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Posted by: Peter Damian

I'll probably get roasted for saying this, but this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SlimVirgin/Poetgate

seems at least a clear description of what was going on. (As opposed to the monstrous 40 page thread going on elsewhere.

So who actually were the real, non-fictional people who want to put their hand up and say SV did something bad? As I say, she has always been good to me, and occasionally sends kind emails on the frequent occasions I get blocked. (Not so much recently but perhaps she was busy writing that essay linked to above.


Edit by Selina: Some of the more glaring lies are addressed in http://wikipediareview.com/?showtopic=20289

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

1 Hand Clapping Here —
How Many Φingers?
YooDooDuhMath …

Jon

Posted by: dogbiscuit

I'll put my hand up. Forget about the sooper-seekrit stuff: she simply used to operate as if Wikipedia was hers - less so now as she is keeping the legendary low profile aside fromher stalking histrionics every now and again..

She owned the rules. If she was losing an edit war, she simply decided it was a demonstration of why the rules were wrong and changed them, on the basis of what would get her a win next time. If she can't win an argument she deletes it, or simply stays quiet, or points out some problem way, way, way over there. Then she uses Crum, her sock or meat puppet to evade 3RR. And any complaint is met by histrionics of stalking.

She is sweetness and light when you are on her good side. If you don't cross her, she will leave you alone. She uses every trick in the book to defeat you if you are not. A good example is Tim Vickers, who seems to be the epitome of fairmindedness, and takes great care to do things by the book, yet Slim was convinced he was the spawn of the devil as he crossed swords when she used her wicked ways upon him. And she has that especially Wikipedian trait of no forgiveness, for however long or forever trivial your sin is.

Posted by: thekohser

Not that it's "bad", but it's kind of a failure that her summary doesn't mention me even once.

Posted by: gomi

I agree with you that the essay is a clear and concise description of the situation. Of course, given the constraints of on-wiki writing, it leaves out many of the salacious details and most of the Review-specific stuff, so it is far from a comprehensive report, but it has the advantage of accessibility to the lay reader. This, indeed, is one of Linda Mack SlimVirgin's strengths, as an Oxbridge-educated (however briefly) demi-scholar, she possesses better-than-average composition and writing skills, and uses them to her advantage on Wikipedia. Nothing wrong with that.

What annoys some people is the utter hypocrisy she displays, how blithe she is about her own transgressions, and how quick she is to capitalize on any given situation in her battles against others on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Her initial reaction to Poetgate was an attack on FloNight, not someone I wish to defend, but nonetheless a craven and petty thing to do, especially coming immediately from her self-imposed exile hiding from justice in the Arbcom case. She has never admitted and apologized for her own sockpuppetry, her own cabalism, and when she castigates anyone for those sins, it simply rings hollow.

The "need for reform" section is particularly problematic. While there is little evidence of cross-project checkuser "abuse" (how would you further abuse an abusive system?), SlimVirgin uses Poetgate to further her latest hobby-horse project, to change checkuser oversight. Now that she has her pet checkuser in Jayjg, she wants to firmly close the door behind herself and ensure that no one uses the system against her and her minions.

Most amazingly, she addressed us directly:
This is remarkable in its arrogance. The SlimVirgin file here is absolutely chock-full of detailed, linked evidence of her mis-deeds, as is Cla68's evidence. This statement is a triumphant use of the Bush-era "Big Lie" tactic to whitewash all of that evidence into insignificance, and it is outrageous.

As I have said elsewhere, I think that SlimVirgin and her cabal are far more damaging to the neutrality and reliablity of (some parts) of Wikipedia's content, and more toxic to its community than any number of Poetlisters. Indeed, I may be one of the only people who is not overly bothered by Poetgate. The controlling entity did very little or no damage to Wikipedia, other than further tarnish the veneer of trust than coats its backstabbing community. The most challenging crime is the use of real people's photos in pursuit of his weird head-games. That we were all duped -- well, shame on us. It's not really a crime to mislead the gullible. Let's just not be misled by SlimVirgin's act.

Posted by: Milton Roe

To say the least. Cla68's number of diffs detailing SV's nastiness is so detailed that MEGO, as in tl;dr. Which apparently most of the people who saw it did not. I did read a lot of those diffs, and Slim really is nasty. She may be able to write, but she is the sort of person who should NEVER be given any sort of power in any project.

