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_ The ArbCom-L Leaks _ SlimVirgin socking Part 2

Posted by: MaliceAforethought

From: (Slim Virgin)
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 19:39:15 -0500
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

Jimbo, I don't read WordBomb's website and I've stopped reading
Wikipedia Review because I find it very upsetting. I've also asked my
wikifriends not to tell me if those sites are saying anything about
me, so I have no idea what you're talking about, and I don't want to
have to pour through their nonsense to find out.

Would you please tell me what *your* exact concerns are? Not theirs,
but yours. I'm certainly willing to "come clean" as you put it,
because I haven't done anything I need to hide from you.

I hope you're bearing in mind that WordBomb (Judd Bagley) is insane
and very unpleasant, even worse than Brandt.

As for trying to avoid "publication," WordBomb publishes his various
allegations on his website, Wikipedia Review, and investors' websites
all the time. He's been threatening me with "publication" of some
terrible thing since mid-2006, and to this day I don't know what he
means. I've pasted one of his e-mails to me below, this one from 12
months ago, where he said "[his] plan is to present these data in a
rather high profile venue where you can't silence us." If he's not
managed to find a "high profile venue" in 12 months, he can't have
much of a story.

I recall he wrote a similar e-mail to you, accusing you of sockpuppetry.

Sarah

From: Becky Beckett
Date: Aug 28, 2006 2:44 AM
Subject: we need to talk.
To: Sarah


Slim,
As I'm sure you know by now, we've been doing some homework. And not
too long ago, we "cracked the code" you might say, on you and your
activities on WP. At this point, we have what I think is a complete
picture, including your various sockpuppets (several, including Jon513
and Szero, both of which were mentioned publicly yesterday I believe),
anonymous IPs (in London, Edinburgh, NYC, etc), proxies (many). You
get the idea. And you've done everything you've banned others for
doing. We have the diffs.

We also have long past wikidumps, which have been available for
download in their original form, complete with many since
"oversighted" pages nicely intact (talk about an oversight!).

All in all, Slim, it's very unlikely that you'll make it through this
one. Right now, our plan is to present these data in a rather high
profile venue where you can't silence us, so please just accept that
there's not much you can do, and Jimbo will find himself under a bit
of pressure to make changes, especially with what's afoot.

That said, I hope you understand that I don't have anything against
you per se. I have things I want, and you stand in the way, so I now
I'm removing you. At the same time, there's no reason we can't
co-exist under specific circumstances.

And that's what I want to discuss with you.

If I don't hear back, I'll assume you'd rather take your chances on
what's coming.

WordBomb
----------

From: (Timothy Titcomb)
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 22:39:16 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On Aug 23, 2007, at 10:25 PM, jayjg wrote:

> It wasn't a straight question

Jay, it was as straight a question as I know how to ask.

Paul August
-----------

From: charles.r.matthews
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 8:46:22 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
Message-ID: <20070824074622.QCUI219.aamtaout01-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>

jayjg wrote

> On 8/23/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> > jayjg wrote
> >
> > > On 8/23/07, Timothy Titcomb wrote:
> > > >
> > > > On Aug 23, 2007, at 5:20 PM, jayjg wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > It is quite clear to me that there was a genuine and well-founded fear
> > > > > of stalking, including many attempts to discover her name and
> > > > > location. Subsequent events have borne that out, to an unprecedented
> > > > > degree. It is also clear that that was the primary issue and reason
> > > > > for asking for oversight. I can't really comment on the other, as I
> > > > > don't know anything about it.
> > > >
> > > > Jay, do you think all of your oversights of SlimVirgin's edits were
> > > > entirely appropriate and within policy?
> >
> > > Paul, do you think it is appropriate to oversight edits which
> > > personally identify an editor when it is clear that she has a genuine
> > > and well founded fear of stalking, including (but hardly restricted
> > > to) many attempts by scary and threatening individuals to discover her
> > > name and location?
> >
> > Err ... considering how many people on this list have already alluded to how serious a matter they consider this, do you really have to answer a straight question with a rhetorical one? You know, if it was all quite as simple as you make out (Brandt and cohorts are crazies - which is fair enough with me - so ends justify the means on WP, which is not what I think), you would not be having to write so many mails redefining the issues.
>
> It wasn't a straight question, it was premised on all sorts of
> assumptions, and I haven't been "writ[ing] so many mails redefining
> the issues." And my argument hasn't been that "the ends justifies the
> means" either.

You know, you are annoying me and possibly others here. Let's look at it, then. Paul asked this:

> > > > Jay, do you think all of your oversights of SlimVirgin's edits were
> > > > entirely appropriate and within policy?

This is a straight question. You could have answered 'Yes' to that. You have been arguing exactly that, I think.

"... it was premised on all sorts of assumptions..."

Bollocks. You were jumping to the conclusion it was loaded.

This is not wikien, and you can drop the tricks of advocacy here. They are more divisive than you imagine, I believe. We all have the mails to look at. We all have the Oversight policy to look at. We all have some potentially messy to look at. We all, I take it, have a stake in Wikipedia's basic integrity.

Charles
----------

From: (Matthew Brown)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:58:07 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/23/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> FWIW: As an oversighter, I'd probably have zapped them in the
> circumstances for the reason stated, without worrying too deeply about
> them on an individual basis.

I have to agree with David here; I'd have likely oversighted them as
well, and probably would not have done any extensive investigation as
to the context. I would have read the contributions, of course.

-Matt
----------

From: (James Forrester)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:02:58 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 24/08/07, Matthew Brown wrote:
> On 8/23/07, David Gerard wrote:
> > FWIW: As an oversighter, I'd probably have zapped them in the
> > circumstances for the reason stated, without worrying too deeply about
> > them on an individual basis.
>
> I have to agree with David here; I'd have likely oversighted them as
> well, and probably would not have done any extensive investigation as
> to the context. I would have read the contributions, of course.

"Not worrying too deeply about them on an individual basis" is a
rather different thing from zapping all edits without reading them,
which is what appears to have occurred here. OTOH, I think Jay's
actions were entirely in good faith, despite them being violations of
policy, and I think that there is potential to see Jay as being a
victim of circumstance and confusion here.

Remember that when we use Oversight to conceal real, non-vandalism
edits, we violate the GFDL and potentially put the Foundation into hot
water. OS for vandalism is fine, and I only read such things to check
that I'm not being fooled by an idiot requester, but for content...
eurgh. I personally am very cautious when requests to OS come in, but
that's my nature anyway. :-)

Speaking from a PR point of view (internal PR as much as anything
else), the best thing to do would be for us to admit that the base of
the allegations, but not the hyperbole, are correct, and apologise for
this. I think we should probably restore the edits, given that their
secrecy has been entirely compromised, and so it merely works to
traduce our name and character without benefit.

I do not think we should chastise Slim for asking for the OS - I don't
think that she engineered Jay into hiding malfeasance. Jay should
consider his position in his own terms and as to how that affects the
Committee and the community, but that is something for him and him
alone; I will not give counsel.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
----------

From: (David Gerard)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:10:21 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 24/08/07, James Forrester wrote:

> I do not think we should chastise Slim for asking for the OS - I don't
> think that she engineered Jay into hiding malfeasance.


I would agree (FWIW). Having nutcases this persistent after one is ...
a really special experience. Slim hasn't done anything warranting the
sort of rubbish she gets from this class of sociopathic troll.


> Jay should
> consider his position in his own terms and as to how that affects the
> Committee and the community, but that is something for him and him
> alone; I will not give counsel.


I don't think Jay has done anything wrong, and indeed the edit-hiding
is IMO arguably within oversight policy, i.e. information too
dangerous or sensitive to be accessible even to admins. (Though also
arguably not, of course.)

On a personal level I'd wonder at the point of the information hiding
to this extent. I've had such persistent crazies after me before and
at a certain point I said "this is me, fuck you," got on with doing
what I was doing and left them to discredit themselves. Mind you, I
still don't widely advertise my home address or employer.


- d.
----------

From: charles.r.matthews
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:32:45 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

"James Forrester" wrote

> Speaking from a PR point of view (internal PR as much as anything
> else), the best thing to do would be for us to admit that the base of
> the allegations, but not the hyperbole, are correct, and apologise for
> this.

Mmm, I could have been clearer about PR. What I meant, really, is that I was asked to talk to ABC about Essjay at a few minutes notice, and if I hadn't been able to talk to Sandra in the Office about the party line, damage might have been added to rather than limited. 'Press release' is really the shorthand for having the story half-written and fully spun.

Where are we? I think four points.

(A) The oversighting in question is arguably within normal practice.
(B) We all support the idea that WP's editors are entitled to edit without any private information being revealed, and that Oversight is properly used to support that entitlement.
© The ArbCom is now satisfied that the content of the oversighted edits, in relation to any possible Arbitration matters, has been taken into account.

Leaves:

(D) Call in a Steward. Formally, since it seems clear that we (Arbs) are not agreed on whether Jayjg's status as Oversighter needs to change, we can refer the matter to an uninvolved Steward (per Wikipedia:Oversight). This would be to settle a specific point: whether the oversighted edits contained bad-faith sockpuppet edits, and if so whether any action need follow.

Charles
-----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:35:39 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> jayjg wrote
>
> > On 8/23/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> > > jayjg wrote
> > >
> > > > On 8/23/07, Timothy Titcomb wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > On Aug 23, 2007, at 5:20 PM, jayjg wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > It is quite clear to me that there was a genuine and well-founded fear
> > > > > > of stalking, including many attempts to discover her name and
> > > > > > location. Subsequent events have borne that out, to an unprecedented
> > > > > > degree. It is also clear that that was the primary issue and reason
> > > > > > for asking for oversight. I can't really comment on the other, as I
> > > > > > don't know anything about it.
> > > > >
> > > > > Jay, do you think all of your oversights of SlimVirgin's edits were
> > > > > entirely appropriate and within policy?
> > >
> > > > Paul, do you think it is appropriate to oversight edits which
> > > > personally identify an editor when it is clear that she has a genuine
> > > > and well founded fear of stalking, including (but hardly restricted
> > > > to) many attempts by scary and threatening individuals to discover her
> > > > name and location?
> > >
> > > Err ... considering how many people on this list have already alluded to how serious a matter they consider this, do you really have to answer a straight question with a rhetorical one? You know, if it was all quite as simple as you make out (Brandt and cohorts are crazies - which is fair enough with me - so ends justify the means on WP, which is not what I think), you would not be having to write so many mails redefining the issues.
> >
> > It wasn't a straight question, it was premised on all sorts of
> > assumptions, and I haven't been "writ[ing] so many mails redefining
> > the issues." And my argument hasn't been that "the ends justifies the
> > means" either.
>
> You know, you are annoying me and possibly others here. Let's look at it, then. Paul asked this:
>
> > > > > Jay, do you think all of your oversights of SlimVirgin's edits were
> > > > > entirely appropriate and within policy?
>
> This is a straight question. You could have answered 'Yes' to that. You have been arguing exactly that, I think.

There's a context to everything though, isn't there? One cannot
"reframe" questions unless they have a frame to begin with. And I
reject that initial framing.

But if you want more direct: Under the circumstances *of course* the
oversights were appropriate.

>
> "... it was premised on all sorts of assumptions..."
>
> Bollocks. You were jumping to the conclusion it was loaded.

Not really; among many other things, there have been
accusations/insunations of conflict of interest, and unwarranted use
of oversight to conceal evidence of bad behavior - that behavior
consisting either of "bringing external conflicts onto Wikipedia" or
sockpuppeting.

> This is not wikien, and you can drop the tricks of advocacy here. They are more divisive
> than you imagine, I believe. We all have the mails to look at. We all have the Oversight
> policy to look at. We all have some potentially messy to look at. We all, I take it, have a
> stake in Wikipedia's basic integrity.

Well, here's the "crisis" we're trying to deal with; it appears that
when SlimVirgin first started editing *three years ago* she tried out
several accounts, before eventually settling on the SlimVirgin
account. The other accounts were used extremely rarely, and certainly
not used actively in over 2.5 years. In 2006 SV started being stalked
by some sociopathic individuals *purely as a result of her supporting
the activities and principles of Wikipedia*. It's not the heirs or
friends of Pierre Salinger (if they exist) who are upset with here,
it's people who have been banned from Wikipedia for extremely bad
behavior, and are looking for ways of discrediting it or destroying
it. In response to this stalking, SV asked that some personally
identifying edits, including edits from her IP, be oversighted, which
is one of the main things oversight was designed for. I oversighted
those edits. Since then those sociopathic individuals have continued
their "outing" crusade against SlimVirgin (among others), hoping to
pin some sort of malefeasance of any sort on her. They've now got
their "smoking gun"; when she first started editing 3 years ago she
wrote some negative (but in all likelihood true) things about Pierre
Salinger, and she probably used an alternate account for a couple of
dozen edits. I'm surprised the New York Times hasn't used this as its
front page lead today.

