Don Murphy brings the Apocalypse! Options

[carbuncle]

After User:Erik added a picture to Don Murphy, the following note appeared on his talk page:

Don Murphy Photo
Dear Erik

Cropping a photo does not make it a derivative work. You do not have the copyright to that photo you inserted. You can avoid personal litigation by removing it within 48 hours. The Foundation cannot avoid it. Thank you. SharkJumper 15:44, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Enjoy WP while you still can!

Never mind - Apocalypse cancelled.

[Tarc]

Man, I just happened to comment on this over there a moment ago. Am I being stalked? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/fear.gif)

The image itself is shit, and I'm not really clear on how an image from someone flickr stream gets licensed CC in the first place.

[Milton Roe]

After User:Erik added a picture to Don Murphy, the following note appeared on his talk page:

Don Murphy Photo
Dear Erik

Cropping a photo does not make it a derivative work. You do not have the copyright to that photo you inserted. You can avoid personal litigation by removing it within 48 hours. The Foundation cannot avoid it. Thank you. SharkJumper 15:44, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Enjoy WP while you still can!

Never mind - Apocalypse cancelled.

Amazing that SharkJumper (T-C-L-K-R-D) didn't get zapped for WP:NLT violation.

[edit] Wups. On going to his page I see that's exactly what happened. Plus, he was a Murphy sock, of course.

[carbuncle]

Apocalypse possibly back on if Don Murphy doesn't have a stroke while furiously yet impotently pounding his keyboard:

Making legal threats

There's a quite serious policy at the Wikipedia (seen at WP:NLT about threatening legal action, as you did here. You really need to go retract that immediately before it gets you into trouble. If there's issues with copyrighted material, then there are better ways ways of dealing with that. Since the file itself is hosted at the Wikipedia Commons, I'd think you'd have to pursue it there. Tarc (talk) 16:02, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Get me into trouble? Hah. Bringing the curtain down more like! SharkJumper (talk) 19:11, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I have just reported you for your legal threat, as indicated above. The original image was released under CC licensing, and it is acceptable to have a derivative image based on a CC licensed image. Erik (talk | contribs) 16:25, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh I better call my fucking mommy you stupid prick. Who is going to pay your legal bill? I just allocated $10,000 of Transformers money just to sue you to set a precedent. So report away. Bass and Wales ain't gonna help you little boy. http://www.donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?t=33622 SharkJumper (talk) 19:10, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

[Ottava]

Did everyone forget that a NLT block is ended as soon as the threat is over? And seeing as how the image is removed there is no more threat?

[carbuncle]

Did everyone forget that a NLT block is ended as soon as the threat is over? And seeing as how the image is removed there is no more threat?

I think Murphy's past threats and harassment of various people have resulted in him being permabanned. (IMG:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Don_Murphy.jpg)
And his monkey, too.

[Somey]

And his monkey, too.

Bastards! That isn't even his monkey!

These people will just ban anyone (or any monkey) they please, not caring about the wide-ranging implications of banning innocent monkeys without anything even approaching just cause.

So, who's been watching the NFL draft?

[Ottava]

And his monkey, too.

Bastards! That isn't even his monkey!

These people will just ban anyone (or any monkey) they please, not caring about the wide-ranging implications of banning innocent monkeys without anything even approaching just cause.

So, who's been watching the NFL draft?

I was, and everyone was pissed off when after waiting so long only for the Ravens to give up their late 1st round draft pick so there was no pick for them last night.

[Somey]

I was, and everyone was pissed off when after waiting so long only for the Ravens to give up their late 1st round draft pick so there was no pick for them last night.

True, but it was the smart move. Most people seem to agree that after the first 15 picks, the talent level is likely to be pretty consistent for the next hundred or so. Besides, if there's no lockout next year, there's probably going to be a LOT of unrestricted free agents. That means this is the year to trade down in the draft for more late-round picks - 2011 picks in general are likely to have less value trade-wise, if that's actually what happens.

Funny, I wouldn't have expected you to be interested in that sort of thing! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

[Ottava]

I was, and everyone was pissed off when after waiting so long only for the Ravens to give up their late 1st round draft pick so there was no pick for them last night.

True, but it was the smart move. Most people seem to agree that after the first 15 picks, the talent level is likely to be pretty consistent for the next hundred or so. Besides, if there's no lockout next year, there's probably going to be a LOT of unrestricted free agents. That means this is the year to trade down in the draft for more late-round picks - 2011 picks in general are likely to have less value trade-wise, if that's actually what happens.

Funny, I wouldn't have expected you to be interested in that sort of thing! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

At the DC Meetup, I was the only one to be watching the Jets woop up on the Bengals. Baltimore is a football town. I am glad to have a strong alternative to the team I was forced to embrace when I was small (the team formerly led by Mr touchy grabby in the nightclub).

[Somey]

At the DC Meetup, I was the only one to be watching the Jets woop up on the Bengals. Baltimore is a football town. I am glad to have a strong alternative to the team I was forced to embrace when I was small (the team formerly led by Mr touchy grabby in the nightclub).

Formerly? I thought they said they weren't going to trade him.

Maybe I should become a Ravens fan too - that might be better than waiting for Dan Snyder to finally grow up and have a heart attack, so that someone competent can take over.

[victim of censorship]

Did everyone forget that a NLT block is ended as soon as the threat is over? And seeing as how the image is removed there is no more threat?

I think Murphy's past threats and harassment of various people have resulted in him being permabanned. (IMG:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Don_Murphy.jpg)
And his monkey, too.

I think the monkey looks a like a typical Wikpediot administrator at a Meetup

[Ottava]

At the DC Meetup, I was the only one to be watching the Jets woop up on the Bengals. Baltimore is a football town. I am glad to have a strong alternative to the team I was forced to embrace when I was small (the team formerly led by Mr touchy grabby in the nightclub).

Formerly? I thought they said they weren't going to trade him.

Maybe I should become a Ravens fan too - that might be better than waiting for Dan Snyder to finally grow up and have a heart attack, so that someone competent can take over.

Well, one can only hope about Rottensberg.

What makes the Ravens great is that they always have a nasty season, always have interesting games (no real blow outs unless they are unexpected), and the calls are always exciting because they can be ridiculous.

The Redskins... sigh. They are like the Baltimore Orioles - once had some decent players but kept losing them to injuries or trading them off on bad deals. Then when it all fell apart, the team got use to losing and couldn't get out of its hole.

I think the monkey looks a like a typical Wikpediot administrator at a Meetup

The monkey is probably a better article writer. Remember, when given enough time the monkey will write Shakespeare.

[Somey]

I think the monkey looks a like a typical Wikpediot administrator at a Meetup

Come on - don't be so insulting to monkeys! Besides, if there were any real similarity there, Murphy would be punching the monkey in the face, not shaking his hand.

That brings up an interesting question - can you shake hands with a vole? I'd have to say you probably can shake hands with a mole, since they have those big front paws for digging, but a vole... they don't have the big front paws.

[Milton Roe]

I think the monkey looks a like a typical Wikpediot administrator at a Meetup

Come on - don't be so insulting to monkeys! Besides, if there were any real similarity there, Murphy would be punching the monkey in the face, not shaking his hand.

That brings up an interesting question - can you shake hands with a vole? I'd have to say you probably can shake hands with a mole, since they have those big front paws for digging, but a vole... they don't have the big front paws.

Take the paw gently between two curled fingers, using the volar surface of the hand.

Ask me anything. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[EricBarbour]

Gad. What a nerd....

No wonder he spends so much time writing about movies on WP.
No life at all.

I dream in XHTML, CSS, and jQuery, and I lovingly hand-code all my sites in Textmate.

[dtobias]

Murphy is just being a smelly lump of feces as usual. I checked on the status of the image, and the original Flickr posting was indeed released under a CC license permitting remixing/adaptation, so no copyrights were violated. Even if they were, the rights would belong to whoever took the picture, not to Murphy himself, so he would have no grounds to sue.

[GlassBeadGame]

Murphy is just being a smelly lump of feces as usual. I checked on the status of the image, and the original Flickr posting was indeed released under a CC license permitting remixing/adaptation, so no copyrights were violated. Even if they were, the rights would belong to whoever took the picture, not to Murphy himself, so he would have no grounds to sue.

Not if it was a work for hire.

[ColScott]

Murphy is just being a smelly lump of feces as usual. I checked on the status of the image, and the original Flickr posting was indeed released under a CC license permitting remixing/adaptation, so no copyrights were violated. Even if they were, the rights would belong to whoever took the picture, not to Murphy himself, so he would have no grounds to sue.

Not if it was a work for hire.

which it was so eat a bag dtobias.

My favorite part is that after speaking with Erik he is desperately trying to convince me that I have the wrong guy.

Except he is on vacation in the UK
and the phone rings a UK ring
and all of his edit times are UK
unless he started editing at 5 am on a Saturday in NY
which even with no life I doubt

(hey tobias, what did I ever do to you?)

so editor ERIK posted a photo to my article yesterday designed to make me look stupid
we managed to convince the cultists that it should not be posted and in fact are having it removed
this led to ERIK being outed on my website

ERIK then went and re-wrote the article
the same article that stood by minding its own business for 16 months.

He re-wrote it as an act of revenge to me
And he rewrote it to remove the link to donmurphy.net that would of course out his crybaby ass

I have questions for the cultists that lurk here

1- Why is rewriting an article for revenge okay? BLP: DO NO HARM is just an f-ing joke right?
2- Go and look at the archives for the article. It had been decided that linking to DM.net was okay because it was my official site. Attack site my ass it is a personal site for Transformers and movie fans. Do any of you have the chops to put it back where it belongs?
3- To quote a great general- Have you no shame? Why is Erik even allowed among you?

[Peter Damian]

Some messages from 'Erik Kraft' on User:Erik's page, from the IP 95.177.43.18 which is London registered. He claims to know nothing about Wikipedia and therefore not the Wikipedia editor user:Erik. Which is puzzling as he claims only to have heard of this in the last hour.

* How did he find User:Erik page on Wikipedia
* How did he know it was to do with Don Murphy, who only identified himself as 'Don'?
* How did he learn to indent with a colon and use three 's for bold type? Perhaps the colon he learned from the person who replied to his first message, but how the bold?
* How does he know what an 'edit war' is?

'''Erik Kraft here again. Sorry for not following the reply conventions, but I'm not a wikipedia editor and I feel this is rather urgent. Erik, can you clarify what you meant by "process of outing you." Because Don and his people seem to be taking this as evidence that I, Erik Kraft, am the person they are mad at. Don has posted my personal information, including address and phone number, on his forum on his personal site and I'm extremely disturbed. Thanks. '''
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Eri...mely_mad_at_you

[edit]
His second edit
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358034400
also shows proficiency in the use of == for section headings.

[edit] Even more puzzling, user:Erik removes information from his user page

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358006391

with the comment "Removed incriminating information to avoid harassment". The information is that he is "from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign". Thus he attended the same university as Erik Kraft

http://www.restlessbee.com/pdfs/erik_kraft_resume.pdf

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign // Visiting Assistant Librarian for Digital Resources / July 2005–June 2006 // Graduate Assistant and Web Designer / January 2004–August 2005

[edit] From Murphy's forum:

Clearly Don isn't going to be talked out of thinking I'm playing some game with him, but I hope everyone else realizes I'm dead serious and extremely disturbed. I'd like everyone to know that Don called me from a blocked number, and wouldn't tell me his last name or even identify the article he was so upset about. I've had to figure it out myself over the past two hours.
http://www.donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?t=33622

How exactly did he figure this out? I.e. that it was Don Murphy, that the article was the problem, and so on.


This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Theanima]

It's sad that Don Murphy got the name completely wrong and decided to ruin this completely innocent person's day by ringing them up. It clearly upset them.

I did a bit of my own research and have found what User:Erik's real name is more likely to be. How they came up with Erik Kraft, I don't know.

[Somey]

I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating:

Despite the success of the Transformers movies and Natural Born Killers, I just don't see how Mr. Murphy here could be said to have reached the kind of "household name" status that would necessitate Wikipedia's having an article about him. Maybe if he were a bit more of a self-promoter, or had some hit TV-series credits, he'd be there with folks like Jerry Bruckheimer or Stephen Bochco, whom everybody's pretty much heard of. But I'm pretty sure I could name several guys with longer (and possibly more impressive) resumes who don't have WP articles. Let's face it, the reason Don Murphy is in Wikipedia is because Wikipedia is full of kids who grew up playing with Transformers action figures, and one or two of them probably didn't like it when their suggestions for what to do on the first movie were rejected. That's it, that's the entirety of it right there. It's one of the stupidest reasons for starting a WP article I know of (though I'm sure there's plenty worse out there that just haven't come to my attention).

When are they going to just delete the article? How many people with the same name(s) as some lame-brained WP "editor" (sheez, "Erik Kraft" probably isn't even his real name!) are going to have to suffer because Wikipedians can't keep it in their pants?

And it's not just real-name accounts, either - for example, if the Murphy article were under attack by User:Can't Sleep, Clown Will Eat Me, just imagine how many people who actually are insomniacs due to fear of circus clowns would suffer? Or if the person was User:Kiss Me Ladies, I'm the Cavalry - just think of all the heterosexual horsemen wearing military uniforms would suddenly be under attack by messageboard "goons" for no apparent logical reason? And don't even ask what would happen if it were User:Everybody Everywhere...

The people insisting that this article be kept are, quite simply, morons. I'll bet a group of organ-grinder monkeys would do a vastly better job of managing the content on Wikipedia, if this is the best the existing regime can do.

[Theanima]

I know I've said this before, but it bears repeating:

Despite the success of the Transformers movies and Natural Born Killers, I just don't see how Mr. Murphy here could be said to have reached the kind of "household name" status that would necessitate Wikipedia's having an article about him. Maybe if he were a bit more of a self-promoter, or had some hit TV-series credits, he'd be there with folks like Jerry Bruckheimer or Stephen Bochco, whom everybody's pretty much heard of. But I'm pretty sure I could name several guys with longer (and possibly more impressive) resumes who don't have WP articles. Let's face it, the reason Don Murphy is in Wikipedia is because Wikipedia is full of kids who grew up playing with Transformers action figures, and one or two of them probably didn't like it when their suggestions for what to do on the first movie were rejected. That's it, that's the entirety of it right there. It's one of the stupidest reasons for starting a WP article I know of (though I'm sure there's plenty worse out there that just haven't come to my attention).

When are they going to just delete the article? How many people with the same name(s) as some lame-brained WP "editor" (sheez, "Erik Kraft" probably isn't even his real name!) are going to have to suffer because Wikipedians can't keep it in their pants?

And it's not just real-name accounts, either - for example, if the Murphy article were under attack by User:Can't Sleep, Clown Will Eat Me, just imagine how many people who actually are insomniacs due to fear of circus clowns would suffer? Or if the person was User:Kiss Me Ladies, I'm the Cavalry - just think of all the heterosexual horsemen wearing military uniforms would suddenly be under attack by messageboard "goons" for no apparent logical reason? And don't even ask what would happen if it were User:Everybody Everywhere...

The people insisting that this article be kept are, quite simply, morons. I'll bet a group of organ-grinder monkeys would do a vastly better job of managing the content on Wikipedia, if this is the best the existing regime can do.

Encyclopedias do not need to just be about "household names". As it happens I've never heard of either the people you just mentioned about. If one goes into an industry such as the one Murphy is in, it's inevitable one will become notable.

It's not like he is a minor backstage guy - he has produced nearly a dozen notable films. You can't expect to be treated as if you're a nobody if you're a film producer.

[Somey]

It's not like he is a minor backstage guy - he has produced nearly a dozen notable films. You can't expect to be treated as if you're a nobody if you're a film producer.

"Nobody"? Who is saying he should be treated like a "nobody"? Are you saying everyone who doesn't have a Wikipedia article is a "nobody"?

What Wikipedians want, and how they personally wish to "treat" people, shouldn't be the issue here. The issues should be privacy, fairness, and responsibility in the face of defamation and revenge. None of which Wikipedians are interested in having.

[Milton Roe]

Encyclopedias do not need to just be about "household names".

Ones that are editable by anybody should be about ANY names, unless the person is dead. Otherwise, you make every person who has done anything very positive with their lives at all that gets them noticed by "media" pay a penalty of having to watch their Wiki very day do be sure it doesn't slander them. That really sucks, and it's hard to believe you defend the idea.

Now, don't come back and say "What about that politician who wants to put his name and face on everything from my neighbor's front lawn to every other TV ad?" And the answer is:

"Maybe-- but there's no good way to draw the line between that person and anybody else who didn't seek notariety for its own sake, but rather found it thrust upon them, without 'asking for it.'"

[BelovedFox]

It's not like he is a minor backstage guy - he has produced nearly a dozen notable films. You can't expect to be treated as if you're a nobody if you're a film producer.

"Nobody"? Who is saying he should be treated like a "nobody"? Are you saying everyone who doesn't have a Wikipedia article is a "nobody"?

What Wikipedians want, and how they personally wish to "treat" people, shouldn't be the issue here. The issues should be privacy, fairness, and responsibility in the face of defamation and revenge. None of which Wikipedians are interested in having.

Anima has a point, in that what consistutes a "household name" should never be used as a criterion for inclusion.

I can name a dozen or two visual effects/directors, for example, who have worked on dozens of AAA films, collaborated with/were employed by Industrial Light & Magic, et al. They've gotten Oscar nods and awards for their work. These people are pretty big names in the entertainment industry--but of course no average moviegoer is going to stick around to find out who Scott Farrar is (and that IMDB link is great because it's missing three movies I know of from his credits).

You, of course, have a point as well--in that provoking a singularly unpleasant individual with acolytes who will harass people in real life by keeping an article on him isn't exactly good for business or a productive work environment. It's not like a lot of people besides him care.[1]

[Doc glasgow]

Encyclopedias do not need to just be about "household names".

Ones that are editable by anybody should be about ANY names, unless the person is dead. Otherwise, you make every person who has done anything very positive with their lives at all that gets them noticed by "media" pay a penalty of having to watch their Wiki very day do be sure it doesn't slander them. That really sucks, and it's hard to believe you defend the idea.

Now, don't come back and say "What about that politician who wants to put his name and face on everything from my neighbor's front lawn to every other TV ad?" And the answer is: "Maybe, but there's no good way to draw the line between that person and anybody else who didn't seek notariety for its own sake, but found it thrust upon them without them "asking for it."

The "where do we draw the line" argument is totally spurious. Sure, no line will be cut and dry, but Wikipedia's existing inclusion standards are subjective and inconsistent anyway.

It would not be hard to have a general "opt out", but then exclude the A-list politician from that right.

However, personally, I think lifting the inclusion bar to delete at least 50% of current BLPs would probably be a better way to go.

I'd afd Murphy's bio in a flash, if I thought I could succeed. Unfortunately it would only result in my having to do more of this

[LessHorrid vanU]

The person who needs a WP article is the photographer that could make Don Murphy look good - from the photo used here - and I am finding it hilarious that the image Don/Col would very much prefer not to have adorning the WP article on him is one that he (per this very discussion) paid to have taken, and is otherwise available in the hinderwebs...

[Tarc]

Encyclopedias do not need to just be about "household names". As it happens I've never heard of either the people you just mentioned about. If one goes into an industry such as the one Murphy is in, it's inevitable one will become notable.

It's not like he is a minor backstage guy - he has produced nearly a dozen notable films. You can't expect to be treated as if you're a nobody if you're a film producer.

Watch "Get Shorty" sometime. Film producers don't do all that much. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

I'm half-tempted to take this thing to an AfD and have it out.

