices of art than those of science (at least we don't have to worry if proper statistical methods were used!). There are some pretty damning diffs there even if Umberto Eco is not your cup of tea on evidence pages (but he should be!).--Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 03:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is the most stylish evidence I've ever seen on Wikipedia. How did you figure this out G-Dett? Cool Hand Luke 07:59, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Tombstone – both the place name and the common noun – was the gift that kept giving.--G-Dett (talk) 16:41, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My jaw has officially hit the ground. Relata refero (talk) 09:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Gary Weiss' piece in Forbes on India's Jewry mentions a trip to the largest Jewish cemetary in India (shades of Longfellow). He's into that sort of thing. But a fact which I mentioned to G-Dett and can't seem to get on the table here, is that Earp of Tombstone was a gentile who married a Jew that he met there. Who spent her days ever after, traveling with him. Though not to India <g>.

Yeah, this sentence in the Forbes piece on India's Jews was a major clue sending me back to Tombstone in search of tombstones:

A short distance away is a Jewish cemetery, and again the distinction is in what you don't see--there's none of the overturned headstones and vandalism that have been sadly common in Jewish cemeteries in the U.S.[6]

Whether due to desecration or some other cause I haven't been able to discover, but all the bodies and headstones (with the exception of Sam Harris') were long ago removed from the Jewish burial ground in Tombstone's Boothill. The following is from an April 18, 1933 piece in a local paper, the Tombstone Epitaph:

During the week, Dewey Chadwick, who has been in charge of a crew of workmen engaged in clearing and cleaning Boot Hill graveyard, counted the graves and found there are 259 outside of the drift fence, besides seventeen excavations from which bodies have been removed. This is more than were supposed to be in the old burying ground. There may be seen here a small grave marked by a tumbled-down stone bearing the name "Sam Harris." This is the only remaining grave in what was once the Jewish section of the cemetery, originally surrounded by an adobe wall. The wall long since disappeared without right or authority and the bodies all have been removed to other resting places with this one exception.

--G-Dett (talk) 18:52, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The other more prosaic possibility is that Lastexit and Mantanmoreland are simply Uncle and Nephew, as both have in fact claimed. If they both went to India for Weiss' marriage, it may well have simply been family vacation. "I am the uncle of another Wikipedian" [7]. User:Mantanmoreland: "Editor is nephew of Lastexit." Mantanmoreland 28 July 2006. And [8], "uncle" & "nephew" use Wiki talk pages to discuss "collaborative" editing of same stock market issue page [9]

Note, the above is not my research. I got it from WR, but the diffs are on Wikipedia (fair game). But again, it brings up the problems of applying "meatpuppet" criteria to family members. SBHarris 17:19, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With respect, the idea of relatives shacking up together and communicating via Wikipedia talk pages is not prosaic but fantastical, a taller tale than any I've told.--G-Dett (talk) 18:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, if they do it all the time, at the same time. But there's nothing to keep two relatives who live in the same timezone from taking a trip to India, and then later editing from different sites on the same stuff, and with the same opinions. Geez I've taken trips with my parents but don't live with them. Many of my interests are shared, however. Uncle and nephew share an interest in Jewish geneology and cemetaries? And finance? So? Oy, you think this stranger than fiction, you do? SBHarris 19:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um, they edited each other's posts. I think we're beyond doubt on those two. Cool Hand Luke 19:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that was Mantan and Tomstoner. But what Sbharris is forgetting is that there was a confirmed CU on Lastexit and Mantanmoreland. After Fred's warning in July '06 and an edit-war over sockpuppet tags on his user page, Lastexit added the note about being Mantan's uncle. They were posting on each other's talk page from the same computer; hence "shacking up together and communicating via Wikipedia talk pages." That scenario – not, as you say, a shared interest in Jewish ancestry, cemeteries, and finance – is what's stranger than fiction.--G-Dett (talk) 20:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And there's also this Mantanmoreland edit of Lastexit. Cool Hand Luke 20:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

!!! Never noticed that one.--G-Dett (talk) 20:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Must confess that it came from W---B--- on Wikback. Cool Hand Luke 22:22, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say you've got me there, UNLESS these incidents (which prove only the same computer use) happened when Weiss was visiting NM, during which time he would presumably have stayed with Uncle and used uncle's Albequerque computer and perhaps even account. Geez, this sound like I'm defending Weiss, but I'm simply examining all angles, without any particular prejudice that I'm aware of. Lastexit certainly sounds like an old Southwesterner to me. Have you found him editing financial articles? Wups, I see this was one: July 12, 2006. And when did Weiss go West to see Ernie Pyle's house there? Yep. April 2006. Exactly when Lastexit first appears. Now, how do you know he didn't introduce Uncle to Wikipedia right then using the new account himself during the visit? If Lastexit continues to edit from NM after Weiss returns East, I'd say that was pretty good evidence he's NOT a sock. Just a meat and perhaps a sock while the account was created during a visit. SBHarris 20:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The all angles approach is great, until it devolves into speculative complications with no explanatory payoff. You could ask Fred Bauder, but I think if his IP data had shown LE's edits coming from New Mexico, he'd have considered this exculpatory. And yes, Lastexit was all over Naked short selling, Patrick Byrne, etc. – the whole lot. And lastly, remember that not just one but all three sock accounts – Lastexit, Tomstoner, and Samiharris – debut with these cryptic tombstone allusions. That's a lotta clever uncles out there in the territories.--G-Dett (talk) 20:50, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we can have him look now for where that IP is. I will add in the spirit of impartiality that loose evidence for a Lastexit-Mantanmoreland connection which is really very close, is Last Exit's name. Last Exit to Brooklyn is EXACTLY the kind of novel that Mantanmoreland goes on and on about liking, in his Userpage. Sigh. But why bother to create a new sock for yourself just for a trip to New Mexico, which we know Weiss took? I doubt very much that Mantanmoreland had any idea that people would be scrutinizing these diffs so carefully, 2 years later. A last possibility (okay, okay) is that Weiss and future wife BOTH took the Albequerque trip, and M is still the wife, and M set up the account for the uncle. I dunno if it's Weiss who likes these potboiler old novels with gay-noir themes. Doesn't sound like a Wyatt Earp fan. Or not the average one. SBHarris 21:18, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I agree with G-Dett's interpretation of these correlations, but what a coincidence: a "Pat Bryne" is also buried in that cemetery! Weirder and weirder. Is this Wikipedia or an episode of Deadwood? Amerique^dialectics 00:47, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Further, I believe G-Dett's evidence is the coup de grâce to this investigation. There seems to me no reasonable way to argue against the primary sockpuppetry or COI claims now. I wrote an email to MM months ago expressing the hope that his activities here would lead to a published exposé of corruption at the top-levels of WP, but warned him that with the way he was going about it, Weiss would more likely end up the subject of such an inquiry, rather than the author. The only thing I'm satisfied with is that Wikipedia, through the outstanding efforts of its more principled members, was able to, essentially, re-publish this material on-site and conduct an open investigation of where it lead, using on-site diffs and time correlations with the Weiss blog. It seems to me that, the principle editors other than WB and MM involved in carrying out this conflict, don't have much if anything at stake (other than a sense of pride, however wounded) in pursuing these matters further. Everyone involved would be better off if they acknowledged their past mistakes and collectively agreed to let bygones be bygones.) As for MM, it seems to me there is nothing more to do other than oversight this entire Arb Case and related RFC and indef-block all his accounts, if only for the sake of Weiss's own career. That guy is a danger to himself. Amerique^dialectics 02:07, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Has anyone tried mailing to Samiharris? User:Dorftrottel 06:44, February 18, 2008

On Feb 8, soon after being apprised of this proceding by ArbCom, user:samiharris blanked user and talk pages, leaving as GoodbyeCruelWorld edit comment: "...forward my pension checks to Bagley" [10]. Evidently user:samiharris feels persecuted by Bagley, which is very odd, given that samiharris is either an alternate account or part of a group of related users editing from the same computers, who had been editing Bagley/Overstock/Byrne-related articles. Bagley/Wordbomb's complaints about this, and about bias resulting from it, as well as his hamhanded attempts to give people a dose of their own medicine, had previously gotten Bagley and all accounts related to him, permanently banned. Including an entire IP range provided by ISP Broadweave near Salt Lake City. For samiharris to feel persecuted in such a position, now that Bagley (however bad Bagley is) is proving to have had a point, is ironic in the extreme. But it's part of the entertainment here at Wikipedia, sort of like watching gladiators and Christians die in the Colosseum arena. (Always provided you're not a gladiator or Christian, of course...) SBHarris 20:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is unnecessary and completely out of line to call people derogatory names, whether they are Wikipedians or not, as was done here, labeling someone as a "vile agenda-driven troll". The principle behind WP:NPA and WP:BLP applies. --MPerel 10:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention the cherry-pickers remark. This is less evidence and more a personal attack, to both banned and active editors. Cool Hand Luke 10:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Have you tried asking Guy to redact his insults? He will, usually, do so. The fact he continues to make them in the first place is unfortunate. Neıl ☎ 11:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He made them in response to Cla68's evidence. I don't think there's much chance that he'll redact them. Relata refero (talk) 11:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I will if Cla68 removes the blatant trolling in his evidence section, since it has no relevance whatsoever to the case in hand and is posted in furtherance of an apparent grudge against everybody with a sysop bit. It is simply not acceptable to say "x made this snarky remark" while forgetting to mention that it was in response to a remark at least as snarky if not more so by y, where x is someone he dislikes and y is one of his mates. If Cla68 wants to make the point that he believes Bagley to be a wronged saint, he has done so.

But what the hell. I forgot, foolishly, that Bagley is a saint, everybody who opposes Bagley - especially Jimbo - is a villain, every admin is evil (though Cla68 would not have been if he'd passed RfA), and all this is of surpassing relevance to an unproven allegation of sockpuppetry against Mantanmoreland because... because... well, just because it is. I'm out of here before I engage in any further "rhetorical exuberance". Guy (Help!) 22:23, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of us have admin bits, and I (at least) have a problem with your comments. At the very least, if you're going to complain about Cla68 supposedly-irrelevant evidence, you could at least include some evidence of your own to counter Cla68's findings. Personally attacking Cla68 for posting diffs where you're apparently attacking him doesn't exactly clear your good name.

Please refactor. Cool Hand Luke 22:29, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, Cla68 has not presented any evidence about Mantanmoreland. He's aired a long list of grudges, some on behalf of a banned user, but that's about it. Guy (Help!) 23:14, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, you haven't presented any evidence, period. It's just a personal attack. I'm not Cla68, so I won't press this, but your failure to fix an attack which many editors (including admins) find reprehensible doesn't look good. I'm sure you've seen Cla68's sandbox.

For what it's worth, Cla68's trying to prove that editors who have tried to inquire into Mantanmoreland before have been bullied, and I think that's a legitimate part of this case. Cool Hand Luke 00:22, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please AGF. It's obvious JzG/Guy that is merely helping Cla68 with his research for User:Cla68/RfC/Sandbox. WAS 4.250 (talk) 12:12, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please AGF, the remarks by user:JzG/Guy constitute a snide attack on Cla68, yet another attempt to smear that user by mentioning them in the same breath as bannedBombword. But a name-caller, when called on it, now has the accusation of "name-calling" to level at those wishing, (and see the /Workshop -Tu quoque) and expecting, the user to refrain from such tactics, and strike the offending remarks, or at least apologise, and moderate their position in accordance with community standards and fairness.Newbyguesses - Talk 17:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As to User:Jzg -- There is no crusade against Bagley, that is wishful thinking on GUY's part, not a statement of fact.Newbyguesses - Talk 17:08, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I will talk to JzG about this and please don't anyone else use such terms, name-calling, etc. See the strict civility notice on the evidence and workshop pages. — Rlevse • Talk • 20:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

JzG got in a dig on me too: "Even if SlimVirgin did own the mailing list (which I can't remember), so what? SlimVirgin is an admin in good standing, and the lists were set up to discuss a problem which was experienced by a number of editors, albeit you and Dan Tobias feel the need to pretend this problem does not exist. Jimbo thinks it does, I think it does, the victims of harassment think it does, and really there is nothing at all wrong with wanting to discuss how best to handle that. Your "evidence" on this point is therefore moot." The implication that I "pretend [stalking / harassment] does not exist" is false. In my essay responding to his essay, I said "Now, harassment and stalking is a genuine problem." That's hardly saying it doesn't exist. I do, however, go on to say that the issue (while genuine) is greatly exaggerated in order to play a game of "victimology" in which victims of harassment (real, imagined, or faked) can gain special consideration for themselves, and punitive treatment of their opponents, by asserting and inflating their claim of being such a victim. *Dan T.* (talk) 23:35, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• VICTIMOLOGY: There is a major problem inasmuch as anonymous people tend to act more nastily ANYWHERE, vs. people whose identities are in evidence. Wikipedia allows anonymity among its editors and its police, and has to deal with the result: faceless vandals being forever chased by hooded narcs. What a waste of time. Occasionally a wikicop goes rogue and unlike real cops, the Wikipolice won't give you an identity, or even a badge number (remember Essjay? I got blocked by him.) The wars of sockpuppets and meatpuppets and checkuser logs are a part of the more general problem which is allowed indeed to fester from the problems of victimology.

