Overstock vs. Wikipedia, She kidnapped herself Options

Starting new thread where we can investigate the possibility that perhaps the ArbCom is right.

Come on, we've got accusers putting together cute little charts and graphs and submitting them as "evidence", self-appointed do-gooders poring over edit histories, investigating trips to India, stuff that would make Durova herself embarrassed to admit to.

On the other hand we have Overstock.com, a company that, as ED might say, is full of fail.

Some "evidence": http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=OSTK&t=2y

If we must play amateur sleuth, or follow the money, or do whatever it is that investigative web forum participants are supposed to be doing, shouldn't we consider the possibility that Overstock.com, a multimillion dollar company with a financial interest in discrediting Wikipedia, is behind some of this drama?

Look again at the timing of this story and Wordbomb's latest crusade vs. the stock price of OSTK. It's no wonder they feel like Wall Street doesn't like them. The company clearly has nothing to offer its investors except excuses.

How can ArbCom be right when they haven't really said anything at all?

What exactly are they right about?

This post has been edited by One: Thu 6th March 2008, 8:05pm

It's OK, Emperor's just an idiot.

The company clearly has nothing to offer its investors except excuses.

Supposing that's true, how does it in any way bear on the fact that Mantanmoreland has been abusively socking Wikipedia? And how would it abrogate our obligation to write from a neutral point of view, or to avoid using Wikipedia as an attack platform against living persons?

Moderator's note: Moved to appropriate forum

It's OK, Emperor's just an idiot.

Emperor may or may not be an idiot, but he's entitled to his opinion. I'd like to engage him a bit here, but I tend to not talk about Overstock.com in settings like this -- particularly on topics relating to share price.

However, if I were going to engage in this conversation, I'd likely do so by first repeating my earlier request that he do something as simple as back up his comments with something.

Personally I think Emperor is just here for the purpose of stirring shit up for the sake of it, but anyway. He asks whether "we can investigate the possibility that perhaps the ArbCom is right". Right about what? The only thing they are right about is that Wordbomb and Piperdown are in some way connected to Overstock, and this is something they freely admit to. The Arbcom is still stating they are not sure that Mantanmoreland and Samiharris are Gary Weiss. Are they right about that? Obviously not.

Personally I think Emperor is just here for the purpose of stirring shit up for the sake of it, but anyway. He asks whether "we can investigate the possibility that perhaps the ArbCom is right". Right about what? The only thing they are right about is that Wordbomb and Piperdown are in some way connected to Overstock, and this is something they freely admit to. The Arbcom is still stating they are not sure that Mantanmoreland and Samiharris are Gary Weiss. Are they right about that? Obviously not.

And if they said that much they were wrong. I don't believe Piperdown has any connection to Overstock.com. I got the impression he was an investor in another company attacked by the naked shorts, and his interest in the subject and familiarity with Overstock.com are based only on Overstock's status as illegal NSS poster child and Patrick Byrne as the primary anti-NSS standard bearer.

But to your larger point, I tend to agree that Emperor is probably a kid who enjoys anonymously lobbing grenades to spark flame wars.

And who hasn't done that before?

(before 1996, that is)

Do you mean right about the proposed finding of fact? Because they did not take any position, they voted on a representation of the community position in that regard.

Starting new thread where we can investigate the possibility that perhaps the ArbCom is right.

Come on, we've got accusers putting together cute little charts and graphs and submitting them as "evidence", self-appointed do-gooders poring over edit histories, investigating trips to India, stuff that would make Durova herself embarrassed to admit to.

On the other hand we have Overstock.com, a company that, as ED might say, is full of fail.

Some "evidence": http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=OSTK&t=2y

If we must play amateur sleuth, or follow the money, or do whatever it is that investigative web forum participants are supposed to be doing, shouldn't we consider the possibility that Overstock.com, a multimillion dollar company with a financial interest in discrediting Wikipedia, is behind some of this drama?

Look again at the timing of this story and Wordbomb's latest crusade vs. the stock price of OSTK. It's no wonder they feel like Wall Street doesn't like them. The company clearly has nothing to offer its investors except excuses.