[Peter Damian]

It's sad that Don Murphy got the name completely wrong and decided to ruin this completely innocent person's day by ringing them up. It clearly upset them.

I did a bit of my own research and have found what User:Erik's real name is more likely to be. How they came up with Erik Kraft, I don't know.

The evidence points to the person not being completely innocent at all. Per my comment here

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=232876

Why would 'User Erik' remove from his user page the information about his university at exactly the time Erik Kraft was phoned by Murphy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358006391

You will object that Erik Kraft immediately got in touch with User:Erik to tell him to remove it. But if Erik Kraft knew nothing about user:Erik, how was that? All the evidence points to Mr Kraft as being entirely guilty.

And now user:Erik has a sock: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Erik.kraft

Oh man Erik, I really appreciate it. This has been such a bizarre and scary episode, but it's good to know that the decent people here seem to far outnumber the trolls. It's truly unbelievable to go through this guy's message board and see how he sics his anonymous thugs on people for the slightest perceived offenses. Erik.kraft (talk) 19:09, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm grateful to you for doing this--and I've gone ahead and created a wikipedia account (erik.kraft) so that it doesn't seem like I'm trying to hide behind anonymity. Which is clearly not possible anyway. Feel free to refer to me as erik.kraft going forward. I'll be following the ANI page and will post further details as I have them. And I even just learned to sign my posts: --> Erik.kraft (talk) 19:06, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358061671

This is laughable.

[edit] Even more laughs

::It's not that funny to be outed, guys... in any case, I will be working on his article. If someone like Tarc does not see Murphy's notability in his article, then the producer has successfully exerted control over it. First off, I removed his website, which is an attack site. To re-cite his background, I found [http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2009/10/20/2009-10-20_producer_transforms.html this], which further solidifies Murphy's notability. I am not sure if I will be further harassed, so I hope admins will keep an eye on the article as I bring my expertise to it. [[User:Erik|Erik]] ([[User talk:Erik|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Erik|contribs]]) 10:41, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
+
+ ::: Erik, this is Erik Kraft. Can you explain what you mean by "outed"? Because as far as I can tell it was me who was "outed" and you are still anonymous. You used the same language on your now-deleted Talk page and this was part of the reason why Don was convinced I was you. I feel like I'm through the looking glass here. [[User:Erik.kraft|Erik.kraft]] ([[User talk:Erik.kraft|talk]]) 21:17, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Talking to himself. (Note the time difference. He gets called by Murphy, and complains as User:Erik that he has been outed. Then he complains, as the Erik Kraft, that he has been outed. Then the penny drops.)

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Daniel Brandt]

Murphy got the wrong Erik. I don't have the dox on the right Erik, but I have evidence that it is not Erik Kraft in Chicago.

Veromi.net and zabasearch.com show that Erik A. Kraft in Chicago is 33 years old. This is the same Erik Kraft suspected by Murphy, as proven by the registration on erikkraft.info, which is his domain on his résumé, the same one that is linked on Murphy's forum. One of the zabasearch.com entries for him shows that he once lived at the same address as the one listed in WHOIS for the erikkraft.info domain. That's Erik Kraft.

But the Erik that Murphy really wants once added his age and birthday on a user page in 2006. He said his birthday is December 31 and he is 20 years old. That would mean his birthdate is 1985-12-31, turning 21 at the end of 2006. Today he would be 24 years old. Moreover, that same page says that he was born in Chicago, but there isn't any evidence I've seen that he lives in Chicago.

The User:Erik that Murphy wants is nine years younger than Erik A. Kraft in Chicago.

[Peter Damian]

Murphy got the wrong Erik. I don't have the dox on the right Erik, but I have evidence that it is not Erik Kraft in Chicago.

Veromi.net and zabasearch.com show that Erik A. Kraft in Chicago is 33 years old. This is the same Erik Kraft suspected by Murphy, as proven by the registration on erikkraft.info, which is his domain on his résumé, the same one that is linked on Murphy's forum. One of the zabasearch.com entries for him shows that he once lived at the same address as the one listed in WHOIS for the erikkraft.info domain. That's Erik Kraft.

But the Erik that Murphy really wants once added his age and birthday on a user page in 2006. He said his birthday is December 31 and he is 20 years old. That would mean his birthdate is 1985-12-31, turning 21 at the end of 2006. Today he would be 24 years old. Moreover, that same page says that he was born in Chicago, but there isn't any evidence I've seen that he lives in Chicago.

The User:Erik that Murphy wants is nine years younger than Erik A. Kraft in Chicago.

Then why does user:Erik remove the reference to being at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, shortly after Erik Kraft is called by Murphy? Makes no sense.

[edit] They both attended Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. Erik Kraft as a mature student, age about 29, user:Erik who says he was 20. Was his statement on the user page correct?

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[BelovedFox]

Murphy got the wrong Erik. I don't have the dox on the right Erik, but I have evidence that it is not Erik Kraft in Chicago.

Veromi.net and zabasearch.com show that Erik A. Kraft in Chicago is 33 years old. This is the same Erik Kraft suspected by Murphy, as proven by the registration on erikkraft.info, which is his domain on his résumé, the same one that is linked on Murphy's forum. One of the zabasearch.com entries for him shows that he once lived at the same address as the one listed in WHOIS for the erikkraft.info domain. That's Erik Kraft.

But the Erik that Murphy really wants once added his age and birthday on a user page in 2006. He said his birthday is December 31 and he is 20 years old. That would mean his birthdate is 1985-12-31, turning 21 at the end of 2006. Today he would be 24 years old. Moreover, that same page says that he was born in Chicago, but there isn't any evidence I've seen that he lives in Chicago.

The User:Erik that Murphy wants is nine years younger than Erik A. Kraft in Chicago.

Do you know where the information for those sites is drawn from? Curious, I tried running myself through it, and only found that there's a bunch of elderly people with my exact name (and middle initial?) living right on top of me... no entry for myself, however.

Murphy got the wrong Erik. I don't have the dox on the right Erik, but I have evidence that it is not Erik Kraft in Chicago.

Veromi.net and zabasearch.com show that Erik A. Kraft in Chicago is 33 years old. This is the same Erik Kraft suspected by Murphy, as proven by the registration on erikkraft.info, which is his domain on his résumé, the same one that is linked on Murphy's forum. One of the zabasearch.com entries for him shows that he once lived at the same address as the one listed in WHOIS for the erikkraft.info domain. That's Erik Kraft.

But the Erik that Murphy really wants once added his age and birthday on a user page in 2006. He said his birthday is December 31 and he is 20 years old. That would mean his birthdate is 1985-12-31, turning 21 at the end of 2006. Today he would be 24 years old. Moreover, that same page says that he was born in Chicago, but there isn't any evidence I've seen that he lives in Chicago.

The User:Erik that Murphy wants is nine years younger than Erik A. Kraft in Chicago.

Then why does user:Erik remove the reference to being at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, shortly after Erik Kraft is called by Murphy? Makes no sense.

[edit] They both attended Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. Erik Kraft as a mature student, age about 29, user:Erik who says he was 20. Was his statement on the user page correct?

Erik presumably learned that Murphy was fishing for him on his forum, as he made an open request to "find Erik" before anyone turned up anything.

I don't see any reason to doubt Erik on his personal details (although now he well wishes he didn't post them.)

[Peter Damian]

Today he would be 24 years old. Moreover, that same page says that he was born in Chicago, but there isn't any evidence I've seen that he lives in Chicago.

When he made this edit

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=357881824

was when I suspect he left Illinois. I.e. now a graduate.

The User:Erik that Murphy wants is nine years younger than Erik A. Kraft in Chicago.

No they are the same age (33). User:Erik was lying about his age, obviously.

Erik presumably learned that Murphy was fishing for him on his forum, as he made an open request to "find Erik" before anyone turned up anything.

I don't see any reason to doubt Erik on his personal details (although now he well wishes he didn't post them.)

That i agree is plausible. How do you explain Erik Kraft's rapid understanding of Wikipedia editing protocol? How do you explain he found User:Erik's page without ColScott saying who he was?

[edit] Also note that user:Erik says he HAS been outed. (Not that he is afraid of being outed).

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[ColScott]

It's sad that Don Murphy got the name completely wrong and decided to ruin this completely innocent person's day by ringing them up. It clearly upset them.

I did a bit of my own research and have found what User:Erik's real name is more likely to be. How they came up with Erik Kraft, I don't know.

Except you're crazy.

Leaving aside all the evidence on this thread alone, I had already zeroed in on the use of the term EDIT WAR. There's just no way it's a separate guy. And he's editing on UK time.

I would love to hear the phone call to the police (as if)- Hi, this guy called me up and asked me why I was messing with his article. The guy was in LA, I live in Chicago but he reached me in the UK. I feel physically threatened please help me. Christ the desk sergeant would call for the net.

I also love the turds who are going to call Jimmy Wales. He's too busy cleaning his tee shirt cum stains, kiddo.

Theanima, prove me wrong by private msg. Which you won't.

[BelovedFox]

It's sad that Don Murphy got the name completely wrong and decided to ruin this completely innocent person's day by ringing them up. It clearly upset them.

I did a bit of my own research and have found what User:Erik's real name is more likely to be. How they came up with Erik Kraft, I don't know.

Except you're crazy.

Leaving aside all the evidence on this thread alone, I had already zeroed in on the use of the term EDIT WAR. There's just no way it's a separate guy. And he's editing on UK time.

I would love to hear the phone call to the police (as if)- Hi, this guy called me up and asked me why I was messing with his article. The guy was in LA, I live in Chicago but he reached me in the UK. I feel physically threatened please help me. Christ the desk sergeant would call for the net.

I also love the turds who are going to call Jimmy Wales. He's too busy cleaning his tee shirt cum stains, kiddo.

Theanima, prove me wrong by private msg. Which you won't.

I'd still love to hear why you commissioned an amazingly bad photograph of yourself, and what the evidence of this ownership is.

[ColScott]

It's sad that Don Murphy got the name completely wrong and decided to ruin this completely innocent person's day by ringing them up. It clearly upset them.

I did a bit of my own research and have found what User:Erik's real name is more likely to be. How they came up with Erik Kraft, I don't know.

Except you're crazy.

Leaving aside all the evidence on this thread alone, I had already zeroed in on the use of the term EDIT WAR. There's just no way it's a separate guy. And he's editing on UK time.

I would love to hear the phone call to the police (as if)- Hi, this guy called me up and asked me why I was messing with his article. The guy was in LA, I live in Chicago but he reached me in the UK. I feel physically threatened please help me. Christ the desk sergeant would call for the net.

I also love the turds who are going to call Jimmy Wales. He's too busy cleaning his tee shirt cum stains, kiddo.

Theanima, prove me wrong by private msg. Which you won't.

I'd still love to hear why you commissioned an amazingly bad photograph of yourself, and what the evidence of this ownership is.

I didn't. My partner at Meltdown Comics did. Neither of us had any idea it was on the net. We are having it removed now.

It's sad that Don Murphy got the name completely wrong and decided to ruin this completely innocent person's day by ringing them up. It clearly upset them.

I did a bit of my own research and have found what User:Erik's real name is more likely to be. How they came up with Erik Kraft, I don't know.

The evidence points to the person not being completely innocent at all. Per my comment here

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=232876

Why would 'User Erik' remove from his user page the information about his university at exactly the time Erik Kraft was phoned by Murphy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358006391

You will object that Erik Kraft immediately got in touch with User:Erik to tell him to remove it. But if Erik Kraft knew nothing about user:Erik, how was that? All the evidence points to Mr Kraft as being entirely guilty.

And now user:Erik has a sock: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Erik.kraft

Oh man Erik, I really appreciate it. This has been such a bizarre and scary episode, but it's good to know that the decent people here seem to far outnumber the trolls. It's truly unbelievable to go through this guy's message board and see how he sics his anonymous thugs on people for the slightest perceived offenses. Erik.kraft (talk) 19:09, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm grateful to you for doing this--and I've gone ahead and created a wikipedia account (erik.kraft) so that it doesn't seem like I'm trying to hide behind anonymity. Which is clearly not possible anyway. Feel free to refer to me as erik.kraft going forward. I'll be following the ANI page and will post further details as I have them. And I even just learned to sign my posts: --> Erik.kraft (talk) 19:06, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358061671

This is laughable.

[edit] Even more laughs

::It's not that funny to be outed, guys... in any case, I will be working on his article. If someone like Tarc does not see Murphy's notability in his article, then the producer has successfully exerted control over it. First off, I removed his website, which is an attack site. To re-cite his background, I found [http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2009/10/20/2009-10-20_producer_transforms.html this], which further solidifies Murphy's notability. I am not sure if I will be further harassed, so I hope admins will keep an eye on the article as I bring my expertise to it. [[User:Erik|Erik]] ([[User talk:Erik|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Erik|contribs]]) 10:41, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
+
+ ::: Erik, this is Erik Kraft. Can you explain what you mean by "outed"? Because as far as I can tell it was me who was "outed" and you are still anonymous. You used the same language on your now-deleted Talk page and this was part of the reason why Don was convinced I was you. I feel like I'm through the looking glass here. [[User:Erik.kraft|Erik.kraft]] ([[User talk:Erik.kraft|talk]]) 21:17, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Talking to himself. (Note the time difference. He gets called by Murphy, and complains as User:Erik that he has been outed. Then he complains, as the Erik Kraft, that he has been outed. Then the penny drops.)

God it just hit me like a ton of bricks. We are both being dumb AND blind. Sorry.

Editor Erik, after being outed on my site and admitting as much, then goes and spends HOURS re-writing the BLP of me specifically to REMOVE any mention of my website. He then goes to movies I have made like Transformers and removes all mentions of the website as an attack site (which it isn't). WHY IS HE SO CONCERNED ABOUT REMOVING MENTION OF MY WEBSITE except because it had his correct information on it?

He's the f-head.

[Ottava]

Transformers being a crappy movie is enough reason to justify an AfD of any article connected to it. The sequel was even worse. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

[ColScott]

Transformers being a crappy movie is enough reason to justify an AfD of any article connected to it. The sequel was even worse. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

Yeah but seriously, how does it feel to work for a porn promoter? A man who uses you and laughs at your fat, stupid face? The two TFs have made me very rich. Has Wikipedia made you anything except more afraid of girls?

[Daniel Brandt]

No they are the same age (33). User:Erik was lying about his age, obviously.

Two different people, or User:Erik was lying in 2006 about his age.

The age 33 for Erik A. Kraft is solid; this comes from various public records. His exact birthday seems to be 1977-03-23. On his résumé he says "B.A., English, and B.A., Psychology, College of Letters and Science University of Wisconsin-Madison, December 1999." (You can still see the cache copy of it by searching for "erik kraft"+resume in Google.)

In 1999 User:Erik was too young to graduate; he would have been almost 14. Also, on that résumé Erik A. Kraft says that he did grad work at U.Illinois: "M.L.I.S., Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May 2005." There is no reason to doubt this.

Yesterday User:Erik added this line to his user page: "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." That's not quite the same thing, but it's close enough to raise eyebrows. It might even be true, although that would be quite a coincidence.

Today User:Erik deleted it and added this edit summary: "Removed incriminating information to avoid harassment."

I suspect that User:Erik is closely following the Murphy forum, and cleverly added that bit yesterday as a "false flag" operation. It looks like the Murphy forum link to the résumé appeared just hours before User:Erik added that line.

Then today he deleted it, with an eyebrow-raising edit summary, perhaps because he realized that he may be liable if it is proven that this information is false. The timing of User:Erik's posting and removal, and his edit summary, are potentially a problem for him. Originally he posted a photo that Murphy doesn't want posted, while hiding behind a screen name (that's bad enough). Now he might be playing games with Murphy (not a good idea).

It could make him liable if he is posting false information that facilitates the harassment of Erik A. Kraft, an innocent party, in order to further obscure his own identity.

Anyway, this is all speculation, but I think my scenario is much more likely than the scenario that User:Erik lied in 2006 on his user page about his age. In my scenario he had a motive for what he's done since yesterday, but I don't see any motive for lying about his age in 2006. I hope Murphy finds User:Erik, whoever he is.

By the way, I think there's enough questionable shenanigans going on here to get User:Erik thoroughly checkusered for all of his edits that relate at all to Murphy and/or Transformers, from as far back as the logs permit.

Arbcom, where are thee?

[ColScott]

No they are the same age (33). User:Erik was lying about his age, obviously.

Two different people, or User:Erik was lying in 2006 about his age.

The age 33 for Erik A. Kraft is solid; this comes from various public records. His exact birthday seems to be 1977-03-23. On his résumé he says "B.A., English, and B.A., Psychology, College of Letters and Science University of Wisconsin-Madison, December 1999." (You can still see the cache copy of it by searching for "erik kraft"+resume in Google.)

In 1999 User:Erik was too young to graduate; he would have been almost 14. Also, on that résumé Erik A. Kraft says that he did grad work at U.Illinois: "M.L.I.S., Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May 2005." There is no reason to doubt this.

Yesterday User:Erik added this line to his user page: "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." That's not quite the same thing, but it's close enough to raise eyebrows. It might even be true, although that would be quite a coincidence.

Today User:Erik deleted it and added this edit summary: "Removed incriminating information to avoid harassment."

I suspect that User:Erik is closely following the Murphy forum, and cleverly added that bit yesterday as a "false flag" operation. It looks like the Murphy forum link to the résumé appeared just hours before User:Erik added that line.

Then today he deleted it, with an eyebrow-raising edit summary, perhaps because he realized that he may be liable if it is proven that this information is false. The timing of User:Erik's posting and removal, and his edit summary, are potentially a problem for him. Originally he posted a photo that Murphy doesn't want posted, while hiding behind a screen name (that's bad enough). Now he might be playing games with Murphy (not a good idea).

It could make him liable if he is posting false information that facilitates the harassment of Erik A. Kraft, an innocent party, in order to further obscure his own identity.

Anyway, this is all speculation, but I think my scenario is much more likely than the scenario that User:Erik lied in 2006 on his user page about his age. In my scenario he had a motive for what he's done since yesterday, but I don't see any motive for lying about his age in 2006. I hope Murphy finds User:Erik, whoever he is.

By the way, I think there's enough questionable shenanigans going on here to get User:Erik thoroughly checkusered for all of his edits that relate at all to Murphy and/or Transformers, from as far back as the logs permit.

Arbcom, where are thee?

Love you Brandt and your work. I aspire to be you some day.

All I can say is if we got the wrong ERIK
then how come the clown just fucking RETIRED

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Erik

[BelovedFox]

No they are the same age (33). User:Erik was lying about his age, obviously.

Two different people, or User:Erik was lying in 2006 about his age.

The age 33 for Erik A. Kraft is solid; this comes from various public records. His exact birthday seems to be 1977-03-23. On his résumé he says "B.A., English, and B.A., Psychology, College of Letters and Science University of Wisconsin-Madison, December 1999." (You can still see the cache copy of it by searching for "erik kraft"+resume in Google.)

In 1999 User:Erik was too young to graduate; he would have been almost 14. Also, on that résumé Erik A. Kraft says that he did grad work at U.Illinois: "M.L.I.S., Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May 2005." There is no reason to doubt this.

Yesterday User:Erik added this line to his user page: "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." That's not quite the same thing, but it's close enough to raise eyebrows. It might even be true, although that would be quite a coincidence.

Today User:Erik deleted it and added this edit summary: "Removed incriminating information to avoid harassment."

I suspect that User:Erik is closely following the Murphy forum, and cleverly added that bit yesterday as a "false flag" operation. It looks like the Murphy forum link to the résumé appeared just hours before User:Erik added that line.

