Cyberstalking list leaks, So much for sooper sekricy Options

[WordBomb]

I've decided to post a few of the email threads taken from SlimVirgin's Cyberstalking list. I'm going to do this slowly because there are certain people I'd rather not embarrass and others who really deserve it and I need to figure out how to accomplish the later and not the former.

I'll start with my all time favorite: a thread in which David Gerard, Jimmy Wales and Gary Weiss (as Mantanmoreland in this case) discuss how to derail an AP reporter's inquiries into the situation Cade Metz ultimately did a great job reporting on here.

In this exchange, you'll see Gerard conclude that the best way to deal with the situation is essentially to mislead and confuse the reporter. When Gerard ultimately succeeds, Wales responds with "Brilliant, David!"

This should be required reading for any journalist dealing with the WMF on anything but a puff piece basis.

I'd post the text inline, but the emails as I received them were hard copies which I've scanned but cannot get to OCR very well, so I'm posting a pdf to my site (here) which you can download and read.

I've got a ton of these, which I'll try to post weekly (though there may be some redactions).

[EricBarbour]

This. Quoted below in case it goes byebye.

[edit] Overstock.com, David Gerard, and the blocking of the town of Lehi, Utah

Jimbo, are the emails linked to here genuine? If so, do you still support what David Gerard did there to mislead an Associated Press reporter who was investigating the WordBomb/Mantanmoreland affair and support Gerard's range block of an entire community in Utah? Cla68 (talk) 00:21, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

[Milton Roe]

This. Quoted below in case it goes byebye.

[edit] Overstock.com, David Gerard, and the blocking of the town of Lehi, Utah

Jimbo, are the emails linked to here genuine? If so, do you still support what David Gerard did there to mislead an Associated Press reporter who was investigating the WordBomb/Mantanmoreland affair and support Gerard's range block of an entire community in Utah? Cla68 (talk) 00:21, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Wales reponds!

Wow, Cla68, that's a pretty outrageous summary of what happened there. What David Gerard was trying to do there was find a way to explain the situation truthfully (which he did) without making it seem interesting (when it wasn't). This is quite common in handling press inquiries - you have to be very careful not to *create* a story when there isn't one. The last thing you want to do is say something interesting when there is actually nothing interesting to be said. So you have to write it up in a very boring way, being very careful to avoid inflaming a situation.

Bagley was making outrageous and frankly ludicrous claims about what can only be called a conspiracy theory. I remember reading his theory that I was somehow, due to my background working in the financial markets, in cahoots with the global conspiracy of financial journalists to cover up wrongdoing in the financial markets. He wrote in a very breathless style at the time about "I happen to have proof of something they want very much to suppress. It's really very sordid and to anybody's knowledge, this sort of thing has never happened before." Total ranting nonsense, that.

Yes, I fully support that range block, and I'm unaware of any legitimate complaints about it. When you have someone behaving as Bagley was (ongoing sockpuppeting), there is often little choice but the block an entire range - you know this, as it unfortunately happens all the time.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:12, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Ahem. I'm afraid it's less than correct to say that "What David Gerard was trying to do there was find a way to explain the situation truthfully (which he did) without making it seem interesting (when it wasn't)." It is interesting (though this is a matter of taste). And as for the "truthfulness part," it depends on what Gerard knew at the time. Factual, it isn't.

Mr. Wales, you know, don't you, that the email you sent Gerard that said "Brilliant!" in getting a reporter to think that Bagley had violated WP's "fairness rules" (as a newbie less than a day old), was regarded Bagley's complaint that Wikipedia was being manipulated by a journalist named Weiss on matters of Overstock and shortselling and Wiess' BLP, and that Weiss was [[user:Mantanmoreland]]? And (later) that he had a number of socks on WP, which was what Bagley was banned for? You copied Mantanmoreland on your email, and you also copied one of his later identified socks, [[user:samiharris]]. And Bagley's other complaint was that these were being protected unfairly by [[user:SlimVirgin]], who was the OTHER person you copied?

If all this was true (which it proved to be) then the Wikipedia actions against Bagley certainly looked like a conspiracy, even if it was merely the manipulation of a bunch of clueless administrators. SlimVirgin AT LEAST had the grace to (later) complain on Wikipedia Review about being manipulated by Mantanmoreland. Gerard never said anything in public that I know of, since to do so would be to remind everybody how clueless he was to the real situation in 2007, despite some fairly frantic attempts to inform him (which he put off as the ravings of the mentally ill).

And now we come to YOU, Mr. Wales, in 2011. Have you not been brought up to date yet about your email cc: list in 2007? "Being manipulated by Mantanmoreland" is your BEST excuse. But that would involve some kind of apology for being wrong, and for mistreating Bagley for trying to get the truth out. A truth you weren't listening to. And still have yet to admit.