I think you have to seperate two things here. The first is that Gary Weiss is basically correct about the naked short seller conspiracy theorists being loons. The second is that he clearly breaks Wikipedia policy in using various socks (and lots of other forums) for blatant self promotion and agenda pushing. The first does not concern us, the second does. We are, after all, the Wikipedia Review. That's why we tend to be so critical, I wouldn't say anyone here that isn't connected with them in some way is pro Overstock as such.

I think you have to seperate two things here. The first is that Gary Weisz is basically correct about the naked short seller conspiracy theorists being loons. The second is that he clearly breaks Wikipedia policy in using various socks (and lots of other forums) for blatant self promotion and agenda pushing. The first does not concern us, the second does. We are, after all, the Wikipedia Review. That's why we tend to be so critical, I wouldn't say anyone here that isn't connected with them in some way is pro Overstock as such.

Would I be right in recalling that you work in the financial markets yourself?

Starting new thread where we can investigate the possibility that perhaps the ArbCom is right.

Come on, we've got accusers putting together cute little charts and graphs and submitting them as "evidence", self-appointed do-gooders poring over edit histories, investigating trips to India, stuff that would make Durova herself embarrassed to admit to.

On the other hand we have Overstock.com, a company that, as ED might say, is full of fail.

Some "evidence": http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=OSTK&t=2y

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=2y&s=OSTK&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=c


Here is a chart of Citigroup versus Overstock.

The largest bank in the U.S. has not done any better.

Try another angle.

IT News from InformationWeek

In Post-Holiday Online Surge, Success--And Some Turkeys

A Web site overhaul helped Overstock.com avoid the transaction slowdowns that plagued some other sites.
By Mary Hayes Weier
InformationWeek
December 1, 2007 12:00 AM (From the December 3, 2007 issue)

http://www.informationweek.com/internet/sh...cleID=204400391

Sites with slow response times included Buy.com, Costco, Eddie Bauer, Kmart, Lowe's, and Toys "R" Us, according to Web monitoring firms Keynote Systems and WebSitePulse. The most serious slowdowns involved home page connections and product searches that took up to 60 seconds and transactions that dragged on for two minutes. No problems were reported at Amazon.com or Wal-Mart, both of which had significant outages last year during the holidays.

Overstock.com not only survived but thrived amid the traffic spike. Overstock was among the 10 busiest retail sites on Cyber Monday, along with Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Wal-Mart, according to site tracker ComScore. Overstock ranked second, behind Blockbuster, in a four-week measure of availability and response time by site monitoring firm Gomez. The Gomez assessment concluded on Cyber Monday. Online sales that day rose 21% over last year to $733 million, according to ComScore.

HOLIDAY RUSH
Top Cyber Monday retail sites by visitors. Traffic spike compares with daily average during preceding month.

AMAZON 50%
WAL-MART 103%
TARGET 86%
DELL 106%
BEST BUY 110%
YAHOO SHOPPING 85%
APPLE 5%
OVERSTOCK.COM 139%
CIRCUIT CITY 136%
MSN SHOPPING 261%
Data: ComScore
CHANGE IN PHILOSOPHY

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne credits a Web site overhaul performed by the company's in-house programmers--and specifically not by outsourced developers--for the strong performance. Overstock built up its internal team of Java developers from a handful a few years ago to about 40 today. Those coders spent the past year remaking the site around a service-oriented architecture in order to be more responsive to customer activity. The refurbished site went live last month.

Overstock employed the concept of agile development, where teams of developers work with business units to create new functionality. It moved away from offshore development, which the company had used with little success. "I was the biggest proponent--as a stupid Dilbert management kind of guy--saying, 'Let's outsource.' Now I've come completely 180 degrees to the agile approach," Byrne says, adding, "We found it's worth it to pay up for more expensive and more serious people."

they are right about is that Wordbomb and Piperdown are in some way connected to Overstock, and this is something they freely admit to.

whoa whoa whoa. I am in no way connected to overstock and have never claimed so either. none what-so-ever. I have never even owned their stock. I could give a crap about overstock as a company and its stock. I do wish the best in life for good people like byrne and bagley though. And their efforts on NSS aren't about their own stock price, so you guys here playing the "bait the evil corporate smear campaigners into a sarb-ox offence" game aren't going to get very far with byrne/bagley. got it emperor? you've stunk like rotten fish since your first post here. you have an agenda and it isn't good.

