Don Murphy brings the Apocalypse! Options

[Milton Roe]

A lawsuit against an individual wikipedian, or an admin, would also have a chilling effect. Indeed even an unsuccessful one would make a lot of Wikipedians nervous. Do I really want a hobby that could get me having to defend myself in court?

Particularly when they find that WP, due to the eternally selfish nature of WMF and the people who run it, will not support your legal defense with a nickel. Hence, sec 230 or not, the trial IS the punishment, since you pay the "fine" either way. In theory you can recover damages from a won suit that way, but in practice, the judge hardly ever orders a losing plaintiff to pay all costs. Usually the defendant is stuck with their own attorney fees. Good luck, suckers.

As for whether this would have a chilling effect on WP BLP editors if it happens, I should hope so. The best chilling effect will be watching Godwin distance WMF from any action of any WMF editor whatever.

There have been

at least two lawsuits against individual Wikipedians.

• Grebner sues for wiki-based defamation
• Ron Livingston: Yo Wikipedia, I'm Not Gay!

I am unable to find any recent coverage of the Grebner suit. As for the Livingston suit, it seems it was dropped after the editor responsible was identified, and the vandalism stopped:

That vandal was I.D.'ed right here on WR, mostly by Somey. No stinkin' "forensic computer expert" was needed. It would be hilarious if the guy ended up charging Livingston for work done for free on WR. Well, not HILARIOUS, but you know what I mean.

Source: Wikipedia - The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge

Is anyone familiar with the author of this article?

Edwin Black is the award-winnng author of "Internal Combustion,"The Plan - How to Rescue Society the Day Before the Oil Stops," "IBM and the Holocaust," and the publisher of TheCuttingEdgeNews.com. Edwin is also a frequent contributor to The Auto Channel.

We discussed Edwin Black not that long ago on WR, as there was a WP editorial spat about getting the Wiki that discusses his book IBM and the Holocaust properly named. A WebHamster sock got spotted and blocked in the course of the argument. Whoever that was.

[GlassBeadGame]

......In December 2009, a fed-up Livingston finally sued the anonymous poster as a “John Doe” for libel. With court-granted discovery powers, Livingston's strategy was to seek the identity of the anonymous person and stop him. Using a forensic computer expert, Livingston's attorney was indeed able to identify the culprit, the attorney explained in an interview with this writer....

Now, that's just insulting. Livingston's lawyer is taking credit for the work we did? Probably so he can bill Livingston for hiring an "expert" whose sole activity (if he even existed) amounted to reading the relevant WR thread!

Jeez... That's the last time I bother helping out a movie actor, and I'll bet Tarantino's with me on that score, too. And he's a fellow Iowan, to boot!

Even if he followed our threads post for post he would need an expert to testify at court. Otherwise the defendant could have responded that there was no basis in fact to believe that the IP provided by WP could be used to link it to use of a specific computer. Somey would probably be fine as an expert, except for the "Somey" part, of course.

[Daniel Brandt]

I want the bio deleted permanently. Tell me what to do. Contact Godwin? Great I'll do that now. What is the preferred method?

I'm no lawyer, but here is my gut instinct of how to proceed. Keep in mind that Godwin will deliberately fail to respond if at all possible. A couple years ago I faxed a complaint to Godwin about a user who sent a fake DMCA complaint to my wikipedia-watch.org DNS provider, and this user even added the statement at the bottom that he swore that he was legit when he wasn't. I managed to identify the guy (a teenager in Australia who had pulled this stunt before on someone else), and all I wanted from Godwin was some sort of statement that the Foundation doesn't condone this behavior. I wanted to send a copy to the headmaster at the kid's boarding school. I never heard back from anyone at the Foundation. Don't leave Godwin any wiggle room and then wait around for 30 days expecting to hear from him. I think he might be a snake.

Unless anyone has a better idea, I'd call this number. It's the general Foundation number, so whoever answers might not even recognize the name "Mike Godwin." Tell them you have to talk to Mike Godwin. If you get to Godwin (good luck!) then ask Godwin for a street address for legal service. They have a registered agent for DMCA stuff, but that's probably not what you want. You want contact info for a process server, and you want to be sure you get either a signature from Godwin or from his authorized agent, or know that a process server in the flesh delivered your document to Godwin. Also ask Godwin for a better telephone number so that you can call back and confirm that he received the document. Godwin should be cooperative — after all, he gets overpaid to perform this function for the Foundation.