This is Judd Bagley et al we're talking about here, and just the
latest in a long sequence of "smoking guns" they've "discovered",
including all sorts of sockpuppet claims. Judd even claimed to have
discovered that Jimbo himself was sockpuppeting. I don't know whether
to laugh or weep at the seriousness being accorded their spin.
-----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:44:34 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, David Gerard wrote:
> On 24/08/07, James Forrester wrote:
>
> > I do not think we should chastise Slim for asking for the OS - I don't
> > think that she engineered Jay into hiding malfeasance.
>
>
> I would agree (FWIW). Having nutcases this persistent after one is ...
> a really special experience. Slim hasn't done anything warranting the
> sort of rubbish she gets from this class of sociopathic troll.
>
>
> > Jay should
> > consider his position in his own terms and as to how that affects the
> > Committee and the community, but that is something for him and him
> > alone; I will not give counsel.
>
>
> I don't think Jay has done anything wrong, and indeed the edit-hiding
> is IMO arguably within oversight policy, i.e. information too
> dangerous or sensitive to be accessible even to admins. (Though also
> arguably not, of course.)
>
> On a personal level I'd wonder at the point of the information hiding
> to this extent. I've had such persistent crazies after me before and
> at a certain point I said "this is me, fuck you," got on with doing
> what I was doing and left them to discredit themselves. Mind you, I
> still don't widely advertise my home address or employer.

Well, you're not a woman, for one thing, who might find some of the
threats made on WR particularly by Scott Grayban, to be extremely
unsettling. In addition, the sheer volume of nasty accusations being
alleged regarding "SlimVirgin" might well make her effectively
unemployable, were they attached to her real name; and that's a very
serious, real-world consequence. And keep in mind, these are people
who went as far as calling up people they think are her old work
colleagues and boyfriends from 20 years ago in an attempt to out her;
that's seriously disturbed.
-----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:52:24 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> "James Forrester" wrote
>
> > Speaking from a PR point of view (internal PR as much as anything
> > else), the best thing to do would be for us to admit that the base of
> > the allegations, but not the hyperbole, are correct, and apologise for
> > this.
>
> Mmm, I could have been clearer about PR. What I meant, really, is that I was asked to talk to ABC about Essjay at a few minutes notice, and if I hadn't been able to talk to Sandra in the Office about the party line, damage might have been added to rather than limited. 'Press release' is really the shorthand for having the story half-written and fully spun.
>
> Where are we? I think four points.
>
> (A) The oversighting in question is arguably within normal practice.
> (B) We all support the idea that WP's editors are entitled to edit without any private information being revealed, and that Oversight is properly used to support that entitlement.
> © The ArbCom is now satisfied that the content of the oversighted edits, in relation to any possible Arbitration matters, has been taken into account.
>
> Leaves:
>
> (D) Call in a Steward. Formally, since it seems clear that we (Arbs) are not agreed on whether Jayjg's status as Oversighter needs to change, we can refer the matter to an uninvolved Steward (per Wikipedia:Oversight). This would be to settle a specific point: whether the oversighted edits contained bad-faith sockpuppet edits, and if so whether any action need follow.
>

Charles, here's a direct question for you; is it in any way clear or
obvious that those oversighted edits on the Talk:Leifern page were
supposed to have come been made by "Sweet Blue Water", rather than
"SlimVirgin"? Had someone come to you, and said "This is my IP,
Wikipedia logged me out a few times and exposed my IP, could you
please oversight the edits I made while logged out?" would *you* have
gone back to the conversation from over a year before, and attempted
to reconstruct the chain of events that led to that comment being left
on that Talk: page? Or would you just have assumed that this was a
comment made by "SlimVirgin" while logged out?
-----------

From: (Kirill Lokshin)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:10:51 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, jayjg wrote:
> Charles, here's a direct question for you; is it in any way clear or
> obvious that those oversighted edits on the Talk:Leifern page were
> supposed to have come been made by "Sweet Blue Water", rather than
> "SlimVirgin"? Had someone come to you, and said "This is my IP,
> Wikipedia logged me out a few times and exposed my IP, could you
> please oversight the edits I made while logged out?" would *you* have
> gone back to the conversation from over a year before, and attempted
> to reconstruct the chain of events that led to that comment being left
> on that Talk: page? Or would you just have assumed that this was a
> comment made by "SlimVirgin" while logged out?

Had the question only been one of removing IP edits, your take on it
would be reasonable; but it wasn't. You oversighted a number of
non-IP edits -- essentially all of Slimv's editing history, for one --
at the same time. Had the only intent been a concealment of an
exposed IP address, this would have been entirely unnecessary.

In all honesty, I don't know what exactly SV asked you to do, or how
she framed her request; but it's clear from the result that it was
more complex than "could you please oversight the edits I made while
logged out".

Kirill
-----------

From: (charles.r.matthews)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:20:19 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote

> There's a context to everything though, isn't there? One cannot
> "reframe" questions unless they have a frame to begin with. And I
> reject that initial framing.
>
> But if you want more direct: Under the circumstances *of course* the
> oversights were appropriate.

And within policy? You see, some people actually believe that policy for tools such as Oversight is not to be treated as a matter of convenience, IAR, call it what you will. It is taken as read that you thought they were justified.

> > "... it was premised on all sorts of assumptions..."
> >
> > Bollocks. You were jumping to the conclusion it was loaded.
>
> Not really; among many other things, there have been
> accusations/insunations of conflict of interest, and unwarranted use
> of oversight to conceal evidence of bad behavior - that behavior
> consisting either of "bringing external conflicts onto Wikipedia" or
> sockpuppeting.

Oh, just leave it to the modern sophists to come out with this sort of thing. Or perhaps I have been corrupted, as Paul has, by the study of mathematics. Less experience of weasel words such as 'yes', 'no', 'true' and so on, you see. How they can be 'taken out of context'. Deconstruct away, but actually straight answers work better.

> > This is not wikien, and you can drop the tricks of advocacy here. They are more divisive
> > than you imagine, I believe. We all have the mails to look at. We all have the Oversight
> > policy to look at. We all have some potentially messy to look at. We all, I take it, have a
> > stake in Wikipedia's basic integrity.

> Well, here's the "crisis" we're trying to deal with; it appears that
> when SlimVirgin first started editing *three years ago* she tried out
> several accounts, before eventually settling on the SlimVirgin
> account. The other accounts were used extremely rarely, and certainly
> not used actively in over 2.5 years. In 2006 SV started being stalked
> by some sociopathic individuals *purely as a result of her supporting
> the activities and principles of Wikipedia*. It's not the heirs or
> friends of Pierre Salinger (if they exist) who are upset with here,
> it's people who have been banned from Wikipedia for extremely bad
> behavior, and are looking for ways of discrediting it or destroying
> it.

Quite right. Brandt certainly wants to discredit Wikipedia. I have no further insight into his thought processes, but it seems that whether WP has an article on him, or not, is hardly a concern of his, as long as some leverage comes from that. I assume this instrumentalism applies across the board.

>In response to this stalking, SV asked that some personally
> identifying edits, including edits from her IP, be oversighted, which
> is one of the main things oversight was designed for. I oversighted
> those edits. Since then those sociopathic individuals have continued
> their "outing" crusade against SlimVirgin (among others), hoping to
> pin some sort of malefeasance of any sort on her. They've now got
> their "smoking gun"; when she first started editing 3 years ago she
> wrote some negative (but in all likelihood true) things about Pierre
> Salinger, and she probably used an alternate account for a couple of
> dozen edits. I'm surprised the New York Times hasn't used this as its
> front page lead today.
>
> This is Judd Bagley et al we're talking about here, and just the
> latest in a long sequence of "smoking guns" they've "discovered",
> including all sorts of sockpuppet claims. Judd even claimed to have
> discovered that Jimbo himself was sockpuppeting. I don't know whether
> to laugh or weep at the seriousness being accorded their spin.

Yes, but the point at issue is not really how to fight these people, but how to ensure that Wikipedia is _not_discredited in the process. Laugh or weep is up to you, but I actually made the point a short while ago in a private email that oversighting is giving a hostage to fortune, if someone else has already noted the diffs and recorded them. Give Brandt credit for doing something like that, and we get a distinctly worse picture. A cover-up! Such a well-known riff and so useful to anyone who really does want to get at Wikipedia's reputation.

Charles
-----------

From: (charles.r.matthews)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 16:43:51 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote

> Charles, here's a direct question for you; is it in any way clear or
> obvious that those oversighted edits on the Talk:Leifern page were
> supposed to have come been made by "Sweet Blue Water", rather than
> "SlimVirgin"? Had someone come to you, and said "This is my IP,
> Wikipedia logged me out a few times and exposed my IP, could you
> please oversight the edits I made while logged out?" would *you* have
> gone back to the conversation from over a year before, and attempted
> to reconstruct the chain of events that led to that comment being left
> on that Talk: page? Or would you just have assumed that this was a
> comment made by "SlimVirgin" while logged out?

"Direct question". In other words two questions, the second hypothetical. If the first should read "...were supposed to have been made...", it still reads like an odd exercise from a modal logic book to me.

Answers:

(i) I don't know whether it is "in any way clear or obvious"?

(ii) I should say that I'm not experienced at Oversight. I think I've used the power just once. I'm quite willing to be guided by David or Matthew as to 'normal practice'. Which of course may differ from 'best practice'. I would certainly have slowed down at this point and wondered what I was doing. The appropriate policy speaks of

"Removal of nonpublic personal information such as phone numbers, home addresses, workplaces or identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public."

And

"Oversight is for material that should not be available even to an admin."

Charles
----------

From: (David Gerard)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:00:05 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 24/08/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:

> (ii) I should say that I'm not experienced at Oversight. I think I've used the power just once. I'm quite willing to be guided by David or Matthew as to 'normal practice'. Which of course may differ from 'best practice'.


*cough* Well, it may ...


> I would certainly have slowed down at this point and wondered what I was doing. The appropriate policy speaks of
> "Removal of nonpublic personal information such as phone numbers, home addresses, workplaces or identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public."
> And
> "Oversight is for material that should not be available even to an admin."


Remember that Oversight exists because deleted info was clearly
leaking to Wikipedia Review / WikiTruth, i.e. via an admin. The
SlimVirgin harassment material arguably (as I noted before) may fall
into this class.


- d.
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:07:45 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

Well, SV, if you could please just visit the link in question.

It contains what appears to be a pretty clear confirmation of sockpuppetry:
http://antisocialmedia.net/?p=115

Sweet Water Blue

I need either an equally compelling analysis showing how his argument is
mistaken... a flat public denial... or a confession. Or something.

Slim Virgin wrote:
> Jimbo, I don't read WordBomb's website and I've stopped reading
----------

From: charles.r.matthews
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:08:41 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

"David Gerard" wrote

> Remember that Oversight exists because deleted info was clearly
> leaking to Wikipedia Review / WikiTruth, i.e. via an admin. The
> SlimVirgin harassment material arguably (as I noted before) may fall
> into this class.

Sure. I noted that at least this arguability seems to be common ground, in a previous mail. Since it is plausibly argued, it is "arguable". Perhaps you'd like to read the previous chapter of the Ayers-Matthews treatise on Wikipedia (ie the one before the one I sent you), where in a masterly turn of phrase it is pointed out that WP policy is path-dependent? You have to know why the policy was written, to know what everyone thinks it means. This is just such a case.

Charles
-----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:21:16 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> On 8/24/07, jayjg wrote:
> > Charles, here's a direct question for you; is it in any way clear or
> > obvious that those oversighted edits on the Talk:Leifern page were
> > supposed to have come been made by "Sweet Blue Water", rather than
> > "SlimVirgin"? Had someone come to you, and said "This is my IP,
> > Wikipedia logged me out a few times and exposed my IP, could you
> > please oversight the edits I made while logged out?" would *you* have
> > gone back to the conversation from over a year before, and attempted
> > to reconstruct the chain of events that led to that comment being left
> > on that Talk: page? Or would you just have assumed that this was a
> > comment made by "SlimVirgin" while logged out?
>
> Had the question only been one of removing IP edits, your take on it
> would be reasonable; but it wasn't. You oversighted a number of
> non-IP edits -- essentially all of Slimv's editing history, for one --
> at the same time. Had the only intent been a concealment of an
> exposed IP address, this would have been entirely unnecessary.

But the *accusation* is that the IP edits were oversighted to conceal
a "Sweet Blue Water" sockpuppet. How does "Slimv" factor into that?

>
> In all honesty, I don't know what exactly SV asked you to do, or how
> she framed her request; but it's clear from the result that it was
> more complex than "could you please oversight the edits I made while
> logged out".