The first is that Gary Weiss is basically correct about the naked short seller conspiracy theorists being loons.

The Commissioner of the SEC is an "naked short seller conspiracy theorist loon" then. Enjoy all the loons taken your loon-callers to the cleaners in the courts soon. I'm sure you'll disregard all the WP:OR facts on the matter because a bunch of imbedded "journalists" have their careers on the line in feeding people like you that big lie.

And I do reserve my somey-given right to defend myself when my editing activity has been questioned, and intentional disinformation about WP article related issues I edited from the likes of UV. The latest on JW just further confirms my resolve to stay away from it and I can't see how anyone else would want to contribute there either.

This post has been edited by Piperdown: Thu 6th March 2008, 11:49pm

I think you have to seperate two things here. The first is that Gary Weiss is basically correct about the naked short seller conspiracy theorists being loons.

yeah, at the risk of appearing to be inflexible and always "on message" here, I have to back up Piperdown and call UV on his imperialism (imperialism being the act of emulating an emperor).

There are loons in every bunch, without exception, pro-market reformers included. I believe you said what you did because Gary Weiss told you it was true.

I would urge you to consider your source.

See, it's no longer a conspiracy theory. It's very much a conspiracy fact. You might consider reading this:

WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday proposed tougher rules to curb so-called "naked" short-selling abuses and prevent market price manipulation.
SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said regulation SHO, an existing rule partly aimed at short selling abuses, "needs teeth."
... Sellers sometimes deliberately fail to deliver securities as part of a scheme to manipulate the stock price.

Got anything else, UV?

Personally I think Emperor is just here for the purpose of stirring shit up for the sake of it, but anyway. He asks whether "we can investigate the possibility that perhaps the ArbCom is right". Right about what? The only thing they are right about is that Wordbomb and Piperdown are in some way connected to Overstock, and this is something they freely admit to. The Arbcom is still stating they are not sure that Mantanmoreland and Samiharris are Gary Weiss. Are they right about that? Obviously not.

It's still possible that Mantanmoreland (MM) is not Gary Weiss (GW), but rather a relative. Remember, all we know is that MM went to India with Weiss when Weiss got married there, and they both mentioned Varkala, a small town there where Weiss' wife's family is obviously from, making it obvious that if MM is not GW, MM is a close-enough family member to vacation to India with Weiss. Which means either Mrs. Weiss or a father, brother, cousin, who knows?

The other salient thing we know about MM is that he edited the article on the NYC cathedral, which he started, from the DTCC (Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation) office building in NYC. Now, given security there, it's highly unlikely that a visitor would be using a computer from inside the DTCC firewall (which only has two outside ISP numbers). Quite obviously MM either works at the DTCC or has an internship there or something close enough to get him logged in on a building computer.

Now. That STILL does not mean MM is GW. Wordbomb/Overstock has used the connection to make the argument that GW has some nefarious relationship with the DTCC, despite all their lawyer's denials of knowing of any formal one, and the GW is somehow acting as a DTCC agent in a huge plot by the DTCC to cover up scandles about naked short selling (NSS), which is something the DTCC is supposed to be regulating or at least concerned with. Why? Because the six DTCC corps are essentially the "market makers" for the entire equities, bond and money market in the US. http://www.dtcc.com/about/business/index.php They make sure everything is settled up at the end of the trading day, a bit like the CME does for pork belly and soy futures in Chicago. But it's not at all clear to me why the DTCC should want to whitewash NSS, since they're the ones left holding the bag if it ever doesn't work (as I understand it). So if Overstock has a theory about all this, they need to lay it out better. I will admit to only modest financial savvy.

Now, where does this leave us? Well, DTCC is VERY interested in NSS, and MM obviously has some kind of day job at the DTCC, and may be (as he claims) a business student or intern tasked with writing about NSS and explaining it (even the bosses at the DTCC may need some brush up). I can't see GW being terribly interested in this arcane subject in and of itself, given his very broad range of interests in writing. Instead, I think it can make a better case that MM is a younger relative of GW who works at the DTCC and is doing a study of NSS (which is why all his edits are on the subject) and he's the guy who got GW interested in the subject, not the other way around. I would suggest that MM is the future Ms. Weiss, except that HER day job was supposed to be at the UN. And I can't see her being so interested in film and Catholic cathedrals while she's supposed to be working at the DTCC.

