Slimvirgin gets slashdotted, No place to hide... Options

[WordBomb]

I couldn't resist.

I probably could've said something wittier if it wasn't past 5am.

Can you imagine how funny it would be to see Slim read a comment like yours, reflexively try to delete it, only to be reminded that, away from her sordid Slim Lair, she's just like us (or lower, considering she lives in Saskatchewan)?

[JohnA]

Tsk tsk.. Jimbo

{{Warning}}

Your edit is a violation of [[WP:AGF]] [wikipedia.org] and [[WP:TROLL]] [wikipedia.org]. If you continue to troll you could be temporarily banned.

[Daniel Brandt]

We all have to remember that this has occurred as the result of a confluence of extremely unusual circumstances and coincidences. What are the chances that Slimmy would have bought a copy of Namebase in the early 90's by asking her boyfriend to physically go to Daniel Brandt's office to buy one? And that she'd then start an article about Brandt, only to delete it a few days later, but then have it restored by some Google-fan she probably had never heard of before? And what are the chances that she'd run into yet another editor who just happened to be obsessed with attacking a corporate CEO whom she'd known 20 years before, in Oxford-Cambridge of all places, and who had offended her by asking someone to pass him some French Fries using a phony British accent? And on top of that, to have someone affiliated with said CEO be one of the most tenacious and dedicated IP-address and sock-puppet trackers any of us have ever encountered in our entire online lives? And that he and Brandt would both end up on the same message board?

One breakthrough was the connection showing that one S.McEwan in Swalwell, Alberta had registered the domain slimvirgin.com, and that this was probably the same as one Sarah McEwan from Canada who wrote a couple of letters to a newspaper in Britain defending animal rights on the foxhunting issue. That domain was created in May, 2002. The email address on the domain registration was already bouncing; it was slimvirgin1@yahoo.com. Slim signs the name "Sarah" on Wikipedia. Unless my memory is faulty, her IP address geolocated to Alberta when she first got involved with my biography. But in recent months, her IP address geolocates to somewhere in Saskatchewan. She's somewhere in central Canada, at any rate.

But the biggest breakthrough of all came from a member of this board in June, 2006. Knowing that SlimVirgin on her user page had identified herself as an alumnus of Cambridge, this board member found an obscure page on the Kings College, Cambridge web site. Twenty pages deep, and seen only with a mouseover (to keep the search engines out), this board member discovered that a mouseover on the name of alumnus Linda Mack showed an email address of slimvirgin1@yahoo.com. This board member sent me an email informing me of the discovery. I recognized the name Linda Mack instantly.

Then by looking at SlimVirgin's early edits on Wikipedia, it was obvious that she was obsessed with PanAm 103, just as Linda Mack was known to be obsesseed with PanAm 103. I started looking for stubs she created and found a couple of ABC-affiliated journalists among these stubs. One of them was reachable on the web, and he generously gave me contact information for John K. Cooley in Athens. I wanted to contact Cooley because in a book written by someone who was involved in the PanAm 103 investigation, he mentioned getting a call from Cooley requesting an interview, and then Cooley passed the telephone to Linda Mack, who asked the questions.

Cooley responded to my email quite quickly. I had already posted on this board that I had found Cooley and was hoping to get a response. That response revealed the information about Salinger's suspicions and Mack getting locked out of her office by Salinger. About a day after I got this smoking gun, Cooley sent a second email, saying that Mack had just contacted him and asked him to not talk to me.

Just as Slim's edits on Wikipedia have slowly but surely been oversighted to obscure the Linda Mack connection, so too has some of the above information. Cooley seemed very nervous after Mack contacted him, and while he didn't retract anything he told me earlier, it was obvious to me that I wouldn't get anything more from him, even if he had more to offer, which I doubted. I didn't bother him again.

The Kings College website listing of Linda Mack was deleted within the last six months, and the domain registration for slimvirgin.com was changed to an anonymous registration by proxy the last time it was renewed. (By the way, I emailed SlimVirgin at gmail.com anonymously in late October 2005, asking if she would be interested in selling the slimvirgin.com domain name. In two separate responses, she flatly denied that she was the owner.)

Someone was trying to keep the lid on this thing, which of course made it much more interesting. It was starting to read like an Eric Ambler spy novel. (Ambler's heroes are amateurs who stumble into these hairy situations. They're not stupid or clumsy, but shit happens and they find themselves smack in the middle of it all without quite knowing how or why they got there. Then they have to use their wits against hardened bad-guy spies to get themselves out of the situation.)

To all those on the Wikipedia mailing list who are insinuating that our evidence about Slim is weak or nonexistent, my response is that our evidence is much, much stronger than the evidence that sent that Libyan to prison for 27 years.

[blissyu2]

Perhaps someone will write a book on SlimVirgin once this is all over.