If you're going to take over WP, you have to have a bunch of cultivated socks who appear to be youngish females (thus suseptible to victimization if the need arrises), and who will attract the protective instincts of the admins in the sisterhood.

Then keep your head down and edit, edit, for awhile. If you can't write, do reversions like the Naked Nubile Norwegian. Make lists, make biographies. Especially biographies of Jews, ala RachelBrown and Arniep/Jorge and Mantanmoreland and so on. That will win you friends. Express pro-zionist opinions a lot, like Chip Berlet. Ditto.

[I actually wondered at some point if our Jorge wasn't a Gary Weiss sock, come to tweak us on WR with a real Mantan pic. But their edit histories aren't greatly concordant given their mutual interest in film and bio. So nevermind]

Note: you may be a compusive listmaker, and that will help you on WP, which is basically a bunch of lists. But stay away specifically from lists of Jews, or else you will trigger the paranoic immune response of the Kabal, who will figure you're making up lists for future termination in the coming death camps. That's what got the PoetBeast crossed with the Slimbeast, else both of them might have ended up as good friends, eventually, having really both about the same range of interests. But if you cross Slim or Jayjg you will be checkusered relentlessly, and that was the beginning of the end for Poetbeast, good backstories or not.

And then Poetbeast, partly banniated from WP, had to come over to WR. Where the thing appears to have been Guy, Poetlister, Yehudi, Taxwoman, and LamontStormstar. Did I forget anybody? All the same MB guy, 51 year-old statistician and transvestite wannabe, originally from Ilford.

Now, in the distressing and heart-rending Taxwoman PMs to JohnA, there recurs this backstory, which is good enough for a Dickens novel if not true, which we've been hearing in the RachelBrown defences on WR and WP now for 3 years and more. Guy is this mellow older guy who has known Rachel Brown's father for 15 years and goes to the same church, which is doubtless a Methodist one, and this person is Londoneye's uncle, which would make Londoneye and Rachel Brown first cousins (right?). And Taxwoman personally knows Poetlister, who is female and recently wed, and has been driven to drink by this whole thing. (Cato on WQ too, one would imagine ).

Baxter is not particularly a Jewish name (the PoetBeast has edited on the Baxter article under 3 socknames), and I wonder how much of the Methodism in the backstory comes from something in the MB reallife, however much he's obscessed with making lists and biograhies of Jews.

Thoughts, anybody? My mind continues to boggle at how vociferously our own http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Usual_Suspects denies knowing anything about Keyser Söze, even though we've rounded up the usual suspects and nailed them three ways from Sunday.

In a previous message I noted that robbery and homicide detectives, who interview crooks for a living, call these pathological liars "shitters". And even though cops are permitted to lie to suspects in interviews, and do, their motto is "You can outshoot a shooter, but you can't outshit a shitter." And I can see the point.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

The main problem with SlimVirgin's version of events is that it's cast in the light of "How can this incident be used to strengthen my own position here". The lensing is severe and there are places where Slim grossly misinterprets events that have little or nothing to do with her particularly as being grave slights against her. If you can read through that cast, though, it's not a bad representation.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Just don't feel slighted
If the diffs you indited
Are wikiwiki out-whited
Like a virgin o'ersighted
In th' dark o'th' night [ed.]

Jon

Posted by: Milton Roe

You are herewith on this basis prohibited from criticizing Moulton's posts, ever again.

Posted by: Milton Roe

Yes, if you can hold your nose occassionally:



We noted here the moment the Everyking RfA closed that Slim didn't vote, and now we know why: she's saying it was because she didn't even care enough to. But she cared enough to make some rather strong metaphoric arguments about Everyking's unforgivably bad behavior in the comments section of that review. Which means she cared a lot. So that's deception on her part. And typical of the kind she does. Do you need the diffs?

Yes, do read the OTHER Cla68 diffs. Slim can pretend that they are all somehow related to her epic fight with the Poetbeast monster. But they aren't. Most of them are just her, stepping on ordinary unrelated people, just because she can.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/C68-FM-SV/Evidence#The_issue

Slim, we've all be had by the Poetbeast. But this detracts from your own basic viciousness and lack of honesty not one whit. It's even a shame inasmuch as it provides you with another tool for claiming that you need to be nasty in the name of fighting monsters. You don't. For example, Alison was physically stalked due to her WP activities in a way you can only imagine, but no nastiness do we see, either before or since.