  Here it is: somebody once knew an administrator, you see, who got a death threat! How horrible. Nevermind that out in the real world, death threats from faceless cowards (anonymous people on a phone, usually, vindicating my point) are made against cops, judges, doctors, politicians, dogcatchers. It's part of public life. Jimbo Wales edits here under his own name. So do I. Guess what—it won't kill you. And you probably won't even get any death threats, and even if you do, the chance of you actually being assassinated over your wikipedia activities, vs. the chance of you dying from a freeway accident or natural causes (heart disease, cancer, stroke, etc), are very, very, very, small.

  So if this worries you, as with the idea that Al Qaeda terrorists are going to fly a hijacked jet into your house, I would suggest that you need some serious help with realistic readjustment about your risks in the real world. See a professional. Meanwhile, could everyone here please try to be a sane and unhysterical, and try not to ruin this encyclopedia with the products of needless fears about dying due to your edits? The worst thing that's going to happen to you on Wikipedia, is that your privacy will be violated. And if it is, you'll just get a new outlook on WP:BLP. You'll experience something much like what happens to the average celebrity or public figure. Do you feel bad for the exposure of public figures? Perhaps you should. There are good lessons to be learned here, but this thing is constructed to make it nearly impossible for anybody to learn them. "If you don't like the heat, you should stay out of the kitchen," is something we routinely say to people in public life. Well, Wikipedia is part of the real world too (WP:WRW), and this is something that needs to be said to those who edit and sysop here. But don't worry. Skiing or scuba diving or the 10 Freeway may get you, but not this place. Calm yourselves. SBHarris 01:27, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Have you had your family threatened with real life harm just because you chose to edit a website for free?...how about your employer called?...has your employer been sent emails from some miscreant who thinks it's funny to link them to an article about you that might appear on another website?....how about death threats?...do you really think that the price of writing articles here and helping to maintain this website from those who wish to waste our time means we have to be harassed, especially since none of us are making one red cent? For the record, the nonsense I have had directed towards me has been very minor, but when dozens of admins and editors feel compelled to leave this website due to real life harassment, then attitudes like the one you and Dtobais are demostrating indicates you really don't care. I wonder how much you would like it, or how well your family might like it if you had to tell them that the reason they have been getting death threats and having to deal with harassment is because you edit this website.--MONGO 02:44, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Mongo (not to be confused with Mangoe, I suppose), FYI I've edited in many a group on USENET, aka The Wild West, which makes this place look tame indeed, for decade 16+ years. And on Compuserve groups before that, back to 1985. No, I didn't get paid. I have several million words up under my own name. Feel free to read. I've had people threaten me, I've had people try to influence employers, and for all I know, I've had employers read what I write. And you know what? I don't give a shit. If you're going to go through life like that, I feel so sorry for you. It's one thing to be like that in a country where the government can take away your livilihood, or beat you to death (I don't advocate fearless in, say, China). But I live in America. I also come from Utah where 3 in every 4 person is a Mormon, and a large fraction of people carry concealed weapons legally, and are very polite to each other (and you can bet the cops are polite to the citizens also). So I have a different world view of how society should function, than you may. Licence plates on automobiles are a good thing. Remove them, and your road would turn into Wikipedia. SBHarris 02:54, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just because you may deal well with those sorts of issues, doesn't mean everyone else will or should be expected to. Simply put, some people take great offense to the sort of thing you claim you have endured...and in a number of cases, editors and admins have left after they felt that they had reasonable concern that they may have their personal safety compromised. Telling editors "to get thicker skin" etc., is simply not helpful. Our goal should be to do what we can to minimize harassment, not just sit back and explain to them, well, shucks, please contribute to our encyclopedia effort, but do so at your own risk. That is not the message we should be sending if we expect to encourage people to contribute here and or stick around.--MONGO 03:05, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

People have left politics for the same reason. And left the police force. These are NOT good reasons to have anonymous politicians, and anonymous police. On the contrary encouragement of such a thing would harm society greatly, by encouraging people not to take responsibility for their actions, due to their complaints of harrassment. Well, you know what happens when people are given power without responsibility? They BECOME the harrassers. Wikipedia is FINE example of this, but it goes all the way back to classic sociological experiments where people are "labeled" prisoners and guards, and then begin to act their roles. If you tell people they don't have to answer for what they do, and that they're working for a larger cause and you can't make an omlette without breaking eggs, most of them will do anything. Things they'd never do otherwise. So, the signers of our Delaration of Independence from Britain in (new) US signed their own names for King George to read. That's why we honor them. Had they signed "MONGO" or "MANGOE" or "SLIM VIRGIN" or whatever, it would have sent the wrong message, I'm afraid. SBHarris 03:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you missed the part about the fact that what we do here provides us with nary one red cent profit wise. Not everyone wishes to have their real life identity "outted" and the right to edit anonymously is something that Jimbo Wales has long supported. Besides, many people (like myself) are simply not notable, so using my real life name wouldn't in any way increase the reliability or integrity of articles I work on...these sorts of things are substantiated by using reliable sources, not by signing my real name to every content edit I make.--MONGO 03:39, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I edit under my real name, and post under my real name to numerous forums, mailing lists, newsgroups, and so on, as well has having a personal Web site under my own name with accurate contact information in the domain WHOIS, and un-munged MAILTO links all over the place. As a result, I get everything from people seeking free technical help to mentally-unbalanced people wanting to use me to pursue their obsessions... and, over the years, a few people threatening to sue me or get me criminally prosecuted for something they imagined I'd done. A time or two I've gotten creepy phone calls at home or work as a result of some online thing. But none of this has stopped me from maintaining my openness and candor, or caused me to don "victim" garments and seek special dispensation in online communities. *Dan T.* (talk) 03:55, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. And this has led you to the erroneous conclusion that such issues are therefore not a problem for other people, whether or not they choose to edit pseudonymously. But it is. We lost an admin because trolls called his firm and tried to get him fired. Your friends at Wikipedia Review just did the same to Feloniousmonk. Some female users and admins are enormously worried about such harassment. One banned user, Andrew Morrow, has been jailed for it. So, Dan, I am happy that your self-confidence leads you to be able to dismiss such things, but it would be a terrible mistake to assume that everybody is or should be capable of that, and an even worse mistake to extend that to the assumption that such activities are not actually problematic, because even if the target does not feel threatened, the intent is plainly to threaten, and we should not tolerate that at all. Anyone with OTRS access will readily understand that the range of human reaction to perceived attacks is wide, and no reaction can be defined as being inherently appropriate or inappropriate. Guy (Help!) 12:33, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not plain at all that Bagley's original intent (before being banned; he has since crossed many lines) was to threaten. As far as I can see, he sincerely believed that someone with a conflict of interest was trying to distort Wikipedia's point of view, and it is now beginning to look like he has indeed 'been some form of "right all along".' It is absolutely inexcusable to tar someone who appears to have, once upon a time, had a genuine concern about the encyclopedia with the same brush as Andrew Morrow. —Random832 16:29, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

'Question to all: How does this help figure out the facts of the situation and to apply them? It doesn't? Oh ok, that's what I thought.

Both sides need to stop prodding each other with pointy sticks. (It's all fun and games, till ArbCom puts an eye out) It's hard enough to determine what's going on in this case without the wars.. SirFozzie (talk) 03:15, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would enjoy debating the anonymity vs COI issue that currently exists in the project but this isn't the appropriate forum. Cla68 (talk) 03:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly agree with SirFozzie. I suggest Wikback as a very appropriate forum. Or somewhere else. Anywhere else, really. Noroton (talk) 18:51, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this has gotten way off track, please stick the focus of the case. THanks. — Rlevse • Talk • 03:16, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

USER:Rlevse, could you clarify, please, when you say :Yes, this has gotten way off track..., what are you referring to by the pronoun *this*? I can agree with you that much in thisdiscussion is wasted air. There are personal attacks: off-topic. There is discussion of personal attacks: off topic, and I thank the clerk for ensuring to date that at least our current interlocuters are attempting to achieve highest standards throughout. You speak well, but as to *This* - my point is that this discussion has meanderered somewhat from and it in particular included user:sbharris's valuable statement, VICTIMOLOGY]].[11] To my present thought, User:S.B.Harris's valuable statement, VICTIMOLOGY, and the following remarks by thatuser [12], [13], and by Dan T just above constitute a valuable contribution, given that the ban'm if they squeak, "shoot on sight" approach has not been successfull in "saving" our volunteers from harassment. So, even if it is not vital, or even central, to this arbcom, it may certainly form the basis of another discussion, later, at even that level.

PS: If I mis-speak at any time, i will retract upon reasonable request. Especially if I mis-identify inadvertantly, any User.

And if any clarification of my position is necessary (?), I only asked, per the above post,

User:Rlevse, what did you refer to with the word, this, please Newbyguesses - Talk 09:35, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"This" means most of this thread. It's best if users just drop it and don't post on this thread and don't start new ones that aren't directly related to the case. Keep commments focused on the issues of the case. — Rlevse • Talk • 11:02, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am firmly convinced at this point in time that the evidence unfolding overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that Mantanmoreland and Bagley apologies, i meant wordbomb (inserted after the following comments!) are a pair of socks. in fact, as Samiharriss is looking to be proved guity momentarily, that makes a pair and a half of socks, at least.

i must state before i forget to refute some ludicrous proposition. User:newbyguesses is not a BOT, and U:newbyg is not, not, a sock, and i would get extremely cross were some user, or blow-in from a social-site accuse me of such. Dont do it. For the record, I have never visited or had any interest in visiting any of the BADSITES that get named and bandied about here, and where the supposed evidence resides. Bollocks if anyone says i have, and i mean it. Newbyguesses - Talk 23:09, 18 February 2008 (UTC) Additional note-- nor to date have i ever perused such material in a sandbox, or log, or deleted contribs/other--. stated here,also, I will [redact] or retract upon reasonable request any statement made by user:newbyguesses objected to as disproven, misleading, or malicious at this forum. Thankyou clerk, for your discretion and professionalism. Newbyguesses - Talk 16:58, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um.. WHAT? Mantanmoreland and WHOM? I think you have your dramatis personae mixed up a bit there, Newbyguesses :) SirFozzie (talk) 23:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, up to a point. Bagley and his hosiery drawer are one half of the pair, and if this case decides that Mantan has done the same on the other side then that makes the pair. I suspect the only sane outcome is "a plague on all your houses"; this is too convoluted to be settled unequivocally either way, in the end it'll just be opinion. Guy (Help!) 23:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I was thinking someone had mixed up (name of WordBomb) with (supposed name of Mantanmoreland). I don't know which of them would complain more about it.. but it'd be impressive either way. SirFozzie (talk) 23:20, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, SirFozzie and all, beg pardon I mis-spoke. I am saying it looks to me like Mantanmoreland is a sock, Samiharriss is a sock, and Wordbomb is a sock, right? That makes a sock drawer full of socks, and the real world actors, names, personae, can all go hang, they are irrelevant. Clear? —note my computer problems recurring, apologies—Newbyguesses - Talk 02:48, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Guy, seriously, you're not doing yourself or anyone else or the situation at hand any favours with such comments. User:Dorftrottel 03:04, February 19, 2008

(logged in, I hope) - No, Guy got that right, in my h/opinion. This isnt a tragedy, it isnt very funny, but shakespeare applies. "A plague on all your houses", gruesomely—nbgNewbyguesses - Talk 06:23, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree that everything will end up being just opinion. User:Dorftrottel 13:19, February 19, 2008

I concur. the evidence of sock use to further a COI seems incontrovertible. Amerique^dialectics 16:59, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree also there with User:Dorftrottel's point, we are gathering massive evidence, and this matter has gone beyond mere opinion. Newbyguesses - Talk 21:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The number of accounts having no same minute edits as Samiharris is just a small fraction of the evidence presented. Moreover, we could expand this study. Mantanmoreland and Samiharris made only one edit within three minutes, and no other edits within five, I believe. Additionally we have the style tics, well-matching editing patterns, previous sockpuppetry, shared POV and interests, and a history of long-term lying from Mantanmoreland.

A note about the stylistic tics: You're right that given enough time, one could come up with meaningless similarities between users that would be unusual to the population at large. However, I have not done that here. Except for "as per" and "duplicative" (which were other's suggestions), I came up with a list of these traits in minutes. And I didn't do it by checking back and forth. I looked at one contribution history until I found a trait that had been used multiple times within that history (these aren't one-offs, except for "phraseologies," which I do accept could be meaningless). As it turned out, every trait I've found that occurred multiple times from one editor also occurred in the other. I didn't fail to report negatives because I had literally no negatives.

All this said, I do recognize the potential for abuse, and I'd love to hear any suggestions. I think that confining study to idiosyncrasies that occur multiple times in each account is a good safeguard, and beyond that you'll have to rely upon our good faith in this effort.

Second, I have two ideas to make the data more convincing to you, Smallbones:

1. I've compared the correlations of these two users, and they're within the top 20 (about top the 0.5%) compared to all of the other accounts. It's been said that I can compare all of the accounts to each other, which would be 6,575,751 comparisons. From these comparisons, we could make a nice curve that would suggest how likely it is that any two accounts have at any particular correlation. Would that help? It appears the chance of this occurring may be less than 0.5%, but would you be more convinced if we decisively showed that any two randomly-picked accounts are less than < X% likely to correlate as well as these two?
2. What if I used my previous definition of 30-minute interleaving to examine all of these 3629 accounts? A preliminary look suggests that having only four interleaves in 2007 (the fifth was in 2008) is a trait that few other accounts will share.

What results from these tests could convince you? Cool Hand Luke 00:13, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am especially curious to know if arbitrators would have any use for such evidence. I think it's a strong case already, but if any more evidence of this kind would help, I could work on it more. Cool Hand Luke 05:40, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm morbidly curious about this. How many accomplices would be needed in order to process 6,575,751 comparisons before this case closes? — CharlotteWebb 15:14, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't given the computer time requirements much thought. Maybe a couple hours—probably less time than it took Alanyst to parse relevant time stamps from the whole 6 gig compressed data dump. It would talk a short while to write a script to run all of the comparisons. I'm a little curious myself, and might end up running them anyway—perhaps on the weekend. I just wish we had some clues about what sorts of evidence are especially desired, and I would like to know whether this would address the concerns of those worried about "statistical" evidence, or whether it would make them even less trustful. I'd also like to know when the arbitrators suspect that the case will be ready to roll.

Incidentally, Alanyst is working on more evidence as we speak. Cool Hand Luke 03:31, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the case has only been opened for a week, and since the committee has taken a load of deserved crap for rushing the proposed decision out before it was ready recently, and several of us asked for more thought, less shoot first in the Request....we seem to be getting what we asked for. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 04:32, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note to report that I retracted my evidence statement on Thatcher and I apologized to him for making it. Cla68 (talk) 01:08, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

3000+ editors, and a direct hit? Lawrence § t/e 14:33, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm struck with the brilliance of this test. Alanyst directly addressed the concern that we were plucking just a few traits from these user's histories. Using known algorithms, he examined every word in every user's history, to show rather decisively that these two users write edit summaries more similarly than any others. The comparison of shared words makes it even more convincing—unlike Piperdown, these users shared many non-topical writing traits. Cool Hand Luke 14:48, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This pretty much is the literal nail in the coffin. Mantanmoreland is Samiharris is Mantanmoreland. I think it's in Mantanmoreland's absolute best interests, given his proven history of disruptive sockpuppetry, to answer this evidence that compared him against every established user on Wikipedia. Otherwise, I'd say he's due for an indef vacation. Lawrence § t/e 16:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Point of order: this was not a comparison with every established Wikipedia user. That data set is too large to analyze in a timely manner. The comparison is against editors with a similar level of editing activity during 2007. alanyst ^/talk/ 17:00, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alanyst, is it possible that with these three accounts (Piperdown, MM and SB) all editing certain articles, the words from the subject at hand (SEC, Byrne, Weiss, Bloomberg, Forbes) actually skewed the results, pushing all three together on that bottom chart on your data page? If the same test could be run without, say, 20 or 30 subject-specific words like that, wouldn't the result give greater weight to personal diction (rply, expanding, clarifying, distort, duplicative) and less to subject matter? In fact, I would assume that even the comparison of your final table with the results of that test would demonstrate more dramatically (in a good way!) how similar these two accounts are at the core. If, on the other hand, the test showed the closest 20 users were on the whole even closer to these two editors, it would tend to undermine this type of comparison. (I've just now mentioned this in a discussion (#3104) offsite.) What do you think? Noroton (talk) 20:41, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Forgot to mention: I'm blown away by your research. Really valuable work. Thank you so much. Noroton (talk) 20:43, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alanyst just ran the numbers. Thanks! That was fast! I'll look it over. Noroton (talk) 21:40, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what this analysis would show if the "conflict articles" were excluded entirely. There are disjoint sets of articles edited by each of these people (including those with high similarity but not thought to be GW, like Piperdown). If they use similar linguistics in topically unrelated articles, that's stronger than using similar linguistics in topically related ones. The high correlation of the two target accounts with Piperdown indicates that this test, by itself, is subject to topical-related false positives. If the correlation remains strong upon exclusion of those articles, then the topical-related connection is excluded as a sole explanation. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:12, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If the conflict articles and their talk pages were taken out, it looks like Samiharris would have perhaps less than 800 edits for the year (he was quite focused in this area as Mantanmoreland withdrew from it). That's an interesting idea though. Which articles would you put on the exclusion list? Cool Hand Luke 05:45, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good question. Hmm... As some obvious examples, Naked short selling, Patrick M. Byrne, Overstock.com ? Alternately, as a related but slightly different idea, do the same exclusion reanalysis with the exclusive OR of the set of articles Sami and Mantan edited... i.e., do they have similar edit summaries (statistically) in completely unrelated aticles.

I am afraid, looking at the current analysis, that it's actually measuring association with the conflict topics. Taking as a working assumption that Piperdown isn't a bad-hand sock of GW being used to infiltrate WR, it seems to have measured proximity to the conflict articles better than user to user similarity, for the set of editors who edit those articles... Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:02, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm no expert here, but as I read up on the Vector space model I concluded that it was primarily derived in a context of trying to match documents on the same topics for the purpose of indexing so they can be retrieved in later searches. So I'm not surprised to see that it highlights topical interest patterns. Alanyst, the person that did the research and probably understands the method best of us, said "Also, I should emphasize that even a high degree of similarity does not (at least in my mind) imply sockpuppetry necessarily. It's just one possible clue that can be reinforced or undermined by other pieces of evidence. The Piperdown result shows that shared interests can influence the similarity rankings quite a bit, so it's not just a matter of looking at rankings and crying "sockpuppet!" GRBerry 22:25, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) I agree with GRBerry. But the amount of evidence beyond this is enormous. So far, we have two accounts who:

• Edit at more similar times of day than any other editors against whom they were compared, and yet almost never edit within thirty minutes of each other.
• Use more similar edit summaries, even once these are controlled for topical words, than any other editors against whom they were compared.
• Use similar uncommon expressions.
• Edit many of the same articles, advocating many of the same positions on those articles.

Is there anything else that I've missed? It doesn't really matter; this evidence is overwhelming enough. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 22:34, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd add this: user:Lastexit was a sock used to edit Gary Weiss among other articles and user:Samiharris was a sock used to edit Gary Weiss, among other articles -- a persisting, strong pattern of past behavior. Noroton (talk) 19:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I volunteered by e-mail to add diff links to Cla68's evidence section if he wanted to provide evidence based on the content of the AFD - this was my sole involvement with such material. I did not supply him with a copy of the deleted material; he presumably found it somewhere on the web. —Random832 16:10, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While this pushes the edge of what would be acceptable, the way that Cla68 has gone about placeing the information, and your linking to the still deleted diffs, is I think fine. It may turn out to be moot, depending upon how far the committee wants to take this proceeding, but is somewhat relevant to the case purely regarding mantanmoreland (gets to motivation, and previous less than good behavior). --Rocksanddirt (talk) 16:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think this would be okay given the circumstances of the case. — Rlevse • Talk • 19:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, my post was both to explain that there was a prior agreement between myself and Cla68 allowing me to edit his evidence section, and to point out that I was not his source for the deleted material. —Random832 18:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Folks, the current pointless editwar is ridiculous and ill-befitting Wikipedia. I have a request in to the ArbCom clerk on this case for a decision. No one should be editing other people's evidence sections in the mean time. SirFozzie (talk) 17:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Folks, it's very easy to conduct this case without violating BLP. Simply make sure that any derogatory BLP evidence that is not backed up by diffs or reliable sources is forwarded to ArbCom via email. Crum375 (talk) 18:16, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While the way that this was done was disruptive and caused some drama, I do have to question why the links are necessary at this point. —Random832 18:44, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fully protected for a period of 1 hour, after which the page will be automatically unprotected. - Ok, ok. This has gone to the ridiculous. I've taken the liberty of fully protecting the evidence page for 1 hour (on the Wrong Version, as usual). Whatever's going on here - please try to resolve this on the talk page. This goes for all of you - Alison ^❤ 18:44, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Trying to suppress all links and mentions of "BADSITES" is just the sort of thing that has caused the underlying disputes to fester all this time. *Dan T.* (talk) 18:46, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't think having the Evidence page of an Arbitration case protected is a good idea. Its only one hour so probably not that big a deal and may have a productive "cool down" effect but people need to be able to present evidence eventally. If edit warring continues, it seems to me that it's going to need to be dealt with by blocks (however unappealing that might be) given that long term protection is untenable. WjBscribe 18:51, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a good idea and I let things run on for a while before slamming on the brakes. However, protection of that duration will not hinder the wheels of justice, IMO. On the contrary; 7rr or whatever was going on there certainly does - Alison ^❤ 18:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If long-term protection becomes necessary, people can write their evidence sections here and have Rlevse make the edits. —Random832 18:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, isn't the fact you Crum was edit warring alone against 4-5 others suggestive that he might have been wrong about it being a BLP violation in this context? For what it's worth, the comments about "stalking" and links to inflammatory posts on Weiss' blog don't seem to be much better. I think the case (and the project) would be best served by not editing other's evidence sections.

If we literally did not allow speculation on BLPs, then any claims of COI could be suppressed on this rationale. Cool Hand Luke 19:05, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As I noted above, any evidence or material that is not backed up by diffs or reliable sources, and may violate either privacy or BLP. should be forwarded to ArbCom via email. Posting it on talk is not acceptable, nor anywhere on WP. Crum375 (talk) 19:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone edit warring on this page, including you, should be blocked immediately. Let the Clerks do their job, and mind your place. Lawrence § t/e 19:08, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that letting the clerks do it is better, but the removal of BLP violation is not "edit warring", and is not subject to 3RR for that reason. Crum375 (talk) 19:12, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Crum, you appear to be arguing then that we can't link Byrne or Weiss' blog anywhere in this arbitration. Is this correct? So far I have not seen anyone that agrees with this position. Mackan79 (talk) 19:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When everyone disagrees with you, and Arbs and Clerks have allowed the material to stand this long, it's probably not a BLP violation. You're up to 7rr based on that. Stop disrupting Wikipedia to make a point--we know you hate one side of this dispute based on your own BLP violating comments that you escaped sanction for (Bagley "violating" wives etc). You need to watch your own BLP step. Lawrence § t/e 19:14, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

But Crum is the one-man Judge Dredd, prepared to be judge, jury, and executioner on this issue, and to heck with what anybody else thinks! *Dan T.* (talk) 19:15, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think a direct link to a page that includes unsourced derogatory material about a LP, or an outing attempt of a wikipedia editor, as is the case here, is clearly material that violates BLP and must be removed. Whether linking to a general person's blog that contains, among others, such improper material, also constitutes a BLP violation, is subject to debate. Crum375 (talk) 19:18, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I happen to know a little something about 3RR BLP violations. Crum375, since this is an ArbCom page, may I suggest that you leave it up to the ArbCom clerks and members to decide what is a violation and what isn't. Because the decision is up to them no matter what you do, isn't it? Noroton (talk) 19:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Unless you can show why this policy is wrong, it is up to any editor to remove BLP violations from anywhere on this site:

Editors should remove any contentious material about living persons that is unsourced, relies upon sources that do not meet standards specified in Wikipedia:Verifiability, or is a conjectural interpretation of a source (see Wikipedia:No original research). The three-revert rule does not apply to such removals. Content may be re-inserted only if it conforms to this policy. These principles apply to biographical material about living persons found anywhere in Wikipedia, including user and talk pages. Administrators may enforce the removal of such material with page protection and blocks, even if they have been editing the article themselves. Editors who re-insert the material may be warned and blocked. See the blocking policy and Wikipedia:Libel.

Crum375 (talk) 19:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand where and how the "biography" part of BLP comes into play here. User:Dorftroffel 19:28, February 22, 2008

Biography means writing about a person's life. On WP BLP applies to any discussion of a living person, anywhere. Crum375 (talk) 19:34, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Better shut down the ArbCom, then... pretty much all their cases are about living persons (there wouldn't be very much point to bringing one on a deceased person, would there?), and the things people have to say in the course of those cases are rarely sourced by such reliable places as The New York Times. *Dan T.* (talk) 20:11, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Crum375, several different editors, most (all) of them administrators, have concluded that your actions were wrong. My initial reaction on looking at the watchlist and seeing the protection was "WTF?". And for that link? "BFD". Nobody with a clue is going to be surprised by anything they find there, nor is Byrne doing himself any favors by posting it. But I strongly suggest Crum that you abide by Arbitration policy and edit only your own evidence section. That is why the page says right at the top in nice bold letters "do not edit in anybody else's section" and a bit later says that the Arbitrators or Clerks can remove content if needed. You are out of line in editing someone else's evidence section, no matter what content it might have in it. As to your quote, you are not removing contentious material about a living person, so it doesn't apply. And WP:IAR trumps everything. GRBerry 19:31, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying this material is not contentious? Or properly sourced? If so please show the sources. And outing attempts don't even need to meet those tests. Crum375 (talk) 19:34, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am calling the material you are removing both of the following: 1) properly sourced and 2) not contentious. All you are removing are links to blog postings. (The content on the other end of those blog posts, while no doubt motivating your misbehavior, is not the content you are removing.) Lets look at the first. Mr. Byrne says that "It is reasonably well known that Overstock.com staff including ... have believed for some time that MM is the financial columnist the current RFAR case is focused on, and that SH and MM are the same individual. An early convenient example to call upon is this entry at antisocialmedia.net [link you redact improperly] ... a more current one being [link you redact improperly]" There is nothing contentious about the statement that staff of Overstock.com believe that MM is GW; we all know that they do. And a link to a blog post by a named member of their staff is precisely a reliable source as to what that named member believed. Both of those are reliable sources for the claims being made. They may be unnecessary, and as I believe unhelpful to the poster, but they are not violations of BLP. So you are clearly in the wrong here. I am not a clerk, so I myself am unlikely to block you should you repeat this behavior - but I do think that the clerks should ban you from the case pages if you repeat it. GRBerry 19:51, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think that he actually _does_ consider the content of the blog posts to be the content he is removing, per the "linking to libel is republishing libel" principle from back in the bad old days of BADSITES. —Random832 20:01, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Any alterations of statements should be under the strict purview of clerks and maybe arbiters. How many admins/arbiters are watching these pages? Yet one person gets to unilaterally decide/interpret what constitutes a BLP violation? That's ridiculous. The blocking policy should be amended to reflect this, otherwise it's an invitation for disruption and edit warring. R. Baley (talk) 19:34, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Any editor can remove BLP violations from anywhere. The policy is clear, as quoted above. Crum375 (talk) 19:36, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are we saying BLP trumps the A.C.'s rules? Lawrence § t/e 19:39, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AC rules don't call for violating BLP, or any other WP policy. Crum375 (talk) 19:41, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section." and "If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move."

Which takes precedence if there is a conflict? Your view or the AC rules? Lawrence § t/e 19:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am not party to this dispute, have never posted about it, and don't care much about the outcome (as long as it's just, for which I trust ArbCom), so I don't have an 'evidence section.' BLP applies everywhere on this site, and that includes evidence sections, so my role here is simply to enforce that policy. Crum375 (talk) 19:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess your thoughts here were unrelated? Mackan79 (talk) 20:03, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying with a straight face you have had no postings on Bagley, including posting your own BLP violations about involved editors[14], and participated in the historical conflict[15][16]? And that you aren't involved as named in the workshop?[17] Your fly bias is open. Lawrence § t/e 20:05, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please WP:AGF. I have no stake in this dispute of whether MM is a sock of GW. The diffs you provide don't show my view in this matter or that I am a party to this case, and anyone can post anything they want in the Workshop. Crum375 (talk) 20:35, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Folks, there's at least one link calling for a Clerk or arbcom member to step in on this situation. Let's not get caught up in the "Yes it is", "No it isn't" ad nauseaum. SirFozzie (talk) 19:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. I'm concerned that someone will just resume edit warring again when protection lifts. Lawrence § t/e 19:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think BLP probably trumps any other policy we have.

That said, nobody agrees that this is a BLP violation. We link to tons of sources that happen to mention unverified details about living people; links don't generally have to maintain our standards (we rejected BADSITES, remember?) One person cannot unilatterally claim thier edit war is correcting a BLP violation. If they could, there would be no such thing as 3RR. As for outing attempts, lets not play coy here. A significant part of this case concerns the identity of Mantanmoreland and the POV wars that he's tracked in with him. Cool Hand Luke 19:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What I learned from my experiences reverting in a similar situation was that once the matter was brought to AN/I and was the subject of a consensus as to how it applied in a particular situation, I couldn't overrule that consensus just by pointing to policy. I wish somebody had explained this to me when I was at the stage you're at now, but now I'm explaining it to you. Actually, it was CHL who came by and explained it to me just a little later, and I've been grateful ever since. I see Slim Virgin recently posted some prudent advice on the WP:BLP talk page as well. Think about it. Noroton (talk) 19:51, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The clerks can't be online every minute of the day; nobody can. Let's keep this dignified. It's better to err on the side of caution where BLP is concerned, even regarding someone you don't like. No, especially regarding someone you dislike. Remember that there are other instances where BLP bumps up against possible COI, and the actions taken here are likely to set the tone for how future cases of that type get handled. I really wish anything approaching the latitude of this proceeding had been extended to me a year ago when I tried to address a long term vandalism problem. Please bear the big picture in mind. If you want this type of issue to get addressed effectively and consistently, then don't tank the effort over small stuff. Durova^Charge! 20:02, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think Random832 makes a good point at the beginning. Drama = bad. I think this was an error in judgment, and Crum has succeeded in drawing much more attention to the link than it would have gotten otherwise. It wouldn't be terrible if we let it rest. But in the future, editors should let the clerks work these things out. The disputed link had been up for hours, so this was not a case like Durova suggests. Users should not edit war under dubious claims of BLP. Cool Hand Luke 20:12, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note: the link was actually up for a day, and the better part of a second day. —Random832 20:24, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If this is the case...

Mind redacting everywhere on WP where we call WordBomb by his supposedly real life name? spryde | talk 20:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Editors who self-identify onsite may be identified by name by other editors in later discussion. Durova^Charge! 20:10, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I must have missed it when he did. I really am trying not to get involved in this but there does appear to be a double standard here. There are a ton of attacks on this site towards this Bagely guy yet those who persist with them are not sanctioned. The guy could be the nuttiest guy on the planet but we should take the high road and continue RBI rather than taunt and attack. How are the attacks on him not a BLP violation and most certainly not a violation of NPA? Honest question. spryde | talk 20:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For ease of administration, this is why I think no evidence sections should be edited. And yes, some of these cases are documented in Cla68's evidence. Cool Hand Luke 20:15, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that taking the high road is best. Let's do the right thing and ask people to refactor whenever they write something over the top about a living person. If they don't cooperate, raise the issue with a clerk. Sounds fair? Durova^Charge! 20:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. And as I say above, I think it would be fine if we take Random832's suggestion and go ahead and leave the link out. We all now know where it is anyway. Cool Hand Luke 20:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Leave it out leave it in, discussion is a waste of time, edit warring looks to prevail at this time. All it takes is for one editor to do it. R. Baley (talk) 20:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I know, but I don't think it's worth the drama. It's still in GWH's section anyway. Cool Hand Luke 20:40, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Having been up for 32 hours yesterday and then asleep through most of this... what the heck? I had the link there, because it's needed to demonstrate the off-wiki behavior of those who initiated it. If Byrne thought it was his finest hour and work, him pointing to it too is fine by me... I think it's evidence of a completely different interpretation, but that's up to Arbcom. Deleting Byrne's copy of the link but leaving mine intact doesn't make any sense to me. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:58, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Where on Wikipedia did Wordbomb say his real name? Diff please just so we're all on the same page. Lawrence § t/e 20:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

WB has admitted his identity elsewhere, and makes no secret of it (it's his handle on Wikipedia Review and Wikiback). There's nothing to protect here about his identity - it's out and open. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Crum375

As he alone is asserting this against all other editors, could we enforce his not editing this page? If nothing else, a time out for sustained and likely to continue disruption may be in order. Lawrence § t/e 20:44, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Crum: Self revert. You edited the page after it was protected and are involved in a content dispute. Lawrence § t/e 20:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fully protected for a period of 2 hours, after which the page will be automatically unprotected. - and again. Two hours this time. This whole situation is ridiculous. Please, everyone, just try to resolve the matter here, at least until a clerk or arbitrator shows up to put the record straight - Alison ^❤ 20:46, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Can we you refactor his edits that he did AFTER you protected? Lawrence § t/e 20:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And another intentional edit after protection here. Lawrence § t/e 20:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If he weren't an admin, he would have been blocked. I think that would be an appropriate means for preventing disruption from anyone who persists in this edit war going forward (on either side). Cool Hand Luke 20:47, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He's self-reverted.. and I'm firmly in Ali's camp on this. Come on guys and gals on ALL sides., this is getting beyond ridiculous. SirFozzie (talk) 20:49, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

He only reverted the last edit, not all of them. Crum: you missed this edit here that was also after protection. This is the final version before protection you need to restore to.. Lawrence § t/e 20:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) Agree with SirFozzie. Durova^Charge! 20:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Big "props" to Mr. Crum for self-reverting and restoring the links here. Crum, will you agree to stop and let the AC decide on this link's disposition? Follow up that noble act with a goodwill move to the community. Lawrence § t/e 21:02, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's odd because I find it a little absurd that Crum would reinstate the BADSITE after finding out the page had been protected. If he believes it is a BLP vio, why reinstate it? If Crum was removing as a matter of principle, why compromise those principles because of something on Wikipedia called "protecton"? It struck me as odd. daveh4h 21:04, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While 3RR is ignored for BLP issues (whatever about it's application here), edit-warring through a full-protect is an utter no-no and is often a blockable offense, whatever about being decidedly ungracious. Crum knows this and I strongly suspect he did this in error. Give him a break here - Alison ^❤ 21:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Probably becuase his BLP claims are highly subjective, while post-protection editing is black and white. Don't scorn him for his show of good faith, please. Cool Hand Luke 21:06, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Because using your admin powers to edit war is worse then just plain edit warring (and if his interpertation of the situation is correct, he's not edit warring?) 9 Reverts is bad. 9 Reverts and then being seen to use administrator powers to continue the war after page protection? Very bad. Very Very Bad. Crum made the right decision here, and now we just need to wait to hear back from ArbCom for guidance. (shoulda just typed ME TOO and pointed at CHL's statement :D) SirFozzie (talk) 21:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the "props", Lawrence, I have no intention to edit protected pages or to use admin tools improperly. As far as letting AC handle this, I agree that AC clerks (or arbs) should ideally remove BLP violations from AC pages, but as Durova noted above, they are not patrolling the site 24x7, and it is not their primary function. Admins, and established editors, should help out with BLP violations, as they occur anywhere on the site. That some editors may disagree with what constitutes a BLP violation is not unusual — the correct solution is to presume removal initially, and then gain consensus among admins to restore the offensive material, if that can be done, per WP:BLP. In AC cases, the material can be emailed to them, so they don't miss it in any case. Crum375 (talk) 21:10, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't you mean consensus among editors, Crum? Administrators have tools, editors come to consensus about content - isn't that how it works? Risker (talk) 22:03, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If no admin action is needed (e.g. to undelete material), then yes, editors alone can decide it. But it has to be a wide consensus, and include careful considerations of the BLP aspects. Asking for input from frequent contributors to all BLP policy would also make sense if there is any doubt or dispute. Crum375 (talk) 22:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think you miss my point, Crum. Editorial (content) decisions are supposedly made by editors. The fact that some of those editors are administrators is immaterial; at least that is what everyone keeps telling us when they say "adminship is no big deal." Of course, you may be correct and every action taken by an administrator should be considered an administrative action, but then that removes the separation of administrative and editorial actions, and indicates that administrators could have their additional permissions removed for strictly editorial actions. I don't see much of a middle ground here. Risker (talk) 23:00, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You may be missing my point. This is not an admin vs. non-admin issue. The point is that if there is already some technical reason an admin is needed, e.g. the page is protected, or the material is deleted, then admins would need to be involved. In any case, wide consensus is needed to restore contentious BLP material if there is dispute about the reliability of its sourcing, and input from BLP regulars would be important too. Crum375 (talk) 23:13, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, on concensus deciding. After you removed it several times, consensus on this page clearly showed it was fine, so you should have stopped removing it thus. In the future, you'll have learned to respect consensus on BLP issues even if you disagree with the outcome for now, like here. Either way, lets move on. Lawrence § t/e 21:12, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Um, clerks don't need to be on duty 24-7. That link was up for over 24 hours. If you thought it was a problem you could have asked User:PatrickByrne or a clerk. If you wanted to immediately edit war, you could have tried to convince somebody—anybody—else that it was indeed a BLP violation. We can and do block people when they edit war against multiple parties under dubious claims of BLP. You edited against 5-6 other editors who clearly did not think such a link was a BLP violation. Don't do that again. Cool Hand Luke 21:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Even when a clerk isnt onduty, you could have sought assistance from another uninvolved editor via the BLP noticeboard. Also, if the attention of another clerk is needed, a note on the clerks noticeboard would do the trick. John Vandenberg (talk) 23:10, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

see User_talk:Rlevse#Request_.28RE:Mantanmoreland_and_BLP.29. I hope this knowledge forestalls any more edit wars.. FROM ANY SIDE. SirFozzie (talk) 20:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