Of course, it was more than just the IP edits she wanted oversighted.
But again, this "crisis" was supposed to be about concealing a
sockpuppet, not other issues which, I might add, were already
discussed at length in the past, soon after they were made.
Malice's note: Translation - You can't get me for that because nobody outside this cabal knows about it.
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:23:52 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> jayjg wrote
>
> > There's a context to everything though, isn't there? One cannot
> > "reframe" questions unless they have a frame to begin with. And I
> > reject that initial framing.
> >
> > But if you want more direct: Under the circumstances *of course* the
> > oversights were appropriate.
>
> And within policy? You see, some people actually believe that policy for tools such
> as Oversight is not to be treated as a matter of convenience, IAR, call it what you will.
> It is taken as read that you thought they were justified.

Oversighting revealed IPs or other personally identifying information?
It's what oversight was designed to do.
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:30:01 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Well, SV, if you could please just visit the link in question.
>
> It contains what appears to be a pretty clear confirmation of sockpuppetry:
> http://antisocialmedia.net/?p=115

Jimbo, I don't think it's a good idea to suggest people visit Judd
Bagley's website; he's well-known for nasty tricks involving capturing
IPs.

>
> Sweet Water Blue
>
> I need either an equally compelling analysis showing how his argument is
> mistaken... a flat public denial... or a confession. Or something.

What's the difference? Why is it important? It was an account that
made a couple of dozen edits almost 3 years ago, when SlimVirgin first
started editing. Do you think anyone, outside of Judd's buddies, will
think this really is newsworthy? If it's confirmed, what would the New
York Times headline be:
"Revealed: One of Wikipedia's 1000 administrators used a second
account for making a few edits 3 years ago!!!"
Malice's note: Cue superhero music from a kid's cartoon "Jayjg to the rescue!"
----------

From: (Josh Gordon)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:33:32 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

I guess I'm just clueless. I can't understand why there's a fuss here.

Yes, Slim used sockpuppets, three years ago, in a way she shouldn't have.

In the process, she inadvertently disclosed her home IP or something of the
sort.

In an apparently vain attempt to suppress this personally identifying
information, Jay oversighted some entries.

I think it's better to err on the side of protecting members of our
community, regardless of the fallout. Perhaps I am naive.


--
--jpgordon ????
----------

From: charles.r.matthews
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:34:42 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote

> Oversighting revealed IPs or other personally identifying information?
> It's what oversight was designed to do.

Quite possibly. But aren't you still ducking the point, about what the _policy_ is? If the policy were drawn up to include a concept of revealed IPs, your point would be clear. It doesn't. This could of course be a flaw in the drafting of the policy. In which case, I suppose, we'd be better off if it did mention revealed IPs.

Charles
----------

From: (David Gerard)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:37:06 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 24/08/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> jayjg wrote

> > Oversighting revealed IPs or other personally identifying information?
> > It's what oversight was designed to do.

> Quite possibly. But aren't you still ducking the point, about what the _policy_ is? If the policy were drawn up to include a concept of revealed IPs, your point would be clear. It doesn't. This could of course be a flaw in the drafting of the policy. In which case, I suppose, we'd be better off if it did mention revealed IPs.


We've always gone by "information so sensitive not even admins should
be able to see it", that including personal info and so forth. We've
generally assumed that to include revealed IPs.


- d.
----------

From: charles.r.matthews
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:38:29 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote

> What's the difference? Why is it important?

Hey, Jay! There another J here, Jimmy Wales. You may remember him best for his role in founding Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

Really, who died and gave you the job of deciding what is and isn't important for Jimbo to know in relation to SlimVirgin or anything else? Jeez.

Charles
----------

From: (Josh Gordon)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 09:38:50 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, David Gerard wrote:
>
> We've always gone by "information so sensitive not even admins should
> be able to see it", that including personal info and so forth. We've
> generally assumed that to include revealed IPs.


Indeed; one must assume that the sensitivities of checkuser are a subset of
the sensitivities dealt with by oversight. It makes little sense to have the
checkuser rules regarding disclosure, otherwise.

--
--jpgordon ????

Posted by: MaliceAforethought

From: charles.r.matthews
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:40:43 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

"Josh Gordon" wrote

> I think it's better to err on the side of protecting members of our
> community, regardless of the fallout. Perhaps I am naive.

Yup. Especially when pressure tactics are probably being applied mostly for their ability to induce inappropriate reactions. You know, like terrorism.

Charles
----------

From: (Kirill Lokshin)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:41:37 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Josh Gordon wrote:
>
>
> On 8/24/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We've always gone by "information so sensitive not even admins should
> > be able to see it", that including personal info and so forth. We've
> > generally assumed that to include revealed IPs.
>
> Indeed; one must assume that the sensitivities of checkuser are a subset of
> the sensitivities dealt with by oversight. It makes little sense to have the
> checkuser rules regarding disclosure, otherwise.

Well, checkuser concerns information culled from the server logs
rather than information publically revealed by the individual
concerned; so the two policies need not necessarily treat the same
type of information equivalently.

Kirill
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:56:26 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> jayjg wrote
>
> > Oversighting revealed IPs or other personally identifying information?
> > It's what oversight was designed to do.
>
> Quite possibly. But aren't you still ducking the point, about what the _policy_ is? If the policy were drawn up to include a concept of revealed IPs, your point would be clear. It doesn't. This could of course be a flaw in the drafting of the policy. In which case, I suppose, we'd be better off if it did mention revealed IPs.


IPs are "nonpublic personal information".
Malice's note: Unless you edit anonymously of course.
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:01:06 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> jayjg wrote
>
> > What's the difference? Why is it important?
>
> Hey, Jay! There another J here, Jimmy Wales. You may remember him best for his role in founding Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.
>
> Really, who died and gave you the job of deciding what is and isn't important for Jimbo to know in relation to SlimVirgin or anything else? Jeez.

I feel that's a very hostile response, Charles. I'm asking simple
questions, just like everyone else. I still don't think I've gotten a
good response to them. I'm still having trouble understanding a) why
we give any credence or attention whatsoever to anything Judd Bagley
says, and b) even if true, why it would be relevant or important
*today*. Others have also had difficulty understanding these points,
and have said so on this list, so it's not just me.
-----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:06:21 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> On 8/24/07, Josh Gordon wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 8/24/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > We've always gone by "information so sensitive not even admins should
> > > be able to see it", that including personal info and so forth. We've
> > > generally assumed that to include revealed IPs.
> >
> > Indeed; one must assume that the sensitivities of checkuser are a subset of
> > the sensitivities dealt with by oversight. It makes little sense to have the
> > checkuser rules regarding disclosure, otherwise.
>
> Well, checkuser concerns information culled from the server logs
> rather than information publically revealed by the individual
> concerned; so the two policies need not necessarily treat the same
> type of information equivalently.

I understand your point, but it still seems obvious to me that we
acknowledge quite clearly that IPs are personally identifying
information. And when someone is logged out by Wikipedia, and
inadvertently reveals their IP, it's not as if *they* are really
"publicly revealing" that information - rather, Wikipedia is doing
that. I remember a time when Wikipedia would log me out every 5 to 10
minutes; fortunately that bug seems to have been fixed, but even now,
if someone accidentally makes an edit while not logged in, I don't
think one could say that they intended to publicly reveal personal
information.
----------

From: (David Gerard)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:15:04 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 24/08/07, jayjg wrote:

> I understand your point, but it still seems obvious to me that we
> acknowledge quite clearly that IPs are personally identifying
> information. And when someone is logged out by Wikipedia, and
> inadvertently reveals their IP, it's not as if *they* are really
> "publicly revealing" that information - rather, Wikipedia is doing
> that. I remember a time when Wikipedia would log me out every 5 to 10
> minutes; fortunately that bug seems to have been fixed, but even now,
> if someone accidentally makes an edit while not logged in, I don't
> think one could say that they intended to publicly reveal personal
> information.


FWIW: oversight-l regularly gets panicked emails from editors who've
accidentally revealed their IP. They certainly consider it highly
sensitive and personal.


- d.
----------

From: (Timothy Titcomb)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:21:11 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On Aug 24, 2007, at 1:01 PM, jayjg wrote:

> I'm still having trouble understanding a) why
> we give any credence or attention whatsoever to anything Judd Bagley
> says, and b) even if true, why it would be relevant or important
> *today*

The answer to the first question is (as you allude to) because they
might be true. I think Theresa provided a reasonable answer to the
second:


On Aug 23, 2007, at 4:15 PM, Theresa Knott wrote:
> 100% agree. If she's done it once how can anyone know that she wont
> do it again? When I saw the title of this thread I couldn't believe
> she would do it. I still can't really. But if she has then then it's
> an important matter.
>
> Theresa


Paul August
----------

From: (Steve Dunlop)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 10:27:04 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

While individuals using oversight have at times taken liberties with the
policy, I have always chosen to interpret the policy narrowly. The
purpose behind the oversight mechanism was to serve the OTRS team and
provide a means of removing truly problematic material that posed a
moral imperative to act or a legal problem for the foundation. There
were three categories of material we intended to cover:

* Libel
* Copyright violations
* Personal information, such as real names and phone numbers

James and I drafted the original policy, which is on meta. The ENWP
policy is essentially a copy of that.

In addition to policy, it has become fairly common practice to oversight
IP edits made when someone was inadvertently logged out. I have
grudgingly done this on one or two occasions where there were
extenuating circumstances, as have others, but it was never part of the
original intent of the policy to permit this.

I simply can't see how all the oversights Jay has made in this matter
can possibly be construed to be in accordance with policy. I am
disappointed that Jay has given us red herring after red herring in this
matter, refusing to address the legitimate concerns we have raised about
the most problematic of his oversights. Oversight has never been and
should never become a tool for covering up regrettable edits made by an
editor who has second thoughts. That SV has been the target of a
stalker does not entitle her to have highly questionable edits she made
some time ago to be redacted.

I also note that Jay did not discuss his actions with others before
performing them. Jay has private email addresses for most if not all
the people with oversight rights and could have contacted any of them
privately to discuss this before acting.

Finally, I question Jay's wisdom in oversighting edits that have been in
the page database for well over a year. To the extent that Jay is
claiming that he has overstepped policy on the grounds that judgment and
conscience trump it, I submit that there is no wisdom in removing highly
visible edits that are so old when dumps of the page database are widely
available.

I believe that Jay has brought the integrity of the oversight mechanism
into question and has done a disservice to the committee and other
leaders of the Wikipedia community.

I would like to call for Jay to resign his oversight privileges
immediately on the meta "requests for permissions" page. Per Charles, I
believe we should assemble a list of oversights we believe are
inappropriate and ask the developers to restore those to the page
database.

Finally, I believe this should be done without delay since the damage is
building.

Steve
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:29:39 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

Theresa Knott wrote:
> On 8/23/07, Josh Gordon wrote:
>> Wow. Six edits two years ago. Take her out and shoot her.
>
> I don't think you should be so glib. It's a serious matter.

I am sympathetic to both viewpoints. It is 6 edits 2 years ago, and
honestly, not that interesting either. But it is still a serious
matter, and we have to be careful here.
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:31:37 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> On 8/23/07, Timothy Titcomb wrote:
>> On Aug 23, 2007, at 2:23 PM, Theresa Knott wrote:
>>
>>> It's a serious matter.
>> Yes it is. Both fundamentally -- as well as from a public relations
>> point of view. I doubt that this issue is going to go away. I
>> wouldn't want to be in Jimbo's shoes having to publicly answer the
>> questions this issue has and will continue to raise. It would be nice
>> to try and get out front of the public reaction to this. Instead of
>> simply appearing to be responding to it.
>
> I don't see any real way to do this without admitting the truth of the
> entire affair, and I think that we ought to do so. There *has* been
> inappropriate behavior here, and trying to cover it up further is both
> infeasible -- too much evidence is available to the public now -- and
> hardly in the best interests of the project in any case.

Well, wait. I don't see anything in the record to suggest that Jay
would have known about the sockpuppeting (if the allegation is true).

Jay oversighed some edits from an ip number... a batch of edits. The
purpose was to protect SV's identity from people who I think are rightly
termed stalkers.

It looks like, in retrospect, that in that batch of oversighted edits
were a couple which confirmed an SV sockpuppet.

--Jimbo
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:33:48 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

I worry more for the "internal press". That is to say, we need to
protect and extend the reputation of the ArbCom for integrity by doing
the right thing, whatever that might be.

(Of course part of "doing the right thing" for us is slow deliberation
and fact gathering.)

I blew it in the EssJay affair. I don't want to blow it again.
----------

From: (Steve Dunlop)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 10:34:13 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

Unless I'm completely misreading the logs, many of the oversights of
concern are from logged-in accounts. While it is true that some of
Jay's oversights are of anon edits, many of the problematic ones are
not.

Steve
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:36:58 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote:
>> together with the unwarranted use of oversight to conceal evidence of
>> said behavior.
>
> But oversight was used to protect her from some rather horrific
> stalking, not to hide any "evidence" of any particular behavior.

Right, and I trust you completely on this. I reviewed the oversighted
edits and did not catch that they also apparently concealed some
sockpuppeting.

