From: John Vandenberg <jayvdb@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 00:06

This is the most recent email

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: In strictest confidence
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2010 09:08:46 +0000
From: Londoneye <wendy.appleby@uclmail.net>
To: Jack Merridew <wiki.jack.merridew@gmail.com>

Jack

I believe that I can trust you, because you will understand what I am
talking about.

I am Longfellow.

Are you familiar with the case of Poetlister? This was one of the
great sockpuppeting cases. I was, admittedly partly through my own
fault, charged with being one of the socks and blocked on both WP and
Commons. Quillercouch (Poetlister renamed) was an admin on WS and had
to resign, though the account was never blocked.

One of the people involved had his e-mails hacked and was identified.
Poetlister's enemies smeared him with a lot of nonsense and
half-truths, and made him an object of ridicule across the Internet.
He had to resign from his job. He very gallantly took full
responsibility for everything, even though he was scarcely acting
alone, so my name has - thankfully - never come out.

You will realise that I very firmly don't want it revealed that I am
Longfellow. The checkusers and bureaucrats all know, and that's a few
people too many already. If Poetlister's enemies were even aware of
my existence, they might try to cause me trouble; while I believe that
there is nothing they could possibly find against me, it would be
seriously annoying.

On the basis of this, you may or may not want to vote in the RfA;
that's your decision. However, I would please ask you not to mention
this e-mail to anyone, or hint that I have contacted you.

With best wishes for the festive season.

Wendy

--
This e-mail was sent by Londoneye to Jack Merridew by the "E-mail
user" function at Wikisource.

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From: Herby <herbythyme@fmail.co.uk>
Date: Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 03:44

Fascinating. I confess this was a quick read and it is early but...

Is this guy still trying to make out he is a woman for a start - it was
his inability to sustain this illusion that made me realise what he was
up to last time among other issues. Londoneye was someone I kept a very
close eye on on Commons and was - I think - a declared puppet account of
PL. I don't recall the name Wendy from any emails I had though. It is
always possible that this is disinformation but the user was highly
devious and may have decided enough of the active CUs from the time are
not around much and it is worth another try. Londoneye persona told us
on Commons that they wanted to be an admin though I doubt that would
have happened. I can only echo comments on other mails - any project
should be careful about rights being granted and certainly advanced
rights which is what this user was after. Last time the fact that I was
fairly sure a sock had CU rights stopped me posting some things on list.

N

On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 16:06 +1100, "John Vandenberg" <jayvdb@gmail.com>
wrote:
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Herby
herbythyme@fmail.co.uk

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----------
From: Sydney Poore <sydney.poore@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 08:13

Your memory is correct. Before I made my oppose comment on WS, I reviewed our old emails from Londoneye. He was signing with the name Anna back then.
ALL Wikisource need to be alert for his attempt to elevate a pack of users to admin and higher perm. Since he is using a variety of IP we are going to watch to other little signs that it is him.

Sydney aka FloNight

On Dec 31, 2010 3:44 AM, "Herby" <herbythyme@fmail.co.uk> wrote:

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From: Sydney Poore <sydney.poore@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 08:17


(Correction)

ALL wikis need to be alert.....

Sydney


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From: Herby <herbythyme@fmail.co.uk>
Date: Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 08:32


Didn't think Wendy rang a bell - although I think Amy was used at some stage, there were a variety of female persona's.

Nice to know the info retrieval system is not too impaired (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

N

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From: Nicholas Michalowski <nmichalo@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 15:52

For those interested: I am one of the people Poetlister contacted me
at some point using wikisource's email user. Back when Kalki was
being investigated for sockpuppets at WQ.

Here is a quick description of our interaction. Poetlister randomly
asked me if I was interested in any further information about Cirt and
Kalki. I didn't notice his email until the matter was resolved. But
when I did I had asked him about past tensions between Cirt and Kalki
(he said there were none.), I also asked him to tell me about his own
story and why thekohser was happy to see Poetlister in trouble. The
first place I had ever heard of Poetlister was a blog link found at
thekohser's WQ talk page. I thought the list might find it
interesting how he described his own past behavior. So that part is
quoted below.

Effectively at this point I invited him to wikibooks. For which I
will probably justly receive some guff. More exactly what I said was
that thekohser's case made it clear that WB's community consensus was
not to look at other WMF wiki's (or elsewhere) when determining
blocks, and he was still in good standing at WB as far as I knew. He
then told me which book he planed to edit and which username he
planned to use, and mentioned a couple links I never got around to
looking at until his name popped up on this list again this week. It
seemed a bit much to copy all the back and forth emails, but if people
really curious I could share.

--thenub314

----------
From: "Poetlister ." <poetlister@gmail.com>
To: Thenub314 <nmichalo@math.uchicago.edu>
Date: Fri, 26 Nov 2010 18:44:46 +0000
Subject: Re: Wikisource e-mail
From poetlister@gmail.com Fri Nov 26 12:44:52 2010

I see that you are a fellow mathematician. :-)

[Edit - removed opinions about Cirt and Kalki not relevant to this
conversation.]


My own history is very
complex, so apologies for the length of what
follows. I was one of a group of editors who were in contact with
each
other and one or two of them may have used each other's accounts. I
managed
to annoy SlimVirgin. She asked Kelly Martin to checkuser me. This
led to
us being blocked. There was a howl of protest from people who said we
were
all good editors, and we were unblocked. (Later, Kelly said that her
initial view was that her checkuser did not justify the block and she
had
been bullied into saying that it did.)

We made a very stupid mistake: some of us used photos on our user
pages that
were not us. This was to have major consequences.

I became an admin on WQ. I also became active on Wikipedia Review and
was
made a staff (roughly, bureaucrat and checkuser). This was a stupid
move;
as the only admin in the history of the Review with an identified
unblocked
WP account, I was the main target for the anti-Review people on WP,
even
though I was generally acknowledged as a moderating influence on the
Review. I was blocked again. For the second time, there was a howl
of
protest.

On the Review, Greg Kohs was angry that there had twice been all these
protests against my blocks but not against his block. Further, there
were
many grumbles at the way he was using the Review to push his
commercial
website and he wrongly held me responsible for this. I never wanted
any
animosity, but he has a very long memory for every slight or perceived
slight. Meanwhile, I had become a bureaucrat on WQ and was in the
middle of
a RfA on WS. The powers that be on WP capitulated and unblocked me.
Greg
was the only prominent member of the Review not to congratulate me.
He
repeatedly argued that I should not have pressed for an unblock, still
less
edited WP after the unblock. He even criticised my article on Paul
Cohn, a
labour of love to my favourite lecturer.

At this point, certain e-mail accounts were hacked. I don't know who
did
it, though I'm told that there is evidence that it was User:Antidote,
who
had been exposed as a sockpuppet master by User:Runcorn. Information
from
this hacking reached Proabivouac and FT2. They used this to identify
Runcorn, a senior British civil servant with his own article on WP.
They
pretended to have proof that several accounts, including me, were the
same
person. FT2 approached Runcorn's employers and made a fuss. Runcorn
felt
obliged to resign. He very nobly agreed to pretend that he was indeed
all
of these accounts, though in fact his only other account was Cato, a
checkuser on WQ. FT2 got a blogger called Cade Metz to post an
article
about this, which would be screamingly funny if it didn;t have such
serious
consequences for Runcorn. The article on Runcorn was speedy deleted,
and
attempts were made to delete the one on his brother, though that was
defeated at AfD. I had to leave WP, WQ, WS and the Review, though I
still
follow events closely.

Sorry for the length, but you did ask!