Our opinion is not just because she once posted here. Actually, it's because she's not nasty, and you are.

Sorry.

Posted by: tarantino

I see it in the opposite, as you know. That the content of the so-called Encyclopedia was relatively undamaged is of little concern to me, likewise it's continued existence. There are real people that have expressed pain because of his actions. When he was accused multiple times, instead of admitting it, he turned and accused the accusers, some of which use their real names. Then he continued on his merry way. That is unethical and should be unacceptable.

Though I argued a long time against his public exposure, it is becoming more clear that nothing would have changed without it. I feel sorry for the effect that this may have on him or his family but he is solely responsible for it.

Posted by: dtobias

How does one go about measuring her http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscocity?

Posted by: Milton Roe

Wups, good one. She is viscous, too, in a sort of slimey sap way (the word comes from a sort of glue from a sort of sap). Measurement by how much you budge her out of her control of wikipedia with any amount of force. Units in centiPoetlisters.

I can only assume she slept with Jimbo at some point. Nothing else explains the tenacity with which the organization holds onto her, and the impossiblity of doing anything about it.

Posted by: Alison

Whoa - waitaminute!!

LamontStormstar was also PoetGuy?? Is there evidence/links for that, because if that was the case, that makes a whole lot of sense to me. Because that guy had a creepy fascination with the whole idea of "female-born checkusers" and repeated that phrase a lot. I thought it was a bit wacked at the time (and wrong on a number of levels. Poor FloNight, just for starters ) but I kinda let the matter slide.

In retrospect, that makes a lot more sense.

Posted by: wikiwhistle

Eh? You don't mean we really have no female-born arbs at all, do you? Sorry if I've got the wrong end of the stick lol

Posted by: Milton Roe

It's simply my assumption on the basis of Lamont's showy avatar, which is Lumberg, the handsome but empty and barking-mad fashion-conscious boss of a crazy IT company, in the film Office Space. He manages cubical workers and is something like the Dilbert Pointy-haired boss. The coffee cup and suspenders and shirtcollars are his props.

Lamont has been extremely scarce lately (no posts since July 7 even though he had thousands before that), and in fact seems to have departed along with the rest of the PoetBeast. We've invited him to show up and identify himself somehow as not being from London, and I think I'm going to PM him.

In the film, BTW, this character's identity is confused with another guy of the same name, and in the end he dies in a company fire, along with a lot of records of misdeeds.

Posted by: Alison

lol - noooo!!! I was just saying that Lamont never considered FloNight to be a checkuser, for some reason. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AListUsers&username=FloNight&group=checkuser&limit=1

EDIT: Examples http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=14532 and http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=14976&view=findpost&p=69969 and http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=15506&view=findpost&p=76107.

PoetGuy?? Possible ....

Posted by: wikiwhistle

Rofl! Sorry Flonight- I know you are a perfectly feminine looking woman, I was just confused, no offence meant.

Posted by: Proabivouac

{citation needed}

Posted by: Castle Rock

Lamont is not a member of the PoetSwarm, seriously did he sound anything like any of them.

He had a "creepy fascination" with the whole idea of "female-born checkusers" because he had a "creepy fascination" with Rebecca/Ambi. Check the http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php?title=Rebecca&dir=prev&action=history of the ED article for example.

Posted by: Milton Roe

I know, I know. I just can't figure out why the hell else they don't get rid of her. They don't need to ban her, just take away the tools. She'd be more or less harmless as a mere editor.

Posted by: Kelly Martin

From what I can tell it was specific to Ambi, too.

Posted by: Alison

Ah, okay so. I just had a zOMG!!!11! moment over Lamont being PoetGuy. Nevermind ....

Posted by: wikiwhistle

You could make worse assumptions based on people's statements, like I did above lol

Posted by: Cla68

As I and others have said before, there's probably no secret background story here. Much like Jayjg, SV was very active in resolving a lot of administrative issues when she first joined the project, in her case improving policy and guideline pages. Jimbo apparently noticed and evidently appreciated it.

Since then, the problem with Jimbo's inaction appears to me to be simply his personality. He appears to prefer a http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/laissez-faire (I hope I'm not insulting anyone's intelligence by linking to the definition, I wasn't sure of its exact definition before I looked it up) style of managment of Wikipedia, hoping that most problems will resolve themselves.

Back to the Poetgate essay...I believe SV made a mistake trying to blame everything negative about her involvement with Wikipedia on Poetlister et al. As this thing shakes out over time it will probably make some of her claims look foolish and undermine her credibility even further.

Posted by: The Wales Hunter

On the balance of probabilities, I would guess PoetGuy is just one part of the soup-maker's identities.

He's been playing too complex a game for too long to allow it to all vanish in one hit. Statistically, it would make sense to have a Plan B, unlinked to Plan A.

Posted by: wikiwhistle

In my opinion it's more that he doesn't want to be seen as the dictator of wiki. Look how people respond when he did things such as blocking Peter Damian. So he wouldn't want to go over the heads of the arbs etc.

For instance in a recent discussion on his talk page he wanted to be seen as the constitutional monarch of wiki rather than any ultimate power.

Posted by: gomi

It's not too fine a line between laissez-faire reign and an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absentee_landlord. I think Jimbo is the latter more than the former these days.

Posted by: dogbiscuit

I was just shuffling through his posts. He has a particular slightly detached style, noticing things and making a short comment. Not particularly fixated on anything. One oddity, for someone who generally does not come across as a deep thinker was http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=18843&view=findpost&p=110186.

I vaguely wonder whether the account had been hacked from that post, with the later posts being an attempt to emulate the earlier style. Being interested in Slim and Poetlister is hardly a definitive test for a PoetGuy sock.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Theorem. Any abuse that can happen, will happen.

Corollary. Any abuse that can happen again, will happen again.

Observation. Some People have the damnedest time drawing the Right Conclusion.

Jon

Posted by: Milton Roe

We just have to keep linking to this fine collection of misdeeds, until everybody finally reads the diffs and gets it.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/C68-FM-SV/Evidence#The_issue

I'm going to MACRO this link, and simply drop it on every schlub from WP who shows up here thinking that we're all so pissed, merely because we're neonazis, or banned vandals, or crazies, or idiots, or tools of persecuters of SlimVirgin the Innocent. No. We've been around, and we've seen the stuff above, much of it, in realtime.

And if you haven't (you, FT2) then fucking go AND READ THE DIFFS above.

Then get back to me. I will be willing to discuss any one of them. Here. Not at WP. It's clear THAT has been a losers rigged game for years.

Posted by: the fieryangel

Bingo! I was thinking that just this morning. There must be a Plan B somewhere....




This quote is particularly revealing :



Well, he's got a point there. Have you sent that PM, Uncle Miltie? I wonder if he'll answer....

Posted by: everyking

There are only so many hours in the day, and it's surprising enough that he had time to maintain as many identities as he did. He may have one or two socks that survived the purge, but it's hard to imagine anything beyond that.

Anyway, I don't think Lamont is/was PoetGuy. The style was quite different--stylistically, all the known PoetGuy socks were pretty similar; they were mainly distinguished by the character backgrounds he developed for them.

Posted by: Moulton

Welcome to the Wacky Wiki World of Post-Modern Performance Art

Baxter is a gifted author of long-running character-driven soap operas. He does it as an enjoyable hobby. Like any author, he can devise new characters, kill off old ones, and improvise as necessary. In TV soap operas, they figure out how to write around the comings and goings of the cast, dealing with pregnancies, accidents, and departures of cast members. Baxter is not going to abandon his hobby just because some of his characters were revealed to be http://knol.google.com/k/barry-kort/cognition-affect-and-learning/3iyoslgwsp412/2#H7-Multi-Layer-Storybook-Character-Model rather than natural born persons.

Paul, why are you not offering to be his Music Director, to supply the original musical sound track to his Po-Mo Pychodramas? Your musical talents would certainly be preferable to my lame song parodies.

Posted by: Proabivouac

Spot on.

Posted by: the fieryangel

I've never written music for a soap opera before. It might be a nice change of pace, at least for awhile.

Of course, Poetlister probably wanted "Here comes the Bride" at her wedding anyway....

Posted by: flash

Bear with me, I think the doors of reality are being creaked open and letting a little light fall on one or two matters...

First, re: The "poetlister dispute'

I was interested to read Slim's 'attack page' (one rule of adminstrators, another for everyone else?) on Poetlister.