But now, the evidence suggests that there was sockpuppeting and that the
oversighting did in fact conceal it, and that's a problem *in hindsight*.

--Jimbo
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:41:38 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote:
> On 8/23/07, Timothy Titcomb wrote:
>> On Aug 23, 2007, at 3:26 PM, Kat Walsh wrote:
>>
>>> Is this really a big press thing? Will anyone care? I suspect the
>>> answer is no, other than the usual malcontents.
>> I care. And my guess is that so will lots of other Wikipedia editors.
>
> It's important to know if SV created a sockpuppet in 2004, and used it
> to make a couple of dozen edits before she became an administrator? An
> account that hasn't edited any articles since January 2005?

Yes, I think it is important.

1/3/05 19:23 SlimVirgin Featured article candidates/Sept. 11, 2001
attacks Voting
1/3/05 6:50 Sweet Blue Water Featured article candidates/Sept. 11,
2001 attacks Voting

bothers me a lot.

I wish I could simply go out and say "When SV was a new user, she had a
couple of different accounts, Sweet Water Blue and Slimv, and edited
different things with them, and in the oversights that were done to
attempt to protect her from stalkers, some of that history was obscured.
It is all a tempest in a teapot since these were independent good
account not engaging in abusive sockpuppetry."

But it looks more like there was sockpuppetry of the bad kind.

--Jimbo
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:44:48 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on
SlimVirgin's abusive sockpuppetry]

Dmcdevit wrote:
> The question is not so much of the sockpuppetry, which is old and easily
> forgiven, I suspect, but of the oversight use. Do you really have no
> idea if this was a sockpuppet? Why then was your very first act as an
> oversight user to remove this
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Oversight&revision=9165353&diff=1>,
> an edit by an IP that appears to be User:Sweet Blue Water, from context?
> Did SlimVirgin contact you and ask for it to be removed, and what reason
> could she have given? These are not accusations or rhetorical questions;
> I think we'd like to know how it happened. I know if an administrator
> asked me to oversight an edit that compromised her IP, but that also was
> evidence of her abusive sockpuppetry, I would not look too favorably
> upon the request.

My guess, and Jay can tell us, is that that edit was just one of a whole
batch of edits by 70.64.24.120 which were removed at that time. I had
reviewed all of these and did not connect this edit with Sweet Water
Blue... I just did not notice. It took someone as obsessive as Judd to
figure that out... I can't imagine how Jay would have known.

SV, on the other hand, would have known.

Unless, of course, this is not a sockpuppet and there is some other
explanation.

--Jimbo
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:46:56 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote:
> As I recall, she wrote that she had edited from that IP, that those
> edits had been inadvertently exposed, and asked that they be
> oversighted. The reasons for oversighting exposed IPs were obvious, as
> explained in earlier e-mails. I simply oversighted all the edits from
> the IP; there's no way of telling in the context of that user talk:
> page that the edits were supposed to have been from a different
> account, much less that it was an "abusive sockpuppet".

I accept this explanation. It all puts us in a bit of a bind
retrospectively, though.

And the above is consistent with my recollection of these oversights.
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:47:52 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

Timothy Titcomb wrote:
> On Aug 23, 2007, at 5:03 PM, jayjg wrote:
>
>> Fortunately, no "attempts" to "cover up abuse" were made; instead,
>> attempts were made to protect Wikipedia editors from serious stalking.
>
> One reason does not preclude the other. Do you think it is possible
> that by asking you to oversight the edits of that IP, that SlimVirgin
> was trying to cover-up her sockpuppetry?

This is my question as well.
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:50:41 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

Timothy Titcomb wrote:
> On Aug 23, 2007, at 5:20 PM, jayjg wrote:
>
>> It is quite clear to me that there was a genuine and well-founded fear
>> of stalking, including many attempts to discover her name and
>> location. Subsequent events have borne that out, to an unprecedented
>> degree. It is also clear that that was the primary issue and reason
>> for asking for oversight. I can't really comment on the other, as I
>> don't know anything about it.
>
> Jay, do you think all of your oversights of SlimVirgin's edits were
> entirely appropriate and within policy?

I will weigh in on this with my own opinion, having reviewed all of them.

I think that the oversights were barely appropriate and barely within
policy. They are in what is a gray area for me.
----------

From: (Kirill Lokshin)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:51:17 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Steve Dunlop wrote:
> Unless I'm completely misreading the logs, many of the oversights of
> concern are from logged-in accounts. While it is true that some of
> Jay's oversights are of anon edits, many of the problematic ones are
> not.

As best as I can tell, the course of events here was pretty close to this:

Around the time she arrived on Wikipedia (c. late 2004), SV made a
number of edits. Some of these were made directly through an IP,
while others were done through one of several accounts.

At some point in early 2006, due to increasing efforts to discover her
identity, SV requested that the bulk of these edits be removed,
presumably because:

- Some of the edits revealed her IP directly
- The content of some of the edits -- including some from the first
category -- would reveal her real-life identity to someone familiar
with the circumstances of Salinger's Pan-Am investigation (notably,
Daniel Brandt)

Jayjg then proceeded to oversight these edits. It is unclear whether
he performed any detailed examination of the edits before removing
them, or whether SV provided any detailed explanation of how the
content of the edits could identify her.

Unfortunately, the edits, aside from leading to SV's identity,
contained evidence of several other problems:

- Some of the edits were inappropriate per se, even in the absence of
an explicit COI policy
- Some of the edits were evidence of unrevealed sockpuppetry

The net effect, therefore, has been to hide away evidence of SV's
identity at the cost of also hiding away evidence of her misbehavior;
and outside parties have now learned of this process and are making
the argument that the edits were oversighted *because* they contained
evidence of misbehavior.

Kirill
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:54:12 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Steve Dunlop wrote:
> While individuals using oversight have at times taken liberties with the
> policy, I have always chosen to interpret the policy narrowly. The
> purpose behind the oversight mechanism was to serve the OTRS team and
> provide a means of removing truly problematic material that posed a
> moral imperative to act or a legal problem for the foundation. There
> were three categories of material we intended to cover:
>
> * Libel
> * Copyright violations
> * Personal information, such as real names and phone numbers
>
> James and I drafted the original policy, which is on meta. The ENWP
> policy is essentially a copy of that.
>
> In addition to policy, it has become fairly common practice to oversight
> IP edits made when someone was inadvertently logged out. I have
> grudgingly done this on one or two occasions where there were
> extenuating circumstances, as have others, but it was never part of the
> original intent of the policy to permit this.
>
> I simply can't see how all the oversights Jay has made in this matter
> can possibly be construed to be in accordance with policy. I am
> disappointed that Jay has given us red herring after red herring in this
> matter, refusing to address the legitimate concerns we have raised about
> the most problematic of his oversights. Oversight has never been and
> should never become a tool for covering up regrettable edits made by an
> editor who has second thoughts. That SV has been the target of a
> stalker does not entitle her to have highly questionable edits she made
> some time ago to be redacted.
>
> I also note that Jay did not discuss his actions with others before
> performing them. Jay has private email addresses for most if not all
> the people with oversight rights and could have contacted any of them
> privately to discuss this before acting.
>
> Finally, I question Jay's wisdom in oversighting edits that have been in
> the page database for well over a year. To the extent that Jay is
> claiming that he has overstepped policy on the grounds that judgment and
> conscience trump it, I submit that there is no wisdom in removing highly
> visible edits that are so old when dumps of the page database are widely
> available.
>
> I believe that Jay has brought the integrity of the oversight mechanism
> into question and has done a disservice to the committee and other
> leaders of the Wikipedia community.
>
> I would like to call for Jay to resign his oversight privileges
> immediately on the meta "requests for permissions" page. Per Charles, I
> believe we should assemble a list of oversights we believe are
> inappropriate and ask the developers to restore those to the page
> database.
>
> Finally, I believe this should be done without delay since the damage is
> building.
>
> Steve


Steve,

a) I don't think I've been giving you "red herring after red herring".
b) There was no prior indication that dumps of the old database had
been kept, or that someone would obsessively try to mine them. It
seems to me that by that logic we might as well do away with Oversight
altogether.
c) I don't think everyone here agrees that my oversights contravened policy.
d) I don't think making public concessions to Judd Bagley, Daniel
Brandt, and the rest of Wikipedia Review is either good precedent or
good strategy. In fact, I think that doing so would do far more to
"bring the integrity of the oversight mechanism into question and do a
disservice to the committee and other leaders of the Wikipedia
community" than anything I have done.
e) As I told you in an e-mail many days ago, I'm not editing Wikipedia
right now - indeed, I don't really even have the time for these e-mail
discussions, though I have done my best to keep up with them. In any
event, as I told you, I won't be using oversight for the forseeable
future, so there's no emergency here.
f) If the eventual decision of the "powers that be" is that I should
not have oversight privileges, then I would hope it would be done in a
dignified and respectful way; there are certainly ways of arranging
that.
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:54:46 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> You have, in any case, missed the rather more obvious third option --
> that Jayjg is telling the truth but that his decision to oversight the
> edits was wrong in spite of this.

I think reasonable people can differ as to whether these oversights were
the right thing to do. I think it worthy of an ongoing discussion to
clarify when we think oversight should be done, and when not, and what
to do in borderline cases.

But I am not happy to simply circle the wagons and bunker down and try
to ignore this when there are questions of sockpuppetry.

I think becaues the crazies here are so crazy, there is a temptation to
give SV a free pass. After all, the claim that she is or was an MI-5
agent is ludicrous... I have an email from Brandt's source on this,
flatly denying there is any reason to believe it.

Great.

We are still left with an uncomfortable sockpuppeting situation, I think.

--Jimbo
-----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:57:24 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

As I've said in earlier e-mails, the current "crisis" is allegedly
about oversighting some IP edits in order to hide sockpuppeting -
that's what Bagley's e-mail was about.

On 8/24/07, Steve Dunlop wrote:
> Unless I'm completely misreading the logs, many of the oversights of
> concern are from logged-in accounts. While it is true that some of
> Jay's oversights are of anon edits, many of the problematic ones are
> not.
>
> Steve
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:03:18 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Dmcdevit wrote:
> > The question is not so much of the sockpuppetry, which is old and easily
> > forgiven, I suspect, but of the oversight use. Do you really have no
> > idea if this was a sockpuppet? Why then was your very first act as an
> > oversight user to remove this
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Oversight&revision=9165353&diff=1>,
> > an edit by an IP that appears to be User:Sweet Blue Water, from context?
> > Did SlimVirgin contact you and ask for it to be removed, and what reason
> > could she have given? These are not accusations or rhetorical questions;
> > I think we'd like to know how it happened. I know if an administrator
> > asked me to oversight an edit that compromised her IP, but that also was
> > evidence of her abusive sockpuppetry, I would not look too favorably
> > upon the request.
>
> My guess, and Jay can tell us, is that that edit was just one of a whole
> batch of edits by 70.64.24.120 which were removed at that time.

Yes, that's exactly what I did, I removed *all* the edits from that
IP, at the same time.

> I had
> reviewed all of these and did not connect this edit with Sweet Water
> Blue... I just did not notice. It took someone as obsessive as Judd to
> figure that out... I can't imagine how Jay would have known.

Exactly.
----------

From: (Josh Gordon)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:03:17 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> We are still left with an uncomfortable sockpuppeting situation, I think.


Then we should treat it like we do any other sockpuppeting situation from
the distant past. Let's see, how do we usually penalize actions taken by
relatively new users 2-3 years ago, in the absence of any evidence (or even
suggestion, other than from nutcases) that similar actions have taken place
more recently?

--
--jpgordon ????
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:03:23 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote:
> Judd even claimed to have discovered that Jimbo himself was sockpuppeting.

But let's be clear about this. In that case, he emailed me with the
name of an editor he thought was me, based on patterns in the timing of
edits. The editor was someone I never heard of and certainly was not
me. It was laughable.

In the current case, he has evidence, evidence which looks to me
reasonably compelling. Certainly, let me put it this way: people are
indef blocked daily at Wikipedia on evidence slimmer than this.

--Jimbo
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:04:26 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
> > Judd even claimed to have discovered that Jimbo himself was sockpuppeting.
>
> But let's be clear about this. In that case, he emailed me with the
> name of an editor he thought was me, based on patterns in the timing of
> edits. The editor was someone I never heard of and certainly was not
> me. It was laughable.
>
> In the current case, he has evidence, evidence which looks to me
> reasonably compelling. Certainly, let me put it this way: people are
> indef blocked daily at Wikipedia on evidence slimmer than this.

Not for stuff they did 3 years ago, as a new editor.
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:06:53 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote:
> What's the difference? Why is it important? It was an account that
> made a couple of dozen edits almost 3 years ago, when SlimVirgin first
> started editing. Do you think anyone, outside of Judd's buddies, will
> think this really is newsworthy? If it's confirmed, what would the New
> York Times headline be:
> "Revealed: One of Wikipedia's 1000 administrators used a second
> account for making a few edits 3 years ago!!!"