Or, GW really is MM and has some nefarious interest which gets him onto the DTCC computers, which he uses to make WP articles about cathedrals. Which do YOU believe? Somehow this just isn't jelling for me, sorry. Yes, MM created the GW bio, but that still may mean that MM is a close family member, say a son for placeholder, not GW himself.

Now, most of the other evidence Wordbomb presents really doesn't bear on this. He sent stuff to SlimV and it got forwarded to MM's IP. That doesn't mean it was forwarded to GW if he isn't MM.

Now, you say-- who cares? If these two people are joined at the hip and vacation together and have the same interests, what does it matter?

Answer: it matters technically. For one thing, it may well be that SH = MM (explaining their similar edit tics and vacation pattern in late Nov, 2007, a year after India). But since neither one of them is actually GW, they may even have convinced Jimbo and some Arbcom members of the existence of a family member.

And of course MM being a younger GW family member, who is a business student and has a job at the DTCC, completely blows Overstock's conspiracy theory about the DTCC. Though it still means that Wordbomb might be perfectly right about the cavalcade of COI editors (SH, MM, Tomstoner, Lastexit) romping though these articles with SlimV's help. Sometimes conspiracy theories are only partly right.

As a last thing, reading some of SH's longer posts on TALK pages, SH doesn't really have MM's writing style. MM is completely American colloquial, though perhaps not up to journalist ease with the language. SH is also, occasionally, but also sometime quite stilted and, well, East-Indian sounding. If I had to pick a sock for the putative Mrs. Weiss, it would be SH. That's not very helpful, is it?

Feel free, all to point out obvious bits of evidence I missed totally, so that my ideas have no chance of being right. I can take it. I'm not pushing one particular conclusion over another there, but still confused and somewhat unsure a bit (and don't mind admitting it).

The beginning of wisdom is admitting you're still out to sea on some aspects. Since of course we all are. Those who tell you they aren't, have an even bigger problem than ignorance.

-- Milt

And of course MM being a younger GW family member, who is a business student and has a job at the DTCC, completely blows Overstock's conspiracy theory about the DTCC. Though it still means that Wordbomb might be perfectly right about the cavalcade of COI editors (SH, MM, Tomstoner, Lastexit) romping though these articles with SlimV's help. Sometimes conspiracy theories are only partly right.

Sorry I have to say that I just assume you haven't really looked at this case in any detail if you think that MM might be Gary Weiss' nephew. There really is a vast amount of evidence that MM/Samiharris/Tom Stoner is Gary Weiss, but the Arbcom will just not listen to it or admit the blatantly obvious truth, mainly because it shows that their judgement and the judgement of other senior admins and Jimbo Wales to be severely flawed. That is of course AGF and not assuming that most of them in fact know that Weiss has been sockpuppeting for years with Wales' approval.

So they're meatpuppets. That's as bad as sockpuppetry in Wikipedia land (unless you have protection).

Here is a chart of Citigroup versus Overstock.

The largest bank in the U.S. has not done any better.

Try another angle.

Are you serious? The banking industry had some other things going on this year, if you remember.

Try comparing to another online retailer, say Amazon.com - http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AMZN&t=2y&...&z=m&q=l&c=ostk

Hmm, 60% up for Amazon, vs. 50% down for Overstock. No wonder Overstock needs an excuse!

The fact is that the thread started as a hurtful testimony about a company and their respective stock price, which may or may not be reflective of what is happening at the company. I have been in the investment business for 30 years; very few charts, if any, tell the correct story about the long term valuation and / or prospects of anything. The fact is this: very few companies outside of gold or oil have done well in the time horizon that was used above. In the long run...50 years...bonds have outperformed most common stocks. The DJIA 30 since inception has returned about 5%. Most individuals have not performed better than the indices.

Maybe I should give a legal disclaimor here...? Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

That is, in fact, since the 1920's.

Your Amazon peaked 8 years ago...btw. Most kids in our business forget that the NASDAQ is still down over 50% since 2000.

Japan is still down 75% from 1985.

This post has been edited by WhispersOfWisdom: Fri 7th March 2008, 12:30am