Then today he deleted it, with an eyebrow-raising edit summary, perhaps because he realized that he may be liable if it is proven that this information is false. The timing of User:Erik's posting and removal, and his edit summary, are potentially a problem for him. Originally he posted a photo that Murphy doesn't want posted, while hiding behind a screen name (that's bad enough). Now he might be playing games with Murphy (not a good idea).

It could make him liable if he is posting false information that facilitates the harassment of Erik A. Kraft, an innocent party, in order to further obscure his own identity.

Anyway, this is all speculation, but I think my scenario is much more likely than the scenario that User:Erik lied in 2006 on his user page about his age. In my scenario he had a motive for what he's done since yesterday, but I don't see any motive for lying about his age in 2006. I hope Murphy finds User:Erik, whoever he is.

By the way, I think there's enough questionable shenanigans going on here to get User:Erik thoroughly checkusered for all of his edits that relate at all to Murphy and/or Transformers, from as far back as the logs permit.

Arbcom, where are thee?

Love you Brandt and your work. I aspire to be you some day.

All I can say is if we got the wrong ERIK
then how come the clown just fucking RETIRED

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Erik

Because he doesn't want to be harassed by you and your cronies?

[Ottava]

Transformers being a crappy movie is enough reason to justify an AfD of any article connected to it. The sequel was even worse. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

Yeah but seriously, how does it feel to work for a porn promoter? A man who uses you and laughs at your fat, stupid face? The two TFs have made me very rich. Has Wikipedia made you anything except more afraid of girls?

I have to say that no matter how much crappy porn is on Wikipedia, it is still more tasteful than Transformers was. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

[ColScott]

No they are the same age (33). User:Erik was lying about his age, obviously.

Two different people, or User:Erik was lying in 2006 about his age.

The age 33 for Erik A. Kraft is solid; this comes from various public records. His exact birthday seems to be 1977-03-23. On his résumé he says "B.A., English, and B.A., Psychology, College of Letters and Science University of Wisconsin-Madison, December 1999." (You can still see the cache copy of it by searching for "erik kraft"+resume in Google.)

In 1999 User:Erik was too young to graduate; he would have been almost 14. Also, on that résumé Erik A. Kraft says that he did grad work at U.Illinois: "M.L.I.S., Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May 2005." There is no reason to doubt this.

Yesterday User:Erik added this line to his user page: "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." That's not quite the same thing, but it's close enough to raise eyebrows. It might even be true, although that would be quite a coincidence.

Today User:Erik deleted it and added this edit summary: "Removed incriminating information to avoid harassment."

I suspect that User:Erik is closely following the Murphy forum, and cleverly added that bit yesterday as a "false flag" operation. It looks like the Murphy forum link to the résumé appeared just hours before User:Erik added that line.

Then today he deleted it, with an eyebrow-raising edit summary, perhaps because he realized that he may be liable if it is proven that this information is false. The timing of User:Erik's posting and removal, and his edit summary, are potentially a problem for him. Originally he posted a photo that Murphy doesn't want posted, while hiding behind a screen name (that's bad enough). Now he might be playing games with Murphy (not a good idea).

It could make him liable if he is posting false information that facilitates the harassment of Erik A. Kraft, an innocent party, in order to further obscure his own identity.

Anyway, this is all speculation, but I think my scenario is much more likely than the scenario that User:Erik lied in 2006 on his user page about his age. In my scenario he had a motive for what he's done since yesterday, but I don't see any motive for lying about his age in 2006. I hope Murphy finds User:Erik, whoever he is.

By the way, I think there's enough questionable shenanigans going on here to get User:Erik thoroughly checkusered for all of his edits that relate at all to Murphy and/or Transformers, from as far back as the logs permit.

Arbcom, where are thee?

Love you Brandt and your work. I aspire to be you some day.

All I can say is if we got the wrong ERIK
then how come the clown just fucking RETIRED

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Erik

Because he doesn't want to be harassed by you and your cronies?

But supposedly I don't even know who he is!

And if by cronies you mean concerned citizens against cults, then yes I'll take it.

Transformers being a crappy movie is enough reason to justify an AfD of any article connected to it. The sequel was even worse. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

Yeah but seriously, how does it feel to work for a porn promoter? A man who uses you and laughs at your fat, stupid face? The two TFs have made me very rich. Has Wikipedia made you anything except more afraid of girls?

I have to say that no matter how much crappy porn is on Wikipedia, it is still more tasteful than Transformers was. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

You don't "have" to say anything, loser. Answer the question- what benefit have you gotten from working for free for the porn king?

[Zoloft]

Meanwhile, HalfShadow steps on the land mine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Hal...ed_for_one_week

...and seems to be headed for an indef.

I believe they call this 'collateral damage.'

I think the Decepticonsâ„¢ got him. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/fear.gif)

[Ottava]

You don't "have" to say anything, loser. Answer the question- what benefit have you gotten from working for free for the porn king?

Well, the benefit of not having my name on two of the worst movies of all time?

[ColScott]

You don't "have" to say anything, loser. Answer the question- what benefit have you gotten from working for free for the porn king?

Well, the benefit of not having my name on two of the worst movies of all time?

but you didn't get that from working for free for the pornographer. You got that from your day job cleaning out public lavs. So then nothing for all that free work? What a pathetic oaf you are.

[carbuncle]

but you didn't get that from working for free for the pornographer. You got that from your day job cleaning out public lavs. So then nothing for all that free work? What a pathetic oaf you are.

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

[ColScott]

but you didn't get that from working for free for the pornographer. You got that from your day job cleaning out public lavs. So then nothing for all that free work? What a pathetic oaf you are.

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

That would be telling.
You are #6.

[Ottava]

but you didn't get that from working for free for the pornographer. You got that from your day job cleaning out public lavs. So then nothing for all that free work? What a pathetic oaf you are.

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

That would be telling.
You are #6.

You seem to hate everyone. Just curious, but you don't happen to be seeking advice from legal scholar do you?

[Somey]

You seem to hate everyone. Just curious, but you don't happen to be seeking advice from legal scholar do you?

Ottava, you know we don't appreciate Murphy-baiting here - there's no future in it, and you know very well that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of movies made every single year that are far worse than Transformers. You're only doing this because you think the cabal will someday reward you for... whatever the hell it is you think you're doing.

Anyway, get off this thread or I'll have to suspend you for a whole week, and without dessert either. I might even have to force you to watch the "director's cut" of Mutant Chronicles, just to knock some sense into you.

[Milton Roe]

Anyway, get off this thread or I'll have to suspend you for a whole week, and without dessert either. I might even have to force you to watch the "director's cut" of Mutant Chronicles, just to knock some sense into you.

Eeeek. Giant zombie mutants with the legs of snow crabs and no crab pick in sight. Retro WW I trenches with machine gun upgrades. An Ancient Evil is awakened and fought by the ancient church, keeper of civilization, not unlike in Gibbon. Sue Gardner brings her swords. We are forced to watch Being John Malkovich. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ohmy.gif)

The Horror.

[carbuncle]

but you didn't get that from working for free for the pornographer. You got that from your day job cleaning out public lavs. So then nothing for all that free work? What a pathetic oaf you are.

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

That would be telling.
You are #6.

I'm #6? What does that mean?

[EricBarbour]

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

That would be telling.
You are #6.

Ha ha ha. Pwned.
(IMG:http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f139/mrs_smartygirl/number_six_original.jpg)

A few idle observations:
1) Erik (T-C-L-K-R-D) has spent a lot of time editing articles dealing with movie adaptations of comic books, particularly Batman, Iron Man, etc. as well as articles for other movies that nerdy guys really, really like. And I mean, he edited them. Fifty to one hundred edits, a day, every damn day of the week, for months at a stretch.

2) here's a photo of Erik Kraft if you need one.

3) don't confuse him with Erik P. Kraft, a Boston author of juvenile fiction. (Whom I suspect of creating his own BLP, but whatever.)

4) after looking thru a lot of web bullshit, I am really suspicious that Erik (T-C-L-K-R-D) and Erik Kraft are the same guy. "Both" of these Eriks have gone to great, massive lengths to "manicure" their web presences, thus displaying a similar obsessive attention to details. Despite their apparent differences in age and interests, they're both such massive nerds, that in the absence of a blatant connection, they still look like they could easily be the same person. Doesn't help that Erik Kraft just erased his LinkedIn profile, and is going around deleting his other web presences. Just too damn suspicious. If they aren't the same guy, I'll bet they would make very good drinking buddies.

5) just PS: Erik (T-C-L-K-R-D) used to have a sock, Erikster.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour:

[BelovedFox]

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

That would be telling.
You are #6.

Ha ha ha. Pwned.
(IMG:http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f139/mrs_smartygirl/number_six_original.jpg)

A few idle observations:
1) Erik (T-C-L-K-R-D) has spent a lot of time editing articles dealing with movie adaptations of comic books, particularly Batman, Iron Man, etc. as well as articles for other movies that nerdy guys really, really like. And I mean, he edited them. Fifty to one hundred edits, a day, every damn day of the week, for months at a stretch.

2) here's a photo of Erik Kraft if you need one.

3) don't confuse him with Erik P. Kraft, a Boston author of juvenile fiction. (Whom I suspect of creating his own BLP, but whatever.)

4) after looking thru a lot of web bullshit, I am really suspicious that Erik (T-C-L-K-R-D) and Erik Kraft are the same guy. "Both" of these Eriks have gone to great, massive lengths to "manicure" their web presences, thus displaying a similar obsessive attention to details. Despite their apparent differences in age and interests, they're both such massive nerds, that in the absence of a blatant connection, they still look like they could easily be the same person. Doesn't help that Erik Kraft just erased his LinkedIn profile, and is going around deleting his other web presences. Just too damn suspicious. If they aren't the same guy, I'll bet they would make very good drinking buddies.

5) just PS: Erik (T-C-L-K-R-D) used to have a sock, Erikster.

I highly doubt they're the same person, in that Erik isn't the drama-monger I would expect to try such a stunt (I think many people would find that he's quite level-headed--through in the requisite "for a Wikipedia editor" bit here if necessary.) No person* in this fiasco is deserving of the Evil Eye of Don Murphy--Erik's edits might have been misinformed, but he was agreeable to removing the (perfectly valid and licensed) image in a discussion.

Having just searched for my name, there's frankly a hell of a lot of people like me out there--albeit not many with a web presence. So while I can understand others might scoff at the coincidence... it's a freakishly small world out there apparently. (There are, by my count, more than 200+ people in the US with my first and last name, and around 5-6 with my middle initial in the same state as I am. Hell, three of them are in the same occupation. Not sure what it is about dentists :\)

*Well, HalfShadow displayed a gross ignorance of copyright, which is bad, and even if a biography subject is as disagreeable as Murphy, being a prick right back is never a good idea. Whatever happened to being the better man?

This post has been edited by BelovedFox:

[victim of censorship]

but you didn't get that from working for free for the pornographer. You got that from your day job cleaning out public lavs. So then nothing for all that free work? What a pathetic oaf you are.

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

That would be telling.
You are #6.

You seem to hate everyone. Just curious, but you don't happen to be seeking advice from legal scholar do you?

Got to love Mr. Murphy. Love his Chicago style ways...



Mr. Murphy - am a real fan, go get'em...

[Daniel Brandt]

User:Erik says on ANI that the wrong person is being intimidated. This is curious in light of the fact that User:Erik posted info on his user page on the 23rd and then deleted it on the 24th. Both of these edits amounted to pinning a target on Erik Kraft's back. Why did he do this? Is User:Erik just stupid, or is he also malicious?

Something is not right here, to say the least.

Erik Kraft, the university librarian based in Chicago, is all over the web. He knows a lot about web design and books. If you try to find any evidence that he cares at all about films or cared at all about editing Wikipedia before a few days ago, then you won't find anything. It doesn't take that long for a computer geek to figure out how to edit Wikipedia, and I discount the claim that his recent competent Wikipedia edits are evidence that User:Erik and Erik Kraft are the same person.

User:Erik must watch at least two movies a day. He has thousands of edits on Wikipedia about films. If you look for any evidence that he has web design skills or interests, or works as a librarian, or has ever read a book, you won't find anything.

I could easily have missed something, and hope someone can find anything I missed. It looks to me like User:Erik pulled a fast one, and also added a couple dozen edits to Murphy's bio in the last couple of days since taking down the photo. This smacks of bad faith, since he has known for years that Murphy doesn't want that bio. It's the old Wikipediot game of claiming that some BLP victim is notable, and assuming that this confers anonymous editors with automatic rights which overrule the BLP victim's rights. Wikipedia needs a slogan — how about "Let's be evil" !

User:Erik is acting like a teenager. I cannot believe he's Erik Kraft, 33 years old with a Masters degree and a real job, plus a web design business on the side. Now if he is 24 years old and lives in his mother's basement, and spends money on DVD rentals and purchases — now that's something I can believe.

[Milton Roe]

It's the old Wikipediot game of claiming that some BLP victim is notable, and assuming that this confers anonymous editors with automatic rights which overrule the BLP victim's rights. Wikipedia needs a slogan — how about "Let's be evil" !

Too late. Google has gotten to that one before you, also.

[EricBarbour]

User:Erik says on ANI that the wrong person is being intimidated. This is curious in light of the fact that User:Erik posted info on his user page on the 23rd and then deleted it on the 24th. Both of these edits amounted to pinning a target on Erik Kraft's back. Why did he do this? Is User:Erik just stupid, or is he also malicious?

Both!

Erik Kraft, the university librarian based in Chicago, is all over the web. He knows a lot about web design and books. If you try to find any evidence that he cares at all about films or cared at all about editing Wikipedia before a few days ago, then you won't find anything. It doesn't take that long for a computer geek to figure out how to edit Wikipedia, and I discount the claim that his recent competent Wikipedia edits are evidence that User:Erik and Erik Kraft are the same person.

User:Erik must watch at least two movies a day. He has thousands of edits on Wikipedia about films. If you look for any evidence that he has web design skills or interests, or works as a librarian, or has ever read a book, you won't find anything.

User:Erik is acting like a teenager. I cannot believe he's Erik Kraft, 33 years old with a Masters degree and a real job, plus a web design business on the side. Now if he is 24 years old and lives in his mother's basement, and spends money on DVD rentals and purchases — now that's something I can believe.

You might well be correct. My searches have uncovered nobody named "Erik" or "Eric" at UIUC, or an alumnus thereof, who is also a movie fan (and big lover of Fight Club). He's obviously playing dumb while pulling asshole tricks in the background. For all we know, he's using Erik Kraft as a shield. Wouldn't put it past a Kool-Aid Kid, such antics have proven in the past to be a positive character archetype for them.

No doubt he's reading this thread. (In which case, fuck you, little boy.)

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

Yes, please ... please do. But let's think and discuss this truth a little first.

If you are willing to invest some money on tripping up the Porno-pedia, is there a better way to do so than targeting individuals? (which I admit, has some functional purpose).

Rather than make some lawyer rich ... why not hire a PR and publish some briefing documents, start working the media and public opinion against it.

The Wikipedia is already a joke in the minds of most folks that know it. You'd have all the others following fairly quickly.

If nothing else, you would probably put the squeeze on Jimbo's six figure talking fees fairly quickly as what corporation is going to hire someone in charge of an encyclopedia for kids being fill with sperm dripping vaginas and bondage?

You might even find that doing so acts as a seed capital others would invest into.

[Somey]

User:Erik is acting like a teenager. I cannot believe he's Erik Kraft, 33 years old with a Masters degree and a real job, plus a web design business on the side. Now if he is 24 years old and lives in his mother's basement, and spends money on DVD rentals and purchases — now that's something I can believe./quote]You might well be correct. My searches have uncovered nobody named "Erik" or "Eric" at UIUC, or an alumnus thereof, who is also a movie fan (and big lover of Fight Club). He's obviously playing dumb while pulling asshole tricks in the background. For all we know, he's using Erik Kraft as a shield....

So, what are we saying here? That User:Erik decided he could shield himself on WP by pretending to be this other Erik, Erik Kraft from Chicago, so as to throw people off his trail should he decide to do something stupid like... edit the Don Murphy article?

And when the shit hit the fan, and the real Erik Kraft got contacted by the Murphygoons and went to Wikipedia (almost immediately) to see what the hell was going on, it suddenly dawned on User:Erik that he was doing something extremely unethical, and possibly even illegal, and so he's now trying to disappear himself?

I dunno - three years ago I would have said that was too far-fetched, but now, I could definitely see one of them doing something like that. Still, it is far-fetched... Why would User:Erik think he'd be better off pretending to be Erik Kraft, rather than just not say anything about where he was from? Other than just sheer stupidity, I mean.

I guess sheer stupidity is a reasonable explanation, though, under the circumstances.

[Daniel Brandt]

So, what are we saying here? That User:Erik decided he could shield himself on WP by pretending to be this other Erik, Erik Kraft from Chicago, so as to throw people off his trail should he decide to do something stupid like... edit the Don Murphy article?

And when the shit hit the fan, and the real Erik Kraft got contacted by the Murphygoons and went to Wikipedia (almost immediately) to see what the hell was going on, it suddenly dawned on User:Erik that he was doing something extremely unethical, and possibly even illegal, and so he's now trying to disappear himself?

I dunno - three years ago I would have said that was too far-fetched, but now, I could definitely see one of them doing something like that. Still, it is far-fetched... Why would User:Erik think he'd be better off pretending to be Erik Kraft, rather than just not say anything about where he was from? Other than just sheer stupidity, I mean.

I guess sheer stupidity is a reasonable explanation, though, under the circumstances.

Yes, that's what I suspect is going on. User:Erik has been on Wikipedia long enough to recognize my name, and know that I've got a couple of old notches on my mouse. While I have no idea if his name is even Erik (originally he was Erikster on Wikipedia), I found his birthdate and that probably freaked him out. I suspect that he forgot about those user boxes he put on his user page briefly in 2006 that revealed his birthdate.

If he did what I think he did, the only smart thing for him to do at this point is to immediately retire and hope everyone forgets the whole thing. He doesn't have any admin bits, so he can come back as someone else with little fuss. He had better pray that Murphy doesn't find him. Murphy's lawyer could put both Murphy and Erik Kraft in front of a jury, where they can describe all the anguish this cruel 24-year-old caused while hiding behind a screen name. Maybe even Jimbo and Newyorkbrad and Carolyn Doran can be called, to explain why Wikipedia is unsupervised, and why this is such a wonderful thing for civil society.

I haven't figured out the time zone stuff on Murphy's forum, and I'm much too lazy to do a careful timeline. I think User:Erik planted the one-line evidence on his user page shortly after that résumé link appeared on Murphy's forum. Or perhaps it was before (I haven't checked much)? Then again, which Murphy fanboy found Erik Kraft to begin with, and posted that link? Do we know who he is, and how he found Erik Kraft's site? What I mean is, just looking for "Erik" on Google leads to all sorts of weird stuff, none of which is very compelling. There must have been something else that pointed to Erik Kraft initially.

On the other hand, who cares? It's probably a non-starter just like Mark Binmore and Ron Livingston. And that one was a whopper that should have grown legs and sprinted into the mainstream media.

[Somey]

Personally, I don't put too much stock into timezone-based editing-habit data as a means of figuring out where a person lives, particularly if the person is self-employed, unemployed, or employed in the porn industry, which seems to describe a fairly large percentage of WP'ers. I myself am typing this at 3:22 AM CST, which is when most people in the UK are just arriving at their offices or shops or whatever it is they do. People in the Far East are on their way home, and of course, people living in the Kuiper belt probably all froze to death the instant they stepped out of the airlock.