STOP

Most of this went on while I was at work and unable to watch it. I appreciate the efforts of others to control this. I've reported it to the arbs and they will decide as a group about what to do about this. On the one hand there's the policy of "don't edit someone else's section" and then there's the BLP side. However, I have to admit I am not so sure that many of the removed edits, especially those that were just external links, were in fact BLP violations. For now, until the arbs rule on this, EVERYONE STOP REMOVING THINGS THAT ARE NOT YOUR OWN EDITS AND STOP ADDING ANY BLP MATERIAL. — Rlevse • Talk • 21:01, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've extended the page's protection for two days as the arbs need more than a few hours to resolve this. ONLY ARBS OR CLERKS (including official listed clerk helpers) SHOULD EDIT THE EVIDENCE PAGE UNTIL THIS IS RESOLVED. — Rlevse • Talk • 21:08, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How is anyone going to present evidence if the page is locked? Instead, shouldn't Crum375 be blocked? Cla68 (talk) 21:55, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Full brakes are needed in this situation. If anyone, including admins, violates the protection, except for non-recused arbs and clerks, I will in all liklihood block them. This does not apply to the edit Random832 just made to update the protection length notice. I am not blocking anyone at this moment as I feel the situation has some semblance of control. If the arbs want to allow more evidence addition right now, they can unprotect, as for people not being able to do so for a short time, a lesson for all to learn from. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:09, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I agree with Cla that simply blocking Crum would have done the job and sent a better message. BLP or no, he just kept reverting instead of discussing on the talk page. Bad precedent. User:Dorftroffel 02:27, February 23, 2008

I tend to disagree.. it may have sent a better message, but I think the effect would not have lessened the drama.. in fact, it would have ratcheted it up into the stratosphere. Also, while one could possibly argue that Crum had problems AGF of the original poster, no one can argue that Crum375 doesn't have a good-faith belief that what he was doing IS validated by policy. The safer thing would have been to let things slide and not revert Crum over and over and over again, until the clerks and the ArbCom could speak on the issue. I asked a couple people to stop (which they did) and more folks just came to take their place. SirFozzie (talk) 03:30, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've spent most of the last year fighting against the many attempts to impose the idiotic BADSITES policy, so there's no way I'm going to stand by and let somebody sneak it in the back door by calling it "BLP". *Dan T.* (talk) 03:53, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The bottomline is that everything was very calm and civilised until he showed up today. The intellectual gesture of actually thinking it could be useful to remove those links, and to revert 8 times, is clear-cut evidence of incapacity. It shouldn't require someone to get reverted 8 times in all, by 5 different people (including the anon, but also two admins) to realise that it's wrong to continue and that he should immediately leave it to the clerks and arbitrators. Also, the fact that the removed links are known to everyone is no argument in either direction, and since the links were already in there, he should have just let them stand without avoidably stirring up all this dust, demonstrating nothing but total disregard for the process. He introduced needless drama and demonstrated his willingness to continue. All of today's drama was introduced by him alone, starting somewhere between his fourth and eighth revert. I would have quickly blocked him for 3 hours just to get him to talk in the first place. The worst part is: He got his way. Not meaning that I cry for those links. To hell with them, everybody knows them. But bullying prevailed. It was sort of a test, and the admins failed. User:Dorftroffel 08:15, February 23, 2008

Just to clarify, two of the three links Crum375 was working to delete remain in the text; the two in the evidence of GeorgeWilliamHerbert are currently present, while the one from the evidence of PatrickByrne remains deleted. As Dorftrottel points out, it is more or less a moot point since everyone knows the links, although one cannot help notice the irony of having the link in GWH's evidence but not in the evidence of the author of the blog referred to in the link. Unfortunately, this silliness points to a weakness in the BLP policy that leaves it wide open to this kind of abuse, and the result is more likely to be a tightening of the policy - probably the opposite effect that Crum375 intended. Risker (talk) 15:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For one thing, the provision exempting BLP issues from 3RR ought to go... it's too subject to abuse by edit warriors. At a minimum, it should not apply to disputes with multiple good-faith editors in good standing on the other side (as opposed to vandals and sockpuppets). *Dan T.* (talk) 16:28, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it is. Normally, when an edit warrior reverts four different users including two admins, and then continues single-handedly, we take it as a rough consensus that there is no BLP violation. We block non-admins for doing this under the pretext of all the time. Crum shouldn't do it again. Cool Hand Luke 17:06, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

<-- User:Crum375 is trying to single-handedly (?) reinstate a flawed implementation of the BADSITES policy. User:Crum375 ought to be subject to severest admonition from apologise to the arbs. in my opinion, he has insulted them, and this forum. Perhaps user:Crum375 feels invincible, now that the meat-puppet thread at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive371#User Crum meat puppeting at LAYOUT has been archived? DIFF and links to AN/I Newbyguesses - Newbyguesses - Talk 09:23, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This was not constructive. Please don't lower the level of discourse by unnecessarily dramatizing the situation. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 10:38, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If that is your opinion, User:GWH, then I apologise, and i will tone it down. in fact, in line with an excellent suggestion, i will say no more. Newbyguesses - Talk 12:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've just seen what was restored here, that the links were replaced in GWH's section but not Patrick Byrne's. Can we please reassess this? It would be one thing if we were strictly limiting reference to any off-wikipedia allegations from either side in this arbitration, but we clearly aren't, and people's perceptions on that dispute are being presented as relevant. Considering commentary on "amanuensis," etc., I think it would be much better to simply let Byrne present his side himself. Following that, Wikipedians can focus on Wikipedia's appropriate response rather than themselves trying to represent the dispute. Mackan79 (talk) 18:48, 23 February 2008 (UTC) (Added: I also missed Rlevse say ArbCom was going to rule on it, which is fine with me.) Mackan79 (talk) 19:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it is a question of bias.

[Revision as of 11:27, 24 February 2008 (edit) (undo)

Revision as of 10:41, 24 February 2008 (edit) (undo)

Revision as of 00:26, 24 February 2008 (edit) (undo)

Revision as of 11:51, 22 February 2008 (edit) (undo)

Newbyguesses (talk · contribs) 19:45, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Replyb to u:Durova

The clerks can't be online every minute of the day; nobody can. agree nbg

It's better to err on the side of caution where BLP is concerned, even regarding someone you don't like. hmmm nbg

the actions taken here are likely to set the tone for how future cases of that type get handled. complete bollocks says nbg

Please bear the big picture in mind. note

If you want this type of issue to get addressed effectively and consistently, then don't tank the effort over small stuff. note

Newbyguesses (talk · contribs) 20:00, 20:26, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Full support

Although I hate to see an arbitration evidence page protected, it's even more important to put the breaks on a situation that was getting out of hand. Let's all support Rlevse here. It wouldn't be a good thing for anyone if this degenerated into a circus. Durova^Charge! 21:25, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Today was a day that did none of us any good, did it? SirFozzie (talk) 21:29, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Strongly agree Let's support Rlevse. Noroton (talk) 02:06, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• This editor strongly supports any actions the clerk may make to curtail an edit-war, and restore the tone of what had been up to now quite a civil debate.

Notwithstanding that, I consider User:Crum375's attidude incomprehensible. Is Crum375 an admin, who should know better? USER:Crum375, if there were any questions, you should have brought them to this talk page, before starting a pointless edit war. That sort of action should get an ordinary user blocked, if they did not have friends, or allies, in high places. User:Crum has not even offered evidence here to date. User:Crum375 is disrupting proceedings . I would ask User:CRUM375 to Stop it, but it already has resulted in page protection. Newbyguesses - Talk 08:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wha'?!?

I might just have to block myself for a few minutes for even being slightly involved in all this nonsense - and I haven't edited this page recently! C'mon, people, get a grip! Until very recently this was as good a conducted ArbCom as there has recently been. Let's try to carry on as before! Please. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:43, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Strongly agree (not that you should block yourself ...) Noroton (talk) 02:08, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NOTE to clerk Newbyguesses - Talk 11:17, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Has anyone attempted contacting Gary Weiss? He should be very surprised of all this and may want to comment. User:Dorftroffel 19:32, February 23, 2008

I don't think he'd be surprised at all. He knows a lot about Wikipedia, and even about this particular claim. Cool Hand Luke 19:42, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, most links to this site appear to be BLP violations according to Crum's definition: links to sites containing unverified defamatory information. That said, this application of BLP is clearly wrong, so I don't want anyone to try to suppress my links. Thanks. Cool Hand Luke 19:48, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Let's not pursue on-wiki the discussion concerning contacting this or any identified real-world individual. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:51, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ok then, but other RL players have commented here already. User:Dorftroffel 19:54, February 23, 2008

To begin, it seems to me that Wikipedia’s problems here derive, as usual, from its mania to include data about semi-notable live people and semi-notable functional corporations (which I DEFINE as those not notable enough for the Britannica). Live people and live corporations “big” enough for inclusion in a paper encyclopedia, are also “big” enough to have pretty thick skins, and aren’t subject to abuse by temporary POV imbalance in the process of writing about them. Nor are they really hurt by negative side reporting, since everybody expects some of that for (say) a president of the US, or Ford Motor Company, or whatever. Again, the paper encyclopedia inclusion criterion serves FINE as a distinction between what can safely be in Wikipedia for “live” things with reputations.

Ignoring this criterion will inevitably lead to exactly the kind of trouble we’re seeing here, on all levels, from writing about a corporation which hasn’t even made a profit (Overstock), to speculating about a journalist who hasn’t won the Pulitzer, and is surely not notable to be included in the Britannica. So, we shoot ourselves in the foot by allowing potshots at small-fry here, because small fry can get very, very angry, and the non-WP internet/blogs provides them with a sting, all out of proportion to their importance.

Now, for the mechanism of how we hurt ourselves, if it’s not already obvious from the above: In order to deal with the thin-skinned semi-notable live legal-entities, in WP we have instituted epecially draconian interpretations of WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:V. Supposedly this ought to be enough to take care of the problem, according to, er, revealed scripture. Why it will NOT do so, unfortunately, is illustrated neatly by the present case. Sometimes, semi-notable people and semi-notable companies do bad things (gasp!). Sometimes those things are WP:V, even if they wouldn’t make it into the Britannica. However, they can’t be used in WP without hurting feelings and people, so there’s bound to be war if we use them. Second, some of the bad things that the semi-notable do, are bad things ON Wikipedia, by Wikipedia internal standards (socks, vandals, POV-pushing, whatever), and Wikipedia exists in the real world. It’s impossible to deal with some of these things by Wikicop standards, because they inevitably connect back to real names in the real world, where semi-notable corporations and people are protected by BLP (for people) and extra-stringent WP:NOR and V rules for companies. Thus, a real semi-notable person (or a corporate PR representative, for that matter) may travel around the world in a WP:V way, vandalizing or socking Wikipedia at every stop, and there’s not much that can be done by WP, unless the accounts are connected to a real name. And even doing so requires violation of NOR, and V and it requires violation of the letter of BLP. So, we’re stuck. Protecting the encyclopedia is such situations requires WP:IAR, but it really shouldn’t NEED to, because the basic problems are of the encyclopedia’s own making. We start with a failed policy.

Leave these thin-skinned semi-notables alone! Generally ONLY mention them by name, when they can be conntected with actions which are WIKI-crimes, but not otherwise. Presently, our policy is to only say good things about people if that’s all that can be supported by WP:V (even if they appear to be Wikicriminials, WP isn’t a V source); and we allow WP editors to puff, fluff, or dump on semi-notable companies as they can find WP:V sources for it in real world print from people with bias, even if these companies are leaving Wikipedia alone. That’s bad policy. We should leave these semi-notables alone (for the good or bad, even if there’s WP:V info on them) UNTIL they harm Wikipedia, and then deal with them by name if we have to, to the extent of fixing the damage to WP. However, if we adopt a paper-encyclcpedia-only notability criterion for all this, we’ll avoid from the beginning, all the wars over the real-world reputations of semi-notable corps and people. That leaves only ordinary vandals, and most of these company PR people and the journalists who deride them, have better things to do if Wikipedia has no horse in their private race.

So, the short message is that WP policy thinks that strict WP:NOR, BLP, V, and NPOV will be enough for WP work on semi-notable people and semi-notable companies who are thin-skinned enough to be hurt. And that policy is just flat wrong. Sorry. Time to rethink it. SBHarris 21:02, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Correction. The Holy Hand Grenade of "Notability" (the guideline, not the concept) is how Wikipedia blows its leg off. No comment on the rest. — CharlotteWebb 21:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Very interesting. This is worth reposting on its own page as an essay, because others should read this after this case is archived. In my gut, I don't agree with it, but it's definitely worth thinking about. Noroton (talk) 21:16, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with some of the issues but prefer a different solution. First, needs a clear threshold. Second, a lot of people want their companies and biographies to be listed in Wikipedia. So my preference goes to courtesy deletion upon request unless the individual is notable enough to be in a paper and ink encyclopedia. Not necessarily Britannica, but any encyclopedia from a reputable publisher. David Bowie is sure to be in the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock Music, but his bass player from 27 years ago probably isn't. So we'll cover both of them, because they're both verifiable, but if the bass player wants to opt out we'll let him. If Bowie wants out? Sorry dude, you're staying in; there's a price to being a rock star. Durova^Charge! 23:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

27 years ago Bowie was in a bit of a lull between his last great album (Scary Monsters) and the first and best of his long mediocre period (Let's Dance), so it's hard to say who his bassist was at that point, but if Trevor Bolder is not in the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock Music then I'm gonna throw a shit-fit.