I am not worried about the New York Times.

I am worried about Wikipedia.
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:08:36 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

I am happy to support the decision of this committee in what to do about
this.

But I am going to push hard on all of us to be really really careful to
do the right thing.
-----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:11:58 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> > You have, in any case, missed the rather more obvious third option --
> > that Jayjg is telling the truth but that his decision to oversight the
> > edits was wrong in spite of this.
>
> I think reasonable people can differ as to whether these oversights were
> the right thing to do. I think it worthy of an ongoing discussion to
> clarify when we think oversight should be done, and when not, and what
> to do in borderline cases.
>
> But I am not happy to simply circle the wagons and bunker down and try
> to ignore this when there are questions of sockpuppetry.

Well, I think the right thing to do when people are trying to
blackmail us with ancient information about stuff that nobody outside
Wikipedia (and Wikipedia Review) really cares about is to do just
that. Honestly, no-one outside Wikipedia would even understand what it
meant that one of our 1000 admins, when they first joined Wikipedia,
and before they were actually an admin, had a "sockpuppet" account,
much less care that they both once voted on some sort of internal
matter.

I think an appropriate response to Bagley's e-mail would have been
"Judd, do you think the shareholders of your failing company
appreciate it that you are spending their money obsessively pursuing
personal grudges you have with the administrators on some website you
were banned from?" Or, a more succinct response might have been "F off
you troll". But, of course, that's just my personal opinion.
----------

From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:14:07 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote:
> I'm still having trouble understanding a) why
> we give any credence or attention whatsoever to anything Judd Bagley
> says, and b) even if true, why it would be relevant or important
> *today*.

In the hope of reducing some of the tension in the room let me just give
my simple answers to these two...

1. He has evidence, evidence which is quite compelling. This evidence
has been confirmed by reviewing the oversighted edits. His tendency to
make wild claims in the past doesn't change the fact that he seems to
have the story right now.

2. SV is a respected editor. She is controversial in certain ways and
would probably not be elected to this committee for those reasons, but
she is widely and properly regarded as a very powerful top community
member. The ArbCom, and I, are tasked broadly by the community with the
job of enforcing certain standards of integrity related to behavior at
Wikipedia -- we have a responsibility to do a good job of this.

-----

For me there is an additional necessity for us to do this right. I blew
it when I appointed EssJay to the ArbCom, and the ArbCom blew it (but I
take the full blame on myself) for not helping me by raising alarm bells
about it before I did it. We have been burned by a friend before. We
risk getting a reputation for being a cabal who protects our friends
rather than pursuing the truth.

We can't let that happen, or we will end up eventually losing our power,
and I do not think that's good for Wikipedia.

--Jimbo
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:22:08 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive sockpuppetry]

An e-mail I'm forwarding from SlimVirgin.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Slim Virgin
Date: Aug 24, 2007 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive sockpuppetry]
To: Jay


Jay, I've sent this to the ArbCom but it has bounced back, and I can
never tell whether any of my e-mails arrive there.

Would you mind forwarding this for me?

I'd also appreciate if it members of the ArbCom list could cc me on
anything about me. It doesn't seem right that allegations made against
me by a lunatic are being discussed, but I can't see the discussion,
or even tell whether my replies are getting through.

Sarah

On 8/24/07, Slim Virgin wrote:
> Jimbo, this is just a holding e-mail until I get my bearings with
> this, because I'm not up to speed. I'm going to write again later.
>
> I'm not going to read any more of WordBomb's nonsense, or Wikipedia
> Review's, so I asked some friends last night to tell me roughly what
> was being said.
>
> I understand there are two issues. The first (as you explained in one
> of your recent e-mails to me) is that I asked Jayjg to oversight some
> of my early edits in or around June 2006, because Wikpedia Review was
> hounding me, and I was worried my early edits would identify me. Some
> of this hounding included threats of violence from a banned editor
> (Scott Grayban, who I didn't even have any contact with on Wikipedia)
> who lived in the same country as me, and who claimed to have been a
> former soldier in Iraq. He was clearly insane, and he wrote that he
> was coming for me and I had better find a place to hide, so I was
> frightened. The edits in question were newbie edits, and OR-ish --
> some of it was OR; most of it just looked like OR because I didn't
> include the published sources. There was nothing sinister about them.
> It was newbie stuff, bad editing, not understanding Wikipedia's
> policies. I'm confused that it's being brought up again (as I
> understand from your e-mail, it's being raised by Paul August). It was
> discussed in June 2006. I recall writing to you about it, and you
> seemed fine with it.
>
> The second issue is whether I was Sweet Blue Water. Yes, I was. Again,
> this was when I first started editing (end of 2004). I couldn't decide
> whether I wanted to keep the SlimVirgin user name, and I thought of
> switching to Sweet Blue. I tried the name out for a few days to see
> how I felt with it, and I don't recall particularly trying to hide it
> was me, because I wasn't even thinking along sockpuppetry lines. If
> you look at the edits, there were no content disputes. I'm going to
> write to you later with diffs and so on. The only mistake I made was I
> inadvertently voted with SlimVirgin and SweetBlue for 9/11 to be a
> featured article. I didn't even notice I'd done this until a couple of
> days later, and it made no difference to the FA outcome. That's when I
> decided to stay as SlimVirgin and I retired SweetBlue, in case I
> inadvertently did anything similar again.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sweet_Blue_Water
>
> If the worst things WordBomb can find about me, out of 60,000 edits
> and nearly three years participation, is some newbie stuff in the
> first few weeks I was here, then my editing record can't be that bad.
>
> I don't understand why you're taking WordBomb (Judd Bagley) at all
> seriously. He's a creep, an internet stalker, and has been named as
> such by several reliable sources, including as I recall the New York
> Times and New York Post. He's left IP traps for people on Wikipedia
> and other websites. He does nothing but accuse people of bizarre
> conspiracy theories. He has zero credibility with the media. Even if
> he were the most credible source on earth, what would be the story be?
> Wikipedia administrator, who once worked for MI5, inadvertently voted
> twice for 9/11 to become a featured article?
>
> Sarah

Posted by: MaliceAforethought

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:27:32 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
> > What's the difference? Why is it important? It was an account that
> > made a couple of dozen edits almost 3 years ago, when SlimVirgin first
> > started editing. Do you think anyone, outside of Judd's buddies, will
> > think this really is newsworthy? If it's confirmed, what would the New
> > York Times headline be:
> > "Revealed: One of Wikipedia's 1000 administrators used a second
> > account for making a few edits 3 years ago!!!"
>
> I am not worried about the New York Times.
>
> I am worried about Wikipedia.

I'm not an unbiased observer, of course, but I think the biggest
concern regarding Wikipedia here is the message sent regarding whether
Wikipedia supports its volunteer workers when they are targeted by
crazies *as a result of that volunteer work*.

As I've said before, I think Guy Chapman's comments in this regard are
spot-on: Wikipedia "is extraordinarily bad at protecting its friends."

http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/wiki/Me_and_Wikipedia

This applies to far more than the Mongo or SlimVirgin case.
----------

From: charles.r.matthews
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:54:29 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on
SlimVirgin's abusive sockpuppetry]

Jimmy Wales wrote

> But now, the evidence suggests that there was sockpuppeting and that the
> oversighting did in fact conceal it, and that's a problem *in hindsight*.

OK, perhaps this takes us closer. Distinguish two issues here:

- Has the ArbCom any interest in this instance of sockpuppeting?

Clear answer is no. No case would make it into Arbitration, based around these edits. "Do better another time" is as strong as it would get.

- Was there a double standard applied here?

This is the PR killer. Everyone understands 'double standard'; it's in the same avoid-at-all-costs list as 'cover-up'. If it can be truly said that there was no double standard applied, then much of the potential PR disaster goes away. So splitting it up a bit more, the oversights were within normal practice. We have torn this one to rags by now. They _may not_ have been appropriate, but they were within policy in its everyday, working interpretation.

Therefore we have only the hindsight thing. "Cover-up" implies intention. The retrospective interpretation that there was a cover-up is a wrong interpretation, because there was no intention of concealment and no application of a double standard at the time.

As Jimmy points out, there is a separate issue (proof-lite blocks of alleged socks, in 2007). This however can be put aside for today.

Charles
----------

From: (Kat Walsh)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:46:10 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Slim Virgin
>
> I'd also appreciate if it members of the ArbCom list could cc me on
> anything about me. It doesn't seem right that allegations made against
> me by a lunatic are being discussed, but I can't see the discussion,
> or even tell whether my replies are getting through.

No, absolutely not. For the same reason everyone else being discussed
on the list, some of whom may be in similar situations, isn't also
copied on discussions about themselves.

-Kat
----------

From:(David Gerard)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 21:08:07 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 24/08/07, jayjg wrote:

> d) I don't think making public concessions to Judd Bagley, Daniel
> Brandt, and the rest of Wikipedia Review is either good precedent or
> good strategy. In fact, I think that doing so would do far more to
> "bring the integrity of the oversight mechanism into question and do a
> disservice to the committee and other leaders of the Wikipedia
> community" than anything I have done.


Note, by the way, that the deletion of [[Daniel Brandt]] didn't alter
his behaviour a dot. As widely predicted.


- d.
----------

From: (Steve Dunlop)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:37:30 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

I do not believe there is truly any actionable issue regarding SV's
activities unless there is ongoing deceit.

Oversight, on the other hand, is a powder keg. The community by and
large does not support its existence. The community has been reassured
that people with the "oversight" privilege are beyond reproach and
crosscheck each others' work to prevent abuse. The community has been
told that there is no WikiDrama, that oversight is just used for libel,
phone numbers, and copyvios. Move along. That happy notion is now seen
as a fiction.

The appearance to the broader ENWP community is that the internal
controls for the use of oversight are insufficient. Jay hid revisions
upon request from a well-known but controversial user upon request based
solely upon a stated concern that the edits disclosed identity. No
evidence has been brought forward that the nature of the edits actually
had the effect of doing this, and frankly the case looks weak to me. I
am unconvinced that we have the whole story. If these actions are
within policy, even if narrowly so, IMO we need to change the policy or
take some other step to be sure that judgment calls are being reviewed
and consensus exists.

I don't think we can ignore this. As I have noted, I believe a careful
review of the oversight log itself shows unjustified, out-of-policy use
of the tool. Others apparently disagree, and if they carry the day we
are going to have to tighten the policy in order to reassure the
community.

Steve
----------

From: charles.r.matthews
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 21:42:15 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

jayjg wrote

> As I've said before, I think Guy Chapman's comments in this regard are
> spot-on: Wikipedia "is extraordinarily bad at protecting its friends."
>
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/wiki/Me_and_Wikipedia

Bah, we de-adminned MONGO as a way of pulling him out of the front line when it was the right thing for all concerned. "Wikipedia failed to protect MONGO from a sustained, vicious, well-orchestrated and relentless attack." Right, we can't protect people from burn-out. Like the man says, it is stressful. Really, the ArbCom can't do it all. For obvious reasons this has not been the public line on MONGO. There was an attack by User:Durin on the AC's decision on this in the last day or so on wikien.

"Nutters and Zealots" is interesting: we got it all wrong with Jeff Merkey, too?

Read as a whole, this is mostly context for a beef about why he thinks someone designated as a "troll" is still on WP.

Charles
----------

From: (David Gerard)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 21:46:30 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 24/08/07, Steve Dunlop wrote:

> Oversight, on the other hand, is a powder keg. The community by and
> large does not support its existence.


Are you quite sure about that? Most of the stuff to oversight-l is
from third parties notifying dodgy edits with addresses, phone
numbers, etc.


> The community has been reassured
> that people with the "oversight" privilege are beyond reproach and
> crosscheck each others' work to prevent abuse. The community has been
> told that there is no WikiDrama, that oversight is just used for libel,
> phone numbers, and copyvios. Move along. That happy notion is now seen
> as a fiction.


Hmm ...


> within policy, even if narrowly so, IMO we need to change the policy or
> take some other step to be sure that judgment calls are being reviewed
> and consensus exists.
> I don't think we can ignore this. As I have noted, I believe a careful
> review of the oversight log itself shows unjustified, out-of-policy use
> of the tool. Others apparently disagree, and if they carry the day we
> are going to have to tighten the policy in order to reassure the
> community.


Maybe. We haven't had a lot of grey-area cases in practice. Just
enough to apply the test of "is this sufficiently sensitive even
admins shouldn't be able to see it?"

Mind you, I'm tempted to edit the anon edit message to be clearly and
visibly different ...


- d.
----------

From: charles.r.matthews
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:03:24 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]

Steve Dunlop wrote

> As I have noted, I believe a careful
> review of the oversight log itself shows unjustified, out-of-policy use
> of the tool. Others apparently disagree, and if they carry the day we
> are going to have to tighten the policy in order to reassure the
> community.