I must be getting really jaded, too, because I'm pretty sure 3 years ago I would have seen something like this and been completely fascinated by it, but now I'm just thinking, "oh no, not another one..."

Mind you, there have been some really positive things happening over on Wikipedia lately - as hard as it is to admit, many of the really abusive old-guard types are either losing interest or losing clout, or both, and the content of certain articles seems to be starting to reflect that. (And naturally, Jimbo is taking as much credit for this as possible.) Yeah, there's a lot of porn, but it's the internet, so you have to expect that, if not actually accept it... But then something like this happens, and you just have to wonder, what the hell are these people thinking?

Anyhoo, the basic point remains - Murphy's a producer, one of many on most of the films he works on. If he'd been the director or even the screenwriter on all those films, maybe I could see why it would be necessary for a pop-culture-based encyclopedia-like website to have an article on him, but unless he wins a bunch of Oscars or something, I just don't see the necessity of it for a producer. Note that I'm not saying WP should delete all articles about movie producers; in fact, I'm sure most movie producers who don't currently have WP articles about them would love to have them. Most movie producers are probably really nice people. I'm just saying there's no need for articles on them in the vast majority of cases, and the WP'ers certainly don't have some sort of God-given right to post and carry them, either. (Though obviously they would disagree.)

[Peter Damian]

Some more puzzles. The Erik Kraft IP starts editing on 16:01 UT on 24 April. There is no overlap with user:Erik. He makes a spate of edits to user:Erik's page (and one to user:Arcayne, which I can't figure out).

At 18:00 the IP stops, then user:Erik starts offf with a spate of edits including a round robin of ANI, Jimbo page and so on.

At 18:58 user:Erik posts a message on ANI with a message to 'Erik Kraft' apologising for the mess. At 19:03 Erik.Kraft opens a Wikipedia account, then at 19:06 he replies to the ANI message from user:Erik.

I'm grateful to you for doing this--and I've gone ahead and created a wikipedia account (erik.kraft) so that it doesn't seem like I'm trying to hide behind anonymity. Which is clearly not possible anyway. Feel free to refer to me as erik.kraft going forward. I'll be following the ANI page and will post further details as I have them. And I even just learned to sign my posts: --> [[User:Erik.kraft|Erik.kraft]] ([[User talk:Erik.kraft|talk]]) 19:06, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358059879

How did Erik Kraft know that user:Erik had just posted a message on ANI, so that he could reply to it 3 minutes later. And note the telltale "I even just learned to sign my posts". One explanation of the IP's skill in editing Wikipedia was his background as a web designer. This taught him to use the == and bolding conventions even when still an IP. But it took him until logging in to learn the ~~~~ signing convention? And don't argue that he got a standard welcome, because that didn't arrive until 21:19 from the ghastly FisherQueen.

The only explanation is (a) chance, but unlikely (b) collusion between the Eriks, but why? or © they are the same person.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Daniel Brandt]

I was thinking of a timeline of the last few days only, involving that one thread on Murphy's forum and the naming of Erik Kraft, User:Erik's edits, Murphy's phone calls, Erik Kraft's responses, ANI and talk page responses, the mysterious IP-only responses, and how they might all imply some sort of possible interplay between them.

These two edits are important. How it unfolded in the very beginning is more important than the fog that rolled in later.

If you can make a circumstantial case that User:Erik engaged in legally-actionable behavior as serious as what I'm suspecting, Murphy could write to Mike Godwin and demand all available checkuser data on User:Erik.

I don't see how Godwin could refuse.

I could see collusion between the two Eriks, where User:Erik is being clever and playing good guy with Erik Kraft, while Erik Kraft is unaware of the long history behind Murphy's bio, and the long-standing inclusionist bias of User:Erik. At one point Kraft asked somewhere whether anyone had any evidence about whether Murphy might be a physical threat. He really was ready to go to the police (assuming, for a moment, that this really was Kraft). Since Murphy was already the bad guy for Kraft, User:Erik could play on this and reinforce Kraft's fears of Murphy. This way Kraft feels like he has a comrade in arms, and User:Erik can use Kraft more easily in his fight against Murphy.

Just speculation, you understand.

[Peter Damian]

These two edits are important.

Agree. The fact he added the fact that he was a graduate so recently, is hard to explain on the 'identity' theory.

[edit] Erik Kraft posts to Murphy's forum two hours ago (07:06 UT, 25 April 2010)

I really don't want to engage anyone on this any further, but this is Erik Kraft. I am still here monitoring things. I am not the wikipedia user "Erik". Wikipedia user "Erik" was talking about being "outed" on wikipedia yesterday. My sense is that he was glad you people found someone else to pick on and wanted to throw you off his scent. Please read through all of this very carefully:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...l_harass ment

At one point, you'll see "Erik" talk about being outed. I, Erik Kraft, ask him to clarify this, because it was apparently this word that led Don to be so convinced to be the person I was after.

Also, further down on that page, "Erik" posts this: Scott, I admit I was heated under the collar because of this situation. I do not like being intimidated, and I like it even less to see the wrong person being intimidated. I basically responded in my area of expertise, to provide cited, neutral background about a person who pretends that he is not notable. I started a discussion on the talk page requesting input about my expansion, so please review the article and make any observations about the matter. Erik (talk | contribs) 19:12, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

To reiterate: that's me, I'm the "wrong guy" wikipedia user "Erik" is talking about. It's bolded for clarification. Leave me out of this. You haven't outed anyone except for a third party (me) who has nothing to do with this and couldn't give two shits, and "Erik," lucky for him, still seems to be anonymous.

In closing, I can't believe how insane this has all been. Leave me out of it. The lynch mob mentality on this board is sick and disturbing, especially for someone who had never heard of Don Murphy until yesterday when he called me out of nowhere.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Moulton]

I must be getting really jaded, too, because I'm pretty sure 3 years ago I would have seen something like this and been completely fascinated by it, but now I'm just thinking, "oh no, not another one..."

The banality of villainy.

[Peter Damian]

More time line puzzles. All times below are in UT.

User:Eric stops editing at 14:49 on the 24 April.

14:49, 24 April 2010 (diff | hist) Talk:Don Murphy ? (?Expansion: cm)

At some time between then and 16:01, Erik Kraft gets called by Murphy. We know this because at 16:01 Eric Kraft's IP posts on user:Erik's talk page, using the == to start a new section, but without using the ~~~~ to sign, and saying he has two phone calls in the past hour from 'a person called Don'. Apparently at this stage Kraft does not know Don's second name.

Nine minutes later, 16:10, Eric Kraft joins Murphy's forum and posts, saying "I've received two phone calls in the past hour from Don". At this stage he presumably does know Murphy's second name is 'Murphy', since the forum is called 'donmurphy.net'. Yet at 16:12 he posts on Wikipedia to user:Arcayne, saying he does not know who 'Don' is.

Kraft makes a series of posts to Murphy's forum up until 16:36. At 16:39 Kraft makes a second post to user:Erik, then a post two ANI, then two further posts to user:Erik, taking us to 18:00.

At 18:50 user:Erik then makes a series of edits culminating in his apology to Kraft. To which Kraft immediately replies, using the new user:Erik.Kraft account.

[edit] this edit by the Kraft IP is also odd. Why does he say 'Sorry for not following the reply conventions'. What reply conventions would those be? If you didn't know there were any conventions, you wouldn't say that. If you did, and given that you knew how to write in bold using 3 's, why wouldn't you follow the : reply convention also? Or perhaps Kraft did know all the conventions, but was pretending (in a rather stupid way) not to know?

'''Erik Kraft here again. Sorry for not following the reply conventions, but I'm not a wikipedia editor and I feel this is rather urgent. Erik, can you clarify what you meant by "process of outing you." Because Don and his people seem to be taking this as evidence that I, Erik Kraft, am the person they are mad at. Don has posted my personal information, including address and phone number, on his forum on his personal site and I'm extremely disturbed. Thanks. '''
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358039241

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Zoloft]

Don Murphy Message Board Statistics
Threads: 30,309, Posts: 1,361,126, Members: 8,309

Oooh. Minions.

It's quite possible he doesn't clean up the banned (spam or otherwise) users, and that number might be inflated a bit, but in order to get 1.3 million posts, you have to have at least 3000 steady users.

No wonder Erik (Kraft or not) is scared.

[Peter Damian]

Don Murphy Message Board Statistics
Threads: 30,309, Posts: 1,361,126, Members: 8,309

Oooh. Minions.

It's quite possible he doesn't clean up the banned (spam or otherwise) users, and that number might be inflated a bit, but in order to get 1.3 million posts, you have to have at least 3000 steady users.

No wonder Erik (Kraft or not) is scared.

If there is a danger from 'minions', and if checkuser showed that user:Erik and user:Erik.kraft are not the same person, shouldn't WMF be making that clear?

[Theanima]

Now if he is 24 years old and lives in his mother's basement, and spends money on DVD rentals and purchases — now that's something I can believe.

He may even download his movies illegally!

I'm surprised to see nobody seems to have found his name, which I found so easily. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wtf.gif)

[Peter Damian]

Now if he is 24 years old and lives in his mother's basement, and spends money on DVD rentals and purchases — now that's something I can believe.

He may even download his movies illegally!

I'm surprised to see nobody seems to have found his name, which I found so easily. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wtf.gif)

No you didn't. You're just imagining you can help him by posting here, pretending you know of some other name. If what you were saying were true, then you would not be helping him by saying his 'real name' could easily be found. How stupid do you think I am?

[Theanima]

Now if he is 24 years old and lives in his mother's basement, and spends money on DVD rentals and purchases — now that's something I can believe.

He may even download his movies illegally!

I'm surprised to see nobody seems to have found his name, which I found so easily. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wtf.gif)

No you didn't. You're just imagining you can help him by posting here, pretending you know of some other name. If what you were saying were true, then you would not be helping him by saying his 'real name' could easily be found. How stupid do you think I am?

What makes you think I want to help him?

[Peter Damian]

nvm

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[anthony]

Yesterday User:Erik added this line to his user page: "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." That's not quite the same thing, but it's close enough to raise eyebrows. It might even be true, although that would be quite a coincidence.

What's the coincidence, that there were two people named Erik who went to the University of Illinois in 2005?

[carbuncle]

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

Yes, please ... please do. But let's think and discuss this truth a little first.

If you are willing to invest some money on tripping up the Porno-pedia, is there a better way to do so than targeting individuals? (which I admit, has some functional purpose).

Rather than make some lawyer rich ... why not hire a PR and publish some briefing documents, start working the media and public opinion against it.

The Wikipedia is already a joke in the minds of most folks that know it. You'd have all the others following fairly quickly.

If nothing else, you would probably put the squeeze on Jimbo's six figure talking fees fairly quickly as what corporation is going to hire someone in charge of an encyclopedia for kids being fill with sperm dripping vaginas and bondage?

You might even find that doing so acts as a seed capital others would invest into.

Mr Murphy likes to say that he is going to sue WP, Jimbo, and individual editors, but it has yet to happen. It would be a mistake to assume that Murphy has any agenda other than his own, which is to control his biography on WP. He has been successful so far without having to do more than point his fanboys at anyone he identifies as a target - why do you think he is interested in other people's BLPs?

[ColScott]

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

Yes, please ... please do. But let's think and discuss this truth a little first.

If you are willing to invest some money on tripping up the Porno-pedia, is there a better way to do so than targeting individuals? (which I admit, has some functional purpose).

Rather than make some lawyer rich ... why not hire a PR and publish some briefing documents, start working the media and public opinion against it.

The Wikipedia is already a joke in the minds of most folks that know it. You'd have all the others following fairly quickly.

If nothing else, you would probably put the squeeze on Jimbo's six figure talking fees fairly quickly as what corporation is going to hire someone in charge of an encyclopedia for kids being fill with sperm dripping vaginas and bondage?

You might even find that doing so acts as a seed capital others would invest into.

Mr Murphy likes to say that he is going to sue WP, Jimbo, and individual editors, but it has yet to happen. It would be a mistake to assume that Murphy has any agenda other than his own, which is to control his biography on WP. He has been successful so far without having to do more than point his fanboys at anyone he identifies as a target - why do you think he is interested in other people's BLPs?

I'd have to agree that you were right- five years ago when this shit started. The constant barrage of madness, going from Phil Gronowski to present day, has shown me that I live in a community and one that is truly harmed by Wikipedia. The people involved are dangerously unbalanced and unloved who waste their time in service of a man whose jizzy tee shirts sell on Ebay. I am devoted to destroying it by any legal means necessary. But I take the tactical missile approach. I want to destroy the heart not the limb. I am looking for the opportunity.

I find it interesting that 5 years ago, when exposed as the scumbag he is, my very first outing, HighinBC "retired " and then came back. I am certain that both Eriks are the same and that this Erik is already back under a witness protection name. One of my minions thinks so too. Again, why RETIRE?

Aside to Brandt- the minion who made the initial posting is known to me and a regular.

This post has been edited by ColScott:

[carbuncle]

I find it interesting that 5 years ago, when exposed as the scumbag he is, my very first outing, HighinBC "retired " and then came back. I am certain that both Eriks are the same and that this Erik is already back under a witness protection name. One of my minions thinks so too. Again, why RETIRE?

Aside to Brandt- the minion who made the initial posting is known to me and a regular.

I have no opinion on whether the two Eriks are one and the same, but I have to say that adding information to his profile immediately before he started poking your BLP seems like rather an odd thing to do. Possible Joe job?

This post has been edited by carbuncle:

[Peter Damian]

Yesterday User:Erik added this line to his user page: "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." That's not quite the same thing, but it's close enough to raise eyebrows. It might even be true, although that would be quite a coincidence.

What's the coincidence, that there were two people named Erik who went to the University of Illinois in 2005?

The coincidences are in the odd timeline.

23/Apr 18:51 Murphy makes first post 'find Erik'
23/Apr 19:30 user:Erik puts on his WP use page that he is "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. "
23/Apr 20:19 GarethFT posts link to CV on Kraft's site (since removed by Kraft)
23/Apr 20:52 JesterJJZ posts Kraft address and phone

24/Apr 10:41 user:Erik says on ANI that he 'It is not funny to be outed.
24/Apr 12:27 user:Erik removes the 'I'm from Chicago' saying 'Removed incriminating evidence'
24/Apr 15:30 Erik Kraft gets called by Murphy - speaks for 30 minutes. The call was to a London number (according to Murphy I think).
24/Apr 16:01 Erik Kraft (London IP) makes series of posts on Wikipedia - Erik page, Arcayne page, ANI. Says he doesn't know who 'Don' is.
24/Apr 16:18 Erik Kraft makes series of posts on Murphy's web site.
24/Apr 16:30 Murphy removes Kraft address and phone
24/Apr 18:50 user:Erik makes series of harassment complaints on ANI and elsewhere
24/Apr 19:03 Erik Kraft creates a Wikipedia account
24/Apr 19:09 user:Erik posts on ANI apologising to Kraft
24/Apr 19:09 Erik Kraft immediately replies
24/Apr 19:09 user:Erik makes another series of posts on ANI, begins archiving
24/Apr 19:26 Erik Kraft posts on ANI asking if Murphy has ever caused physical harm
24/Apr 19:26 user:Erik edits for about hour and a half on Murphy-related pages, archives some more stuff
24/Apr 19:17 Erik Kraft makes series of posts on ANI asking user:Erik what he means by 'outed' - he says he is the one who has been outed.

The really odd thing, as others have commented, is why user:Erik puts the "am a graduate of University of Illinois" AFTER the first posting by Murphy. And then removes shortly after. Why?

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[BelovedFox]

When are you taking some of your hard-earned Transformers money and actually starting that lawsuit you like to threaten people with?

Yes, please ... please do. But let's think and discuss this truth a little first.

If you are willing to invest some money on tripping up the Porno-pedia, is there a better way to do so than targeting individuals? (which I admit, has some functional purpose).

Rather than make some lawyer rich ... why not hire a PR and publish some briefing documents, start working the media and public opinion against it.

The Wikipedia is already a joke in the minds of most folks that know it. You'd have all the others following fairly quickly.

If nothing else, you would probably put the squeeze on Jimbo's six figure talking fees fairly quickly as what corporation is going to hire someone in charge of an encyclopedia for kids being fill with sperm dripping vaginas and bondage?

You might even find that doing so acts as a seed capital others would invest into.

Mr Murphy likes to say that he is going to sue WP, Jimbo, and individual editors, but it has yet to happen. It would be a mistake to assume that Murphy has any agenda other than his own, which is to control his biography on WP. He has been successful so far without having to do more than point his fanboys at anyone he identifies as a target - why do you think he is interested in other people's BLPs?

I'd have to agree that you were right- five years ago when this shit started. The constant barrage of madness, going from Phil Gronowski to present day, has shown me that I live in a community and one that is truly harmed by Wikipedia. The people involved are dangerously unbalanced and unloved who waste their time in service of a man whose jizzy tee shirts sell on Ebay. I am devoted to destroying it by any legal means necessary. But I take the tactical missile approach. I want to destroy the heart not the limb. I am looking for the opportunity.

You're the hotshot producer with millions, you've already got the opportunity. Put your money where your mouth is.

Also, please don't give us that "any legal means" crap. You just post stuff and hope someone else will take care of it so your hands are "clean".

Don't you have more bad movies to make? More directors to punch?

Yesterday User:Erik added this line to his user page: "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." That's not quite the same thing, but it's close enough to raise eyebrows. It might even be true, although that would be quite a coincidence.

What's the coincidence, that there were two people named Erik who went to the University of Illinois in 2005?

The coincidences are in the odd timeline.

<snip>

The really odd thing, as others have commented, is why user:Erik puts the "am a graduate of University of Illinois" AFTER the first posting by Murphy. And then removes shortly after. Why?

It's only odd if you're really looking for a pattern. They could be one and the same, Erik could have tried to deliberately throw Murphy's dogs off the scent, or he might have added it and immediately found out why that was a bad idea. He could have been ignorant of the entire thing for too long, stupid, both, or just unlucky. Point is, we have no real evidence for any of it.

[anthony]

The really odd thing, as others have commented, is why user:Erik puts the "am a graduate of University of Illinois" AFTER the first posting by Murphy. And then removes shortly after. Why?

Seems the most likely (but not only) explanation is that he added (and removed) it because it isn't true. Maybe intentionally to frame someone, or maybe he just picked U of I randomly and unwittingly framed someone. I don't see the the fact there is, indeed, someone named Erik who graduated from the University of Illinois, as a very unlikely coincidence. Nothing else about the two Eriks (one of whom might not even be named Erik) seems to match.

The rest of the timeline doesn't strike me as odd in the least.

It's only odd if you're really looking for a pattern. They could be one and the same, Erik could have tried to deliberately throw Murphy's dogs off the scent, or he might have added it and immediately found out why that was a bad idea. He could have been ignorant of the entire thing for too long, stupid, both, or just unlucky. Point is, we have no real evidence for any of it.

Exactly.