Elegant essay there Sbharris but I don't think raising the bar on bios will keep people large or small from pursuing their interests in, on, and through Wikipedia. Even if there were no articles on Gary Weiss or Patrick M. Byrne, our boys would still be shaking their thing over on Naked short selling.--G-Dett (talk) 23:23, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• ANSWER: Oh, of course. As people fight over any matter which is of interest to them. But remove personal-personal references, and it all gets less… personal. For example, a war on an article on Naked short selling could be partly diffused by deleting or minimizing references to named people and named companies in the main article body. That would leave the thing free of the best specific examples, except in the refs and links, but still workable. Likewise, it diffuses a lot of tension in any contentious article to remove names of major human players in the main article, and offload them to the reference list. That all makes people feel less threatened, and less threatened people are less likely to declare war. And we've been through the rest before in Wikiwars over ethnic groups and religions and alternative medicine and conspiracy theories and so on. It's all not quite as horrid as what we're seeing here, and we already have developed ways to fix it. As a last resort for binary views (is this religion or theory true), a POV-fork pair of articles, one pro, one con, each with a short summary and link to the other, is perfectly within policy. If it can be done for Apollo Moon Landing hoax theories, it can be done for anything. This is not a fix for wikiwars, just the particularly bad ones that spill over onto attack blogs. I think we can actually avoid many of these.

  Durova: Yes, the dead tree standard rules. Any reputable paper set. And yes, we'll have a few semi-notables who want to be included and waive their opt out, and we can allow them their neutral Who's Who type thing, until they either die or make an enemy who wants to stick in some WP:V dirt, whichever comes first. That may force an opt-out for the semi-notables, but I never said this was a perfect solution, just a BETTER solution. Some semi-notable people and companies which are harmless and non-controversial, will never have to bail out (really-- they exist). For them, and us, it's win-win. For the rest, at least when they do bail we're rid of them and the hornets' nest that comes with them. For the truly famous the hornet's nest is well orchestrated on both sides, and again we (and they) have already learned to deal with it. SBHarris 23:55, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How many BLPs does Britannica have? Noroton (talk) 00:12, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know and can't find out. I can tell you that it existed from 1768, but didn't include ANY BLPs until 1911 in the 11th edition. It's up to 15th edition now (1974, reorganized in 1985). So it's out of date badly on the BLPs. Length is roughly 40 million words and 500,000 topics, of which 17% are bio, so figure roughly 85,000 bios. Only a small fraction can be living people, even living in 1985 (but since then, obviously many gone). So I'd guess-- 10,000 or less. SBHarris 00:29, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not Britannica and should not look to Britannica as any standard at all. We have our own quite reasonable definition of notability, and to move to the deletionist standard you suggest would mean excluding most of our content, effectively destroying the project. Everyking (talk) 19:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Come, now. I hope you're not claiming that most of Wikipedia's content consists of bios of living people, and profiles of active companies, that wouldn't get into another encyclopedia. If that's true, we truly are in a sad way. I personally spend most of my time editing articles on the sciences, medicine, and some stuff about the Wild West where everybody's long dead. So that's my perspective. I see a lot of pop-culture stuff, but it's mostly Simpsons episodes summaries and the like. None of this kind of thing would be affected. The only stuff that would be affected is the stuff you would go bananas about, if it personally was done to YOU and YOUR company, under YOUR real name, without YOUR permission. So please try to imagine harder. Heck, I'm editing here under my real world identity, and you're not even doing THAT. So what's the problem? Wikipedia is composed of mostly anonymous aditors and administrators who take no personal responsiblity for public actions, who seem bent on OUTING for the general net any obscure WP:V fact about any living person and any corporation they can think of, who makes it into the papers and can't limbo under the WP:NOTE guidelines (and the bar is even lower for corporations). This is just SICK. How come everybody here doesn't see that it's sick?? Talk about double standards! Well, you pay for those. Karma. SBHarris 20:35, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

NON_NOTABILITY

Response to NOTABILITY by SBHarris

21:06, 23 February 2008 Sbharris Notability: how Wikipedia shoots itself in the foot) 21:06, 23 February 2008 Sbharris (Talk | contribs) m (161,993 bytes) (→Notability: how Wikipedia shoots itself in the foot) (undo)

I find myself in general agreement with User:SBHarris. Weiss and Bagley may be slightly well-known figures in some circles in the USA, but world-wide they are about as notable as belly-lint (fluff). This undecorous battle of Lilliputians is the equivalent of a back-yard or over-the-back-fence dispute between two suburban nobodies, and we all know how much importance and sensible conversation is likely to accrue in such a situation. Even the police would be too bored to attend. Domestic arguments are the pits, that is well known to all law enforcement officers.

For an example of another article, or (soon, maybe) set of articles that is completely worthless to an encyclopedia try Kirkwood City Council shooting. WP is NOT A NEWSPAPER, nor should en.WP be simply a creative writing workshop for violence-obsessed ghouls, and perpetrators of UrbanMyths.

As an example of a BLP article on a notable subject, that is, one which would deserve an entry in a real encyclopedia, (of Music), you can look at Bad Boy Records; of course, it quite likely has other massive, problems, of [COI] but at least the subject is notable. And see a related BLP article, Sean Combs, aka the artist formerly known as PuffDaddy. Notable, yes, contentious, ditto. And possibly a bigger crook or "gangsta", than Weiss, according to Reliable sources available either in the article or at a LIBRARY.

Books are the real currency of information and knowledge, there is too much rubbish on-line that many people appear to take as gospel, especially paltry so-called "outings" and "attacks". Dont read it, and go write an encyclopedia! Ignore all fools. A computer screen is not the bible, just, usually, some person's opinion, presented as dazzling pixels. Infatuation with the latest toys is a well-known trait of adolesvcent males, ie. the majority of those who go on-line regularly, and a large segment of the WP editor pool. Ignore all fools.

(post-haste)Newbyguesses - Talk 01:09, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

from User talk:WordBomb

Mantanmoreland's threat

and the very next edit is by Mantanmoreland's sock

Let's see what wordbomb had to say.

protected

The /Evidence page is protected. I believe this material is acceptable, it is only DIFFs, and thus is verifiable, and definitely ON-WIKI. Would the clerk please add this to my evidence #Newbyguesses if that is in order, f i cannot add it myself, thanks. Newbyguesses (talk · contribs) 12:12, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{editprotected}}

 Not done Neither I nor any other admin has any intention of getting themselves blocked by editing this page. If the arbitrators want more evidence, they will unprotect the page so that it can be added. Happy‑melon 17:50, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is a request to the clerk, rather than a sysop. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:03, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As these are onwiki diffs, I've added them. — Rlevse • Talk • 21:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would also like to add evidence—from the heading below. Cool Hand Luke 08:53, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Incidentally, can some one tell me what evidence connected Poetlister and Runcorn with those socks? I see the original report on Newport and two related, but I can't find evidence on Runcorn and Poetlister. It seems the only publicly posted similarities are their consistent votes together, which seems like weird evidence. One would expect editors with similar philosophy to !vote together, so I didn't even consider listing this. If the Committee considers this is convincing evidence, we should make a similar table for these two—I don't think they've ever disagreed with each other anywhere.

Note, I don't have any agenda here. I'm unfamiliar with prior cases, and I'm just trying to figure out what prior cases might have that this one lacks. Cool Hand Luke 09:37, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is that a rhetorical question or do you really need a primer? In few other cases have the ruling cliche at wikipedia prematurely stepped into the swamp and pulled a foot up all muddy. But in this one, they did. So, standards are now going to be higher. I doubt if you'll get past them no matter how many stats you run, but it's fun to watch. Also, this is a cultural thing. Neither side likes the other's smell or politics. Wikipedia is run by bicoastal wine-drinkers who wouldn't be caught dead in one of those heartland states that starts with a vowel. Weiss is a NewYorker. SlimV is Canadian/Brit. Wikipedia is headed from Florida toward San Francisco, and they dang sure aren't going to stop in Idaho on the way. None of them give two craps about what happens to a bunch of yahoos running a company in the creosote bushes around Salt Lake City, that's for sure. And until the Mormon crap hit the fan, it would have stayed nice and peaceful with David Gerrard having blocked the whole bunch of them. But blogs are here, so it's not so easy. Mormons can use computers, even when ousted from Wikipedia. Drat. And that's the word. SBHarris 21:02, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What the heck? Cool Hand Luke 21:18, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and if any WR types are reading this, I checked all seven accounts listed below, and like MM/SH, they edited in solid blocks. Between all of them and over 10,000 edits combined, 30 minute interleaving occurred only 16 time on 14 days:

• 4/23/2007 22:49 Newport
  4/23/2007 22:44 Runcorn
  4/23/2007 22:36 Newport
  4/23/2007 22:35 Newport
  4/23/2007 22:30 Newport
  4/23/2007 22:28 Newport
  4/23/2007 22:24 Runcorn
• 2/15/2007 22:38 Runcorn
  2/15/2007 22:35 R613vlu
  2/15/2007 22:35 R613vlu
  2/15/2007 22:20 Runcorn
• 1/31/2007 23:07 Runcorn
  1/31/2007 23:00 Brownlee
  1/31/2007 22:58 Brownlee
  1/31/2007 22:44 Runcorn
• 12/28/2006 22:07 Runcorn
  12/28/2006 22:00 Taxwoman
  12/28/2006 21:29 Taxwoman
  12/28/2006 21:21 Runcorn
  12/28/2006 21:04 Taxwoman
  12/28/2006 20:49 Runcorn
• 12/21/2005 20:36 Poetlister
  12/21/2005 20:17 Taxwoman
  12/21/2005 20:15 Newport
• 12/20/2005 18:14 Londoneye
  12/20/2005 18:03 Newport
  12/20/2005 18:00 Taxwoman
• 12/19/2005 12:54 Londoneye
  12/19/2005 12:50 Taxwoman
  12/19/2005 12:49 Taxwoman
  12/19/2005 12:43 Poetlister
• 12/16/2005 (just listing days for simplicity...)
• 12/15/2005
• 12/11/2005
• 12/02/2005
• 11/20/2005
• 11/10/2005
• 8/11/2005

This case is exactly analogous—open proxies were used, and only 5 examples of interleaving within 30 minutes. Recall that comparison accounts with similar numbers of edits to SH/MM had 28-41 overlaps, with multiple back-and-forth edits on days when both were simultaneously online. Neither this case, nor the Runcorn case has any examples of such back-and-forth.

I'm therefore confident that all of the Runcorn accounts were in fact socks, but I would still like to know the evidence proffered. Cool Hand Luke 10:29, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

[evidence moved to page]

The 2-day protection of the main evidence page has ended. I have not received any more instructions from the arbs, so I will say this:

• Do not edit someone else's evidence section (unless you're an arb or a clerk). If you think something needs removed, ask the person first, then myself or an arb. This applies to BLP issues also.
• Some wondered why I did not block Crum375. The reason is basicially that I felt it would not solve the situation, as SirFozzie also commented to that affect. When others backed off, others then joined in.
• Let's move forward in as peaceful a manner as possible. — Rlevse • Talk • 21:20, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update. If the arbs do not intend to rule, I would like to see what consensus is on whether it should be returned to Byrne's section. I don't think it is appropriate to remove it from Byrne's section (while stating that it is a link "to" a "BLP violation" as if external sites can themselves violate our policies), but to leave it in GWH's section. Maybe a calmer discussion could resolve the issue. Mackan79 (talk) 21:32, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that Byrne's link was there for a full day in plain view before anyone removed appears to show that it was ok for it to be there. Request Rlevse add it back since he asked that no one edit someone else's evidence section. Cla68 (talk) 21:34, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, esp since BADSITES was rejected by the community, I feel that if all wiki has is a link to an offwiki site that in itself would be a BLP vio if it were onwiki, it's okay to link to it as long as the BLP info isn't onwiki itself. That is my personal opinion and I'm open to discussion on the matter. I agree with Cla68 that we shouldn't have such links in one section but removed from another. So I'll put them back. — Rlevse • Talk • 21:43, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The arbitrators are generally aware of the external sites that have included lots of discussions relevant to this case. Unless there is a specific link containing an item of highly relevant information not already mentioned on the evidence page, we probably do not need any more links to these sites. I am not saying that such links are prohibited, but unless (as I said) they contain new and important information, they are not worth arguing about in the context of helping the arbitrators decide this case. Thanks, Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:00, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, we'll go with that. Thanks for the input. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:05, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Several Wikipedians have now written me thanking me for the back-story on Gary Weiss tht I publisheed on my blog, DeepCapture. They say it has let them take this whirlwind of disjointed facts and fit them into a coherent story. I linked to that backstory, which included a brief explanation of the weird relationship between SlimVirgin and me. Much to my suprise, I learned that Wikipedelites like SlimVirgin can write (or enable others) to write nonsense about me, but I cannot write the truth about them, either within Wikipedia or on a site linked to from Wikipedia. How utterly unexpected. Or not.

In any case, here is the backstory on Gary Weiss, bowdlerized to conform to Wikipedia's selectively-enforced standards, but retaining a great many links to evidence all readers of this page will find interesting. I have every expectation that this will be censored (but another thing I have is two journalists watching to see what I have been talking about).

I now turn to Gary Weiss. In a series of brilliant investigations, Judd Bagley, a reporter-investigator-technologist friend of mine (and more recently, I am proud to say, a colleague) studied the IP footprints Gary’s computers have left scattered across the Internet for over a decade, and posted his extraordinary analyses of them on his cleverly-titled site, "Antisocialmedia.net". Judd's posts are as disturbing with regard to what they reveal about our society’s discourse, as they are regarding the activities of Gary himself.

It is a complex story that I recount below in as clear and straightforward a manner as I can muster. The best way for me to do that is to break it into 7 short stories. Embedded within each are links to carefully documented research . I respectfully suggest the reader try to understand these as individual stories, before synthesizing them into one complete picture.

In case you get lost in the telling, however, here is the take-away:

Gary Weiss, formerly a reporter with BusinessWeek and currently a columnist at Forbes, has actually spent over a decade posting under a variety of fake names on Usenet groups, stock message boards such as Yahoo!, and on Wikipedia, in a remarkable attempt to confuse, distort, and hijack social media so as to cover-up criminal activity.

#1) Gary's start in social media

Gary started with simple Usenet group postings [18]" in the mid 1990's, often making productive contributions to newsgroups devoted to matters Judaic. However, as this analysis shows[19], by the late 1990's Gary had become a chronic "sock-puppeter," that is, he maintained a stable of identities and personalities under which he could post in order to steer conversations to his ends (Gary even posted anti-Semitic statements that he could then respond to under other names). Another user caught Gary red-handed and confronted him. Establishing a pattern that would become Gary's hallmark, when he was caught red-handed Gary Weiss practiced the "deny-deny-deny-then-disappear" school of personal responsibility.

Another pattern of Gary's emerged as well: that of accusing anyone who disagrees with him about anything as being anti-Semitic. One person whom he has accused of hundreds of times of anti-Semitism complained to the Anti-Defamation League. Showing immense class, the ADL looked into it all and dismissed Gary out-of-hand[20]. Notwithstanding this, Gary continues to level this allegations (under the assumption, presumably, that he understands anti-Semitism better than the ADL).

#2) Gary's manipulation of Amazon reviews

For years Gary posted numerous reviews on Amazon praising his own books and trashing the work of other business journalists[21]. While Gary's sock-puppets trash other journalists (e.g., Charles Gasparino), there is one journalist whom he never bashes, but whom he uses his sock-puppets to promote: Jim Cramer. Hilariously, though they were supposed to be the work of various disinterested strangers, Gary's sock-puppets' glowing Amazon reviews of his own work began disappearing as soon as Judd began exposing Gary's methods[22].

#3) Gary goes beserk against another journalist and that journalist' wife at the United Nations

The following remarkable history is recounted, with thorough documentation, on these two posts: [23] [24].

a) Ian Williams, a British journalist, was president of the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) and UN correspondent for The Nation. Mr. Williams' wife, a BBC World Service journalist (and native of Uzbekestan), also held a position within the UNCA.

b) Gary's wife (an Indian national holding herself out as a correspondent for the Indian newspaper The Pioneer of India) applied to work within the United Nations Correspondents Association. To be admitted to the UNCA she had to demonstrate that she was in fact a journalist who covered the UN. Towards that end she submitted copies of her stories from the front page of The Pioneer of India, along with a letter from The Pioneer's editor, Chandan Mitra, attesting to her employment there. On that basis she was admitted to the UNCA and began working in the UN offices in Manhattan.

c) Gary's wife coveted the UNCA position above her that was then held by Ian Williams' wife. Gary attempted to dislodge Ian Williams' wife from that position by claiming that Mrs. Williams had lied in order to get her visa to enter the US, so as to create an opening which his own (Gary's) wife could take. Gary's allegations proved false.

d) Journalists at the UNCA noticed that the stories which Gary's wife was regularly submitting from The Pioneer to document her ongoing UN coverage were of identical size and location on the front page of The Pioneer. A bit of investigation proved that they were all forged, and had been photo-shopped on a computer. The Pioneer was contacted, and its Editor Chandan Mitra stated [25] that Mrs. Weiss had "never been engaged by The Pioneer for any purpose," his signature on her documentation was "an outright forgery," as was the letterhead upon which it had been generated. Simply put, Gary's wife was a fake : she never was a reporter for The Pioneer of India. Gary's wife's UN credentials were revoked and she was escorted from UN premises under armed guard.

e) Within days of the exposure of Gary's wife and her being escorted out of the UN, Gary was on Amazon writing reviews under the name "Ted Dichtler" trashing Ian Williams' work, and within 30 days, had founded "Mediacrity," a blog putatively devoted to media criticism, but actually largely engaged in (anonymously) hammering away at journalist Ian Williams for being "a fourth rate hack" and continuing the demonstrably false smears against Ian Williams' wife.

f) It should also be noted that when confronting a man on a Usenet group, Gary posted that man's wife's name and home address [26]. Pretty sleazy (although the man in question was a bigot, I think good manners demand that one not get even with a guy by revealing his wife's name and address). In contradistinction to Gary, however, Judd, ever the gentleman, wrote:

"AntiSocialMedia.net has issues with Gary Weiss, not his wife. As it happens, one of the more startling examples of abuse of social media we’ve discovered anywhere and the central theme of this, the third part of this series on Gary Weiss - cannot be told without making reference to that relationship. However, because her identity is ultimately not material to this situation, we shall only refer to her as 'Mrs. Weiss' (though Weiss is not her real last name) and have set this site’s comment filter to immediately reject any comments that contain either her first or last name. Comments containing any other personally identifying information belonging to Mrs. Weiss will be immediately deleted and the commenter barred from further use of this site." I will follow the same principle here on DeepCapture.

g) Besides the general zaniness of the story, there are some take-aways from this:

i) Gary had accused Mrs. Williams of lying to get her visa, but those accusations were false. Gary did this while Gary's own wife was forging her credentials, which credentials were the basis of her own employment in the US. Thus, Gary and his own wife were engaged in the act of which they were falsely accusing another journalist's wife. That takes a special kind of sociopathy (i.e., the kind who could post anti-Semitic comments while continuously accusing others of anti-Semitism).

ii) What was Mrs. Weiss doing for those years when she was given access to the UN, under the guise of being a correspondent for The Pioneeer of India?

#4) Gary manipulates stock message boards

Gary also stays busy posting thousands of times per year on stock message boards, as this remarkable piece by Judd exposes [27]. Gary's stock message board sock-puppeting and "bashing" involves switching among 6 sock-puppets while going at it for 24 hours at a stretch in a remarkable display of intensity and duration. What an odd "hobby." Curiously, the stocks with which he concerns himself generally mirror the positions of Jim Cramer, Roddy Boyd, Bethany McLean, Herb Greenberg, Carol Remond, etc.

If only there were a pattern…

#5) Gary Weiss: The Prequel

At this point you are probably wondering, "Who is Gary Weiss?" Allow me to give you seven pieces of background, a-g.

a) In the 1990’s, Gary made a name for himself with a BusinessWeek series exposing the Italian Mob (in in particular, the Gambino Crime Family) and its infiltration of Wall Street. Bravo. But he relied heavily on two sources. One journalist who interviewed them told me that after debriefing them, and examining materials they supplied, "I can safely say that Gary Weiss built his career in the 1990’s just typing up whatever two sources gave him."

b) In the mid-1990’s a Forbes reporter based in Russia named "Paul Klebnikov" wrote an expose called, "The Godfather of the Kremlin?" [28] about an alleged Russian Mafia figure named "Boris Berezovsky."

c) In 1999 Al Chalem and Laier Lehmann, two New Jersey stockbrokers operating a New Jersey securities firm called "Harbor Securities," were executed in a New Jersey mansion. The same two sources who had supplied Gary so much other material presented him with evidence that this time it was not the Italian Mafia, but the Russian Mafia, and in particular, Boris Berezovsky. Gary then ran a story that (they maintained) fabricated everything they had told him in an attempt to divert attention from Russian involvement and focus it on (in this case non-existent) Italian Mob involvement. One of Gary's sources actually sued Gary in an attempt to get public that which he felt Gary was supressing. [29]

d) In 2000, Forbes’ Paul Klebnikov completed a book, The Godfather of the Kremlin[30]. It reiterated his earlier allegations about Mr. Berezovsky, but without the question mark. Quickly there appeared a series of anonymous Amazon reviews trashing Mr. Klebnikov’s book and discounting its conclusions. On the same days these reviews appeared on Amazon, Gary had a rash of positive reviews of his work. This and the language of the reviews trashing Mr. Klebnikov’s work raise an obvious question: if these startling coincidences of timing were not in fact coincidences, why was Gary adding to his normal routine (that is, going on Amazon with sock-puppets to promote his own work) the additional labor of trying to discredit the work of a Forbes journalist (Paul Klebnikov) who was trying to expose the Russian Mob? And is this related to the claim of his own two sources that his coverage of the execution of the two stockbrokers was designed to move attention away from the Russians and onto the Italian Mob?

e) On July 9, 2004, Paul Klebnikov was assassinated leaving the Moscow offices of Forbes.[31]

f) Days later in July, 2004, Gary left BusinessWeek. If you ever want to shut a BusinessWeek reporter up, ask, "What were the circumstances surrounding the departure of Gary Weiss from BusinessWeek?" In a notoriously gossipy crowd, it is a closely guarded secret.

g) One of the first things Gary seems to have done after departing BusinessWeek was to join Project Klebnikov, "The global media alliance investigating the July 9th, 2004 murder of Paul Klebnikov, the editor-in-chief of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.[32] I’ll bet O.J. Simpson finds his wife’s real killer before Gary solves that investigation.

#6) Gary covers-up for the DTCC from within DTCC offices:

Speaking of strange places from which to post: at the heart of our nation's stock settlement system, and hence, at the heart of the issues of concern to DeepCapture, is a nearly unknown corporation called "The DTCC." The company provides settlement for the nation's capital market: $1.5 quadrillion in trades are settled there every year (that is, about 30X the economic output of the entire planet). For most of its history it has largely escaped regulation: state regulators are admonished that they cannot peer inside because the DTCC is federally regulated, and the DTCC has told federal regulators it escapes their regulation due to its strange ownership structure (one former federal regulator, and one former employee of the DTCC, have both told me the feds would not know where to begin if they tried to regulate it).

In short, at the heart of the world's economy is an enourmous black box that is regulated except on the days it's not, and through which 30X the economic output of the world flows.[33] It is my contention that much of Wall Street's illegal activity is funneled through this strange entity.

The huge, nondescript building in downtown Manhattan that houses the DTCC is something of a Fort Knox. Long-gun toting guards watch the entrances, and journalists who have been inside tell me that entering it is tougher than getting into the Federal Reserve or any comparable institution.

Gary recently made a slip that revealed he was inside the offices of the DTCC, using one of their computers to post on Wikipedia about the DTCC. [34] Given that it's like getting into Fort Knox, I'm pretty sure that's odd. However, it casts some light on why Gary has been stridently denying that the DTCC is dirty and that none of the issues I have been raising regarding stock market manipulation are legitimate, and why he has (according to a colleague of his in the financial press sympathetic to me) devoted 93% of his blogs to criticizing my efforts to expose the illegal Wall Street activity which, I claim, intersects within the DTCC.

#7) The Finale

The following heavily-documented story qualifies as "mind-blowing." It is so extraordinary, in fact, many people find it almost impossible to synthesize. Therefore I am going to tell it by first giving a three paragraph synopsis, then by recounting the story in 14 steps, a-n, with documentation for each.

The synopsis:

The intellectual battle over the existence of criminal naked short-selling has been won. As is demonstrated thoughout DeepCapture, what was dismissed three years ago as a fringe theory is now no longer in serious dispute. There is an ongoing criminal prosecution and regulators and SRO's have recently imposed multimillion fines over it. [35] Papers by academic and government economists have confirmed it [36] and reputable journalists have broken news stories concerning its effects.[37] [38] A Bloomberg documentary concerning naked short selling was nominated for an Emmy for long-form investigative journalism.[39] Last summer SEC Chairman Christopher Cox aknowledged that it is real and illegal, and last week he and Senator Bob Bennett discussed this crime matter-of-factly, in this televised hearing of the Unitted States Senate.[40]. Earlier this week Dr. Robert Shapiro, a former US Undersecretary of Commerce for Economics and Fellow of National Bureau of Economic Research, Brookings, and Harvard [41] explained the reality of this issue on Canadian business televion [42] (start at minute 17).

