An FT2 Sockpuppet?, It quacks like a duck Options

[Peter Damian]

There is apparently more that's been scrubbed from FT2's history than the 2 oversighted edits that Peter brought to our attention. Wikidashboard (Providing social transparency to Wikipedia), provides a link to 212 edits that are no longer available to mere editors. The links don't provide the page title, only the edit number, so I'm unable to tell if they were from XFDs, admin deletions or oversights. There's plenty of provocative edit summaries though. Here's a small sample -

2006/06/04 02:55:25 /* Cartoon and other representations */
2006/06/04 02:50:25 /* Animal pornography not including humans $stub$ */
2006/06/04 02:47:00 /* Animal pornography and culture */

Are there any admins here who can confirm the method of deletion for these edits? PM me if you don't feel like attaching an answer to your WR account name.

I've archived a copy of the list here modifying the links to point directly to WP, instead of going through wikidashboard.

What? None of these are on my list of FT2's edits at all. Can you confirm whether the date that appears is the date of the oversight, or the date of the edit itself? I assume the latter.

[edit] OK mystery solved. These are not oversighted edits. They are from a subpage in FT2's user space, which he has deleted. Thus the record of the edit summaries remains, but because Wikipedia remembers versions of a page (rather than diffs, which it constructs from the 'diff' between versions), and because the whole page has disappeared, there is no record in the database.

The page must have been from his own user space, because it was deleted before he had oversight or admin privileges (it seems to have been deleted in Jan 2007, when he first ran for admin, yes?).

The edits are all to do with animal pornography, which he seems to have a comprehensive knowledge of, and which was no doubt acquired for research purposes.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Sat 10th May 2008, 7:16am

[Proabivouac]

Down to brass tacks:

Why is Wikipedia being run by a COI-afflicted disciple of Neurolinguistic programming - a professional crank - who's used WP to promote bestiality?

Why was this individual promoted to the top of the heirarchy?

Why was evidence which might have - and should have - nipped his ArbCom candidacy in the bud suppressed?

Why was the whistleblower blocked indefinitely?

I want answers, but all I've heard is silence.

[Proabivouac]

The edits are all to do with animal pornography, which he seems to have a comprehensive knowledge of, and which was no doubt acquired for research purposes.

Just to make it completely clear, my position is that no respectable publication would be associated with this kind of thing.

[Moulton]

I want answers, but all I've heard is silence.

I can empathize with your frustration.

[guy]

Why was this individual promoted to the top of the heirarchy?

Because Daniel Brandt thought that his own interests would be better served by having FT2 heading ArbCom rather than Newyorkbrad.

[Moulton]

Why was this individual promoted to the top of the heirarchy?

Because Daniel Brandt thought that his own interests would be better served by having FT2 heading ArbCom rather than Newyorkbrad.

Damn, it's hard to sort out unintended consequences from intended ones. I keep dropping the ball when it comes to accurately adducing the mindset of various characters in these long-running soap operas.

[tarantino]

What? None of these are on my list of FT2's edits at all. Can you confirm whether the date that appears is the date of the oversight, or the date of the edit itself? I assume the latter.

[edit] OK mystery solved. These are not oversighted edits. They are from a subpage in FT2's user space, which he has deleted. Thus the record of the edit summaries remains, but because Wikipedia remembers versions of a page (rather than diffs, which it constructs from the 'diff' between versions), and because the whole page has disappeared, there is no record in the database.

The page must have been from his own user space, because it was deleted before he had oversight or admin privileges (it seems to have been deleted in Jan 2007, when he first ran for admin, yes?).

They are not necessarily from a user subpage. The dates are when the edits were made. When you look through his history you can see the holes. Examining them a little more closely, the text inside /* */ is the title of the page section edited, and the text after is a manually added summary which he rarely did at the time. Wikiscanner results are similarly constructed. I'll have to search for the section titles to see if any remain.