Perhaps Bagley will then admit that you actually were not in cahoots with the global conspiracy of financial journalists to cover up wrongdoing in the financial markets. That you were just clueless. Like Gerard. And SlimVirgin.

[WordBomb]

This. Quoted below in case it goes byebye.

[edit] Overstock.com, David Gerard, and the blocking of the town of Lehi, Utah

Jimbo, are the emails linked to here genuine? If so, do you still support what David Gerard did there to mislead an Associated Press reporter who was investigating the WordBomb/Mantanmoreland affair and support Gerard's range block of an entire community in Utah? Cla68 (talk) 00:21, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Wales reponds!

Wow, Cla68, that's a pretty outrageous summary of what happened there. What David Gerard was trying to do there was find a way to explain the situation truthfully (which he did) without making it seem interesting (when it wasn't). This is quite common in handling press inquiries - you have to be very careful not to *create* a story when there isn't one. The last thing you want to do is say something interesting when there is actually nothing interesting to be said. So you have to write it up in a very boring way, being very careful to avoid inflaming a situation.

Bagley was making outrageous and frankly ludicrous claims about what can only be called a conspiracy theory. I remember reading his theory that I was somehow, due to my background working in the financial markets, in cahoots with the global conspiracy of financial journalists to cover up wrongdoing in the financial markets. He wrote in a very breathless style at the time about "I happen to have proof of something they want very much to suppress. It's really very sordid and to anybody's knowledge, this sort of thing has never happened before." Total ranting nonsense, that.

Yes, I fully support that range block, and I'm unaware of any legitimate complaints about it. When you have someone behaving as Bagley was (ongoing sockpuppeting), there is often little choice but the block an entire range - you know this, as it unfortunately happens all the time.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 09:12, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Ahem. I'm afraid it's less than correct to say that "What David Gerard was trying to do there was find a way to explain the situation truthfully (which he did) without making it seem interesting (when it wasn't)." It is interesting (though this is a matter of taste). And as for the "truthfulness part," it depends on what Gerard knew at the time. Factual, it isn't.

Mr. Wales, you know, don't you, that the email you sent Gerard that said "Brilliant!" in getting a reporter to think that Bagley had violated WP's "fairness rules" (as a newbie less than a day old), was regarded Bagley's complaint that Wikipedia was being manipulated by a journalist named Weiss on matters of Overstock and shortselling and Wiess' BLP, and that Weiss was [[user:Mantanmoreland]]? And (later) that he had a number of socks on WP, which was what Bagley was banned for? You copied Mantanmoreland on your email, and you also copied one of his later identified socks, [[user:samiharris]]. And Bagley's other complaint was that these were being protected unfairly by [[user:SlimVirgin]], who was the OTHER person you copied?

If all this was true (which it proved to be) then the Wikipedia actions against Bagley certainly looked like a conspiracy, even if it was merely the manipulation of a bunch of clueless administrators. SlimVirgin AT LEAST had the grace to (later) complain on Wikipedia Review about being manipulated by Mantanmoreland. Gerard never said anything in public that I know of, since to do so would be to remind everybody how clueless he was to the real situation in 2007, despite some fairly frantic attempts to inform him (which he put off as the ravings of the mentally ill).

And now we come to YOU, Mr. Wales, in 2011. Have you not been brought up to date yet about your email cc: list in 2007? "Being manipulated by Mantanmoreland" is your BEST excuse. But that would involve some kind of apology for being wrong, and for mistreating Bagley for trying to get the truth out. A truth you weren't listening to. And still have yet to admit.

Perhaps Bagley will then admit that you actually were not in cahoots with the global conspiracy of financial journalists to cover up wrongdoing in the financial markets. That you were just clueless. Like Gerard. And SlimVirgin.

Jimbo is a case study in human nature, specifically the tendency of people to adhere to one convenient version of reality despite repeated demonstrations that it's flawed. I won't even get into the specifics (they've been chronicled at length on this site) but the most obvious and relevant is this: today Jimbo says I and all my neighbors were blocked because I was promoting a "conspiracy theory" (that SlimVirgin had socked and JayJG had oversighted the evidence) while here he's the first one to say that it's true.

If Jimbo happens to be referring to the whole SV as MI-5 conspiracy theory, I'm repeatedly on the record as saying I never believed it to be true, so he's wrong there, as well.

Admittedly, I might be guilty of this myself, as I have no recollection of ever publicly accusing Jimbo of sockpuppeting, as he seems to claim (though I did briefly have my suspicions at one time). I'm inclined to believe that this is another of his inventions.