You'll have Dave Gerard choking on his coffee again.

I've said my piece on the specific oversighting now: I'm happy to leave SlimVirgin's giving an account of herself to Jimbo. Despite Jay running all sorts of interference on that, I think she'll have to do so. Despite SV's saying it is no fun being discussed behind her back, it's precisely what this list is here for; and of course we assume it's all in confidence. I am honestly in no hurry for all that.

Steve's issue with Oversight is worth more discussion, though. Clearly Oversight is unloved, and there's a reason. We see exactly why in this thread. Oversight is in conflict with the transparency of the site. Oversight is backed by policy, and transparency is one of WP's most deep-rooted customary values. Everyone likes to feel that page histories contain historical truths, with value as evidence. The loss from oversighting is probably unquantifiable, but one shouldn't suppose that it is not felt at all.

Apparently there is another message to be sent. Two ways, though: tighter policy, or more stringent attitude to those who apply it. I'm always for the latter, as a management theory. I've always said we should de-sysop a few, rather than constrain admins generally.

Charles
----------

From: (Dmcdevit)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:05:50 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on
SlimVirgin's abusive sockpuppetry]

charles.r.matthews wrote:
> jayjg wrote
>
>
>> As I've said before, I think Guy Chapman's comments in this regard are
>> spot-on: Wikipedia "is extraordinarily bad at protecting its friends."
>>
>> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/wiki/Me_and_Wikipedia
>>
>
> Bah, we de-adminned MONGO as a way of pulling him out of the front line when it was the right thing for all concerned. "Wikipedia failed to protect MONGO from a sustained, vicious, well-orchestrated and relentless attack." Right, we can't protect people from burn-out. Like the man says, it is stressful. Really, the ArbCom can't do it all. For obvious reasons this has not been the public line on MONGO. There was an attack by User:Durin on the AC's decision on this in the last day or so on wikien.
>
> "Nutters and Zealots" is interesting: we got it all wrong with Jeff Merkey, too?
>
> Read as a whole, this is mostly context for a beef about why he thinks someone designated as a "troll" is still on WP.
>
> Charles
>
Having been thinking about it a while since Jay first brought MONGO up,
I do see a lot of parallels between MONGO and SlimVirgin, though perhaps
not in the way he intended. As I said about MONGO, I think half the time
he attracts real trolls in his good-faith, and often successful but
stress-inducing, attempts to clean up crud and POV, but the other half
of the time, his edit warring, threats, and name-calling, and most
especially, willy-nilly branding of other editors, sometimes new and
misguided ones, as trolls, tends to *make* trolls out of them.

This is often the effect I see SlimVirgin has. If you make everything
out to be an ideological battle with uncompromising malevolents, don't
be suprised to find youself in ideological battles with uncompromising
malevolents a lot.

Dominic
----------

From:(Matthew Brown)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:17:16 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, David Gerard wrote:
> On 24/08/07, Steve Dunlop wrote:
>
> > Oversight, on the other hand, is a powder keg. The community by and
> > large does not support its existence.
>
> Are you quite sure about that? Most of the stuff to oversight-l is
> from third parties notifying dodgy edits with addresses, phone
> numbers, etc.

I think that the situation is somewhat more complex. The community at
large seems to want oversight (at least in that they make many
requests for it, and that most I think would agree with the removing
of libel and personal information) but is uncomfortable about the
mechanism and the possibility of abuse.

> Mind you, I'm tempted to edit the anon edit message to be clearly and
> visibly different ...

We need to ensure that getting inadvertently logged out and causing an
IP-revealing edit to be made is a lot harder than it is. If we made
it hard to do, we wouldn't get nearly as many oversight requests
wishing for it. It is frankly a big grey area in our oversight policy
- a little outside the wording, but arguably within the spirit, and
fervently desired by many users who make that mistake. We should (a)
make it hard to do, and (b) clarify oversight policy about that
situation - either explicitly forbid it or add it to the allowed
reasons.

As I recall, these oversights in question were among the first uses of
the tool (let me know if I'm mistaken) and possibly set the precedent
for other oversighters to believe removing IP edits was appropriate in
practice.

-Matt
----------

From: (Matthew Brown)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:23:37 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> In the current case, he has evidence, evidence which looks to me
> reasonably compelling. Certainly, let me put it this way: people are
> indef blocked daily at Wikipedia on evidence slimmer than this.

Generally speaking, an editor would be given a short block and a
warning in such a case, unless they already had a history of trouble.
Some gung-ho admins might block for longer, but IMO they should not
and such blocks tend to be reversed.

No blocks would be issued on 3 year old sockpuppetry in such a limited fashion.

I would suspect that some would call for de-adminship in such a case.
However, I'm not sure it would be successful considering the age and
apparent non-recurrence of the conduct, as well as the fact that the
double-voting didn't appear to have changed anything.

I do think that the edits that were oversighted in this case should be
restored. There is no longer a case for secrecy, and there is much
case for openness.

-Matt
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:29:38 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> jayjg wrote
>
> > As I've said before, I think Guy Chapman's comments in this regard are
> > spot-on: Wikipedia "is extraordinarily bad at protecting its friends."
> >
> > http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/wiki/Me_and_Wikipedia
>
> Bah, we de-adminned MONGO as a way of pulling him out of the front line when it was
> the right thing for all concerned. "Wikipedia failed to protect MONGO from a sustained,
> vicious, well-orchestrated and relentless attack." Right, we can't protect people from
> burn-out. Like the man says, it is stressful. Really, the ArbCom can't do it all. For
> obvious reasons this has not been the public line on MONGO.

Well, it's clear that MONGO was *right*, in the sense that he was
battling people who were basically inserting crap into articles. It's
also clear that he put up with a ton of abuse, that he got little
support during that process, that he was regularly baited, and that he
abused his admin tools. Are all the mitigating circumstances enough to
say that he shouldn't have been de-adminned? The ArbCom thought not,
while Guy thinks they should have been. Did the de-adminning send the
right message or the wrong one? I think some of both.

> There was an attack
> by User:Durin on the AC's decision on this in the last day or so on wikien.

I'm sorry, I haven't been able to keep up with that; do you know the
subject of the thread?

> "Nutters and Zealots" is interesting: we got it all wrong with Jeff Merkey, too?

Well... O.K., Merkey was indeed unsuited to Wikipedia editing.

>
> Read as a whole, this is mostly context for a beef about why he thinks someone
> designated as a "troll" is still on WP.

I don't think he has it all right, but I do think he's right in saying
that Wikipedia doesn't do enough to support people who are being
attacked. The issues here go much deeper than just "person X abused
policy, therefore there must be a consequence." The actions the ArbCom
takes can have the the effect of supporting some very unsavory people,
regardless of the ArbCom's intent, and it seems to me that the ArbCom
has sometimes been reluctant to recognize that.
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:31:38 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, David Gerard wrote:
> On 24/08/07, Steve Dunlop wrote:
>
> > Oversight, on the other hand, is a powder keg. The community by and
> > large does not support its existence.
>
>
> Are you quite sure about that? Most of the stuff to oversight-l is
> from third parties notifying dodgy edits with addresses, phone
> numbers, etc.

Well, the Wikipedia Review community does not support its existence,
and they're quite vocal about that. I, like you, am not so sure that
the Wikipedia community does not support its existence.
----------

From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:35:53 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

On 8/24/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> Steve's issue with Oversight is worth more discussion, though. Clearly Oversight is
> unloved, and there's a reason. We see exactly why in this thread. Oversight is in conflict
> with the transparency of the site. Oversight is backed by policy, and transparency is one
> of WP's most deep-rooted customary values. Everyone likes to feel that page histories
> contain historical truths, with value as evidence. The loss from oversighting is probably
> unquantifiable, but one shouldn't suppose that it is not felt at all.

How does fundamentally differ from deleting specific revisions? True,
in one case, the deleted material is available to 1000 people, while
in the other it's available to, say, around 50 people - but what's the
difference when you compare that to the millions of people for whom
the net effect is the same? I suppose there's a difference regarding
logging of the deletions; but even then, deletion logs are a fairly
obscure thing, and they don't tell *what* was deleted, simply that
something was deleted.

Posted by: Heat

QUOTE

In the current case, he has evidence, evidence which looks to me
reasonably compelling. Certainly, let me put it this way: people are
indef blocked daily at Wikipedia on evidence slimmer than this.

--Jimbo


QUOTE

For me there is an additional necessity for us to do this right. I blew
it when I appointed EssJay to the ArbCom, and the ArbCom blew it (but I
take the full blame on myself) for not helping me by raising alarm bells
about it before I did it. We have been burned by a friend before. We
risk getting a reputation for being a cabal who protects our friends
rather than pursuing the truth.

We can't let that happen, or we will end up eventually losing our power,
and I do not think that's good for Wikipedia.

--Jimbo


So why are SV and Jayjg still admins?

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

Jimbo seems lucid, but strangely impotent in his comments:

QUOTE
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:07:45 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]

Well, SV, if you could please just visit the link in question.

It contains what appears to be a pretty clear confirmation of sockpuppetry:
http://antisocialmedia.net/?p=115

Sweet Water Blue

I need either an equally compelling analysis showing how his argument is
mistaken... a flat public denial... or a confession. Or something.

QUOTE
But it looks more like there was sockpuppetry of the bad kind.


And then there is Charles Matthews:
QUOTE

- Was there a double standard applied here?

This is the PR killer. Everyone understands 'double standard'; it's in the same avoid-at-all-costs list as 'cover-up'. If it can be truly said that there was no double standard applied, then much of the potential PR disaster goes away. So splitting it up a bit more, the oversights were within normal practice. We have torn this one to rags by now. They _may not_ have been appropriate, but they were within policy in its everyday, working interpretation.

Therefore we have only the hindsight thing. "Cover-up" implies intention. The retrospective interpretation that there was a cover-up is a wrong interpretation, because there was no intention of concealment and no application of a double standard at the time.

Charles overlooks an important detail: Slim has routinely used allegations of sockpuppetry to ban her opponents in content disputes. So this goes beyond a simple "double standard."

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(MaliceAforethought @ Wed 27th July 2011, 5:51am) *

From: Slim Virgin
Date: Aug 24, 2007 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive sockpuppetry]

> The second issue is whether I was Sweet Blue Water. Yes, I was. Again,
> this was when I first started editing (end of 2004). I couldn't decide
> whether I wanted to keep the SlimVirgin user name, and I thought of
> switching to Sweet Blue. I tried the name out for a few days to see
> how I felt with it, and I don't recall particularly trying to hide it
> was me, because I wasn't even thinking along sockpuppetry lines. If
> you look at the edits, there were no content disputes. I'm going to
> write to you later with diffs and so on. The only mistake I made was I
> inadvertently voted with SlimVirgin and SweetBlue for 9/11 to be a
> featured article. I didn't even notice I'd done this until a couple of
> days later, and it made no difference to the FA outcome. That's when I
> decided to stay as SlimVirgin and I retired SweetBlue, in case I
> inadvertently did anything similar again.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...weet_Blue_Water
>
> If the worst things WordBomb can find about me, out of 60,000 edits
> and nearly three years participation, is some newbie stuff in the
> first few weeks I was here, then my editing record can't be that bad.


SlimVirgin plays the newbie card: I was a newbie, trying out a new account like a pair of new shoes, to see "how I felt about it," as she says. And I inadvertantly voted twice an an FA! Zomg. But, see, I was a newbie!!

Alas, and Wordbomb was a newbie, too. He'd been on WP about a day when SlimVirgin indef blocked him without explaining the rules. All else flows from there. And the fact that Slim paid no attention whatsoever about his actual complaints about Mantanmoreland's editing. Slim says she was just protecting Mantanmoreland from "attack." But that's how all narcissists feel about it, when somebody questions their bad behavior-- they regard it as a personal attack. SlimVirgin immediately personalized Bagley's complaints about Mantanmoreland, and now she's crying to Jimbo when he personalized them right back. Narcissists personalize all criticism of themselves and resent it very deeply, but they are always shocked, completely shocked, when the people they do bad things to, become personally offended by it, and respond in a personal fashion. Why don't they get over it? To narcissists, it's forever a mystery.

"Because of that mistake, I decided I needed to make up my mind and choose between Sweet Blue and Slim, which I did on Jan 5. I chose Slim because I'd already started to identify with that account, whereas Sweet Blue felt like a stranger."

Jesus, it sounds like she's choosing one child over another from an orphange. I'm starting to tear up. And when she brings in being stalked by Scott Grayban or whoever, the clouds roll in. It's all of one piece with this insane Bagley thing! Don't you see! People are discussing my undies and boyfriends and dogs, and I'm a WOMAN!

I'd just do anything to keep this gentle flower from more anxiety, wouldn't you?

