I think that we need to consider a few points before we get confused as to what is going on.
1) Do we know for certain that Snowspinner was planning to and/or had already stalked and/or raped and/or murdered someone? - No, we do not. However, we do know that people have written things like this in the past, and ended up doing it. It is enough for someone to consider investigating it. Perhaps some police would have deemed it was not worthwhile to investigate it, but on this occasion they chose to. I have in my life had 2 people who had told me they were planning to kill someone. One of them never did anything, and the second one killed 35 people in a day. Police didn't investigate either. They should have. 2) Why were police contacted? - Police were contacted because of the chance that this was serious. Sure, we can guess and say that most likely Snowspinner didn't do anything. But they for whatever reason felt that there was a chance. Nobody rang Snowspinner or stalked him or did anything like that. They asked police if they felt it was serious enough to investigate. Police agreed that it was. 3) Why was the board messages edited? - I don't rightly know. In all likelihood Daniel Brandt's was edited to stop him from being harassed by Wikipedia people, and Everyking's one was edited just to make it sound more clear what he was trying to say. Whilst it is a pity that nobody here has admitted to doing it, there is really nothing suspicious or unusual about it. 4) Was Snowspinner the victim of police harassment? - No. There is actual police harassment that happens, and when it does it is very serious. When you get police arrest you just for walking home at night, or approach people sitting around talking, then you are talking about police harassment. Someone following a legitimate tip off and investigating something appropriately is not harassment. 5) Was Snowspinner forced to give DNA, fingerprints and to say his source for his story? - No. Snowspinner was asked. He refused on all 3 counts. If he had given his DNA or fingerprints, then he could have proved his innocence. Because he refused, it makes him look guilty. He also refused to say his source for the story. What if someone he knew really had committed a murder? He is impeding a police investigation and potentially protecting a criminal. He is using the excuse of "police harassment" to get away with it. 6) Why did Boing Boing support him? - This is a question that really needs to be asked, and far too few people are asking it. A quick look at the Wikipedia article on Cory Doctorow, who wrote the article, gives a rather obvious reason for it. Cory Doctorow is one of few people who have been allowed to make their own articles on Wikipedia as 100% positive advertisements for them. In other words, thanks to Wikipedia, Cory Doctorow is more famous and makes more money than he otherwise would. Cory Doctorow regularly deletes "negative" material from his article. So in payment for this, Cory Doctorow is helping out Snowspinner, one of the people that helped to make sure that Cory Doctorow got such a positive spin on his story. Its a simple case of "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". Cory Doctorow is far from neutral about Wikipedia - he loves it and is prepared to lie his heart out in order to protect it. 7) Do we care who called police? - I don't really care. If they want to say who they are, then they will. But police informants should be protected by privacy. Its a bit like how some people wanted to expose the name of the girl who accused the hockey team of rape. We shouldn't find out her name because she will be harassed. Similarly, we shouldn't be trying to find out this person's name. Wikipedia has tried to bully it out, by accusing practically everyone who has posted here of being the person, and then accusing them of lots of things which could not possibly be true.
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