[Somey]

If Jimbo happens to be referring to the whole SV as MI-5 conspiracy theory, I'm repeatedly on the record as saying I never believed it to be true, so he's wrong there, as well.

It seems clear enough that he wasn't referring to that, but of course that wasn't a "conspiracy theory" either, it was just repeating something Pierre Salinger had said about her. Salinger was probably wrong, but even the mere fact that he suspected (if not believed) it had some bearing on SV's behavior, and various people's attempts to explain it. (Or at least that was our position at the time.)

Jimbo has a real incentive to minimize Weiss's WP activities and refer to them now as being little more than "fiddling" or "mischief" - the last thing he needs are people pointing out how WP can be manipulated to do actual damage to companies, shareholders, and even entire economies, especially when so many countries' economies are already badly messed up. Even if it's just PR damage, it still reflects badly on him. The amount of damage Weiss actually did via Wikipedia is debatable, but there's no question that he was trying, very hard, to do damage. And he still is, most likely.

[LessHorrid vanU]

If Jimbo happens to be referring to the whole SV as MI-5 conspiracy theory, I'm repeatedly on the record as saying I never believed it to be true, so he's wrong there, as well.

It seems clear enough that he wasn't referring to that, but of course that wasn't a "conspiracy theory" either, it was just repeating something Pierre Salinger had said about her. Salinger was probably wrong, but even the mere fact that he suspected (if not believed) it had some bearing on SV's behavior, and various people's attempts to explain it. (Or at least that was our position at the time.)

Jimbo has a real incentive to minimize Weiss's WP activities and refer to them now as being little more than "fiddling" or "mischief" - the last thing he needs are people pointing out how WP can be manipulated to do actual damage to companies, shareholders, and even entire economies, especially when so many countries' economies are already badly messed up. Even if it's just PR damage, it still reflects badly on him. The amount of damage Weiss actually did via Wikipedia is debatable, but there's no question that he was trying, very hard, to do damage. And he still is, most likely.

I don't believe that Weiss is interested in doing damage, except where it supports his central aim which is to enrich himself. Weiss probably did not maintain his campaign against Patrick Byrne/Overstock simply because he desired to damage it, but because they were hindering or obstructing his aim to make money out of naked short selling. Such is the banality of evil, that the damage caused is not for its sake but the disregard of the consequences to others in pursuit of another agenda.

Since such acts (including all the sockpuppets and forming of alliances with sundry "operators" at WP) are distant from the intended purpose, it is quite easy for such individuals to really believe that their actions are legitimate - or at least inconsequential (to them, at least). Weiss really may have believed that selling stock he did not intend to cover by purchasing subsequently was an appropriate method of "creating liquidity" in the market from which he could benefit. And he still may, most likely.

[Piperdown]

I don't believe that Weiss is interested in doing damage, except where it supports his central aim which is to enrich himself. Weiss probably did not maintain his campaign against Patrick Byrne/Overstock simply because he desired to damage it, but because they were hindering or obstructing his aim to make money out of naked short selling. Such is the banality of evil, that the damage caused is not for its sake but the disregard of the consequences to others in pursuit of another agenda.

Uh, no.

Weiss is not a hedge fund manager or prime broker executive. He came to bat for several journalists and their "sources" (hedge fund managers who have a long history of shorting stocks, then using the same consistent vertically integrated network of journalists, supposedly independent analysts, and social media blowhards.

Weiss was said to have about $700K at one time that he was supporting himself with after getting let go by Business Week, and now several more outlets, and his books not selling enough to warrant more books. He probably trades stocks and shorts them too but that's not what got him started on Byrne's ass in 2006. He was tag teamed to jump in by a blogger/fund manager in the Rocker network named Jeff Matthews.

Without this network, journalists like Herb Greenberg and Weiss have no material to write about that would be controversial enough to ensure they can coninute their careers. Weiss killed his own career by writing nothing but whack job articles calling Byrne a whack job for the last 5 years. Greenberg had nothing to go with once his main man hedge fund manager retired involuntarily, and disappeared for a couple of years before returning with...the same cast of characters. There was no lone conspiracy against Overstock, they do this to several companies a year. It's what they do. It's very profitable for the ones at the bottom at that vertical ladder, and they kickback some of it upwards.

The WP NSS article brouhaha was overblown blog war that spilled over. It's true that it was a very obvious attempt to control what was sees when they google NSS, because NSS is a profitable thing for brokers and hedge fund managers, but regular, legal, shorting is way more profitable and prevalent.

Weiss is no more a sith lord of shorting than Linda Mack is the female James Bond.

Michael Milken on the other hand, that Star Wars fan is quite the sith...

This post has been edited by Piperdown: