David Gerard, Shock Site Proprietor Options

[tarantino]

Warning, the websites listed below are not work safe, and may be considered offensive by many people.


David Gerard, anti-censor spokesman and model Wikipedian, said on February 22 this year -

wefixtech.co.uk is a virtual private server. It just got wiped by an idiot at the hosting company. So davidgerard.co.uk, [and several other personal sites listed] are down until they can recover from the February 17th backup. Good thing we got shot of the actual paying customers and it's now strictly our toy.

What does he do with that toy? Why, host the notorious lemonparty.org along with a dozen other lesser known shock sites such as thewillpower.org, yourmom.org and k-k-k.com.

Asked whois.pir.org:43 about lemonparty.org
lemonparty.org = [ 69.65.107.209 ]
Name Server: NS1.WEFIXTECH.CO.UK
Name Server: NS2.WEFIXTECH.CO.UK

Asked whois.nic.uk:43 about wefixtech.co.uk
wefixtech.co.uk = [ 69.65.107.209 ]
Name servers:
ns1.wefixtech.co.uk
ns2.wefixtech.co.uk

Note the wefixtech registrant is not Gerard, but a (former?) business partner.

David Gerard, just the sort of guy to represent WP in the press.

[Lifebaka]

I wasn't able to get whois.nic.uk:43 to work for me (Firefox refused to open it with the :43 ending, and it timed out without; probably me not knowing how to use it), but I did ping lemonparty.org, webfixtech.co.uk, and davidgerard.co.uk from the command line. For me, lemonparty.org and davidgerard.co.uk came up as the same, [ 69.65.107.209 ], but webfixtech.co.uk came up as [ 216.8.179.24 ]. I'm not going to speculate as to what this means, because I prefer not to think about it.

[tarantino]

I wasn't able to get whois.nic.uk:43 to work for me (Firefox refused to open it with the :43 ending, and it timed out without; probably me not knowing how to use it), but I did ping lemonparty.org, webfixtech.co.uk, and davidgerard.co.uk from the command line. For me, lemonparty.org and davidgerard.co.uk came up as the same, [ 69.65.107.209 ], but webfixtech.co.uk came up as [ 216.8.179.24 ]. I'm not going to speculate as to what this means, because I prefer not to think about it.

You need to use nslookup or a web interface to whois such as samspade.org. And it's not webfixtech.co.uk, but wefixtech.co.uk.

[Lifebaka]

I wasn't able to get whois.nic.uk:43 to work for me (Firefox refused to open it with the :43 ending, and it timed out without; probably me not knowing how to use it), but I did ping lemonparty.org, webfixtech.co.uk, and davidgerard.co.uk from the command line. For me, lemonparty.org and davidgerard.co.uk came up as the same, [ 69.65.107.209 ], but webfixtech.co.uk came up as [ 216.8.179.24 ]. I'm not going to speculate as to what this means, because I prefer not to think about it.

You need to use nslookup or a web interface to whois such as samspade.org. And it's not webfixtech.co.uk, but wefixtech.co.uk.

Ah, right, typo. That'd do it. wefixtech.co.uk comes out as [ 69.65.107.209 ] as well, in my test. Cheers.

[Pumpkin Muffins]

David Gerard, anti-censor spokesman and model Wikipedian ...

Ha Ha.

From David Gerard's website;

What Makes A Fuckhead?

• A Fuckhead Must Have An Exaggerated Sense of His/Her Own Importance
• A Fuckhead Must Refuse to Abide By Common Social Rules
• A Fuckhead Must Never Back Down When Caught In A Lie
• A Fuckhead Must Keep Coming Back Without Mending His/Her Ways
• A Fuckhead Will Change His/Her Beliefs To Suit The Situation

By my count Gerard rates at least 3/5.

[Piperdown]

David Gerard, anti-censor spokesman and model Wikipedian ...

Ha Ha.

From David Gerard's website;

What Makes A Fuckhead?

• A Fuckhead Must Have An Exaggerated Sense of His/Her Own Importance
• A Fuckhead Must Refuse to Abide By Common Social Rules
• A Fuckhead Must Never Back Down When Caught In A Lie
• A Fuckhead Must Keep Coming Back Without Mending His/Her Ways
• A Fuckhead Will Change His/Her Beliefs To Suit The Situation

By my count Gerard rates at least 3/5.

5 out of 5.

exagerrates his importance as a freedom from scientology fighter, and as a stop evil censorship warrior, and as a "volunteer" Wikipedia UK "representative". Photo of him laptopping next to Jimbo's laptopping, on his user page is meant to show "don't fuck with me, I know jimbo". Other desperate editors now stalking jimbo at various starbucks and attempting to get impromptu photo ops of themselves laptopping next to jimbo.

refuses to abide by common social rules that photos of naked children in suggestive poses under sexually suggestive text are unacceptable

never backs down when caught in lies on wikipedia. just ignores complaints about those lies until the "but that was 2 years ago Rule" aka the "Sweet Blue Water Rule" causes the statute of limitations to run out.

keeps coming back as an admin after laying low after each of his skirmishes.

changes "beliefs" about what cults are (the ones he isn't in already), and what censorship is, depending on which side of the fight he's on.

lol.

This post has been edited by Piperdown: Thu 11th December 2008, 6:56am

[everyking]

David Gerard, anti-censor spokesman and model Wikipedian ...

Ha Ha.

From David Gerard's website;

What Makes A Fuckhead?

• A Fuckhead Must Have An Exaggerated Sense of His/Her Own Importance
• A Fuckhead Must Refuse to Abide By Common Social Rules
• A Fuckhead Must Never Back Down When Caught In A Lie
• A Fuckhead Must Keep Coming Back Without Mending His/Her Ways
• A Fuckhead Will Change His/Her Beliefs To Suit The Situation

By my count Gerard rates at least 3/5.

4 out of 5 for sure; the last one's arguable. Maybe he could add lack of self-awareness to the list.

[Somey]

Dave was always a jerk, no question about that, but he was at least tolerable until he became a father about a year-and-a-half ago. I guess that made him turn serious, because he lost whatever sense of humor he still had at that point - and ever since then his behavior has just been that of any other common, run-of-the-mill, everyday jerk.

Dave's one of those guys who has a profound lack of empathy for others, and has no conception of the effect he has or the impression he makes on others. He actually has a few of what, at first glance, seem to be admirable qualities - for example, you'll never see him use a fancy "sig" on any wiki site, ever. Just the four tildes, and that's it. But that isn't because he doesn't want to draw attention to himself, it's because he wants to make everyone else feel bad for trying to draw attention to themselves, since this makes him feel superior.

And of course, he always uses his real name too, and is very open about his physical location, etc. But that's not his only account, if you know what I'm sayin'.

I used to be angry at Dave, but now I just feel a bit sorry for him - if you read some of his WikiEN-L postings and so forth, you can see that he realizes now that he made the wrong move by devoting so much of his life to Wikipedia... There's no future in it for him. All he really gets out of it now are endless opportunities to tell everyone else what they're doing wrong, and even that has to lose its appeal after a while.

[EricBarbour]

But that's not his only account, if you know what I'm sayin'.

Care to share?

I used to be angry at Dave, but now I just feel a bit sorry for him - if you read some of his WikiEN-L postings and so forth, you can see that he realizes now that he made the wrong move by devoting so much of his life to Wikipedia... There's no future in it for him. All he really gets out of it now are endless opportunities to tell everyone else what they're doing wrong, and even that has to lose its appeal after a while.

about 3 years too late. Sorry Dave.
You now have regrets. Like any adult.

I seem to have some difficulty feeling sorry for him.
After all the bullshit he's pulled.....all the IP ranges he's blocked...
And now, we find out he's involved with Lemonparty?

It also links to another site that links to http://thewillpower.org/,
oddly enough. Still having trouble with the sympathy....

[everyking]

A large portion of what Gerard does is just glorified trolling. I suppose that's his idea of fun. In the past--not so much nowadays--sophisticated and ultimately quite mean-spirited trolls like Gerard and Tony Sidaway could really rise through the ranks, and in Gerard's case all the way to the ArbCom. These days the environment is more favorable for serious people and the community is not much inclined to tolerate such characters, but Gerard is sort of an entrenched holdover.

This post has been edited by everyking: Thu 11th December 2008, 4:19pm

[tarantino]

I'd like to revive this thread to bring it to the attention of the several arbs who currently visit WR.

In this LJ post, Gerard states that wefixtech.co.uk is a virtual private server and is "now strictly our toy."

A list of some of the other domains hosted on that private server can be found at heyya.org . Whois results will confirm this. Heyya is safe, but I would strongly recommend against following any of the links listed there. The sites are meant to shock and offend.

That one of the most trusted volunteers at Wikipedia, who is also a WMF press contact, seems comfortable in associating with such content reflects very poorly on WP/WMF.

[Somey]

...I would strongly recommend against following any of the links listed there. The sites are meant to shock and offend.

That one of the most trusted volunteers at Wikipedia, who is also a WMF press contact, seems comfortable in associating with such content reflects very poorly on WP/WMF.

Y'know, I don't think we've ever came up with a satisfactory answer to the question of why Dave does this sort of thing, have we?

I mean, "because shocking and offending people is fun" might explain it, but you'd think the novelty would wear off after, say, the first two or three websites.

He doesn't make money doing this, does he? Does anyone know if any of these sites take donations?

[Giggy]

He doesn't make money doing this, does he? Does anyone know if any of these sites take donations?

I can't imagine why someone would want to donate to a site that contains "an image of three elderly men in a bed kissing and having oral sex" (proof Wikipedia CAN be useful!)...

[tarantino]

...I would strongly recommend against following any of the links listed there. The sites are meant to shock and offend.

That one of the most trusted volunteers at Wikipedia, who is also a WMF press contact, seems comfortable in associating with such content reflects very poorly on WP/WMF.

Y'know, I don't think we've ever came up with a satisfactory answer to the question of why Dave does this sort of thing, have we?

I mean, "because shocking and offending people is fun" might explain it, but you'd think the novelty would wear off after, say, the first two or three websites.

He doesn't make money doing this, does he? Does anyone know if any of these sites take donations?

There are referral links to pay sites. I haven't closely reviewed all the source code, and have scripts and images turned off when visiting them. Heyya is on a separate server but it loads a hidden iframe from Gerard's server that contains javascript linking to adultfriendfinder. *
The actual shock site domain owners are obscured by anonymized registrations, so it's possible they're owned by an acquaintance. Even if that is the case, he has root access and knows what's what.

*edit: I suppose this could make it not so safe, so it would be better to turn off scripting if you should decide to visit.

2nd edit: lemonparty is actually "tame" in comparison to most of the others. Also searching for heyya shows quite of few other related domains that are now expired.

This post has been edited by tarantino: Fri 23rd January 2009, 3:28am

[LaraLove]

He doesn't make money doing this, does he? Does anyone know if any of these sites take donations?

Well, they have ads, so how much do you think those pay out? I don't know about all the sites, but Lemonparty.org has been making its rounds for years, so I'm sure it gets a lot of hits. I've never had a website with ads, so I don't know what the payout is like.

[EricBarbour]

He doesn't make money doing this, does he? Does anyone know if any of these sites take donations?

Usually they're put up as gags by porn-site hosters, using some of their
excess bandwidth. When you're spending $500k/month on bandwidth, a few
ten-thousand hits per month on a gag site is nothing.

(That's where rotten.com, goatse, ShockSiteList, and All Electric supposedly came from.
Get it? came?.......)

It's obvious. Gerard is probably tech-supporting a porn site, or something equally profitable/verboten.
And he runs this crap (plus his own useless wiki) on their servers as a sideline.

Seriously, if you need to see a LOT of disgusting videos, shocksitelist.com
will do the job. They're all run by the same (British) guy.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Fri 23rd January 2009, 3:49am

[Lifebaka]

He doesn't make money doing this, does he? Does anyone know if any of these sites take donations?

Well, they have ads, so how much do you think those pay out? I don't know about all the sites, but Lemonparty.org has been making its rounds for years, so I'm sure it gets a lot of hits. I've never had a website with ads, so I don't know what the payout is like.

Alexa figures for Lemonparty.org are actually extremely low, giving it a 3 month average of 1.03 pageviews/day. (Warning: Alexa automatically displays a low-res of the site when viewing it's statistics, so is still not SFW.)

[Somey]

Alexa figures for Lemonparty.org are actually extremely low, giving it a 3 month average of 1.03 pageviews/day. (Warning: Alexa automatically displays a low-res of the site when viewing it's statistics, so is still not SFW.)

I guess having your website mentioned on Wikipedia isn't quite the traffic-generator it used to be, then. (And I wonder if TheGoonSquad (T-C-L-K-R-D) is actually Dave himself? Probably not, but he seems to have been the one who added it in.)

Realistically, the idea that sites like these could bring in any significant advertising revenue whatsoever is almost completely implausible - I'm afraid Mr. Barbour's theory is much more likely. Though he doesn't necessarily have to be doing paid work for the server owners - he might just being doing it all out of the goodness of his heart, right?

[Krimpet]

I can't imagine why someone would want to donate to a site that contains "an image of three elderly men in a bed kissing and having oral sex" (proof Wikipedia CAN be useful!)...

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1775489

[EricBarbour]

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1775489

Good find! I should blog that.

(And I wonder if TheGoonSquad (T-C-L-K) is actually Dave himself? Probably not, but he seems to have been the one who added it in.)

You can count on it.

Long ago, I read an interview with the guy who started rotten.com.
He lives in Mountain View, Ca and "consults" with adult-entertainment
providers online. He's an expert in Perl scripts, I think.

In the beginning, rotten.com was hosted on one of their servers
(too much traffic now, I assume he's got an investor or
something to help support his traffic).

If only I could find that interview.
Another piece of early web history lost forever.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Fri 23rd January 2009, 8:32am