Jay's comment in this sequence, repeating something JzG said, wins my award for largest pile of bullshit:

QUOTE(Jayjg)
As I've said before, I think Guy Chapman's comments in this regard are
spot-on: Wikipedia "is extraordinarily bad at protecting its friends."

blink.gif Wikipedia protects its "friends" very well indeed, as this case demonstrates. And the Essjay one before it (before he imploded and even his friends got spattered with goo).

Jimbo's comment in this sequence actually comes out quite reasonable. He is the one who got MOST spattered when the Essjay thing hit the public fan. He recognizes this danger. He addresses it. But so far as I can tell, that's all we get from Jimbo: lipservice. He can't understand why Bagley is enraged at what happened to him, any more the SlimVirgin can. Why doesn't he just get over it? Why does he do this IP harvesting thing, and this anti-cabal thing, and go and get a life? We threw him off WP as a newbie, but he should get over it. As for the rest of us, well SlimVirgin says she had no idea how addictive WP could be, when she was choosing usernames. Why Bagley is still involved, however, confuses her. rolleyes.gif laugh.gif

Posted by: SpiderAndWeb

I always did like The Uninvited Company. Glad to see him as a voice of reason here.

Posted by: It's the blimp, Frank

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 27th July 2011, 3:01pm) *

SlimVirgin plays the newbie card: I was a newbie, trying out a new account like a pair of new shoes, to see "how I felt about it," as she says. And I inadvertantly voted twice an an FA! Zomg. But, see, I was a newbie!!

Alas, and Wordbomb was a newbie, too. He'd been on WP about a day when SlimVirgin indef blocked him without explaining the rules. All else flows from there.
Including hundreds of similar incidents.

Posted by: gomi

There is a meta-issue, observable here, and in many of the other leaks. It deserves more than this short note, but here goes ...

The leaks are important because they reveal, in a way that the more public utterances of the Arbitrons do not, the essential character of the major players. The factions are several: the straight-laced rule followers, such as Charles Matthews and (in this argument, at least) Kirill Lokshin); there are the do-what-it-takes political game-players such as Jayjg, Josh Gordon, and David Gerard; and there are the bumbling wind-direction checkers, in this case Jimbo Wales, Kat Walsh, and some others.

In reviewing the more recent leaks, with different members, these categories seem to hold up. The rule-followers are straightforward -- they look at the policies, and suggest the simple enforcement of them. They are especially cognizant of the caustic effect of special treatment (or the appearance of special treatment) for Wikipedia's ruling class. The are in the minority, and a minority that seems to be getting even smaller recently.

The group on the ascendant are the political game-players. Their guiding principle is written in no policy, it is pure fealty to the wiki, which is in practice a mechanism to protect their own power there. They apply a higher-level rule of "defending the wiki" and they pronounce certain people to be "unsuitable for editing" or "stalkers" or "sociopaths". They are willing to bend or break any policy or rule for the higher cause, and to cover it all up if need be. These are the people who have been ascending strongly since 2006/2007, when this all happened.

The last category, the befuddled sympathizers, are also taking up positions from the rule-followers. They often appear to to external perspectives like law-and-order type rule-followers, but they lack a real moral compass that the rule-followers seem to have, and are subject to influence by Wiki-political rhetoric from the political types. NewYorkBrad is the poster child for this category now, though Jimbo continues to be mold for the type.

This whole thing with SlimVirgin is indeed a little snow globe of Wikipedia horrors, a perfect miniature of their deeper problems: We have a powerful and well-connected editor and admin getting away with things that have generated hundreds of indefinite blocks of lesser editors. We have a secret mailing list on which people (who later turn out to be correct) are portrayed as "sociopaths" "trolls" and "nutters", mostly in order to discredit them and their messages. We have an interminable discussion, punctuated with deceptive rhetoric (Jayjg: "b) There was no prior indication that dumps of the old database had been kept, or that someone would obsessively try to mine them ..." -- i.e. 'we didn't know we'd get caught!' and "c) I don't think everyone here agrees that my oversights contravened policy" -- i.e. 'if everyone doesn't agree, then you're out of line'), misdirection, and excuses (usually by third parties from the cohort, muddying the waters).

This, I am sure, isn't the most serious topic revealed by the leaks, but it should open people's eyes about the deeper politics of the Wikipedia elite.

Posted by: SpiderAndWeb

QUOTE(gomi @ Wed 27th July 2011, 7:44pm) *

There is a meta-issue, observable here, and in many of the other leaks. It deserves more than this short note, but here goes ...

The leaks are important because they reveal, in a way that the more public utterances of the Arbitrons do not, the essential character of the major players. The factions are several: the straight-laced rule followers, such as Charles Matthews and (in this argument, at least) Kirill Lokshin); there are the do-what-it-takes political game-players such as Jayjg, Josh Gordon, and David Gerard; and there are the bumbling wind-direction checkers, in this case Jimbo Wales, Kat Walsh, and some others.

In reviewing the more recent leaks, with different members, these categories seem to hold up. The rule-followers are straightforward -- they look at the policies, and suggest the simple enforcement of them. They are especially cognizant of the caustic effect of special treatment (or the appearance of special treatment) for Wikipedia's ruling class. The are in the minority, and a minority that seems to be getting even smaller recently.

The group on the ascendant are the political game-players. Their guiding principle is written in no policy, it is pure fealty to the wiki, which is in practice a mechanism to protect their own power there. They apply a higher-level rule of "defending the wiki" and they pronounce certain people to be "unsuitable for editing" or "stalkers" or "sociopaths". They are willing to bend or break any policy or rule for the higher cause, and to cover it all up if need be. These are the people who have been ascending strongly since 2006/2007, when this all happened.

The last category, the befuddled sympathizers, are also taking up positions from the rule-followers. They often appear to to external perspectives like law-and-order type rule-followers, but they lack a real moral compass that the rule-followers seem to have, and are subject to influence by Wiki-political rhetoric from the political types. NewYorkBrad is the poster child for this category now, though Jimbo continues to be mold for the type.

This whole thing with SlimVirgin is indeed a little snow globe of Wikipedia horrors, a perfect miniature of their deeper problems: We have a powerful and well-connected editor and admin getting away with things that have generated hundreds of indefinite blocks of lesser editors. We have a secret mailing list on which people (who later turn out to be correct) are portrayed as "sociopaths" "trolls" and "nutters", mostly in order to discredit them and their messages. We have an interminable discussion, punctuated with deceptive rhetoric (Jayjg: "b) There was no prior indication that dumps of the old database had been kept, or that someone would obsessively try to mine them ..." -- i.e. 'we didn't know we'd get caught!' and "c) I don't think everyone here agrees that my oversights contravened policy" -- i.e. 'if everyone doesn't agree, then you're out of line'), misdirection, and excuses (usually by third parties from the cohort, muddying the waters).

This, I am sure, isn't the most serious topic revealed by the leaks, but it should open people's eyes about the deeper politics of the Wikipedia elite.


Excellent post.

The most important effect these leaks have had, IMO, is clearly revealing the individual beliefs and attitudes of the people behind an institution that acts more or less monolithically on-wiki. Whether or not it's enough to oust the second faction come December, we'll have to wait and see.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(SpiderAndWeb @ Wed 27th July 2011, 1:30pm) *

The most important effect these leaks have had, IMO, is clearly revealing the individual beliefs and attitudes of the people behind an institution that acts more or less monolithically on-wiki. Whether or not it's enough to oust the second faction come December, we'll have to wait and see.

It really is a lot like the Pentagon Papers: the specifics don't matter. What matters is that the wiki-"government" is quite capable of lying to the membership. It is full of deceipt, hypocrisy, and paranoia. It is also corrupt, inasmuch as the "rules" count only so far as the ingroup wants to make use of them, but otherwise not. It is, to put it bluntly, a government of persons, not laws (or policies).

We knew all this, of course. But it's interesting to see hard evidence for it at the arbcom level.

Kirill Lokshin (T-C-L-K-R-D) gets my early nomination for Straight Shooter this next round. I wonder if he even knows of the existence of WR.

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 27th July 2011, 1:46pm) *

Kirill Lokshin (T-C-L-K-R-D) gets my early nomination for Straight Shooter this next round. I wonder if he even knows of the existence of WR.
I am certain that he does -- after all, it's a dominant topic on the Arbcom-L list -- and I second the nomination.

Posted by: Sololol

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 27th July 2011, 4:46pm) *

Kirill Lokshin (T-C-L-K-R-D) gets my early nomination for Straight Shooter this next round. I wonder if he even knows of the existence of WR.

I'll second that. The awards this year will be very interesting. We could almost have a seperate one just for the leaks.

Off-(or back on?)topic: Didn't Jayjg have a lot of his own user history oversighted?

Posted by: Abd

QUOTE(gomi @ Wed 27th July 2011, 3:44pm) *
This, I am sure, isn't the most serious topic revealed by the leaks, but it should open people's eyes about the deeper politics of the Wikipedia elite.
Just in case someone doesn't know to click on the back-arrow next to the quote to read the original, http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=34489&view=findpost&p=281374

This is a brilliant analysis of the situation, which doesn't mean that I have researched each identification of type and agree with it. The types exist, and the devastating trend described exists. I just want to underscore it. Thanks, Gomi.

Posted by: Abd

QUOTE(SpiderAndWeb @ Wed 27th July 2011, 4:30pm) *
The most important effect these leaks have had, IMO, is clearly revealing the individual beliefs and attitudes of the people behind an institution that acts more or less monolithically on-wiki. Whether or not it's enough to oust the second faction come December, we'll have to wait and see.
I hate to break a bubble, but ousting the faction and replacing them is very likely to replace them with people who are similar or even worse. It's not the people, and the composition of ArbComm is not an accident that we can fix by repeating what we've done before. It's a product of the existing structure.

That's doesn't mean that it can't be changed, but it will not be changed by a few people reading Wikipedia Review and voting for "better arbitrators." The system of choosing arbitrators is guaranteed to produce composition like what we see, and electing an occasional Good Guy just wastes her talent.

Posted by: MaliceAforethought

QUOTE(Abd @ Thu 28th July 2011, 12:12am) *

That's doesn't mean that it can't be changed, but it will not be changed by a few people reading Wikipedia Review and voting for "better arbitrators." The system of choosing arbitrators is guaranteed to produce composition like what we see, and electing an occasional Good Guy just wastes her talent.


I agree. The problem is that most who are going to run for the position should in no case be given the job.

Posted by: Silver seren

QUOTE(MaliceAforethought @ Thu 28th July 2011, 12:27am) *

QUOTE(Abd @ Thu 28th July 2011, 12:12am) *

That's doesn't mean that it can't be changed, but it will not be changed by a few people reading Wikipedia Review and voting for "better arbitrators." The system of choosing arbitrators is guaranteed to produce composition like what we see, and electing an occasional Good Guy just wastes her talent.


I agree. The problem is that most who are going to run for the position should in no case be given the job.


Isn't that the general saying for people running for President as well?

I mean, god knows this election reflects that. We've got Bachmann, Palin, and Hillary. The world is surely ending.

Posted by: Heat

QUOTE(MaliceAforethought @ Thu 28th July 2011, 12:27am) *

QUOTE(Abd @ Thu 28th July 2011, 12:12am) *

That's doesn't mean that it can't be changed, but it will not be changed by a few people reading Wikipedia Review and voting for "better arbitrators." The system of choosing arbitrators is guaranteed to produce composition like what we see, and electing an occasional Good Guy just wastes her talent.


I agree. The problem is that most who are going to run for the position should in no case be given the job.


And an endorsement of any candidate on WR is (still) the kiss of death.

Posted by: carbuncle

QUOTE(Silver seren @ Thu 28th July 2011, 12:31am) *

I mean, god knows this election reflects that. We've got Bachmann, Palin, and Hillary. The world is surely ending.

Perhaps I haven't been following politics as closely as I should - I'm only aware of one of those three women running for president.

Posted by: SpiderAndWeb

QUOTE(Heat @ Thu 28th July 2011, 2:27am) *

And an endorsement of any candidate on WR is (still) the kiss of death.


Note to self: come here in December and endorse the hell out of Coren.

We're stuck with Iridescent until 2012, sadly.

Posted by: radek

QUOTE(gomi @ Wed 27th July 2011, 2:44pm) *

There is a meta-issue, observable here, and in many of the other leaks. It deserves more than this short note, but here goes ...

The leaks are important because they reveal, in a way that the more public utterances of the Arbitrons do not, the essential character of the major players. The factions are several: the straight-laced rule followers, such as Charles Matthews and (in this argument, at least) Kirill Lokshin); there are the do-what-it-takes political game-players such as Jayjg, Josh Gordon, and David Gerard; and there are the bumbling wind-direction checkers, in this case Jimbo Wales, Kat Walsh, and some others.

In reviewing the more recent leaks, with different members, these categories seem to hold up. The rule-followers are straightforward -- they look at the policies, and suggest the simple enforcement of them. They are especially cognizant of the caustic effect of special treatment (or the appearance of special treatment) for Wikipedia's ruling class. The are in the minority, and a minority that seems to be getting even smaller recently.

