This was originally written by Kato today at 4:15am.

With all this talk of “Attack sites” and BADSITES on WP, and descriptions of The Review getting thrown about on the ARBCOM pages, it seems like a good time to go and examine the Top ten most viewed threads in The Review’s back catalogue. Though this thread should probably be in the Wikipedia Review Review section, so as not to disappoint our non-signed up members, this one goes out for free on the top section. Here goes:

1
19,719 views Who is Essjay?
Epic thread started by Daniel Brandt that continued for nearly a year. Tracing the long Essjay saga from mere Brantian brain wave to The New Yorker magazine and into the history books of the internet itself. Brandt opens the thread with “Who is Essjay? I would love to ID this guy.” Some 20,000 or so posts later we were to find out.

2
8,991 views Snowspinner muses about stalking and murder
Bizarre tale of admin Snowspinner, who wrote a short story on his blog - a typically youthful kind of Camus meets Chuck Palahniuk thing about a malevolent stalker - and became embroiled in a real life Police investigation over an unrelated incident at his campus. The Review gallery revel in Snowspinner’s woes, and despite being exonerated by the cops, Snowspinner appears on the thread himself to mud wrestle with some of The Review’s more unsympathetic literary critics.

3
8,346 views The Jeff Merkey thread
An amalgamation of various threads detailing the activities of the mercurial Merkey. What was he playing at? Was he right? Was he wrong? Was he actually contributing to the thread himself using a pseudonym? Who knows? Enjoy the Merkey mayhem.

4
7,501 views Can Jayjg be stopped?
Endless speculation as to the motives and identity of WP’s highly evolved Octopus, an editor so prolific that he apparently sprouted tentacles and beak to handle a watchlist that grew to the size of the Pacific. Some of it seems plausible, much of it isn’t. The thread ends with Lamontstormstar sagely noting “Someone will just take Jayjg’s place.” And he is probably right. Somey pays tribute to our tentacled friend on a subsequent editorial piece.

5
5,911 views Please help me and Seth get our bios deleted
Brandt’s plea for assitance from the The Review faithful to end the stalemate regarding both his own shabby biography and Seth Finkelstein’s article. The thread turns into a sockpuppet hunt on the Brandt AfD, with The Review sleuths attempting to identify any potential Denny Colts that may arrive to railroad the process. The afds also see the appearance of the Charlie Manson defense. Seth’s article is deleted outright. Brandt’s becomes part of a “complex merge” that seemed like an improvement.

6
5,826 views ColScott Says Hola
Film Producer Don Murphy roars onto the The Review board like Ollie Reid in a bad mood to denounce WP and several of its teenage editors. All kinds of issues spill out: Notability issues, the young age of WP editors, “stalking” of article subjects, Dan Tobias’s MENSA score. The Review attempts to salvage some common sense out of WPs irresponsible mess-ups. Very little changes. Bliss provides a write up on The Review’s blog.

7
4,684 views SlimVirgin gets Slashdotted
The game looks up for SlimVirgin, The Review’s most tireless foe, when the improbably named Ludwig De Braeckeleer scoops up hours of The Review’s musings and pastes it over a Slashdot article. The unravelling web of intrigue rivals a John le Carré novel. The Review faces an internal crisis when, having redacted Slim’s real name from various threads in good faith, it finds itself being out-outed by half of the electronic media. Ludwig’s story carries the real names unabashed whilst The Review grapples with its conscience. According to GBG, “You seldom get such good seats to watch a story move up the journalistic food-chain.” Take a seat yourself and relive the experience. Full coverage of the SlimVirgin scandal is also provided on the WR blog.

8
4,668 views Honest admins, Another opportunity for us to be of service.
The Review passes the hat round the bar for names of honest admins. FCYTravis gets a free drink and three cheers. But according to Jonny Cache : “There are only two types of admin. (1) Evil Bastards (2) Good Minions Doing Nothing.” In the melee of confused identifications, the term ghoul is coined for the first time to describe the worst of the Wiki Adams-family. And apt it was to be.

9
4,580 views Professional journalist is an anonymous admin
Daniel Brandt in full flow, initiating the messy WP end of Katefan0, the professional journalist in question. Brandt states his objectives from the start “I think she should probably do this: a) resign her adminship, b) identify herself and her employer on her User page, with a current photo, and c) announce on her User page that she will not edit any articles having to do with Congress or Congressional politics.” By about page 3 of the thread, she quits the site, and it becomes a bitter bone of contention between The Review and the WP elite ever after. The WP elite called it “stalking”, everyone else called it a demand for accountability.

10
3,941 views Danny’s RfA…, Quite interesting indeed!
Danny quits his day job at the WMF and Cyde takes the opportunity to nominate him for adminship. Chaos ensues as the wiki-public and other peasants use the RfA as an excuse to throw eggs and flour at the WP aristocracy. GBG oversees what is surely one of The Review’s more engaging threads. “This is such great entertainment” pipes Karmafist. I’m sure you’ll agree.