It's an intriguing account. However, the key opening allegation that Slim blocked " Amalekite " with an expiry time of indefinite ?(disruption; posted a list of Wikipedians he believes are Jews on the Stormfront website; posted details of how to edit using proxies and sockpuppets)"

- seems to be backed by no evidence. indeed, Slim's case seems to be based on the earlier claim by 'Formeruser-82'that he was a 'neo-nazi Troll soliciting other trolls off of Stormfront".

Despite Slim's 'love of diffs' few of the links on this poetlister page work - those that do are only to trivial Wikidefinitions...

It seems odd to me that someone who spends so much time infiltrating WP (Guy/Poetlister) should have pointlessly revealed their neo-Nazi interests by posting 'lists of jews'. But then maybe neo-nazis can't stop themselves...

I asked Slim by email if she had any evidence for this, but got no response. No response from Slim is however itself a kind of message.

'Dogbiscuits' got it about right here though:

Second, re. Slim's character and 'modus operandi'

My colleague here in Normandy, Docmartincohen, had a friendly exchange with Slim over his permablock, literally by David Gerard, but based on a checkuser link to Wikigiraffes who (some may recall) was permablocked by Slim earlier this year.

In effect, the ban on DMC is due to Slim, hence DMC has pestered her about it. Slim offered not to lift the block but to add snippets from one of DMC's books to an article or two for him, (avoiding those awful 'conflicts of interest'). This was very nice and most unexpected. Slim even wrote to say she had bought the book and was looking forward to reading it on holiday. But then nothing.

However, a week later, a pseudonymous http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RRM99W6RPFOXZ/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#RRM99W6RPFOXZ appeared (by 'John Hamilton' (likely name!) headed 'Poorly researched rubbish' and continuing:



Now Slim considers herself as a specialist on 20th Century English Oxbridge philosophers, so this expertise fits. If it were Slim's 'two-faced' work, that would bear out Dogbiscuit's character assessment. However, I prefer to think no one is that sneaky. I think the review might just as easily have something to do with the famous English philosopher [Jeremy Stangroom] who around this time was active on WP asking to have Docmartincohen blocked as a sockpuppet. If so, it would explain how he failed to know about Wittgenstein's hatred of CND.

But for those who like to connect two points to make a line - Slim in any case is linked to Stangroom by having started his page on WP. When Docmartincohen asked her about this she gave a curiously evasive response:



Slim created pages just because she came across their names in a book? Poorly researched rubbish, methinks!

Posted by: that one guy

Oh for fucks sake Slim get off your soap box and clean your own house before you clean the house of other's.

Posted by: Milton Roe

I have sent it. No answer yet. Perhaps Somey or somebody would like to send an official forum inquirey to Lamont?

I'm on the fence about whether or not he's part of the Beast. Maybe not. Four, including mod, seems more than enough infiltration for a place as small as WR. That would correspond to having control of what fraction of 2000 admins on WP? And god knows how many nameusers with a decent number of edits. Last I checked, there were something like 2000 people who'd made more than 10,000 edits on WP, also. Many of them admins, but an interesting fraction not.

Posted by: ThisismyUsername

We pretty much know all of Poetguy's WR identities - or think we do

Guy, Poetlister, Taxwman, Yehudi, and likely that Dawson hijacked account.

Posted by: Somey

There's simply no way that Lamont is one of the PoetEntity's identities. Everything about him is completely different - IP's, writing, sense of humor, general behavior... And what are we basing this on? The fact that he's interested in unusual sexual practices? Why not pick any of the roughly 27,000,000 people on the interwebs who fit that same description and assume they're all this same guy too?

I know everyone loves to play detective, but please, let's not turn this into some sort of witch hunt. PoetEntity already had an account for discussing kinky sex, and I'd say he was smart enough to know not to risk tripping himself up, cross-identity-wise, with more than one of those.

Posted by: Jon Awbrey

Because loyalty is one of Jimbo's outstanding traits?

Jon

Posted by: Kelly Martin

Jimbo is 100% loyal.... to Jimbo.

Posted by: Cedric

Careful here, Uncle Miltie. Three card Monte operators and other grifters merely play to the marks' weaknesses and take their money. To verbally abuse a mark, or to kick them in the nuts (literally or figuratively), would by grifters be considered grossly unprofessional conduct, if not out-and-out insane. To make such an invidious comparison between wikipediots and grifters could be construed as libel.