[badlydrawnjeff]

See, I feel like that's the most damning part of the whole thing - there's more than enough circumstantial evidence there, and it seems...odd not to address it.

I mean, the more controversial issue here isn't "Is SlimVirgin actually Linda Mack," but "Is SlimVirgin someone who's involved with intelligence agencies and editing Wikipedia with that in mind." I could honestly care less as long as the edits are sound - I only had one rotten encounter with her in my time at WP, and it had nothing to do with anything you guys discuss here.

But let's be serious for a second. Outside of the accusations of cabalism and article ownership (the latter of which I haven't investigated, don't really care about, and are really only meta issues), is there evidence she's really done anything wrong other than mislead some people into thinking she was someone else? And this isn't like a "I said I was a professor, but I'm really a 24 year old" misleading, but "I said my name was Sarah when it's really Linda," which is, well, a big "so what" in my book.

And let's put it a step further here - we're seeing accusations that she's working as an intelligence agent or operative or whatever. If this is so, do we see definitive edits which show her pushing some governmental/intelligence POV? If she is working for some governmental agency, or at least working with that agenda in mind, but there's no evidence of her making poor edits, why is this even a story for us outside of "omg wikipedia admin uses a pseudonym and may have worked for the government!"

I mean, there are far, far worse administrators and editors doing severe damage to the credibility of the project who don't cover their tracks as well than someone who might have a predisposition to detailing Nazisim and a horrific terror attack.

What's the point here?

This post has been edited by badlydrawnjeff: Sat 28th July 2007, 1:42pm

[Daniel Brandt]

I mean, there are far, far worse administrators and editors doing severe damage to the credibility of the project who don't cover their tracks as well than someone who might have a predisposition to detailing Nazisim and a horrific terror attack.

What's the point here?

The point is this: If the evidence suggests that the content on Wikipedia is getting shaped by unacknowledged influences, then the people who use Wikipedia have the right to know this. Accordingly, there should be no tolerance for anonymity when it is used to protect powerful administrators such as SlimVirgin, particularly when evidence suggests the potential for serious conflicts of interest.

The "so what?" attitude is better reserved for Essjay, who was backed up by Catholicism for Dummies instead of two doctorates. At least Essjay was merely playing with trivia about Catholicism. That was funny — a delightful human interest story.

Slim is dealing with geopolitical issues that, in the case of Lockerbie, involve Western intelligence agencies and the conspiracies that they arrange to protect Western interests. There is, at a minimum, the appearance of a potential conflict of interest when Slim edits content about Lockerbie.

It's not merely an issue of rigorous sourcing. It's also an issue of which sources are selected in the first place. Slim is in the habit of declaring certain sources substandard. She declared me to be a substandard source on the topic of one Chip Berlet, even before she started that stub on me.

There's a reason why newspapers list publishers and editors in a staff box, and why many articles contain bylines. It's called "accountability."

"Anonymity" is the opposite of "accountability."

[guy]

Outside of the accusations of cabalism and article ownership (the latter of which I haven't investigated, don't really care about, and are really only meta issues), is there evidence she's really done anything wrong other than mislead some people into thinking she was someone else?

She's destroyed I don't know how many good editors, whose only crime was to believe in the self-proclaimed principles of Wikipedia. I can only speculate on her motives, but if she really believes that she was doing anything other than damaging the project, we should ask Jimbo if he really wants admins who lack a grip on reality.

[blissyu2]

Here's some problems with SlimVirgin's use of Wikipedia, that are of serious relevance to people:

* She refuses to acknowledge sources, choosing which sources you can use, none more so than on List of British Jews, in which she has added to the edit the article space this message: <!--PLEASE DO NOT ADD ANY MORE NAMES TO THIS PAGE WITHOUT INCLUDING A CREDIBLE SOURCE FOR THE INFORMATION. SEE [[WIKIPEDIA:VERIFIABILITY]] AND [[WIKIPEDIA:NO ORIGINAL RESEARCH]], WHICH ARE POLICY. THE SOURCE MUST SAY THAT THE PERSON IS ACTUALLY JEWISH.--> and has a similar insistence on the talk page of the article.

This is relevant because, in many cases, she chooses which links are okay to include, and hence decides what kind of truth is acceptable to her.

* She routinely refuses to answer messages to her on her user talk page, instead deleting them and then getting someone to punish the person who wrote to her. We have seen in relation to this recent issue several cases of this, but there are many others as well. Sometimes she hides these by claiming that she is archiving, when in reality she is refusing to answer a question...

This demonstrates a lack of transparency. That she is above public comment.

* She also goes around Wikipedia changing the rules to suit herself. The amount that she has changed to WP: Verifiability for example are monstruous. She has a clear agenda to make sure that only the truth that she wants people to read is what people read. This is truth-changing at its worst.