The numbers after oldid and prev in WP urls are page versions, and every single edit on WP can be referenced by just using the oldid field. The page title in the url is not even needed and seems to be ignored. With a manually constructed url, you can compare any two diffs in the database and insert any title you want. The comedy potential in doing this is large, and perhaps should be the subject of a WR contest. For example http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=211451045 .

FT2 first ran for admin in June 2006.

[Peter Damian]

They are not necessarily from a user subpage. The dates are when the edits were made. When you look through his history you can see the holes. Examining them a little more closely, the text inside /* */ is the title of the page section edited, and the text after is a manually added summary which he rarely did at the time. Wikiscanner results are similarly constructed. I'll have to search for the section titles to see if any remain.

Are you sure?

http://wikidashboard.parc.com/dashboard/de...0101&l=20080516

This URL has a page number (5205068), just as do all the other pages he edited shown here

http://wikidashboard.parc.com/w/index.php?title=User:FT2#

So my logic is as follows:

1. The missing edits are all from one page
2. For all the versions to be missing, the page must have been deleted.
3. Only pages in user space can be deleted if you aren't admin (which he wasn't until 2007)

------------------------------------------
[edit] Interesting that the contents of /* */ are section headings. Sorting these alphabetically, it looks like an article (in preparation, if I am correct) with the following sections:

Abuse
Abusive films
Add "activism" section
Animal pornography and culture
Animal pornography not including humans
Animal sexuality
Background on sexual aspects
Cartoon and other representations
Erotic stories
Faked activity
Features of animal pornography
History of animal pornography
Human-animal sexual activity
Images
Legal issues
Legality of sale, transportation and ownership
List of relevant laws
Major producers of animal pornography
Modern times
Notable aspects in animal pornography
OLD ZOO POSTS
Pre-modern times
Production and distribution
References
See also
Textual representations

I'm guessing 'See also' and 'references' came at the end. Wonder what the order would be.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Sat 10th May 2008, 3:22pm

[tarantino]

They are not necessarily from a user subpage. The dates are when the edits were made. When you look through his history you can see the holes. Examining them a little more closely, the text inside /* */ is the title of the page section edited, and the text after is a manually added summary which he rarely did at the time. Wikiscanner results are similarly constructed. I'll have to search for the section titles to see if any remain.

Are you sure?

http://wikidashboard.parc.com/dashboard/de...0101&l=20080516

This URL has a page number (5205068), just as do all the other pages he edited shown here

http://wikidashboard.parc.com/w/index.php?title=User:FT2#

So my logic is as follows:

1. The missing edits are all from one page
2. For all the versions to be missing, the page must have been deleted.
3. Only pages in user space can be deleted if you aren't admin (which he wasn't until 2007)

Yes, that makes sense. In another list of FT2 results that wikidashboard labels unknown, all the versions seem to be from the Zoophilia article.

The page was probably deleted though sometime after the date of the database dump which wikidashboard is using. I think it's from August 2007, the same one that wikiscanner uses.

[wikiwhistle]

3. Only pages in user space can be deleted if you aren't admin (which he wasn't until 2007)

Yes but one of his admin mates could always have done it, to help him out.

[Eva Destruction]

While I'm *not* going to disclose the content for obvious reasons, I can confirm that the article in question was entirely in a userspace sandbox and the sandbox itself was (legitimately) deleted as it only had one editor. Having read the (deleted and never posted to mainspace) article in question, while it's on a fairly unpleasant subject, it's undoubtedly a legitimate, referenced academic article. That said, I can see why he didn't post it into mainspace, and (while I dislike him for other reasons), I think he's to be commended for not posting it after putting so much effort into it.

Not that any of you are going to take any notice of me...

[wikiwhistle]

I think he's to be commended for not posting it after putting so much effort into it.

The struggle between the dictates of one obsession and another?

[Eva Destruction]

I think he's to be commended for not posting it after putting so much effort into it.

The struggle between the dictates of one obsession and another?

I prefer to think "realised after he'd written it that it wasn't appropriate". I know I sound like a broken record on this one but just because someone writes an article on something doesn't have to mean they personally support it...