Yet throughout the evolution of this awareness, the Wikipedia page on naked shorting [43] has fought a steadfast rearguard action. It will be a matter for some future critic to reconstruct in detail, but at all times the thrust of that page has been to deny and deride the emerging understanding of the issue. Since the time when complete denial became impossible, it has labored mightily to minimize the problem of naked short-selling and all the attendent issues discussed in Deep Capture, citing every critic (Gary Weiss, Floyd Norris, Joe Nocera, and Holman Jenkins of the WSJ) while allowing only barest mention of the positive attention it has received from investigative journalists and economists.

I believe that the chief reason this happened was because Gary Weiss used the name "Mantanmoreland" (and later, "Samiharris") to hijack the Wikipedia articles on naked short selling, Patrick Byrne, and Overstock.com (as well as the page on Gary Weiss himself). In addition, all the mechanisms within Wikipedia which are supposed to prevent such an act were subverted by Wikipedia's elites on Gary's behalf. Judd exposed Gary within Wikipedia, but Wikipedelites suppressed Judd's evidence. When he began posting it off-Wikipedia on AntisocialMedia.net, Wikipedelites fought to make mention of "Antisocialmedia.net" or "Judd Bagley" a thought-crime within Wikipedia (under the spurious reasoning that someone mentioning either of them had to be a sock-puppet of Judd). Hence, no evidence contrary to official doctrine was permittted at "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." However, evidence slowly circulated within the Wikipedia-in-Exile-community until rank-and-file Wikipedians began getting suspicious of Gary. Wikipedia 's founder Jimbo Wales did everything possible to stop their investigation, although it turns out he knew all along that Judd was right. It has turned into a civil war within the Wikipedia community.

I turn now to third paragraph of the preceding synopsis (that is, the paragraph immediately preceding this one). I will serve the full story, cut into 14 bite-sized pieces, a-n.

The evidence:

a) Judd turned up evidence that Gary was manipulating Wikipedia under the name "Mantanmoreland" (and later, "Samiharris"). When confronted, Gary denied it, saying, "Similarly [Judd Bagley] continues to publish the lie that I am this 'Mantanmoreland' long after it was, again, denied by both myself and Jimbo Wales of Wikipedia." [44]

b) Judd sent evidence to a Wikipedia uber-administrator named "SlimVirgin," who was posing as a neutral arbiter. However, when SlimVirgin received Judd's evidence she immediately forwarded it to Gary (without even opening it herself). [45]

c) A community debate ensued over whether Mantanmoreland was guilty of a Conflict Of Interest violation when he created and dominated the "Gary Weiss" page (i.e., whether or not he was in fact Gary Weiss). A highly regarded Wikipedia figure named "Cla68" (apparently a US Air Force officer in Asia with encyclopedic knowledge of so many subjects that he is revered within Wikipedia) got close to taking sides against Gary. In a step that was extremely unusual given Wikipedia's philosophies of transparency and strict retention of all sides of a debate, Wikipedia-founder Jimbo Wales personally intervened to delete the record of the debate. [46] As Jimbo Wales wrote:

"The page contained wildly inappropriate speculation that a notable author was sockpuppeting. As I am sure you are aware, many authors have had their careers badly damaged by being caught sockpuppeting at Amazon, etc., and it is deeply wrong for people to ask me to restore a page with such speculations in Wikipedia after the claims have already been investigated and dismissed. If there are further problems in the future, there will be no problem restoring the article at that time. In the meantime, it is my position that MOST AfD pages for living persons or active companies should be courtesy blanked (at a minimum) as a standard process, and deleted in all cases where there was inappropriate commentary. This is not the current policy, but currenty policy does allow for deletions of material which is potentially hurtful to people.--<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales User:Jimbo Wales">Jimbo Wales</a> 01:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC)"

d) Taking things to an Orwellian extreme the "ArbCom" ("Arbitration Committee") attempted to pass a "BADSITES" policy prohibiting mention of "Judd Bagley" and "antisocialmedia.net," the site Judd started to post evidence as he gathered it (such evidence having been i from Wikipedia itself). The debate ran for many weeks, but throughout it, it was prohibited even to name "Judd Bagley" or "antisocialmedia.net." That is, for many weeks a debate raged on Wikipedia ("the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit") in which the accused (Judd Bagley and his site antisocialmedia.net) could not be named, nor was the accused allowed to have a voice, nor were dissenting opinions permitted (on the grounds that anyone who wrote one must be a sock-puppet of the accused). [47]

e) In fact, in an attempt to prevent Judd Bagely from participating in that discussion to point out the manifest circularities and fabrications of the BADSITES debate, Wikipedia blocked Overstock and 1,000 homes around Judd Bagley's neighborhood, as was exposed in this article that appeared in the well-regarded on-line British tech journal, The Register. [48]

f) Throughout this process, anyone trying to mention Judd or antisocialmedia.net, or positions supported by either, was banned as a Wordbomb sockpuppet. [49] Note the circularity of this position: Wikitruth demands that Goldstein be banned, and anyone sounding like he might agree with Goldstein will be banned, because clearly, they must be sock-puppets of Goldstein. Hey, it worked in 1984, right?

• "Any user who creates links to the attack site or references it (other than in the context of this Arbitration) may be banned."

g) Eventually, this was actually proposed as a matter of official policy for Wikipedia</a> ("the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.") [50]

• "After warning, or without warning in the case of users familiar with the issue, users who link to the attack site or reference it may be blocked for an appropriate period of time." (emphasis added)

h) That effort collapsed of its own foul weight. As this other investigative piece</a> in The Registerexposed, however, it did spawn the creation of a secret email list for Wikipedia elites wherein they plotted how to shape the discourse within Wikipedia. [51]

i) Just when you thought this story could not be any weirder, an email has surfaced that was written by Jimbo Wales in September, 2007 at the start of this conflagration, [52] where he admitted already believing that Mantanmoreland was Gary Weiss (this exchange occured on another of those secret elite-only email lists):

" title="http://antisocialmedia.net/?page_id=124"

<a href="mailto:Mantanmoreland@gmail.com" title="mailto:Mantanmoreland@gmail.com">Mantanmoreland@gmail.com</a>: "…I am not going to reveal my real identity to prove that just because Judd Bagley is making a fuss. Rest assured that after all that has happened I am more determined than ever to not reveal my real identity to any person associated with Wikipedia." <a href="mailto:jwales@wikia.com" title="mailto:jwales@wikia.com">jwales@wikia.com</a>(Jimbo Wales): "I just want to go on record as saying that I believe the reason for this is that Mantanmoreland is in fact Gary Weiss."

j) Despite this private admission, Jimbo spent the next four months publicly defaming Judd and intimidating anyone who explored Gary Weiss's activities on Wikipedia. [53] For example, he wrote to the renowned Wikipedian Cla68:

"I fear that you have been manipulated by lying stalkers and trolls, and I am happy to talk to you about it privately, but I am sick of the drama around this issue on this page, and it absolutely has to come to an end...-- Jimbo Wales 01:32, 21 October 2007 (UTC)"

k) Despite Jimbo's opposition (and in the face of his attempts to derail it), over the last two weeks the Wikipedia community has to its credit performed an exhaustive analysis </a>of the Mantanmoreland account [54] (as well as "Samiharris", an additional Gary Weiss sock-puppet) and come down overwhelmingly in favor of Judd's original thesis.

l) Even in that setting, Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales again [55] attempted to derail the process and deny his earlier recognition of a link between Gary Weiss and Mantanmoreland. Here Jimbo dances on an arcane postmodern distinction between "knowing" and "believing it is a fact that" (in this context it's a distinction without a difference, Jimbo). Jimbo's statement is a compendium of fallacies from Logic 101 (e.g., argument from authority, ignoring contravening evidence, ad hominem attacks, non sequiturs, and straw-man rebuttals).

"Because there has been unseemly and false speculation in some quarters that I know this (or related claims) to be true, and that I have admitted as such in private forums, it is important for me to state what I know and what I don't know.

"Claims about Mantanmoreland being author Gary Weiss have been floating around for a long time. Various claims of 'proof' have been made, none of which I have found convincing. At times I have believed one way, at times I have believed another way. I have investigated the claims to the best of my ability and I have been unable to find proof one way or the other.

"An email I sent to Mantanmoreland and others has been widely quoted as evidence that I supposedly 'know' this claim to be true. Such interpretations are malarky, and most of the people making the claims appear to me to be acting in bad faith. What I said, at a point in time, was that I believed it to be true that Mantanmoreland == Gary Weiss. This was specifically in the context of a conversation in which I was trying to get more evidence... a proof, one way or the other. Me believing at a point in time in an investigation that something was true, is not the same thing as an assertion that it is true, nor of an "admission" or anything else.

"Mantanmoreland steadfastly denies being Gary Weiss. Ask him yourself if you want to know.

"Related allegations that I am protecting a 'friend' are nonsense. Mantanmoreland and I do not get along well at all.

"Related allegations that I have some vested interest in the underlying content dispute are even worse nonsense. I have no opinion about 'naked short selling'. I have never sold a stock short in my life. I have no financial interests of any kind in this case. If you read anything otherwise, or hints to that effect, on the <a href="http://deepcapture.com/" title="http://overstock.com/">overstock.com</a> blog or elsewhere, well, I don't know was else to say but: nonsense. I think such allegations tell more about the people who are making them than anything else.

"Regarding the specific claim at issue here, whether Samiharris and Mantanmoreland are the same user, I can say quite firmly that I do not believe it to be true. I have interacted (argued!) with both users over an extended period of time by private email, and I have not seen any reason to think it true. The offsite 'evidence' relating to this comes from a highly questionable source, and furthermore strikes me as completely unpersuasive. For all we know, these are faked screenshots from someone who has engaged in a campaign of harassment and bad behavior (on-wiki and off-wiki) that has been really astounding to witness.

"I have reviewed my email archives to look for similarities between the users. I have examined email headers. I have looked for textual similarities, time patterns, etc. I see nothing to lead me to a conclusion that Sami Harris and Mantanmoreland are the same user.

"For these reasons, I do not believe it to be true that Mantanmoreland == Samiharris. --<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales User:Jimbo Wales">Jimbo Wales</a> (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales" title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales User talk:Jimbo Wales">talk</a>) 02:19, 15 February 2008 (UTC)"

m) All but Weiss's most dogmatic defenders were silenced, however, when a law student from Chicago published a graph showing the dates and times of all Mantanmoreland's Wikipedia edits.[56] In it, one can clearly note two things: the rich posting patterns of Mantanmorland and Samiharris never overlap (statistically, highly improbable); and more importantly, a perfect "phase shift" of precisely the right duration corresponding to a period in which Gary's own Forbes work revealed him to be in India. [57]

n) There is another twist to this story. Above I mentioned "SlimVirgin". She is a woman from my past. Though she has enabled Gary for so long, evidently I cannot say more than that within the confines of Wikipedia.

Conclusion

That Gary Weiss is a psychopath and a Scaramouche should now be clear, but that is incidental. Here is the moral of the tale: the great dilemma that most journalists face is that they want to be first with a story, but they do not have the nerve to publish a story that is too far ahead of the pack. I believe Gary Weiss went to such effort to hijack these Wikipedia articles because somewhere, someone understands that professional journalists, much as they deride Wikipedia, will never depart more than a few degrees from a Wikipedia consensus. Thus if one can hijack a page so that it simply repeats the accusations of a few co-opted journalists, then rare is the new journalist who will come along and escape that equilibrium. Thus, by hijacking the Wikipedia consensus one can corral much of the industry of modern professional journalism (this is all the more reason why those few journalists who departed from that consensus over the last year, however meekly or bravely, deserve admiration).

The deeper question, then, is this: how many social institutions have failed when a "journalist" is manipulating the discourse within both the news and social media, and all the mechanisms that should curtail him are short-circuited? Or, more to the point of DeepCapture, trying to drown out a scandal while simultaneously working to manipulate social media from within the corporation at the heart of that scandal?

====================================================================

Postscript: There is a side matter that, in all fairness to Gary, I should mention to condition your reading of what I wrote about him. It is this: I have a lady friend who for 13 years has managed and been part-owner of a superb Italian restaurant in Manhattan. Her restaurant generally receives a Zagat’s rating of 23 or 24 (with a 24-rating being the threshold for the serous foodies). In fact, the restaurant is regularly one of the lowest-priced Zagat-24’s in Manhattan. Its reviews generally range from good to stellar. Weeks after Gary joined Forbes, a harsh review of her 10-employee restaurant appeared in Forbes magazine. I'm pretty sure that's odd, too. Because the writing was florid and made no sense it is natural to suspect Gary of having written it (note to Gary: how does a pasta dish like orecchiette taste like it is from Bombay? And "branzino" is Mediterranean seabass, which explains why it tastes like fish. Also, describing a fish as “too fishy” is puerile.) Of course, it could have been just a coincidence that, weeks after Gary began his relationship to Forbes, the magazine suddenly felt the need to review a small Italian restaurant managed by the woman then displaying the unfortunate judgement of dating me (full disclosure: since then she has decided to display better judgement). I don’t really know if Gary was behind it, pursuing a personal vendetta by misusing his position as a journalist to hurt my magnificent lady friend.

But it sure is his style.

And now you Wikipedians know.... the rest of the story.

Respect, Patrick M. Byrne PatrickByrne (talk) 22:51, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]