I'd very briefly lay out the evidence that suggests that User:Erik set you up, and that User:Erik may even be implicated in attempted identity theft in the matter of one Erik Kraft of Chicago. Don't get too specific — just say that you have circumstantial evidence of this, and that the situation has caused both you and reportedly also Mr. Kraft some pain and suffering, and that you wish to seek restitution for damages by pursuing all legal means to identify the perpetrator, User:Erik. It's not really Godwin's role to evaluate your evidence. If he thinks it is, then he's protecting a Wikipedia user and Section 230 immunity becomes more complicated than it already is.

Ask specifically for all IP addresses for User:Erik that can be found in the logs maintained by any of the Wikimedia Foundation's employees. These employees would normally be the system administrators who maintain the servers and ultimately control access to this data. You want a date/time stamp for each edit as far back as the logs go (this will probably be not more than six months). Set a deadline for Godwin's response.

What you are requesting is more comprehensive than the usual checkuser data. Normally a checkuser would say that this guy is not this other guy, based on the tools they used to do the checking. You want more than this, so explain that your impression is that it would not be sufficient to simply request a checkuser on User:Erik through normal Wikipedia channels. In other words, you have not made such a request through normal channels, and you don't see why you should.

Make a copy of your document and post it here or on your own forum.

You can always change your mind later and also request a checkuser through normal channels.

[Somey]

But if I love your work as much as I profess, I should follow your lead. I want the bio deleted permanently. Tell me what to do. Contact Godwin? Great I'll do that now. What is the preferred method?

Unless it's your lawyer doing it, I'd say a phone call - and he's on the West Coast, so he might still be in his office...

That's (by far) the less important issue, though. The main thing is to start treating Erik Kraft as the victim, not the perp, since he almost certainly is - in fact, he's more of a victim than you are in this particular case, IMO.

Think of it as a kind of Pascal's Wager situation. If the second person (the innocent Erik Kraft) exists, then you've got a legitimate case for wrongdoing by User:Erik, mostly against Kraft, but it's still fairly serious wrongdoing. Whereas, if Kraft is the perp, your only case is that he edited your article and then lied about it - but only to you, not to a court, not to law enforcement. (OK, then he would have lied to Daniel too, but you have to figure everybody on Wikipedia does that.)

More importantly, if Kraft and User:Erik really are the same person, then it's case-closed - you'd have no rationale for pursuing him via the Wikimedia Foundation, since you already know who he is. Therefore, no chilling effect on further edits to the article, and no added rationale for a deletion (AfD, "Articles for Deletion") attempt.

This is extremely important, Mr. Murphy - I understand that you're angry at these people and you clearly should be, but all the hard evidence (i.e., other than vague suspicion on your part, and one or two odd coincidences) points to Erik Kraft being a different guy, whose identity the now-disappeared User:Erik is trying to hide behind. If there isn't a law against that, there should be - but at the very least, you might have some legitimate grounds for a civil case. (Though to be brutally honest, it's not a case I personally would want to take into court, given the relatively minor nature of the offense.)

[anthony]

He's not saying "Yeah, that is my address", he's saying "Yeah, I'm going to get outed".

I did consider it. It is a possibility. But why did he not immediately deny that the address and number were his? Why did he not immediately say 'they've got the wrong guy'?

Isn't that obvious? He didn't want anyone to know they've got the wrong guy. At least that was not his immediate reaction.

[A Horse With No Name]

Honestly though, what's with all the mud-loving? Most people don't pay attention* to Michael Moore because his "documentaries" are full of ridiculous stunts and side-shows. You can make a balanced, well-reasoned piece about Wikipedia and still provoke important questions and dialogue.

Mud sells, and Moore's documentaries bring in tons more money than serious stuff.

I used to write for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate through their Hartford Courant newspaper. If the real Erik needs tips on who to call, just whistle for Horsey.

And by the way...where is Tarantino? We could certainly use him to clarify who User:Erik really is.

[BelovedFox]

Honestly though, what's with all the mud-loving? Most people don't pay attention* to Michael Moore because his "documentaries" are full of ridiculous stunts and side-shows. You can make a balanced, well-reasoned piece about Wikipedia and still provoke important questions and dialogue.

Mud sells, and Moore's documentaries bring in tons more money than serious stuff.

I used to write for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate through their Hartford Courant newspaper. If the real Erik needs tips on who to call, just whistle for Horsey.

And by the way...where is Tarantino? We could certainly use him to clarify who User:Erik really is.

But I'll make the argument that money /= actual impact. After all, film critics dish out gobs on films that made nickels and dimes at the box office, and they're often the films we remember. Because they're so rooted in what is "fresh" now, Moore's documentaries are going to age very badly. "An Inconvenient Truth" had far more impact than, say, "Bowling for Columbine", in part because of its serious framing (of course, it also made gobs of money.)

Anyhow, my point is that if one were to make a documentary on Wikipedia, I would hope it wouldn't be a hatchet job one way or another. From what I've seen, there's only one or two short pieces that even take a stab at it, and they rely too much on the windbags.