The odd part is that "Peter Damian" is looking for patterns. What's the point of looking for patterns if you "don't have any beliefs"? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unsure.gif)

This post has been edited by anthony:

[Daniel Brandt]

I appreciate Murphy's brief timeline, which he posted today on his forum thread. The sequence in these lines is what I needed for now:

23/Apr 18:51 Murphy makes first post "find Erik"
23/Apr 19:30 user:Erik puts on his WP user page that "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."
23/Apr 20:19 GarethFT posts link to CV on Kraft's site (since removed by Kraft)
23/Apr 20:52 JesterJJZ posts Kraft address and phone
24/Apr 10:41 user:Erik says on ANI that "It is not funny to be outed"
24/Apr 12:27 user:Erik removes the "I'm from Chicago" saying "Removed incriminating evidence"

Murphy says he still believes that the two Eriks are the same person. I think they are two people, and User:Erik tried to use the 33-year-old Erik Kraft as a shield for a while, in order to throw off Murphy and friends. This is an issue that will hopefully be resolved soon. If Erik Kraft wants to help resolve it, and he is a separate person, he will at some point be willing to swear under oath that he made certain posts, and did not make other posts. We know a lot about Erik Kraft, age 33. We have his picture and we know his history. He may be out of the country at the moment, but that's a small matter in the long run, because someone named Erik Kraft, age 33, is a known quantity. I think he is innocent and was used by User:Erik to obscure User:Erik's real-life identity. I hope Erik Kraft is willing to help us prove it.

But whether you accept my theory that User:Erik played games and pointed the finger at Erik Kraft, or whether you accept Murphy's theory that they are both the same, the consequence of either theory is that each reflects very poorly on that 24-year-old Wikipedia editor, User:Erik.

Murphy is in a position to get checkuser data from the Foundation on User:Erik. That would be worthwhile and he should pursue it. Even if Murphy doesn't want to sue anyone, this checkuser data will be useful for Wikipedia itself. If User:Erik is even half as devious as it now appears, regardless of whether there are two Eriks or not, then Arbcom won't want him to create a new username and continue on Wikipedia. Because if Arbcom lets him to this, then Murphy can sue the Foundation. The checkuser request should go to Mike Godwin and should be presented by Murphy's lawyer, and it should be formal and well-constructed.

At a minimum, there is very strong evidence of trickery by User:Erik that involved an innocent party, Erik Kraft. At a maximum, we may even be looking at attempted identity theft.

If User:Erik was merely clumsy, instead of devious, then by now I would have expected a lengthy explanation and apology for his clumsiness, posted somewhere for all to see. No, I think he had Murphy in his sites when he posted that picture, and had a pretty good idea that Murphy would try to find him. He voted to "keep" the Murphy bio years ago, and he's been consistent in his position that Murphy is notable; User:Erik is a committed inclusionist. If User:Erik was merely clumsy, by now he'd say so, and admit that he was wrong to bait Murphy. And he would profusely apologize to Erik Kraft, thereby clearing up the matter of whether there are two Eriks.

How many of you expect that User:Erik will do any of this?

[Peter Damian]

The rest of the timeline doesn't strike me as odd in the least.

Many oddities. As soon as Kraft is phoned by Murphy, who, according to Kraft, only called himself Don, Kraft goes straight to Wikipedia, and edits user:Erik's page, user:Arcayne's page, and ANI. And then Murphy's website. Yet he claims to have known nothing until Murphy called him half an hour earlier. Why does Kraft claim on Wikipedia that he only knows Murphy as 'Don', when he has already posted on Murphy's website (which contains Murphy's surname)?

And how do we explain the sequence: Kraft creates an account THEN user:Erik posts an apology to Kraft on ANI THEN Kraft responds, all within 5 minutes? I can understand that Kraft may have been watching ANI, and then created an account and posted, in that order. But that is not the order.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[anthony]

The rest of the timeline doesn't strike me as odd in the least.

Many oddities. As soon as Kraft is phoned by Murphy, who, according to Kraft, only called himself Don, Kraft goes straight to Wikipedia, and edits user:Erik's page, user:Arcayne's page, and ANI. And then Murphy's website. Yet he claims to have known nothing until Murphy called him half an hour earlier.

I don't see that as odd in the least. But then, I have beliefs.

Did Murphy (or any of the others who called Kraft) mention Wikipedia in his phone call? Did any of them mention User:Erik?

Why does Kraft claim on Wikipedia that he only knows Murphy as 'Don', when he has already posted on Murphy's website (which contains Murphy's surname)?

I have no idea, but the most likely explanation would be that he didn't yet know Murphy's last name.

And how do we explain the sequence: Kraft creates an account THEN user:Erik posts an apology to Kraft on ANI THEN Kraft responds, all within 5 minutes?

I fail to see what's odd about that.

This post has been edited by anthony:

[Peter Damian]

Why does Kraft claim on Wikipedia that he only knows Murphy as 'Don', when he has already posted on Murphy's website (which contains Murphy's surname)?

I have no idea, but the most likely explanation would be that he didn't yet know Murphy's last name.

So he found Murphy's website, which is called 'donmurphy.net', and found the thread with posts by 'Don Murphy, administrator', and failed to realised that the 'Don' who phoned him was the same as this 'Don Murphy'. Fine.

[anthony]

Why does Kraft claim on Wikipedia that he only knows Murphy as 'Don', when he has already posted on Murphy's website (which contains Murphy's surname)?

I have no idea, but the most likely explanation would be that he didn't yet know Murphy's last name.

So he found Murphy's website, which is called 'donmurphy.net', and found the thread with posts by 'Don Murphy, administrator', and failed to realised that the 'Don' who phoned him was the same as this 'Don Murphy'. Fine.

Glad I could be of assistance.

[Peter Damian]

So he found Murphy's website, which is called 'donmurphy.net', and found the thread with posts by 'Don Murphy, administrator', and failed to realised that the 'Don' who phoned him was the same as this 'Don Murphy'. Fine.

Glad I could be of assistance.

And later, as I have already said, he posts on Wikipedia apparently not knowing Don's surname.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[ColScott]

Why does Kraft claim on Wikipedia that he only knows Murphy as 'Don', when he has already posted on Murphy's website (which contains Murphy's surname)?

I have no idea, but the most likely explanation would be that he didn't yet know Murphy's last name.

So he found Murphy's website, which is called 'donmurphy.net', and found the thread with posts by 'Don Murphy, administrator', and failed to realised that the 'Don' who phoned him was the same as this 'Don Murphy'. Fine.

I called Erik up and said my name was Don and why was he rewriting the article and trying to restart the wars. He denied being Erik and claimed he had not edited WP in three years.

In the second call he claimed he had never edited WP.

It's the same guy.

[Peter Damian]

I called Erik up and said my name was Don and why was he rewriting the article and trying to restart the wars. He denied being Erik and claimed he had not edited WP in three years.

In the second call he claimed he had never edited WP.

It's the same guy.

Right, but what article did you say it was? The 'Don Murphy' article? I don't see how you can speak for 30 minutes and not refer to it as the 'Don Murphy' article.

He denied being Erik and claimed he had not edited WP in three years.

Ah so Erik Kraft has edited Wikipedia, which explains how he knew how to write in bold, and begin section heading with ==.

But oddly he claims only just to have realised 'how to sign my name' ~~~~

:I'm grateful to you for doing this--and I've gone ahead and created a wikipedia account (erik.kraft) so that it doesn't seem like I'm trying to hide behind anonymity. Which is clearly not possible anyway. Feel free to refer to me as erik.kraft going forward. I'll be following the ANI page and will post further details as I have them. And I even just learned to sign my posts: --> [[User:Erik.kraft|Erik.kraft]] ([[User talk:Erik.kraft|talk]]) 19:06, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358061266

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[anthony]

So he found Murphy's website, which is called 'donmurphy.net', and found the thread with posts by 'Don Murphy, administrator', and failed to realised that the 'Don' who phoned him was the same as this 'Don Murphy'. Fine.

Glad I could be of assistance.

And later, as I have already said, he posts on Wikipedia apparently not knowing Don's surname.

Right. But I'm going to slightly amend what you said. You said Erik "failed to realised that the 'Don' who phoned him was the same as this 'Don Murphy'". I'm saying at this point he most likely failed to notice that there was a Don Murphy involved in that site in the first place.

The alternative is a grandiose plan where some guy named Erik led two lives. By day he was a 30-something business owner who designed websites and by night he pretended to be a 20-something grad student who obsessed over movies, and he kept the two lives meticulously separate, so the only thing tying them together until a week ago was the use of the name Erik. (Why, I wonder, would he bother using the same first name for his invented persona, I guess it made things easier.)

And then, one day, right after someone threatened him in real life, he decided to give up that meticulously created persona and reveal the place where he graduated.

I suppose that's all a possibility. I mean, Poetguy pretty much did it (minus the last sentence). But I see it as a much less likely possibility than that someone visited a website and didn't notice the URL.

Ah so Erik Kraft has edited Wikipedia, which explains how he knew how to write in bold, and begin section heading with ==.

To write in bold you type something, highlight it, and click on the "B". To begin a section heading with == you click the big huge A.

This post has been edited by anthony:

[Peter Damian]

To write in bold you type something, highlight it, and click on the "B". To begin a section heading with == you click the big huge A.

And to sign your post you look at the instruction next the save button that says 'sign your post with the four ~~~~"

But I see it as a much less likely possibility than that someone visited a website and didn't notice the URL.

How did he find the URL? And how, as I said, did he miss the fact that the person he was replying to was called 'Don Murphy, administrator' in very large letters? http://donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?p=1424848

There is another possibility: user:Erik, the IP and user:Erik.kraft are all the same person. But none of them is the actual Erik Kraft. Only Murphy would know, since he called Erik in London (not Chicago, where Kraft lives).

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[anthony]

To write in bold you type something, highlight it, and click on the "B". To begin a section heading with == you click the big huge A.

And to sign your post you look at the instruction next the save button that says 'sign your post with the four ~~~~"

Or you click on the signature thingy in the toolbar. Either way, yeah, something you easily could figure out in the time it took Erik to figure it out.

How did he find the URL?

You'll have to ask him. But I highly doubt he typed it in.

And how, as I said, did he miss the fact that the person he was replying to was called 'Don Murphy, administrator' in very large letters? http://donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?p=1424848

Again, you'll have to ask him. But it doesn't look to me like he replied to Don. He addressed his post to "everyone", and referred to Don in the third person.

[Peter Damian]

To write in bold you type something, highlight it, and click on the "B". To begin a section heading with == you click the big huge A.

And to sign your post you look at the instruction next the save button that says 'sign your post with the four ~~~~"

Or you click on the signature thingy in the toolbar. Either way, yeah, something you easily could figure out in the time it took Erik to figure it out.

So the first series of posts he is OK with the bold and the section headings (which I, a veteran Wiki user, have never noticed actually). And then later he notices how to sign his posts. It's possible I agree. But also as a veteran sock user, I am careful not to say dumb things like 'I have just realised you sign your post with four ~~~~'. I wait for someone to admonish me, or wait for the welcome message that tells you this.

[anthony]

There is another possibility: user:Erik, the IP and user:Erik.kraft are all the same person. But none of them is the actual Erik Kraft. Only Murphy would know, since he called Erik in London (not Chicago, where Kraft lives).

1) Why do you say that Kraft lives in Chicago?
1a) I thought you didn't have any beliefs.
2) How would any of them know about the phone call? Are you saying the real Kraft posted on donmurphy.net, but not to Wikipedia? (And you're throwing that out there solely to deal with the fact that the Wikipedia editor claimed to not know Don's last name?)

So the first series of posts he is OK with the bold and the section headings (which I, a veteran Wiki user, have never noticed actually). And then later he notices how to sign his posts. It's possible I agree. But also as a veteran sock user, I am careful not to say dumb things like 'I have just realised you sign your post with four ~~~~'. I wait for someone to admonish me, or wait for the welcome message that tells you this.

I guess that's more evidence that Erik Kraft is not a veteran sock user.

Seriously, you should consider the fact that you, a veteran Wiki user, have never noticed the toolbar buttons, as an indication that maybe you aren't so knowledgeable about what it's like to be a brand new user of Wikipedia (or a returning user who edited briefly 3 years ago), circa 2010.

This post has been edited by anthony:

[Peter Damian]

There is another possibility: user:Erik, the IP and user:Erik.kraft are all the same person. But none of them is the actual Erik Kraft. Only Murphy would know, since he called Erik in London (not Chicago, where Kraft lives).

1) Why do you say that Kraft lives in Chicago?
1a) I thought you didn't have any beliefs.
2) How would any of them know about the phone call? Are you saying the real Kraft posted on donmurphy.net, but not to Wikipedia?

No. I am saying that it is possible (and not saying I believe it) that all these people are the same:

1. User:Eric
2. The person Murphy called in London yesterday
3. The London IP who posted on User:Eric's talk page
4. The person who calls himself 'Erik Kraft' who posted on Murphy's forum.
5. User:Erik.kraft

Clearly 2,3,5 and 5 are the same (you can count that as a belief). Possibly 1 is the same as them also, as we are discussing. However:

6. Erik Kraft, web designer who lives in Chicago, who has Chicago phone number

may be a different person entirely. Murphy did not ring the Chicago number.

I guess that's more evidence that Erik Kraft is not a veteran sock user.

Correct. Only relatively inexperienced ones.

[edit] However, evidence against this hypothesis is that the link to Kraft's CV http://www.restlessbee.com/archived/resume, which worked yesterday, is now dead.

Blimey! Something is amiss. I recently did a redesign, so there is a chance you clicked on an out-of-date link.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[anthony]

I am saying that it is possible (and not saying I believe it)

Are you saying that you believe it is possible?

[Peter Damian]

[nvm]

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[anthony]

I am saying that it is possible (and not saying I believe it)

Are you saying that you believe it is possible?

Stop this.

No. Not until you retract the ridiculous claim that you don't believe anything.

This post has been edited by anthony:

[Peter Damian]

[never argue with Anthony]

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[anthony]

[nvm]

Too late.

I can say it is possible that p without believing that p.

Of course you can. I believe that, and you...well, I guess you claim you don't?

It is possible that there will be an earthquake in London tomorrow. But I don't believe there will be an earthquake in London tomorrow.

But do you believe that it is possible that there will be an earthquake in London tomorrow? Of course you do. The very fact that you say "X is true" implies that you believe that X is true. In this case, X just happens to have the word "possible" in it.

[never argue with Anthony]

Definitely a good idea for you, as long as you intend to cling to logically ridiculous statements after you are proven wrong.

For others, who are able to refrain from insisting upon the absurd, it's perfectly fine to argue with me.

In any case, I got what I wanted out of you: the theory that Erik Kraft, the web designer who lives in Chicago, who has Chicago phone number, is a different person from whoever answered the call at that London telephone number.

Now, how was that London telephone number obtained?

This post has been edited by anthony:

[Peter Damian]

In any case, I got what I wanted out of you: the theory that Erik Kraft, the web designer who lives in Chicago, who has Chicago phone number, is a different person from whoever answered the call at that London telephone number.

Now, how was that London telephone number obtained?

It's one of the possibilities. It is very serious for user:Erik if correct. Against it, as I have said, is the fact that Kraft's CV disappeared from his website over the last 24 hours.

I don't know how the London number was obtained. Only Murphy knows that.

[ColScott]

I called Erik up and said my name was Don and why was he rewriting the article and trying to restart the wars. He denied being Erik and claimed he had not edited WP in three years.

In the second call he claimed he had never edited WP.

It's the same guy.

Right, but what article did you say it was? The 'Don Murphy' article? I don't see how you can speak for 30 minutes and not refer to it as the 'Don Murphy' article.

He denied being Erik and claimed he had not edited WP in three years.

Ah so Erik Kraft has edited Wikipedia, which explains how he knew how to write in bold, and begin section heading with ==.

But oddly he claims only just to have realised 'how to sign my name' ~~~~

:I'm grateful to you for doing this--and I've gone ahead and created a wikipedia account (erik.kraft) so that it doesn't seem like I'm trying to hide behind anonymity. Which is clearly not possible anyway. Feel free to refer to me as erik.kraft going forward. I'll be following the ANI page and will post further details as I have them. And I even just learned to sign my posts: --> [[User:Erik.kraft|Erik.kraft]] ([[User talk:Erik.kraft|talk]]) 19:06, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358061266

I am not sure where you got the 30 minutes from
I called twice within 30 minutes both times less than 5 minutes long
I refused at any point to mention Murphy

To write in bold you type something, highlight it, and click on the "B". To begin a section heading with == you click the big huge A.

And to sign your post you look at the instruction next the save button that says 'sign your post with the four ~~~~"

But I see it as a much less likely possibility than that someone visited a website and didn't notice the URL.

How did he find the URL? And how, as I said, did he miss the fact that the person he was replying to was called 'Don Murphy, administrator' in very large letters? http://donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?p=1424848

There is another possibility: user:Erik, the IP and user:Erik.kraft are all the same person. But none of them is the actual Erik Kraft. Only Murphy would know, since he called Erik in London (not Chicago, where Kraft lives).

to clarify THIS I called his number in Chicago but it was a cell forwarded to London- it rang like a UK phone does- and he screamed he was on vacation in London

[Somey]

Definitely a good idea for you, as long as you intend to cling to logically ridiculous statements after you are proven wrong.

For others, who are able to refrain from insisting upon the absurd, it's perfectly fine to argue with me.

So tell me, did the bug that's currently up your ass about this start out small and then grow in size, or did you have to do like the "Goatse guy" to get it up in there?

I mean, for shit's sake, Anthony - could you maybe be a little more annoying? I can still sort of make sense out of this thread!

to clarify THIS I called his number in Chicago but it was a cell forwarded to London- it rang like a UK phone does- and he screamed he was on vacation in London

Well, there you go. Problem solved! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

[Peter Damian]

to clarify THIS I called his number in Chicago but it was a cell forwarded to London- it rang like a UK phone does- and he screamed he was on vacation in London

Yes I surmised that - you rang the number taken from the now dead link on Restless Bee I suppose.

I am not sure where you got the 30 minutes from
I called twice within 30 minutes both times less than 5 minutes long
I refused at any point to mention Murphy

"Don has found my phone number and I spent 30 minutes trying to explain to him that I'm not the person he has a beef with. " http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358034400

This was at 16:12. If at no point you mentioned your full name, we have to understand how with 20-30 mins the person you rang, who supposedly had no prior knowledge of any of this, discovered Don Murphy's website, and the (very concealed) thread with the outing material, without realising that Don's second name is Murphy (pace Anthony), and then following on with a series of posts in all the right places in Wikipedia. All in the space of minutes.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Jon Awbrey]

I called his number in Chicago but it was a cell forwarded to London — it rang like a UK phone does — and he screamed he was on vacation in London

Chicago Wrings Like A London Dew

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[ColScott]

to clarify THIS I called his number in Chicago but it was a cell forwarded to London- it rang like a UK phone does- and he screamed he was on vacation in London

Yes I surmised that - you rang the number taken from the now dead link on Restless Bee I suppose.

I am not sure where you got the 30 minutes from
I called twice within 30 minutes both times less than 5 minutes long
I refused at any point to mention Murphy

"Don has found my phone number and I spent 30 minutes trying to explain to him that I'm not the person he has a beef with. " http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358034400

This was at 16:12. If at no point you mentioned your full name, we have to understand how with 20-30 mins the person you rang, who supposedly had no prior knowledge of any of this, discovered Don Murphy's website, and the (very concealed) thread with the outing material, without realising that Don's second name is Murphy (pace Anthony), and then following on with a series of posts in all the right places in Wikipedia. All in the space of minutes.

At no point did I mention my full name. He tried to get it but I was not forthcoming.

He did it of course because he IS the same guy, silly.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

I'd have to agree that you were right- five years ago when this shit started. The constant barrage of madness, going from Phil Gronowski to present day, has shown me that I live in a community and one that is truly harmed by Wikipedia. The people involved are dangerously unbalanced and unloved who waste their time in service of a man whose jizzy tee shirts sell on Ebay. I am devoted to destroying it by any legal means necessary. But I take the tactical missile approach. I want to destroy the heart not the limb. I am looking for the opportunity.

I agree with you.