[Proabivouac]

While I'm *not* going to disclose the content for obvious reasons…

What obvious reasons?

[Peter Damian]

While I'm *not* going to disclose the content for obvious reasons, I can confirm that the article in question was entirely in a userspace sandbox and the sandbox itself was (legitimately) deleted as it only had one editor. Having read the (deleted and never posted to mainspace) article in question, while it's on a fairly unpleasant subject, it's undoubtedly a legitimate, referenced academic article. That said, I can see why he didn't post it into mainspace, and (while I dislike him for other reasons), I think he's to be commended for not posting it after putting so much effort into it.

Not that any of you are going to take any notice of me...

I'm not tempted to take much notice. Why is it a 'legitimate' article? What makes it legitimate, i.e. legal? What makes it referenced? Not much of anything else FT2 has been written is referenced (except to pornographic websites - this is not what we call referencing).

Why is he to be commended? Normally if you put a great deal of work into something, you publish it. Why didn't he publish it?

I prefer to think "realised after he'd written it that it wasn't appropriate". I know I sound like a broken record on this one but just because someone writes an article on something doesn't have to mean they personally support it...

No of course it doesn't. Unless they say or imply they support it.

And as PB says, what are the obvious reasons for not disclosing the content? That makes no sense.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Sat 10th May 2008, 9:52pm

[wikiwhistle]

Why all this concern to ensure FT2 looks perfect, to the extent of others oversighting his posts? If there isn't something to hide, why hide it?

I mean we all make mistakes or sometimes do things that later don't appear politically correct. And yes other members of the cabal's posts are oversighted sometimes, aren't they?

But it seems particuarly so in this case. But then we are perhaps viewing the actions or requests of an intensely introspective/secretive personality.

And as PB says, what are the obvious reasons for not disclosing the content? That makes no sense.

Because he wanted it gone- because it reflects badly on him or could be construed as doing so. Ok I will tell you one that was in my userspace, after I delete it lol

Ok it is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Merkinsm...gainst_Muhammad but as you can see if it hasn't gone yet, the tone was quite constructive and NPOV. But I might not want something with that title if I was on/running for ArbCom.

This post has been edited by wikiwhistle: Sat 10th May 2008, 10:06pm

[guy]

While I'm *not* going to disclose the content for obvious reasons?Ǫ

What obvious reasons?

Admins can get desysopped for even hinting that they might reveal the content of deleted material to WR.

[Proabivouac]

While I'm *not* going to disclose the content for obvious reasons…

What obvious reasons?

Admins can get desysopped for even hinting that they might reveal the content of deleted material to WR.

The typical rationale behind this - and a fairly good one - is that the deleted material contained some kind of libelous charge or personal information. If this was a just well-referenced article with a neutral and clinical tone, that wouldn't apply. It was released under GFDL, and like any other article could conceivably be undeleted at any time. The only basis for complaint that I can see is, well, it was in FT2's userspace. But so what? All of this begs the question, if it doesn't reflect poorly upon FT2, then why was it deleted, and what would be the problem with anyone looking at it? Correspondingly, the only way that revealing the content could be construed as a way of damaging FT2 is if there is something not quite right about it.

Nevertheless, Eva Destruction, thank you for providing the background on this.

[tarantino]

Regardless of what one thinks of FT2, he has some good ideas. He's the one who came up with idea and provided sample code for those show/hide text boxes that are widely in use, and he wrote the Newcomers guide to installing [Mediawiki] on Windows over Christmas in 2004.

My favorite though that I've seen so far is, you find some out of the way project, say the Cornish Wiktionary, and you can use it as a scratchpad while running for arbcom, away from the prying eyes of your home wiki. His user subpages there are the most highly edited pages of the whole wiki, with nearly a 1000 edits among them.

[wikiwhistle]

away from the prying eyes of your home wiki. His user subpages there are the most highly edited pages of the whole wiki, with nearly a 1000 edits among them.

oh, anything about horses, golden retrievers etc?