[anthony]

The best hypothesis is that they are the same person.

Are you still on that, or have you finally given it up?

At this point I see absolutely nothing to suggest they are the same person. Okay, I take that back. I see one thing. The username of the one is the first name of the other. That's it. There's nothing else.

I suppose that it has not yet been established (to me, anyway) that they are not the same person. But then, it has not yet been established (to me, anyway) that User:Erik is not Meg Ryan.

The only thing keeping me from saying "no, they aren't the same person", is that I haven't yet heard the reasoning by which EK was suspected in the first place.

[Subtle Bee]

The only thing keeping me from saying "no, they aren't the same person", is that I haven't yet heard the reasoning by which EK was suspected in the first place.

Agreed, and given the length of this thread that's rather remarkable. What's more remarkable is how this guy's been put through the wringer here and on other sites, including his name and identifiables, by the same person who wants us to be outraged that it happened to him on WP.

Or am I missing something important?

[ColScott]

The only thing keeping me from saying "no, they aren't the same person", is that I haven't yet heard the reasoning by which EK was suspected in the first place.

Agreed, and given the length of this thread that's rather remarkable. What's more remarkable is how this guy's been put through the wringer here and on other sites, including his name and identifiables, by the same person who wants us to be outraged that it happened to him on WP.

Or am I missing something important?

1- f you

2- hey- Subtle Bee... Restless Bee? Wtf?

[Subtle Bee]

The only thing keeping me from saying "no, they aren't the same person", is that I haven't yet heard the reasoning by which EK was suspected in the first place.

Agreed, and given the length of this thread that's rather remarkable. What's more remarkable is how this guy's been put through the wringer here and on other sites, including his name and identifiables, by the same person who wants us to be outraged that it happened to him on WP.

Or am I missing something important?

1- f you

2- hey- Subtle Bee... Restless Bee? Wtf?

1. "f" me? Really? Are you 12?
2. yeah, you got me. You're like Durova on crack. Supergenius.

[ColScott]

The only thing keeping me from saying "no, they aren't the same person", is that I haven't yet heard the reasoning by which EK was suspected in the first place.

Agreed, and given the length of this thread that's rather remarkable. What's more remarkable is how this guy's been put through the wringer here and on other sites, including his name and identifiables, by the same person who wants us to be outraged that it happened to him on WP.

Or am I missing something important?

1- f you

2- hey- Subtle Bee... Restless Bee? Wtf?

1. "f" me? Really? Are you 12?
2. yeah, you got me. You're like Durova on crack. Supergenius.

1- I know you are but what am I?
2- Hey, I am clear with who I am. So are many others here. If you aren't, you are suspect. The only question is of what. I think you've committed several counts of mopery, at least!

[Cirocco]

Boredom and drifting in and out of states of consciousness due to combinations of drugs to keep me on this mortal coil for a while longer caused me to look through the revision history of Erik.

I like a good mystery but unfortunately I have no real internet detection ability.

Would the bottom of this page, with the remark under miscellaneous of "See Erik in his n00b phase. What's wrong with this picture?" that links to this page possibly be a clue to Eriks identity? Or have I just wasted 20 minutes?

[Subtle Bee]

1- I know you are but what am I?
2- Hey, I am clear with who I am. So are many others here. If you aren't, you are suspect. The only question is of what. I think you've committed several counts of mopery, at least!

1. Way to win, winner.
2. I don't care what you suspect.

How's about you actually speak to the point I first raised? What makes what you did to EK different from what WP did and does to you? Are you able to see how that looks hypocritical, and do you care? Or are you some obese Jesus, and there's just no more room on the cross?

(I would've numbered that last point, but I suspect I'm already asking too much of you).

[carbuncle]

Boredom and drifting in and out of states of consciousness due to combinations of drugs to keep me on this mortal coil for a while longer caused me to look through the revision history of Erik.

I like a good mystery but unfortunately I have no real internet detection ability.

Would the bottom of this page, with the remark under miscellaneous of "See Erik in his n00b phase. What's wrong with this picture?" that links to this page possibly be a clue to Eriks identity? Or have I just wasted 20 minutes?

You just wasted 20 minutes. Sorry.

[CharlotteWebb]

Ask specifically for all IP addresses for User:Erik that can be found in the logs maintained by any of the Wikimedia Foundation's employees. These employees would normally be the system administrators who maintain the servers and ultimately control access to this data. You want a date/time stamp for each edit as far back as the logs go (this will probably be not more than six months). Set a deadline for Godwin's response.

Checkuser retention is officially three months. Each passing edit has a 1% chance of triggering an SQL query to delete checkuser data older than ["now" minus "90 days"].