* She edits primarily the most controversial articles. The articles that have the least amount of consensus, with sometimes 5 or 6 or even more opposing views. She controls these articles. She doesn't control some Spongebob Squarepants article that everyone pretty much agrees on, or a purely factual article like something about Nuclear Physics. She controls articles about the Middle East, Terrorism, Judaism, and articles of this kind.

* She rarely does something herself. Instead, she claims at how abused she has been, and then hey presto Jayjg or Crum375 or someone else does it for her, and then she says "Thank you so much for rescuing me" and everything is fine. Thus she can't be instantly tracked back for what she is doing.

It doesn't matter what SlimVirgin's real name is. Who cares if she is Sarah McEwan or Linda Mack or Popeye the Sailor Man. And indeed, if a spook was editing Wikipedia for his or her own private reason, who cares? What we care about is that SlimVirgin is changing history. She is changing reality.

Lockerbie bombing was changed to present a different sense of reality on the topic to what exists elsewhere. There are many other examples of articles that have done this, not all controlled by SlimVirgin. But why do we care if the Celine Dion article is perverted to incorrectly make Celine Dion look worse than Mariah Carey? We don't care. But we do care if she is presenting a false history on topics of major relevance to everyone.

For the record, I didn't have any run ins with SlimVirgin either, and as at when I left Wikipedia I thought that she was a great person, and I felt sorry for her. That opinion has changed, however, since that time.

Quite frankly, who gives a shit if Snowspinner is spinning some lies, and abusing people? It doesn't matter to the world, just so long as he isn't actually murdering classmates. Who cares if Raul654 is abusive? It doesn't matter to the world, so long as that's all he's doing. Who cares if MONGO is abusive? But SlimVirgin is changing history. That in itself is bad, but if she is doing it with a major agenda, then we need to wake up and take serious notice. That's why this issue is so much more important than issues like the Essjay scandal or Seigenthaler or any previous scandal before this.

[JohnA]

Quite frankly, who gives a shit if Snowspinner is spinning some lies, and abusing people? It doesn't matter to the world, just so long as he isn't actually murdering classmates. Who cares if Raul654 is abusive? It doesn't matter to the world, so long as that's all he's doing. Who cares if MONGO is abusive? But SlimVirgin is changing history. That in itself is bad, but if she is doing it with a major agenda, then we need to wake up and take serious notice. That's why this issue is so much more important than issues like the Essjay scandal or Seigenthaler or any previous scandal before this.

Actually that is my point about Wikipedia: it is changing history right before our eyes. I think that one fact is scary beyond belief. Thousands of anonymous people are talking into their speakwrites altering history moment by moment and then consigning previous history to the memory holes (oversight).

Wikipedia was and is a clear threat to liberal democracy and freedom. If even the case of Slimvirgin was the end of it, it wouldn't be so bad, but even SV is the thin end of a very large wedge of vandalism of the historical record.

[Daniel Brandt]

Selina kept a lot of information, but Selina sadly is on holiday at the moment. We must wait until she returns. And hopefully Selina hasn't wiped it in the meantime or forgotten where she put it.

You might be referring to http://wikipediareview.com/slimvirgin/

What we really need is Slim's complete "user contributions" listing as of about June 2006. That's when she began to get nervous about exposure. With a list like this, we could then compare it to the current history, and see if anything existed in June 2006 that no longer exists on her user contribution list.

I don't know if old dumps of Wikipedia can deliver complete histories. What I have in mind is forcing a dump of 5000 by changing the "500" in the URL to "5000" or more. (I know 5000 works, but I haven't tried anything more.) If you had two complete lists in plain text, you could run a "file compare" to spit out the differences, and then you could investigate the differences.

If anyone has an old dump of Wikipedia, they might be able to do this. It would be a lot of work, but it would also be quite interesting.

[badlydrawnjeff]

So, I mean, what's the point, then? That she mgiht have a conflict of interest? Oh, shucks, she'll be one of ten thousand, then - big whoop.

I guess I don't get it. Unless she's actively working to provide misinformation based on privileged information, I'm not sure why this is more important than any other administrator who can't seem to control themselves.

[WordBomb]

If anyone has an old dump of Wikipedia, they might be able to do this. It would be a lot of work, but it would also be quite interesting.

As it happens, I've been accumulating dumps over time, for just this purpose, but have yet to completely expand any of them (400 Gb is a lot of space). However that will all change on Monday, as I've made arrangements to get query access first to the 7/23/07 dump and then to several preceding it (going back to last summer to just before oversight was instituted), each captured soon after it was made.

I'll try to find some way to make a manageable subset of the data available so you folks can join the fun. Suggestions are welcome.

[Daniel Brandt]

I'll try to find some way to make a manageable subset of the data available so you folks can join the fun. Suggestions are welcome.

I think a complete list of Slim's user contributions as they appeared on Wikipedia as of June 2006, or as close to that as possible, is the most useful thing right now. This would start on November 5, 2004, the date of her very first edit (which is also, by the way, an edit that is no longer listed in her user contributions because it got memory-holed). A list like this can be compared to the current version of the same list, which we can get ourselves from Wikipedia.

The important thing is to develop a listing of differences between these two lists. Both lists will cover exactly the same time span. Any differences are immediately suspicious. Then we can order the differences by subject. Any politically-charged subjects are more important than animal liberation issues, for example.

This ordered list of differences will provide a starting point for further research. It will probably be a fairly small list — I'd be surprised if it was more than 100 items. Once the list is this manageable, pulling the actual diffs from the memory hole will give us some insight into the types of edits that Slim did not want scrutinized.

[LamontStormstar]

I'll try to find some way to make a manageable subset of the data available so you folks can join the fun. Suggestions are welcome.

I think a complete list of Slim's user contributions as they appeared on Wikipedia as of June 2006, or as close to that as possible, is the most useful thing right now. This would start on November 5, 2004, the date of her very first edit (which is also, by the way, an edit that is no longer listed in her user contributions because it got memory-holed). A list like this can be compared to the current version of the same list, which we can get ourselves from Wikipedia.

The important thing is to develop a listing of differences between these two lists. Both lists will cover exactly the same time span. Any differences are immediately suspicious. Then we can order the differences by subject. Any politically-charged subjects are more important than animal liberation issues, for example.

This ordered list of differences will provide a starting point for further research. It will probably be a fairly small list — I'd be surprised if it was more than 100 items. Once the list is this manageable, pulling the actual diffs from the memory hole will give us some insight into the types of edits that Slim did not want scrutinized.

What about her two main meatpuppets (that some have considered socks) Jayjg and Crum375? They must have some oversighted or at least hidden edits, too.

[Daniel Brandt]

What about her two main meatpuppets (that some have considered socks) Jayjg and Crum375? They must have some oversighted or at least hidden edits, too.

Slim first. We have one example already of an interesting memory-holed edit, which I explained earlier in this thread. Also, Slim joined Wikipedia and charged ahead, assuming that no one would ever make any connections between her real identity and her editing. That all changed when we discovered that she was Linda Mack of PanAm 103 fame. That discovery was made in June 2006. This gives us an approximate date to distinguish the charge-ahead SlimVirgin from the go-back-and-cover-up SlimVirgin.

We're looking for a pattern of cover-up. If we find one, then the next question is the extent to which other admins at Wikipedia helped Slim with this task. She probably needed support from above to pull this off, if it was at all systematic.

If we don't find anything interesting with Slim, then I doubt that we'd do very well with Jayjg and Crum375.

[A Man In Black]

Here's some problems with SlimVirgin's use of Wikipedia, that are of serious relevance to people:

* She refuses to acknowledge sources, choosing which sources you can use, none more so than on List of British Jews[...]

* She routinely refuses to answer messages to her on her user talk page, instead deleting them and then getting someone to punish the person who wrote to her.

* She also goes around Wikipedia changing the rules to suit herself.

* She edits primarily the most controversial articles.

* She rarely does something herself.

News flash! WR has damning, conclusive evidence that demonstrates she's editing Wikipedia to push MI5's interests!

Oh wait. None of this has anything to do with that. So why are you copy-pasting the same old rant, Zordy? ¬_¬

[LamontStormstar]

Here's some problems with SlimVirgin's use of Wikipedia, that are of serious relevance to people:

* She refuses to acknowledge sources, choosing which sources you can use, none more so than on List of British Jews[...]

* She routinely refuses to answer messages to her on her user talk page, instead deleting them and then getting someone to punish the person who wrote to her.

* She also goes around Wikipedia changing the rules to suit herself.

* She edits primarily the most controversial articles.

* She rarely does something herself.

News flash! WR has damning, conclusive evidence that demonstrates she's editing Wikipedia to push MI5's interests!

Oh wait. None of this has anything to do with that. So why are you copy-pasting the same old rant, Zordy? ¬_¬

MI5? What about MJ12?

[BobbyBombastic]

now on digg 856 diggs right now

ElinorD doesn't really care

[LamontStormstar]

now on digg 856 diggs right now

ElinorD doesn't really care

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=147676255

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=147674997


As usual, saying anything bad about admins there is a crime:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...176#Please_stop

Hmmm Oleg Alexandrov is an admin, though, or else he'd get banned for criticizing SlimVirgin. Maybe DcDemiv, Jayjg or somebody will claim something like saying Oleg Alexandrov is Runcorn and then ban him.


This post has been edited by LamontStormstar: Sat 28th July 2007, 11:12pm

[Infoboy]

What we really, really need are the oversighted edits of [[User:Slimv]], her originally username. Jayjy removed them all. That's where the real evidence was.