The group on the ascendant are the political game-players. Their guiding principle is written in no policy, it is pure fealty to the wiki, which is in practice a mechanism to protect their own power there. They apply a higher-level rule of "defending the wiki" and they pronounce certain people to be "unsuitable for editing" or "stalkers" or "sociopaths". They are willing to bend or break any policy or rule for the higher cause, and to cover it all up if need be. These are the people who have been ascending strongly since 2006/2007, when this all happened.

The last category, the befuddled sympathizers, are also taking up positions from the rule-followers. They often appear to to external perspectives like law-and-order type rule-followers, but they lack a real moral compass that the rule-followers seem to have, and are subject to influence by Wiki-political rhetoric from the political types. NewYorkBrad is the poster child for this category now, though Jimbo continues to be mold for the type.

This whole thing with SlimVirgin is indeed a little snow globe of Wikipedia horrors, a perfect miniature of their deeper problems: We have a powerful and well-connected editor and admin getting away with things that have generated hundreds of indefinite blocks of lesser editors. We have a secret mailing list on which people (who later turn out to be correct) are portrayed as "sociopaths" "trolls" and "nutters", mostly in order to discredit them and their messages. We have an interminable discussion, punctuated with deceptive rhetoric (Jayjg: "b) There was no prior indication that dumps of the old database had been kept, or that someone would obsessively try to mine them ..." -- i.e. 'we didn't know we'd get caught!' and "c) I don't think everyone here agrees that my oversights contravened policy" -- i.e. 'if everyone doesn't agree, then you're out of line'), misdirection, and excuses (usually by third parties from the cohort, muddying the waters).

This, I am sure, isn't the most serious topic revealed by the leaks, but it should open people's eyes about the deeper politics of the Wikipedia elite.


I think you're missing one important category: the WMF defenders. These are the arbs who's main motivation is to prevent the WMF (and sometimes Jimbo) from looking bad or catching crap. Basically to throw up a defensive wall around it. They are not "straight laced rule followers" because they're quite willing to throw any such rules out the window when it suits their purpose. They are also not really "do-what-it-takes political game-players" since they don't have a recognizable faction and if they do they are willing to quickly abandon it if the said faction or its actions, is in danger of becoming an embarrassment to "the project". And they are not "bumbling wind-direction checkers" because they do have a paramount goal, as stated above.

Essentially these are PR people pretending to be mediators or arbitrators. And this PR can involve different actions at different times; sometimes drama needs to be squashed quickly. Sometimes things need to be hidden from "the masses". But sometimes it's better if a certain amount of drama is allowed either as a steam release valve or because if it is not allowed then there's danger of bigger drama ensuing later.

Sometimes these guys (and gals) vote with the do what it takes political game players, since these guys represent useful factions. But sometimes, when this faction gets to out of hand, the defenders will switch and align with the straight laced rule followers - depending on what the situation calls for.

I think Risker, Flo Night and Coren are pretty representative of this group.

Btw, what group would you put Rvlevse in?

Posted by: It's the blimp, Frank

QUOTE(gomi @ Thu 28th July 2011, 3:54am) *

The group on the ascendant are the political game-players. Their guiding principle is written in no policy, it is pure fealty to the wiki, which is in practice a mechanism to protect their own power there. They apply a higher-level rule of "defending the wiki" and they pronounce certain people to be "unsuitable for editing" or "stalkers" or "sociopaths".
This seems overly generous. They're not "defending the wiki," they're defending THEIR wiki. The "There is no cabal" joke is no longer funny.

Posted by: radek

QUOTE(It's the blimp, Frank @ Wed 27th July 2011, 11:08pm) *

QUOTE(gomi @ Thu 28th July 2011, 3:54am) *

The group on the ascendant are the political game-players. Their guiding principle is written in no policy, it is pure fealty to the wiki, which is in practice a mechanism to protect their own power there. They apply a higher-level rule of "defending the wiki" and they pronounce certain people to be "unsuitable for editing" or "stalkers" or "sociopaths".
This seems overly generous. They're not "defending the wiki," they're defending THEIR wiki. The "There is no cabal" joke is no longer funny.


I would also question whether this really is the ascendant group. Certainly for example the election of someone like Iridescent (and to a lesser extent, a few others) would contradict that claim. I dunno, do you really think the present ArbCom is actually worse than the previous ones?

One of the possible impacts of WR on Wikipedia is that some criticisms and issues (not all, not even a majority) which at one point where made only on WR have filtered into the mainstream consciousness of Wikipedia (without of course giving credit), and have resulted in some "outsiders" getting elected onto the committee

Posted by: EricBarbour

Please bear in mind, that this "community" is the same "community" that made
a http://www.linkedin.com/pub/keegan-peterzell/19/67/260 at Connor's Steak And Seafood into an administrator, checkuser,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan, and community fundraising officer.....

Posted by: Rhindle

Speaking of Jayjg, wasn't this around the time(Aug 2007) that he disappeared for a quite a while? I remembered him locking the George Soros article due to edit warring and it stayed locked for a long time and he was nowhere to be found.

Posted by: The Joy

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Thu 28th July 2011, 12:41am) *

Please bear in mind, that this "community" is the same "community" that made
a http://www.linkedin.com/pub/keegan-peterzell/19/67/260 at Connor's Steak And Seafood into an administrator, checkuser,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan, and community fundraising officer.....


At least he wasn't a server from Mzoli's Meat (T-H-L-K-D)! biggrin.gif

Posted by: Herschelkrustofsky

QUOTE(radek @ Wed 27th July 2011, 9:16pm) *

I dunno, do you really think the present ArbCom is actually worse than the previous ones?


I haven't followed the evolution of the ArbCom in fine detail, but my impression would be no. Looking at their response to recent controversial requests, they seem very wishy-washy and anxiety-ridden, determined to avoid being placed in the position of having to make a consequential decision. The older, Fred Bauder-era ArbComs were quite different, making decisions with great arrogance that were completely arbitrary. Others may see it differently.

Posted by: Abd

QUOTE(Herschelkrustofsky @ Thu 28th July 2011, 10:44am) *
I haven't followed the evolution of the ArbCom in fine detail, but my impression would be no. Looking at their response to recent controversial requests, they seem very wishy-washy and anxiety-ridden, determined to avoid being placed in the position of having to make a consequential decision. The older, Fred Bauder-era ArbComs were quite different, making decisions with great arrogance that were completely arbitrary. Others may see it differently.
That's early Wikipedian vs. later Wikipedian. The early Wikipedians had a strong belief in the wiki vision of endless improvement, and no sophistication about group process, except for a special case: open-source software, where the active community is relative small and highly united for various reasons.

The early Wikipedians believed that their vision was superior to all others, and that they needed to resist "advice" from outsiders, who obviously were clueless, only they knew what was needed. This tends to be the view of the oligarchy that develops in all organizations, it's an error to ascribe this to pure power hunger. They might even often be right! Certainly many clueless critics appear.

But that oligarchy weakens the organization, and organizations that don't address the problem are far weaker, in the long run, that those which do, and which keep the structure open. There will always be an oligarchy, it's natural, and organizations which pretend to pure equality are deluding themselves. However, it's possible to set up structure so that the oligarchy sees itself and actually functions as a servant of the community, rather than as governors. And I mean in reality, not just as a platitude.

That requires a robust structure that bypasses those "servants" who assert personal control, control that is not actually supported by consensus. It requires structure that finds true consensus, which Wikipedia had no concept of how to accomplish, being uninterested in the historical precedents and the science of, say, elections. To them, minor election methods known only to academics and aficionados of election system theory were "non-notable," of no interest to them and only of interest to a few fanatics, and they thought that proposals to use advanced election methods were simply efforts by fanatics to use Wikipedia to promote their favorite methods.

Iridescent, actually, came to this conclusion very early on, with me. It was backwards. I believed that certain methods, some of which are very old, would be of high utility on Wikipedia, and a *successful* trial of them, sure, that could "promote" them. But only if they actually worked! The existence of small trials would be useless for promotion.

I was actually banned from Cold fusion by WMC, not for any advocacy of cold fusion, but for attempting to use Range voting to rapidly assess consensus on multiple versions of the article, after it had been protected through the abuse of Hipocrite. It worked! It was quite obvious what version to use, there was unanimity on it. But WMC chose something completely different, arbitrarily, editing under protection contrary to expressed consensus....

Completely overlooked by ArbComm: at Cold fusion, I was seeking, and finding, and supporting consensus. That's quite opposite to what they expect, it appears. They expect to see revert warring, tendentious advocacy, etc. So, amazing how this works, they see what they expect, they fit all the facts into the stories that they have adopted.

Posted by: Milton Roe

QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Wed 27th July 2011, 9:41pm) *

Please bear in mind, that this "community" is the same "community" that made
a http://www.linkedin.com/pub/keegan-peterzell/19/67/260 at Connor's Steak And Seafood into an administrator, checkuser,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan, and community fundraising officer.....

Was that one of the used servers they were later looking to donate to a good cause?

Posted by: WordBomb

QUOTE(Milton Roe @ Wed 27th July 2011, 9:01am) *

QUOTE(MaliceAforethought @ Wed 27th July 2011, 5:51am) *

From: Slim Virgin
Date: Aug 24, 2007 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive sockpuppetry]

> The second issue is whether I was Sweet Blue Water. Yes, I was. Again,
> this was when I first started editing (end of 2004). I couldn't decide
> whether I wanted to keep the SlimVirgin user name, and I thought of
> switching to Sweet Blue. I tried the name out for a few days to see
> how I felt with it, and I don't recall particularly trying to hide it
> was me, because I wasn't even thinking along sockpuppetry lines. If
> you look at the edits, there were no content disputes. I'm going to
> write to you later with diffs and so on. The only mistake I made was I
> inadvertently voted with SlimVirgin and SweetBlue for 9/11 to be a
> featured article. I didn't even notice I'd done this until a couple of
> days later, and it made no difference to the FA outcome. That's when I
> decided to stay as SlimVirgin and I retired SweetBlue, in case I
> inadvertently did anything similar again.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...weet_Blue_Water
>
> If the worst things WordBomb can find about me, out of 60,000 edits
> and nearly three years participation, is some newbie stuff in the
> first few weeks I was here, then my editing record can't be that bad.


SlimVirgin plays the newbie card: I was a newbie, trying out a new account like a pair of new shoes, to see "how I felt about it," as she says. And I inadvertantly voted twice an an FA! Zomg. But, see, I was a newbie!!

Alas, and Wordbomb was a newbie, too. He'd been on WP about a day when SlimVirgin indef blocked him without explaining the rules. All else flows from there. And the fact that Slim paid no attention whatsoever about his actual complaints about Mantanmoreland's editing. Slim says she was just protecting Mantanmoreland from "attack." But that's how all narcissists feel about it, when somebody questions their bad behavior-- they regard it as a personal attack. SlimVirgin immediately personalized Bagley's complaints about Mantanmoreland, and now she's crying to Jimbo when he personalized them right back. Narcissists personalize all criticism of themselves and resent it very deeply, but they are always shocked, completely shocked, when the people they do bad things to, become personally offended by it, and respond in a personal fashion. Why don't they get over it? To narcissists, it's forever a mystery.

"Because of that mistake, I decided I needed to make up my mind and choose between Sweet Blue and Slim, which I did on Jan 5. I chose Slim because I'd already started to identify with that account, whereas Sweet Blue felt like a stranger."

Jesus, it sounds like she's choosing one child over another from an orphange. I'm starting to tear up. And when she brings in being stalked by Scott Grayban or whoever, the clouds roll in. It's all of one piece with this insane Bagley thing! Don't you see! People are discussing my undies and boyfriends and dogs, and I'm a WOMAN!

I'd just do anything to keep this gentle flower from more anxiety, wouldn't you?

Jay's comment in this sequence, repeating something JzG said, wins my award for largest pile of bullshit:

QUOTE(Jayjg)
As I've said before, I think Guy Chapman's comments in this regard are
spot-on: Wikipedia "is extraordinarily bad at protecting its friends."

blink.gif Wikipedia protects its "friends" very well indeed, as this case demonstrates. And the Essjay one before it (before he imploded and even his friends got spattered with goo).

Jimbo's comment in this sequence actually comes out quite reasonable. He is the one who got MOST spattered when the Essjay thing hit the public fan. He recognizes this danger. He addresses it. But so far as I can tell, that's all we get from Jimbo: lipservice. He can't understand why Bagley is enraged at what happened to him, any more the SlimVirgin can. Why doesn't he just get over it? Why does he do this IP harvesting thing, and this anti-cabal thing, and go and get a life? We threw him off WP as a newbie, but he should get over it. As for the rest of us, well SlimVirgin says she had no idea how addictive WP could be, when she was choosing usernames. Why Bagley is still involved, however, confuses her. rolleyes.gif laugh.gif

Milton, your assessment strikes at the root of the issue. Well done.