Sure, wait until you can sue them ... but, please, get together with other Hollywood folks and hire a PR company to run an anti-"Jimbo's Joy" publicity war.

The we dredge up here constantly will sink them if it was widely known and discussed.

Besides, think about it strategically ... it would be poking a stick in a hornets' nest which will wind them up and become sure to make a mistake faster.

This post has been edited by Cock-up-over-conspiracy:

[anthony]

to clarify THIS I called his number in Chicago but it was a cell forwarded to London- it rang like a UK phone does- and he screamed he was on vacation in London

Well, there you go. Problem solved! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

Same number on the PDF version of the resume? Is that PDF resume the same as the CV?

[ColScott]

to clarify THIS I called his number in Chicago but it was a cell forwarded to London- it rang like a UK phone does- and he screamed he was on vacation in London

Well, there you go. Problem solved! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

Same number on the PDF version of the resume? Is that PDF resume the same as the CV?

yes
yes

[anthony]

Same number on the PDF version of the resume? Is that PDF resume the same as the CV?

yes
yes

On your website, "garethparkerTF" writes: "In 2005, this graduate of the same college, Erik, according to his CV, started making Wiki edits. About the same time as Erik on Wiki did."

I don't see any mention of "wiki" on the PDF version of the resume (which has not been taken down).

This post has been edited by anthony:

[A Horse With No Name]

Love you Brandt and your work. I aspire to be you some day.

I second that emotion! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wub.gif)

All I can say is if we got the wrong ERIK
then how come the clown just fucking RETIRED

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Erik

No great loss to Wikipedia, truly. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

to clarify THIS I called his number in Chicago but it was a cell forwarded to London- it rang like a UK phone does- and he screamed he was on vacation in London

Obviously he went out in search of good pizza -- you can't find that in Chicago! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif)

[Somey]

One of us might point out that if you do a Google search on the words "erik chicago," Restless Bee doesn't appear until the bottom of Page 2 - but that's still fairly high, and more importantly, it's currently the first result in which a full name starting with "Erik" is associated with an internet-related profession (that of "web designer"). So, if I had been calling myself "Erik" on Wikipedia, and I knew that a CheckUser would geolocate me to Chicago, and I needed to quickly find someone's identity to use as an online disguise, that would be the first one to come up.

That doesn't mean they're not the same guy, though. Still, if he really is User:Erik, you'd think the "Restless Bee" guy would show a greater interest in big budget comic-book movies somewhere on the web, even if it's not necessarily on his business website.

All I can say is if we got the wrong ERIK
then how come the clown just fucking RETIRED

Well, again... putting aside the timing considerations, once he realized his little disguise gambit wasn't working quite as perfectly as he'd expected, he might well have decided it was time to disappear as that account - it's just a Wikipedia user account, after all, one with no admin rights. You know, wait three months, start over, and next time around, keep your head down and you'll probably pass your RfA with no trouble at all - then start fiddling with highly contentious BLP's.

[anthony]

One of us might point out that if you do a Google search on the words "erik chicago," Restless Bee doesn't appear until the bottom of Page 2 - but that's still fairly high, and more importantly, it's currently the first result in which a full name starting with "Erik" is associated with an internet-related profession (that of "web designer"). So, if I had been calling myself "Erik" on Wikipedia, and I knew that a CheckUser would geolocate me to Chicago, and I needed to quickly find someone's identity to use as an online disguise, that would be the first one to come up.

That doesn't mean they're not the same guy, though. Still, if he really is User:Erik, you'd think the "Restless Bee" guy would show a greater interest in big budget comic-book movies somewhere on the web, even if it's not necessarily on his business website.

The birthdate stuff mentioned by Brandt (and which I have confirmed in the user page history), as well as the comment about starting grad school when Kraft had already graduated from grad school three years prior, is hard to explain away based solely on an edit made *after* Don announces that he's going to try to out "Erik".

[thekohser]

Whew, I'm glad I'm not vested in trying to help figure this one out.

I just hope that Don Murphy litigates against some self-righteous, unaccountable Wikipediot(s).

Go for it, Don!

[anthony]

All I can say is if we got the wrong ERIK
then how come the clown just fucking RETIRED

Well, again... putting aside the timing considerations, once he realized his little disguise gambit wasn't working quite as perfectly as he'd expected, he might well have decided it was time to disappear as that account

Or even to quit altogether. I mean, he either intentionally, recklessly, or negligently caused someone else to become a victim of what most generously can be described as unwanted phone calls. Maybe he got a glimpse of how how wrong what he was doing was and decided to quit before he caused even more harm.

This post has been edited by anthony:

[Peter Damian]

The birthdate stuff mentioned by Brandt (and which I have confirmed in the user page history), as well as the comment about starting grad school when Kraft had already graduated from grad school three years prior, is hard to explain away based solely on an edit made *after* Don announces that he's going to try to out "Erik".

On the hypothesis that he was pretending to be a student, 9 years younger than in real life, he would have to consistently lie. Note that in August 2008 when he claimed to be 'busy' because of grad school, Erik Kraft had just left university of Chicago to go freelance and set up Restless Bee.

[A Horse With No Name]

Arbcom, where are thee?

Well, when we last checked in on Arbcom...

Coren: Uploading pornographic images for profit.
Roger Davies: Trying not to get caught plagiarizing articles.
Newyorkbrad: Playing poker with Shappy.
Rlvese: Teaching Boy Scouts how to tie knots and light campfires.
SirFozzie: Deciding what to have for lunch: Taco Bell or Popeye's Fried Chicken or both.
Risker: Writing an essay about how she began her nursing career during the Boer War.
Cool Hand Luke: Trying and failing to grow a beard.
Shell Kinney: Wondering how she ever got hooked up with these screwballs.

[anthony]

The birthdate stuff mentioned by Brandt (and which I have confirmed in the user page history), as well as the comment about starting grad school when Kraft had already graduated from grad school three years prior, is hard to explain away based solely on an edit made *after* Don announces that he's going to try to out "Erik".

On the hypothesis that he was pretending to be a student, 9 years younger than in real life, he would have to consistently lie.

Unless the resume is a lie... But Brandt says he confirms the (older) age for Kraft.

[Daniel Brandt]

I'm still convinced that Erik Kraft in Chicago (on vacation in London) is not the same as User:Erik.

Even apart from the evidence that they are different people, I also think that Murphy's insistence that they are the same is a poor strategy that will get him nowhere. He should confess that maybe he is wrong, and that he needs checkuser evidence to settle the issue.

You cannot as easily encourage Mike Godwin and the Foundation to cough up checkuser data if you are constantly claiming that Erik Kraft is the guy you want. We have complete dox on Mr. Kraft already. All Godwin has to say is, "Well, Mr. Murphy, you say that you know who he is, so it's not our problem. Request denied."

[ColScott]

I'm still convinced that Erik Kraft in Chicago (on vacation in London) is not the same as User:Erik.

Even apart from the evidence that they are different people, I also think that Murphy's insistence that they are the same is a poor strategy that will get him nowhere. He should confess that maybe he is wrong, and that he needs checkuser evidence to settle the issue.

You cannot as easily encourage Mike Godwin and the Foundation to cough up checkuser data if you are constantly claiming that Erik Kraft is the guy you want. We have complete dox on Mr. Kraft already. All Godwin has to say is, "Well, Mr. Murphy, you say that you know who he is, so it's not our problem. Request denied."

True

[EricBarbour]

Even apart from the evidence that they are different people, I also think that Murphy's insistence that they are the same is a poor strategy that will get him nowhere. He should confess that maybe he is wrong, and that he needs checkuser evidence to settle the issue.

Agreed. And he should do it publicly, to insure that Godwin can't skate around it.

[ColScott]

http://www.bodub.com/search.htm

[Daniel Brandt]

http://www.bodub.com/search.htm

I don't think he spends a lot of time researching movies based on comic-book heros, and stuffing the results into Wikipedia in the form of many thousands of edits over the last three years.

[dogbiscuit]

http://www.bodub.com/search.htm

Must remember not to bother with a Masters Degree to advance my career.

[Daniel Brandt]

One of us might point out that if you do a Google search on the words "erik chicago," Restless Bee doesn't appear until the bottom of Page 2 - but that's still fairly high, and more importantly, it's currently the first result in which a full name starting with "Erik" is associated with an internet-related profession (that of "web designer"). So, if I had been calling myself "Erik" on Wikipedia, and I knew that a CheckUser would geolocate me to Chicago, and I needed to quickly find someone's identity to use as an online disguise, that would be the first one to come up.

Yes, a strong circumstantial case can be made that Murphy was the victim of a setup engineered by User:Erik, and that Erik Kraft was unanticipated collateral damage. It's even possible that User:Erik noticed long ago that Mr. Kraft was a convenient "Erik" located in Chicago. When Murphy issued orders to "Find Erik" he remembered this, and threw up that one-liner on his user page — either because he panicked and was incredibly stupid, or because this was his devious plan from the beginning.

The evidence is strong enough to allow Murphy to get checkuser data from the Foundation. It may even be strong enough to get a judge to tell an ISP to cough up the account name, although that might take a year or more.

I could be wrong. If User:Erik really is from Chicago and a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and if he proves this by coughing up his own confirmable dox online, then I can give him the benefit of doubt by assuming that he was trying to be helpful.

But somehow I don't think User:Erik will be volunteering this information...

One of Murphy's helpers should extract certain keywords from User:Erik's edit history, and then throw the ID numbers in each of those lines into a script, and download them all. This stuff has a way of getting oversighted.

[Peter Damian]

http://www.bodub.com/search.htm

I don't think he spends a lot of time researching movies based on comic-book heros, and stuffing the results into Wikipedia in the form of many thousands of edits over the last three years.

Well perhaps Mr Kraft likes to keep his obsessions in different compartments. There is nothing in his CV about films or videos, but this

http://vimeo.com/user929513

is an account he maintains about his interest in video, and here

http://fallingandlaughing.com

is a whole website devoted to his musings about film and literature and poetry and so on. If you doubt this, click on the box 'Author' where there is birthdate, name and link to 'Restless Bee'.

The site reveals an obsessive interest in the films of Werner Herzog (which user:Erik has also edited about). Also an obsessive interest in Wikipedia. "For some weeks now, I have been obsessed with the wikipedia entry on “In the Air Tonight”, a well-known composition by Sir Philip Collins. There is much to treasure in this article ... sometimes the only way you can exorcise your obsession with a wikipedia article is to add an apocryphal critical quotation to it.

And behold the edits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...ns/24.11.231.53 (from a Chicago comcast IP - Kraft is a Comcast customer http://fallingandlaughing.com/post/1797520...e-in-miserable).

I don't know why he should use an IP and not the user:Erik account. Perhaps because, as I say, he likes to keep his obsessions in different compartments. Why after all did Kraft tell Murphy that he hadn't edited Wikipedia in three years, when he clearly has edited as recently as November last year (2009)?

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[carbuncle]

The site reveals an obsessive interest in the films of Werner Herzog (which user:Erik has also edited about). Also an obsessive interest in Wikipedia. "For some weeks now, I have been obsessed with the wikipedia entry on “In the Air Tonight”, a well-known composition by Sir Philip Collins. There is much to treasure in this article ... sometimes the only way you can exorcise your obsession with a wikipedia article is to add an apocryphal critical quotation to it.

And behold the edits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...ns/24.11.231.53 (from a Chicago comcast IP - Kraft is a Comcast customer http://fallingandlaughing.com/post/1797520...e-in-miserable).

I don't know why he should use an IP and not the user:Erik account. Perhaps because, as I say, he likes to keep his obsessions in different compartments. Why after all did Kraft tell Murphy that he hadn't edited Wikipedia in three years, when he clearly has edited as recently as November last year (2009)?

This thread finally got annoying enough for me to look at User:Erik. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out the real name of this person and confirm that they are not Erik Kraft. I cannot explain why they chose to add it to their userpage in the midst of the dispute, but they do appear to have attended Indiana Illinois University, so their intention was not to frame Erik Kraft.

Peter Damian, you are quite obviously grasping at straws. Most of your evidence is merely coincidence. I don't think it matters to Murphy so long as he has someone to focus his anger on.

[I originally wrote Indiana University, but meant Illinois University. Sorry for the confusion that may have caused. - carbuncle]

This post has been edited by carbuncle:

[Peter Damian]

This thread finally got annoying enough for me to look at User:Erik. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out the real name of this person and confirm that they are not Erik Kraft. I cannot explain why they chose to add it to their userpage in the midst of the dispute, but they do appear to have attended Indiana University, so their intention was not to frame Erik Kraft.

Peter Damian, you are quite obviously grasping at straws. Most of your evidence is merely coincidence. I don't think it matters to Murphy so long as he has someone to focus his anger on.

Well if they are not shouldn't someone make that clear? I am too stupid to find the evidence that they are not the same. And I cannot understand the odd coincidences. Particularly the coincidence that Erik Kraft manages to locate the epicentre of the dispute within minutes of hearing about it from Don Murphy, and without being told Murphy's surname.

The thing only matters to me a puzzle. You know, I like detective stories, mysteries, all that kind of stuff. If there is absolute and irrefrageable proof that they are not identical, then we have to write off all the other stuff as mere difficult-to-explain coincidence. Otherwise not.

I too find it hard to explain the difference in content and interest between Kraft, and user:Erik.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[carbuncle]

Well if they are not shouldn't someone make that clear? I am too stupid to find the evidence that they are not the same. And I cannot understand the odd coincidences. Particularly the coincidence that Erik Kraft manages to locate the epicentre of the dispute within minutes of hearing about it from Don Murphy, and without being told Murphy's surname.

The thing only matters to me a puzzle. You know, I like detective stories, mysteries, all that kind of stuff. If there is absolute and irrefrageable proof that they are not identical, then we have to write off all the other stuff as mere difficult-to-explain coincidence. Otherwise not.

I too find it hard to explain the difference in content and interest between Kraft, and user:Erik.

I'm sure it's not stupidity that has prevented you from finding user:Erik's name. I cannot explain the actions of Erik Kraft, but I don't particularly feel the need to try, since I am certain that the person Murphy spoke to is not the same person as user:Erik.

It's completely up to you whether or not you believe me, but I am not attempting to mislead you or Murphy here, just stating what I believe to be true.

[ColScott]

Well if they are not shouldn't someone make that clear? I am too stupid to find the evidence that they are not the same. And I cannot understand the odd coincidences. Particularly the coincidence that Erik Kraft manages to locate the epicentre of the dispute within minutes of hearing about it from Don Murphy, and without being told Murphy's surname.

The thing only matters to me a puzzle. You know, I like detective stories, mysteries, all that kind of stuff. If there is absolute and irrefrageable proof that they are not identical, then we have to write off all the other stuff as mere difficult-to-explain coincidence. Otherwise not.

I too find it hard to explain the difference in content and interest between Kraft, and user:Erik.

I'm sure it's not stupidity that has prevented you from finding user:Erik's name. I cannot explain the actions of Erik Kraft, but I don't particularly feel the need to try, since I am certain that the person Murphy spoke to is not the same person as user:Erik.

It's completely up to you whether or not you believe me, but I am not attempting to mislead you or Murphy here, just stating what I believe to be true.

Well here is the thing- all you cultists screamed and cried that an "innocent" was being harassed. Now if Kraft is the wrong guy he is going to have some hefty legal defense bills. Or you could PM me the right guy with back up information and then only the right guy gets the summons. IF you know, and I doubt it, then share. I won't name you. But prove it or stfu.

[Lar]

Well here is the thing- all you cultists screamed and cried that an "innocent" was being harassed. Now if Kraft is the wrong guy he is going to have some hefty legal defense bills. Or you could PM me the right guy with back up information and then only the right guy gets the summons. IF you know, and I doubt it, then share. I won't name you. But prove it or stfu.

"If you don't help me, this innocent guy gets hurt."

Got it.

[carbuncle]

Well here is the thing- all you cultists screamed and cried that an "innocent" was being harassed. Now if Kraft is the wrong guy he is going to have some hefty legal defense bills. Or you could PM me the right guy with back up information and then only the right guy gets the summons. IF you know, and I doubt it, then share. I won't name you. But prove it or stfu.

You don't really think I'm going to help you harass someone, do you? And you don't think that I believe you're launching any kind of legal action against Erik Kraft, do you?

[ColScott]

Well here is the thing- all you cultists screamed and cried that an "innocent" was being harassed. Now if Kraft is the wrong guy he is going to have some hefty legal defense bills. Or you could PM me the right guy with back up information and then only the right guy gets the summons. IF you know, and I doubt it, then share. I won't name you. But prove it or stfu.

You don't really think I'm going to help you harass someone, do you? And you don't think that I believe you're launching any kind of legal action against Erik Kraft, do you?

I have never harassed a person in my life. I hope you aren't falsely accusing me of a crime. That in and of itself is actionable.


I didn't expect you to tell me, because you made it up.

I don't believe Erik Kraft is innocent. He's a cultist and a liar. Let God sort you all out!

[carbuncle]

I have never harassed a person in my life. I hope you aren't falsely accusing me of a crime. That in and of itself is actionable.


I didn't expect you to tell me, because you made it up.

I don't believe Erik Kraft is innocent. He's a cultist and a liar. Let God sort you all out!

Aren't you harassing Erik Kraft right now?

[Peter Damian]

I have never harassed a person in my life. I hope you aren't falsely accusing me of a crime. That in and of itself is actionable.


I didn't expect you to tell me, because you made it up.

I don't believe Erik Kraft is innocent. He's a cultist and a liar. Let God sort you all out!

Aren't you harassing Erik Kraft right now?

Not wishing to defend Murphy's actions (phoning some guy on holiday out of the blue, when he has a hangover) but Kraft has not made things easy. He told Murphy that he had not edited Wikipedia for 3 years, when he clearly edits Wikipedia and when there is demonstrable evidence of his having edited it a few months ago. And then he registers as user:Erik.kraft and pretends to be a completely new user, which he clearly isn't ("I have just learned to sign my name"). So it is very fishy. Why do this if there is nothing whatever to hide?

[Zoloft]

Not wishing to defend Murphy's actions (phoning some guy on holiday out of the blue, when he has a hangover) but Kraft has not made things easy. He told Murphy that he had not edited Wikipedia for 3 years, when he clearly edits Wikipedia and when there is demonstrable evidence of his having edited it a few months ago. And then he registers as user:Erik.kraft and pretends to be a completely new user, which he clearly isn't ("I have just learned to sign my name"). So it is very fishy. Why do this if there is nothing whatever to hide?

Because people are crazy.

[Peter Damian]

Not wishing to defend Murphy's actions (phoning some guy on holiday out of the blue, when he has a hangover) but Kraft has not made things easy. He told Murphy that he had not edited Wikipedia for 3 years, when he clearly edits Wikipedia and when there is demonstrable evidence of his having edited it a few months ago. And then he registers as user:Erik.kraft and pretends to be a completely new user, which he clearly isn't ("I have just learned to sign my name"). So it is very fishy. Why do this if there is nothing whatever to hide?

Because people are crazy.

Well yes but mostly they behave in predictable ways. Let's suppose someone phones me out of the blue about something in Myspace. I know nothing about Myspace, and so I know that nothing could possibly come of this. So I would tell that person to f--- off and ignore it completely. Would I go onto Myspace and look for different accounts and try to make sense of any of it? No.

Look what Kraft says on ANI below. That sounds to me like a dyed-in-the-wool cultist to me.