CODE

# How long to keep CU data?
$wgCUDMaxAge = 3 * 30 * 24 * 3600; // 3 months

(link)
Of course the possibility always exists that this is a false front with no bearing on what actually goes on inside the tubes. However if that were so, it seems odd Tim Starling would have had a fit about this:

Revert change to $wgCUDMaxAge. If you want such a policy change, have an open discussion about it, don't get together with some troll-hunting mates on a private mailing list and make your own rules.

(diff of revert).

What you are requesting is more comprehensive than the usual checkuser data.

At about the same time Tim also made the following statements on foundation-l regarding data retention:

CheckUser data used to be kept for 3 months, but Aaron recently increased it to 5 months. I'm not sure why or on whose authority.

<http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/CheckUser/CheckUser.php?r1=39734&r2=40620>

(link)

The other logs are not automatically rotated, and need to be manually purged. The retention time is thus not consistent. Typically we have kept around 6 months of data. There are error logs, and logs for various kinds of special requests. They are not used for sockpuppet investigation.

I've said in the past that I think 6 months would be a reasonable horizon for all private data -- it would give us plenty of data for operations, and would be a far shorter period than that used by the large commercial websites.

(link)
I think he means the raw http access logs which would include every page-load rather than edits. Somebody should ask what the hell he meant by "special request"—that these logs are available via "special request" i.e. subpoena (or yet more user-agent/demographic research by Greg Maxwell) or that they are merely logs of "special" HTTP requests which somehow deviate from the norm?

Also when he says "they are not used for sockpuppet investigation" I'm curious whether this means they the data is anonymized and therefore useless for that purpose, or that it is "inadmissible evidence" in wiki-legal fiction.

Shedding further light on the matter of Erik v. Erik may require a straight answer to these questions.

This post has been edited by CharlotteWebb: Tue 27th April 2010, 2:33am

[tarantino]

And by the way...where is Tarantino? We could certainly use him to clarify who User:Erik really is.

I'm watching from the sidelines :)

Nobody's mentioned that User:Erik is deaf. He probably doesn't take many cell phone calls.

[CharlotteWebb]

I'm watching from the sidelines

Nobody's mentioned that User:Erik is deaf. He probably doesn't take many cell phone calls.

WP also has a user who claims to have made 80,243 edits despite being blind. That's something I'd have to see to believe (no pun intended).

All I know is I tried installing a screen-reader and turning my monitor off for a few minutes... but could not find my ass with both hands, much less edit.

Obviously editing while deaf is more plausible, but I'd tend to take that sort of claim with a grain of salt also.

This post has been edited by CharlotteWebb: Tue 27th April 2010, 3:33am

[Daniel Brandt]

Nobody's mentioned that User:Erik is deaf. He probably doesn't take many cell phone calls.

Thank you tarantino!

He had a "This user is deaf" user box on his user page in his early days. I even made a note to myself when I first saw it. But it was only there a short time on his user page. I thought, for about 30 fleeting seconds a day later, "Why don't I check this out?" It would have taken three minutes to check it out. But then I thought to myself, "How does he watch all those movies if he's deaf? Maybe he was just figuring out how to stick user boxes on his page, and that's why he deleted it!" (As I recall, it was the first fime a user box showed up on his user page, looking at them in sequence.)

This web research is so weird. You short-change just one clue and it can turn out to be the one clue you should have checked just one step further, instead of wasting an hour chasing something else. This is why we need a lot of people searching and sharing simultaneously, and a lot less trolling.

If we get geolocation from an IP address, then wikipedia + deaf + city + films might be a useful search.

That settles it once and for all (for me, at least). I spent 30 minutes talking to Erik Kraft today, and he heard everything I said. Two different people. I suppose there are machines that can transcribe, but the back-and-forth was pretty fast at times.

[CharlotteWebb]

He added at least one stub about the spider-man sound-track:

The film's original score was composed by Danny Elfman. The score combines traditional orchestration, ethnic percussion and electronic elements. A CD release of the score came out on Sony's label.

I realize it doesn't prove anything as a deaf person could have copied that information from somewhere else, or through the help of a friend's ears. I haven't seen the film so I don't even know whether it's accurate, only that I wouldn't post something like that without at least listening to a sample. Too much potential to look like an idiot. Others' mileage may vary.

I notice User:Erik has edited several articles related to deafness and sign language, but only one time each and without any attention to the content, which seems a bit unusual: [1][2][3][4][5][6]

Not a smoking gun but I'd hesitate to take his word for it, particularly if he's been playing the shell-game regarding his identity.

If you have reasons to believe he's impersonating another Erik you're probably right, but if he says your mother loves you, check it out.