Oh man Erik, I really appreciate it. This has been such a bizarre and scary episode, but it's good to know that the decent people here seem to far outnumber the trolls. It's truly unbelievable to go through this guy's message board and see how he sics his anonymous thugs on people for the slightest perceived offenses. [[User:Erik.kraft|Erik.kraft]] ([[User talk:Erik.kraft|talk]]) 19:09, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358061655

[edit] Note Kraft has just posted again on user:Erik's page. Protesting too much? It sort of looks as though user:Erik is trying to cover up his embarrassment about the talk of 'outed'.

After dealing with harassment from Don Murphy and his goons for the past two days, I can appreciate why wikipedia user Erik would want nothing further to do with this mess. At the same time, I really wish he would have clarified why he talked about being "outed" both here and on the admin thread--all that did was wave a red flag in the face of Don and his goons and make them think they had found the right target in me, Erik Kraft, a third party who had nothing to do with any of this until receiving a call from Don Murphy Saturday. No one was outed except for me, and I'm the one who's had to deal with extremely scary real-life repercussions. [[User:Erik.kraft|Erik.kraft]] ([[User talk:Erik.kraft|talk]]) 13:49, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358406055

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[ColScott]

I have never harassed a person in my life. I hope you aren't falsely accusing me of a crime. That in and of itself is actionable.


I didn't expect you to tell me, because you made it up.

I don't believe Erik Kraft is innocent. He's a cultist and a liar. Let God sort you all out!

Aren't you harassing Erik Kraft right now?

No. Filing suit against a cultist is not harassment. To what do you refer?

[Theanima]

This thread finally got annoying enough for me to look at User:Erik. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out the real name of this person and confirm that they are not Erik Kraft. I cannot explain why they chose to add it to their userpage in the midst of the dispute, but they do appear to have attended Indiana University, so their intention was not to frame Erik Kraft.

Peter Damian, you are quite obviously grasping at straws. Most of your evidence is merely coincidence. I don't think it matters to Murphy so long as he has someone to focus his anger on.

Yes, I too. I found it in less time than that, maybe 2 minutes? I didn't bother to research the name any further, but I'll take your word for it that he attended Indiana University.

This obsession with Erik Kraft, who is obviously not the right guy, is becoming harassment.

[thekohser]

And behold the edits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...ns/24.11.231.53 (from a Chicago comcast IP - Kraft is a Comcast customer http://fallingandlaughing.com/post/1797520...e-in-miserable).

Thank you for your business, Mr. Kraft. We'll be happy to divulge your other IP access points, as per legal thresholds for disclosure.

[Peter Damian]

This obsession with Erik Kraft, who is obviously not the right guy, is becoming harassment.

Well posting here that user:Erik's real name can be found in 2 minutes is surely harassment of user:Erik, since Murphy's minions will surely find out some time (perhaps more than 2 minutes).

I can see nothing on user:Erik's page or its history or any of his edits that suggest a full real name. I think you and Carbuncle are making this up, sorry.

[Daniel Brandt]

This thread finally got annoying enough for me to look at User:Erik. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out the real name of this person and confirm that they are not Erik Kraft. I cannot explain why they chose to add it to their userpage in the midst of the dispute, but they do appear to have attended Indiana University, so their intention was not to frame Erik Kraft.

I hope this was a typo.

User:Erik said on April 23, "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign."

There may be a film buff who graduated from Indiana University, but as far as I know, you are the first to claim that Indiana University is associated with User:Erik.

Is this a typo, and you went googling for erik+indiana? Or is there some page where Erik mentions Indiana that I missed? Please, I'd like a URL.

[Peter Damian]

This thread finally got annoying enough for me to look at User:Erik. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out the real name of this person and confirm that they are not Erik Kraft. I cannot explain why they chose to add it to their userpage in the midst of the dispute, but they do appear to have attended Indiana University, so their intention was not to frame Erik Kraft.

I hope this was a typo.

User:Erik said on April 23, "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign."

There may be a film buff who graduated from Indiana University, but as far as I know, you are the first to claim that Indiana University is associated with User:Erik.

Is this a typo, and you went googling for erik+indiana? Or is there some page where Erik mentions Indiana that I missed? Please, I'd like a URL.

Good spot. The 'Indiana' bit had me puzzled too.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Theanima]

This obsession with Erik Kraft, who is obviously not the right guy, is becoming harassment.

Well posting here that user:Erik's real name can be found in 2 minutes is surely harassment of user:Erik, since Murphy's minions will surely find out some time (perhaps more than 2 minutes).

I can see nothing on user:Erik's page or its history or any of his edits that suggest a full real name. I think you and Carbuncle are making this up, sorry.

Nonsense. Saying something can be done doesn't mean it will be. I haven't said how I did it, have I?

It's clear you're not looking in the right places, but I won't say any more than that because I don't want Murphy and his gang finding it (despite being easy enough for a 12-year-old to find).

[thekohser]

I think it's fishy when multiple people say "I know who the REAL User:Erik is in real life, and it was really quick to discover, but neener-neener, I'm not going to tell you." It's not only fishy, it's annoying.

This post has been edited by thekohser:

[Theanima]

I think it's fishy when multiple people say "I know who the REAL User:Erik is in real life, and it was really quick to discover, but neener-neerer, I'm not going to tell you." It's not only fishy, it's annoying.

The only reason I'm saying it is to try to end the obsession with Erik Kraft, who has nothing to do with this. I don't want to engage further in what game ColScott is playing though, which is why I'm not going to divulge the name I found.

[Peter Damian]

The only reason I'm saying it is to try to end the obsession with Erik Kraft, who has nothing to do with this. I don't want to engage further in what game ColScott is playing though, which is why I'm not going to divulge the name I found.

Oh come on. From user:Erik's talk page.

I hope that's not your real address that they pulled up on the website. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unhappy.gif) SilverserenC 07:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, they're in the process of outing me. Hopefully they won't harass my fiancee... Erik (talk | contribs) 10:12, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Erik Kraft here again. Sorry for not following the reply conventions, but I'm not a wikipedia editor and I feel this is rather urgent. Erik, can you clarify what you meant by "process of outing you." Because Don and his people seem to be taking this as evidence that I, Erik Kraft, am the person they are mad at. Don has posted my personal information, including address and phone number, on his forum on his personal site and I'm extremely disturbed. Thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Eri...regarding_image

SilverserenC says they hope it's not the real address (i.e. the Chicago). user:Erik replies 'yes, they're in the process of outing me'. I can't read that in any other way except as an admission of outing, and that the address (Kraft's) is correct.

Later, user:Erik regrets having admitted the outing, and so creates an account in his real name, and replies to himself (note that the 'Erik kraft' post was made somewhat later). 'Sorry for not following the reply conventions, but I'm not a wikipedia editor' is a complete fabrication, as I have demonstrated.

I don't want to engage further in what game ColScott is playing though, which is why I'm not going to divulge the name I found.

It is you that are playing games. Pointless games.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Theanima]

Fine don't believe me.

And to think, all this comes from someone not liking a pic in their bio. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/angry.gif)

[ColScott]

Fine don't believe me.

And to think, all this comes from someone not liking a pic in their bio. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/angry.gif)

No dickless
This comes from having a bio kept at all
This comes from having an illegal website allow children to write about me
This comes from a societal need to see WP destroyed and your type jailed
This all comes from much deeper shit than your feeble mind can grasp.

Stop doing evil and trying to mislead.

[Zoloft]

Fine don't believe me.

And to think, all this comes from someone not liking a pic in their bio. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/angry.gif)

A pic they claim is one they had taken on purpose.

Which isn't even on the bio any more.

A point I feel I must raise.

ColScott, is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

You've been tossing around that term a lot to anyone here who disputes you.

I just want a yes or no answer to that question.

Is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

[Theanima]

Fine don't believe me.

And to think, all this comes from someone not liking a pic in their bio. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/angry.gif)

No dickless
This comes from having a bio kept at all
This comes from having an illegal website allow children to write about me
This comes from a societal need to see WP destroyed and your type jailed
This all comes from much deeper shit than your feeble mind can grasp.

Stop doing evil and trying to mislead.

Oh, I didn't know you were a poet.

With regards to your comments, I was unaware Wikipedia was an "illegal website". Perhaps you could explain what crime(s) it is committing? In nine years, has anyone successfully managed to win a case against it? No?

I know you don't like your bio, but as a film producer it's ridiculous to say that you should not be included in an encyclopedia. Did you seriously go into the business you're in and not expect anyone to write about you? You're nothing like Daniel Brandt, for example, who apart from a few interviews, keeps out of the limelight.

I wonder what I could possibly be jailed for. For daring to disagree with the one and only Don Murphy?

I think you and I have different definitions of evil. For me, stalking and harassing innocent members of the public comes much closer to that, than "having disagreements on a minor webforum".

[carbuncle]

This thread finally got annoying enough for me to look at User:Erik. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out the real name of this person and confirm that they are not Erik Kraft. I cannot explain why they chose to add it to their userpage in the midst of the dispute, but they do appear to have attended Indiana University, so their intention was not to frame Erik Kraft.

I hope this was a typo.

User:Erik said on April 23, "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign."

There may be a film buff who graduated from Indiana University, but as far as I know, you are the first to claim that Indiana University is associated with User:Erik.

Is this a typo, and you went googling for erik+indiana? Or is there some page where Erik mentions Indiana that I missed? Please, I'd like a URL.

Sorry, that was a typo! It is Illinois, not Indiana, that I meant. I'll add a note to my original post.

[Milton Roe]

With regards to your comments, I was unaware Wikipedia was an "illegal website". Perhaps you could explain what crime(s) it is committing? In nine years, has anyone successfully managed to win a case against it? No?

It isn't illegal, just immoral. Sort of like US slavery in 1858, just after Dred Scott. Its time will come when enough people realize that what goes around, tends to come around.

[Theanima]

With regards to your comments, I was unaware Wikipedia was an "illegal website". Perhaps you could explain what crime(s) it is committing? In nine years, has anyone successfully managed to win a case against it? No?

It isn't illegal, just immoral. Sort of like US slavery in 1858, just after Dred Scott. Its time will come when enough people realize that what goes around, tends to come around.

That's questionable too, but a more appropriate choice of word perhaps.

[Daniel Brandt]

I commend Peter Damian for his research. His discovery of this page (click "author" on top) confirms that Erik Kraft is 33 years old. I had already confirmed this two days ago, and said then that it was solid. Now you can take it to the bank (oops, that expression is sort of outdated these days).

Peter also found another picture of Kraft. Together with Eric Barbour's discovery we're now able to count the freckles on Mr. Kraft's face. All we lack now is a big right-profile shot.

I differ with Peter when he says that User:Erik's curious complaints about getting outed suggest that the two Eriks are the same person. I look at this same evidence, and I suspect that User:Erik is trying to throw researchers off the track. I believe that Erik Kraft is innocent, and while User:Erik knows this, he is all too willing to toss Kraft to the wolves because it diverts attention from User:Erik's real identity. Once Kraft began responding online, User:Erik sort of went into a mode where he teamed up with Kraft a bit, along the lines of, "We're both getting slammed by Murphy, poor us!"

I don't mind disagreeing with anyone who is doing good research and sharing what they find. But I get upset when people claim they know this or that in some sort of troll offensive, without sharing any research.

By the way, Peter, this was rather hasty on your part:

Today he would be 24 years old. Moreover, that same page says that he was born in Chicago, but there isn't any evidence I've seen that he lives in Chicago.

No they are the same age (33). User:Erik was lying about his age, obviously.

You are just plain wrong here, Peter. It is not at all obvious that he was lying about his age in 2006. If he was lying, it certainly isn't obvious to me.

I fear that this thread is about to be overtaken by trolls who don't do research. While I think that Peter is drawing the wrong conclusions from some evidence, at least he's looking at evidence.

[ColScott]

Fine don't believe me.

And to think, all this comes from someone not liking a pic in their bio. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/angry.gif)

A pic they claim is one they had taken on purpose.

Which isn't even on the bio any more.

A point I feel I must raise.

ColScott, is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

You've been tossing around that term a lot to anyone here who disputes you.

I just want a yes or no answer to that question.

Is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

Yes

Fine don't believe me.

And to think, all this comes from someone not liking a pic in their bio. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/angry.gif)

No dickless
This comes from having a bio kept at all
This comes from having an illegal website allow children to write about me
This comes from a societal need to see WP destroyed and your type jailed
This all comes from much deeper shit than your feeble mind can grasp.

Stop doing evil and trying to mislead.

Oh, I didn't know you were a poet.

With regards to your comments, I was unaware Wikipedia was an "illegal website". Perhaps you could explain what crime(s) it is committing? In nine years, has anyone successfully managed to win a case against it? No?

I know you don't like your bio, but as a film producer it's ridiculous to say that you should not be included in an encyclopedia. Did you seriously go into the business you're in and not expect anyone to write about you? You're nothing like Daniel Brandt, for example, who apart from a few interviews, keeps out of the limelight.

I wonder what I could possibly be jailed for. For daring to disagree with the one and only Don Murphy?

I think you and I have different definitions of evil. For me, stalking and harassing innocent members of the public comes much closer to that, than "having disagreements on a minor webforum".

I am ignoring you from now on dipshit. Keep accusing me of actual crimes and see where you end up.

[thekohser]

Is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

Yes

Don, I would appreciate an exemption for those of us who (for the most part) edit Wikipedia in order to draw public shame to its key governors, and to secretly manipulate content at the paid request of our clients.

For heaven's sake, I'm not a Wikipedia cultist, but I've got hundreds of edits and at least a half-dozen accounts.

[Peter Damian]

You are just plain wrong here, Peter. It is not at all obvious that he was lying about his age in 2006. If he was lying, it certainly isn't obvious to me.

I fear that this thread is about to be overtaken by trolls who don't do research. While I think that Peter is drawing the wrong conclusions from some evidence, at least he's looking at evidence.

You are quite right. I was being hasty. You are also right that all that matters is the evidence and the research that gives us that evidence, gathered in an impartial way and without prejudice. All my experience confirms that, whatever the outcome of searching for the truth may be, it is always a better outcome than trying to avoid the truth, or cover it up.

[Theanima]

I differ with Peter when he says that User:Erik's curious complaints about getting outed suggest that the two Eriks are the same person. I look at this same evidence, and I suspect that User:Erik is trying to throw researchers off the track. I believe that Erik Kraft is innocent, and while User:Erik knows this, he is all too willing to toss Kraft to the wolves because it diverts attention from User:Erik's real identity. Once Kraft began responding online, User:Erik sort of went into a mode where he teamed up with Kraft a bit, along the lines of, "We're both getting slammed by Murphy, poor us!"

I don't mind disagreeing with anyone who is doing good research and sharing what they find. But I get upset when people claim they know this or that in some sort of troll offensive, without sharing any research.

I am glad we have established that they are not the same person. I am glad someone with some sense has managed to come to the same conclusion I have.

I am sorry it upsets you when people claim they know this or that in some sort of troll offensive, without sharing any research, but I don't like where this is going at all. I have a feeling that User:Erik, who has left Wikipedia, will now be outed on Hivemind, which I really do not want to happen so I can't exactly release anything because of that feeling.

[ColScott]

Is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

Yes

Don, I would appreciate an exemption for those of us who (for the most part) edit Wikipedia in order to draw public shame to its key governors, and to secretly manipulate content at the paid request of our clients.

For heaven's sake, I'm not a Wikipedia cultist, but I've got hundreds of edits and at least a half-dozen accounts.

Then you are a revolutionary working against the cult from within

[Peter Damian]

I am glad we have established that they are not the same person.

We have not established that they are not the same person, nor have we established that they are. To 'establish' p is to give conclusive or demonstrative evidence that p. To simply assert that p without telling how it is you know that p, is not to establish anything. It is simply to assert something.

Nothing is 'established' either way, until conclusive evidence is given.

[To Greg] Then you are a revolutionary working against the cult from within

And nothing wrong with that.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[ColScott]

I am glad we have established that they are not the same person.

We have not established that they are not the same person, nor have we established that they are. To 'establish' p is to give conclusive or demonstrative evidence that p. To simply assert that p without telling how it is you know that p, is not to establish anything. It is simply to assert something.

Nothing is 'established' either way, until conclusive evidence is given.

[To Greg] Then you are a revolutionary working against the cult from within

And nothing wrong with that.

one should just follow human nature
why would User Erik retire so quickly and mysteriously? because he was Erik Kraft

[Theanima]

why would User Erik retire so quickly and mysteriously? because he was Erik Kraft

Or, the more likely explanation, is that he is afraid of you and your gang finding him, and afraid for his fiancée.

[Peter Damian]

one should just follow human nature
why would User Erik retire so quickly and mysteriously? because he was Erik Kraft

And why did 'Erik kraft' not press 'user:Erik' harder on why he claimed to be living at the Chicago address. We have firm evidence 'Erik kraft' spotted this fact. If they were two separate people, Kraft should be extremely angry that 'user:Erik' has claimed to live there, and would blame him for bringing down the wrath of Murphy upon him. But 'Erik kraft' is mildly asking, without any sign of anger, why 'user:Erik' claims to have been outed, and merely making the counterclaim that it is he who has been outed. And on the other side, 'user:Erik' has given no explanation - though he had the opportunity - to explain why he made the claim about outing, and claiming to live at Kraft's address in Chicago.

The best hypothesis is that they are the same person. The next best is that they are different, and that 'user:Erik' despicably pointed Murphy in the wrong direction.

why would User Erik retire so quickly and mysteriously? because he was Erik Kraft

Or, the more likely explanation, is that he is afraid of you and your gang finding him, and afraid for his fiancée.

But not afraid for Erik.kraft, whom he has not helped in the slightest by retiring (if the non-identity theory is correct). If the identity theory is correct, Murphy knows who he is already, and retiring will not help.

[carbuncle]

And why did 'Erik kraft' not press 'user:Erik' harder on why he claimed to be living at the Chicago address. We have firm evidence 'Erik kraft' spotted this fact. If they were two separate people, Kraft should be extremely angry that 'user:Erik' has claimed to live there, and would blame him for bringing down the wrath of Murphy upon him. But 'Erik kraft' is mildly asking, without any sign of anger, why 'user:Erik' claims to have been outed, and merely making the counterclaim that it is he who has been outed. And on the other side, 'user:Erik' has given no explanation - though he had the opportunity - to explain why he made the claim about outing, and claiming to live at Kraft's address in Chicago.

The best hypothesis is that they are the same person. The next best is that they are different, and that 'user:Erik' despicably pointed Murphy in the wrong direction.

Peter, are you taking this exchange to mean that User:Erik is claiming to live at the address posted on Murphy's site?

I hope that's not your real address that they pulled up on the website. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unhappy.gif) SilverserenC 07:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, they're in the process of outing me. Hopefully they won't harass my fiancee... Erik (talk | contribs) 10:12, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Consider this: User:Erik knows that Murphy's fanboys are attempting to out him ("in the process of") but have not yet done so (because they have the wrong guy). He's not saying "Yeah, that is my address", he's saying "Yeah, I'm going to get outed".

This post has been edited by carbuncle:

[Theanima]

Peter, are you taking this exchange to mean that User:Erik is claiming to live at the address posted on Murphy's site?

I hope that's not your real address that they pulled up on the website. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unhappy.gif) SilverserenC 07:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, they're in the process of outing me. Hopefully they won't harass my fiancee... Erik (talk | contribs) 10:12, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Consider this: User:Erik knows that Murphy's fanboys are attempting to out him ("in the process of") but have not yet done so (because they have the wrong guy). He's not saying "Yeah, that is my address", he's saying "Yeah, I'm going to get outed".

That's how I see it. At no point does he say anything like "Yes, he has my details, that's me."

[Peter Damian]

I hope that's not your real address that they pulled up on the website. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unhappy.gif) SilverserenC 07:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, they're in the process of outing me. Hopefully they won't harass my fiancee... Erik (talk | contribs) 10:12, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Consider this: User:Erik knows that Murphy's fanboys are attempting to out him ("in the process of") but have not yet done so (because they have the wrong guy). He's not saying "Yeah, that is my address", he's saying "Yeah, I'm going to get outed".

I did consider it. It is a possibility. But why did he not immediately deny that the address and number were his? Why did he not immediately say 'they've got the wrong guy'? And why did he use the word 'process'? If Kraft was really not him, it would be 'blind alley', not 'process'.

On the identity hypothesis, by contrast, he unguardedly admitted the truth, and only later realised the incriminating nature of this, thus logged in as 'Erik.kraft' and confronted himself.

That's how I see it. At no point does he say anything like "Yes, he has my details, that's me."

But he implies it. He uses the word 'process', implying a progression towards successful identifyication. And, despite the fact that, on your hypothesis, a completely innocent person has been targeted, he in no way attempts to correct this.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Moulton]

I was unaware Wikipedia was an "illegal website". Perhaps you could explain what crime(s) it is committing?

I'd say it's a fraudulent website, although I dunno if the fraud is of a civil variety or a criminal variety.

[Peter Damian]

And why aren't WMF helping user:Erik in any way? Erik Kraft was in London, editing from a London IP. At exactly the same time, user:Erik was editing, supposedly in Chicago, from presumably a different IP. Without revealing user:Erik's identity, someone from Wikipedia could at least make a statement that the IP's were different.

I suppose they would argue that (from past experience) no one would believe them. Fair enough.

[A Horse With No Name]

Or, the more likely explanation, is that he is afraid of you and your gang finding him, and afraid for his fiancée.

Oh, no...not another one who is pretending to be afraid that people who have absolutely nothing to do with the mess are going to be sucked into the maelstrom. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hrmph.gif)

I am confused and I am not hunting about the mothership for clues, so let me be so bold as to ask: if User:Erik is not Erik Kraft, who the hell is he? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unsure.gif)

[Theanima]

That's how I see it. At no point does he say anything like "Yes, he has my details, that's me."

But he implies it. He uses the word 'process', implying a progression towards successful identifyication. And, despite the fact that, on your hypothesis, a completely innocent person has been targeted, he in no way attempts to correct this.

I know, and I'm not saying he's right.

And why aren't WMF helping user:Erik in any way? Erik Kraft was in London, editing from a London IP. At exactly the same time, user:Erik was editing, supposedly in Chicago, from presumably a different IP. Without revealing user:Erik's identity, someone from Wikipedia could at least make a statement that the IP's were different.

I suppose they would argue that (from past experience) no one would believe them. Fair enough.

Has anyone even asked for a check to be carried out?

Or, the more likely explanation, is that he is afraid of you and your gang finding him, and afraid for his fiancée.

Oh, no...not another one who is pretending to be afraid that people who have absolutely nothing to do with the mess are going to be sucked into the maelstrom. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hrmph.gif)

I am confused and I am not hunting about the mothership for clues, so let me be so bold as to ask: if User:Erik is not Erik Kraft, who the hell is he? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unsure.gif)

It's all on the wiki, if you want answers. He'll be found out eventually, but I'd rather not assist in that.

[Peter Damian]

It's all on the wiki, if you want answers. He'll be found out eventually, but I'd rather not assist in that.

Where on the wiki? And how do you explain this

People at the website referenced in the Wikipedia article have seen fit to harass me, so I am removing the website as a reference and an external link per [[WP:BLP#Using the subject as a self-published source]]. The website is of ill repute, and there is no reason to provide access to a website that is the source of off-wiki harassment of Wikipedia editors. [[User:Erik|Erik]] ([[User talk:Erik|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Erik|contribs]]) 10:24, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=357992099

If he is referring to Murphy's forum, and if he is different from Kraft, he has not been harassed at all.

It's all on the wiki, if you want answers. He'll be found out eventually, but I'd rather not assist in that.

Where are the 12 year olds when you need them?*

*Referencing someone's remark that a 12-year old could easily find it.

[Somey]

Just trying to catch up here... (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wacko.gif)

The site reveals an obsessive interest in the films of Werner Herzog (which user:Erik has also edited about). Also an obsessive interest in Wikipedia. "For some weeks now, I have been obsessed with the wikipedia entry on “In the Air Tonight”, a well-known composition by Sir Philip Collins. There is much to treasure in this article ... sometimes the only way you can exorcise your obsession with a wikipedia article is to add an apocryphal critical quotation to it.

And behold the edits http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...ns/24.11.231.53 (from a Chicago comcast IP - Kraft is a Comcast customer http://fallingandlaughing.com/post/1797520...e-in-miserable).

I don't know why he should use an IP and not the user:Erik account. Perhaps because, as I say, he likes to keep his obsessions in different compartments.

That's an amazing degree of compartmentalization, if true - probably more than I've ever seen, like, ever. For example, on his personal site (thanks for finding that btw), he's got a tag called "MES," the acronym for Mark E. Smith, lead singer of The Fall. The entries under that tag are part of an (abortive?) idea for a "Children’s Treasury of MES Verse," a quite-funny idea that I might have come up with myself if I had the imagination (which I do, I'm just not as much of an MES fan).

To me, the idea that any long-term Wikipedian could be that much of an MES/Fall aficionado (with the possible exception of LHVU) is almost preposterous. And the idea that a true MES/Fall aficionado would be interested in movies like Spiderman 3 and Bloodrayne and "The Fountain" is even more preposterous. If you don't know anything about The Fall or their fanbase, you'll just have to take my word for it on that score - the fundamental aesthetic is totally different, about as far apart as you can get without moving from pop culture into high culture.

The IP edit almost certainly comes from The Real Erik Kraft, but there's no real indication that it's Erik (T-C-L-K-R-D) , IMO. I'd be willing to treat the Herzog-related edits as a coinkydink, and now that I've been through all of User:Erik's contribs, Ockham's Razor tells me that the almost total lack of substantive editing activity on anything not related to movies (and mostly big-budget CGI movies, at that) means he can't possibly be Erik Kraft.

And again, the reason for the quick "retirement" could just as easily be because of guilt, not fear - and quite possibly more easily.

[Peter Damian]

That's an amazing degree of compartmentalization, if true - probably more than I've ever seen, like, ever. For example, on his personal site (thanks for finding that btw), he's got a tag called "MES," the acronym for Mark E. Smith, lead singer of The Fall. The entries under that tag are part of an (abortive?) idea for a "Children’s Treasury of MES Verse," a quite-funny idea that I might have come up with myself if I had the imagination (which I do, I'm just not as much of an MES fan).

To me, the idea that any long-term Wikipedian could be that much of an MES/Fall aficionado (with the possible exception of LHVU) is almost preposterous. And the idea that a true MES/Fall aficionado would be interested in movies like Spiderman 3 and Bloodrayne and "The Fountain" is even more preposterous. If you don't know anything about The Fall or their fanbase, you'll just have to take my word for it on that score - the fundamental aesthetic is totally different, about as far apart as you can get without moving from pop culture into high culture.

The IP edit almost certainly comes from The Real Erik Kraft, but there's no real indication that it's Erik (T-C-L-K-R-D) , IMO. I'd be willing to treat the Herzog-related edits as a coinkydink, and now that I've been through all of User:Erik's contribs, Ockham's Razor tells me that the almost total lack of substantive editing activity on anything not related to movies (and mostly big-budget CGI movies, at that) means he can't possibly be Erik Kraft.

And again, the reason for the quick "retirement" could just as easily be because of guilt, not fear - and quite possibly more easily.

I agree with you, and it's the style that leads to my greatest doubt about the identity hypothesis. Erik Kraft sees himself as a sort of high intellectual, user:Erik does not.

However, compartments can sometimes be there for good reason. I am known for my editing on medieval philosophy and logic and high-falutin nonsense like that. If you thought I had an account which solely edited on trance and dance music, sometimes of the trashiest kind, you would doubt this, no? Yet it might be true.

[Zoloft]

A point I feel I must raise.

ColScott, is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

You've been tossing around that term a lot to anyone here who disputes you.

I just want a yes or no answer to that question.

Is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

Yes

So. I am looking for sources on a subject. Google shows me a link on Wikipedia. When I go there, I see an article with an easily-corrected error. I create an account, fix the error.
I'm now a cultist?
Hell, you have any number of accounts. You've edited many articles.
You must be a hooded, censer-swinging Grand Leader of their cult.
You're sensitive about what people call you. Try not painting us all with the same brush, please.
Most of us here believe Wikipedia has serious problems.
Some of us work to remove the sort of material you dislike.
Others want Wikipedia gone entirely.
Most of here look for common ground.

[ColScott]

A point I feel I must raise.

ColScott, is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

You've been tossing around that term a lot to anyone here who disputes you.

I just want a yes or no answer to that question.

Is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

Yes

So. I am looking for sources on a subject. Google shows me a link on Wikipedia. When I go there, I see an article with an easily-corrected error. I create an account, fix the error.
I'm now a cultist?
Hell, you have any number of accounts. You've edited many articles.
You must be a hooded, censer-swinging Grand Leader of their cult.
You're sensitive about what people call you. Try not painting us all with the same brush, please.
Most of us here believe Wikipedia has serious problems.
Some of us work to remove the sort of material you dislike.
Others want Wikipedia gone entirely.
Most of here look for common ground.

But it cannot BE fixed
It is a stupid idea
100 12 year olds typing does not lead to TRUTH

[A Horse With No Name]

100 12 year olds typing does not lead to TRUTH

No, it leads to the Wiki Cup! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/rolleyes.gif)

[Zoloft]

A point I feel I must raise.

ColScott, is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

You've been tossing around that term a lot to anyone here who disputes you.

I just want a yes or no answer to that question.

Is anyone who edits Wikipedia and has an account there a cultist?

Yes

So. I am looking for sources on a subject. Google shows me a link on Wikipedia. When I go there, I see an article with an easily-corrected error. I create an account, fix the error.
I'm now a cultist?
Hell, you have any number of accounts. You've edited many articles.
You must be a hooded, censer-swinging Grand Leader of their cult.
You're sensitive about what people call you. Try not painting us all with the same brush, please.
Most of us here believe Wikipedia has serious problems.
Some of us work to remove the sort of material you dislike.
Others want Wikipedia gone entirely.
Most of here look for common ground.

But it cannot BE fixed
It is a stupid idea
100 12 year olds typing does not lead to TRUTH

Perhaps you're correct.
You've (if you are indeed Don Murphy) got resources and followers. Form a PAC. Or actually hire a lawyer and go her go mano-a-mano with the WMF.

Of all the people who post here, you have the best chance to make a change.

So do it!

Don't chase shadows. Get some briefcase sharks, give them a real war chest, and promise of booty if they win.

Hire a PR firm. Make the WMF bleed donors.

You'd kill them off or make real changes in a few years.

But what you're doing right now won't even be a breeze in their hair. They'd just (at most) hand you the IP of User:Erik and say, "There ya go."

[Somey]

No, it leads to the Wiki Cup! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/rolleyes.gif)

Still, it would be nicer if we all reserved our use of the word "cultist" to refer specifically to people who have explicitly expressed a high degree of loyalty to Wikipedia and/or the WP "community," even if that loyalty is based on idealism or feigned altruism (as opposed to narcissism, gamesmanship, or socio-political ideology).

Certainly, very few of the regulars here can claim never to have "constructively" edited Wikipedia at all. I believe I might still be the only one who's consistently claimed never to have made a single edit of any kind whatsoever on WP, and I wouldn't blame anyone for not believing me.

[BelovedFox]

Of all the people who post here, you have the best chance to make a change.

So do it!

Don't chase shadows. Get some briefcase sharks, give them a real war chest, and promise of booty if they win.

Hire a PR firm. Make the WMF bleed donors.

You'd kill them off or make real changes in a few years.

But what you're doing right now won't even be a breeze in their hair. They'd just (at most) hand you the IP of User:Erik and say, "There ya go."

But then who would Don Murphy complain about?

[Somey]

So do it!

It's hard to argue with this, but I personally believe Mr. Murphy would be more effective by getting a movie made that properly portrays the evils of Wikipedia in a way kids can understand (i.e., with lots of monsters, explosions, gun battles, Jessica Biel, and CGI in general). Under the current legal climate, a legal challenge against Wikipedia itself (as opposed to specific users) is too likely to fail on Section 230 and other grounds - in order to get legislatures and judges to see the problem(s), we have to influence the culture first.

Admittedly, by that time Wikipedia might have fixed their own problems, though I doubt they'll manage it, personally. Still, there have been a few positive changes in the last year or so, so it's not completely hopeless.

[BelovedFox]

So do it!

It's hard to argue with this, but I personally believe Mr. Murphy would be more effective by getting a movie made that properly portrays the evils of Wikipedia in a way kids can understand (i.e., with lots of monsters, explosions, gun battles, Jessica Biel, and CGI in general). Under the current legal climate, a legal challenge against Wikipedia itself (as opposed to specific users) is too likely to fail on Section 230 and other grounds - in order to get legislatures and judges to see the problem(s), we have to influence the culture first.

Admittedly, by that time Wikipedia might have fixed their own problems, though I doubt they'll manage it, personally. Still, there have been a few positive changes in the last year or so, so it's not completely hopeless.

So what you're saying is that Murphy needs to convince James Cameron that Wikipedia = White, US metaphor so that Avatar 2 will be the Pandorans fighting crowdsourcing free culture advocates that emerge from the earth (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[Ottava]

Oh come on. From user:Erik's talk page.

I hope that's not your real address that they pulled up on the website. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unhappy.gif) SilverserenC 07:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, they're in the process of outing me. Hopefully they won't harass my fiancee... Erik (talk | contribs) 10:12, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Erik Kraft here again. Sorry for not following the reply conventions, but I'm not a wikipedia editor and I feel this is rather urgent. Erik, can you clarify what you meant by "process of outing you." Because Don and his people seem to be taking this as evidence that I, Erik Kraft, am the person they are mad at. Don has posted my personal information, including address and phone number, on his forum on his personal site and I'm extremely disturbed. Thanks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Eri...regarding_image

SilverserenC says they hope it's not the real address (i.e. the Chicago). user:Erik replies 'yes, they're in the process of outing me'. I can't read that in any other way except as an admission of outing, and that the address (Kraft's) is correct.

There is a difference between "yeah" and "yes".

[Doc glasgow]

So do it!

It's hard to argue with this, but I personally believe Mr. Murphy would be more effective by getting a movie made that properly portrays the evils of Wikipedia in a way kids can understand (i.e., with lots of monsters, explosions, gun battles, Jessica Biel, and CGI in general). Under the current legal climate, a legal challenge against Wikipedia itself (as opposed to specific users) is too likely to fail on Section 230 and other grounds - in order to get legislatures and judges to see the problem(s), we have to influence the culture first.

Admittedly, by that time Wikipedia might have fixed their own problems, though I doubt they'll manage it, personally. Still, there have been a few positive changes in the last year or so, so it's not completely hopeless.

Actually, a proper documentary on Wikipedia (as opposed to two minute item in a news show, which has probably been inspired by a WMF press-release, and features 90second of Jimboisms) would probably be effective. I mean a proper documentary where Seigenthaler, Brandt, and a few others got interviewed, and a serious researcher/ investigative journalist got involved.

[Milton Roe]

So what you're saying is that Murphy needs to convince James Cameron that Wikipedia = White, US metaphor so that Avatar 2 will be the Pandorans fighting crowdsourcing free culture advocates that emerge from the earth (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

Sure. Would be better than Avatar I which was merely Dances With Wolves with really big blue Sioux.

But if the Academy Award formula works, I suppose it would be crazy not to follow it. I suppose we have one of these every generation. I remember Little Big Man.

[Ottava]

So what you're saying is that Murphy needs to convince James Cameron that Wikipedia = White, US metaphor so that Avatar 2 will be the Pandorans fighting crowdsourcing free culture advocates that emerge from the earth (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

Sure. Would be better than Avatar I which was merely Dances With Wolves with really big blue Sioux.

But if the Academy Award formula works, I suppose it would be crazy not to follow it. I suppose we have one of these every generation. I remember Little Big Man.

You noticed that too? Amazing how the film's message was really anti colonialism/sanctity of a Native American type tribal bond with the land and wanting to protect their home and not the grandiose "we must protect planet Earth from the dangerous of CO2" that Cameron seems to be claiming it is.

[HRIP7]

Actually, a proper documentary on Wikipedia (as opposed to two minute item in a news show, which has probably been inspired by a WMF press-release, and features 90second of Jimboisms) would probably be effective. I mean a proper documentary where Seigenthaler, Brandt, and a few others got interviewed, and a serious researcher/ investigative journalist got involved.

Agreed. Rush Limbaugh and Taner_Akçam would make good subjects too.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Come on guys ... it is not really the issue. Picking on Wikipedia editors one by one with sniper fire is too expensive and too personal. For everyone that you kill, 10 more accounts have been set up (and at least 3 of those are real people rather than sockpuppets). And the cultists will only be able to accuse you of personally motivated bitterness using it against you.

It is a longer term battle than that. You want to stop people being sucked in, separate it from the funding trusts, inform the media what it really is and give then the language to describe it and the facts to support that ... encourage schools and childsafe software set ups to block it, persistently eroding away at its credibility.

If your "community" is Hollywood ColScott, I am pretty damned sure that there are plenty of people pissed off with Jimbo Wales and if you passed your Colonel's hat around, there would be many others willing to contribute to a war chest to fight it.

BTW, you do not need a lawyer's letter to demand information if you intend to carry out legal proceedings. You have the perfect right to carry out legal proceedings in personal and informing them that you are is sufficient at law. You do not need to be a law enforcement officer either, which is what jerks usually tell people ... but it is not true.

The idea of a documentary is a wonderful idea, visually it could blow Middle-Americas eyes out.

You do a whole section on successful breaching, vandalism and comic editing. POV warriors, show the ridiculous discussions that go on, the anatomy of banning, the sheer ugly dishonest and nastiness of many of them ... do some Michael Moore-style doorstepping ..., mix the child admins with all the amateur hard core porn, and pin Jimbo and Sue down under the lights of an interview.

Find out if that Amsterdam rumour was true ... and go ask the funding foundations what they think is "educational" of RichieX fuck pics or Stan Spanker's red assed schoolgirl photo.

You might even make some money back by selling to the networks (so cut an adult version for the porn channels too). In fact, a whole programme on "How to find and upload Wikipedia fap material" might be a program in itself ... "Wikipedia Porn Review" ... you could do a weekly slot for updates.

This post has been edited by Cock-up-over-conspiracy:

[Theanima]

I love the idea. The Truth about Wikipedia. I'd watch it. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

[Daniel Brandt]

Today I spoke with Erik Kraft for about 30 minutes. I left my telephone number on his answering machine yesterday and identified myself fully. Now he's back in Chicago. He says that he was tempted to not return my call (he's still getting harassing messages), but then considered my contributions to this thread and dialed my number. He said he did talk to the police. Now he's back in Chicago.

I'm more convinced than before that he's innocent, and I was thoroughly convinced before. Any strange behavior over the last few days (like deleting some of his web pages) was due to the fact that all hell broke loose when "Don" (no last name) called him. He said that Don's attitude was rather in-your-face (I find this believable), and Kraft had no idea who "Don" was at that time.

Initially Kraft had very little familiarity with Wikipedia and how it works, but he dove right in because he needed to find out what the hell was going on. Now he knows more about Wikipedia, but still seems unfamiliar with consulting a recent archive, or with researching edit histories. He has computer smarts, and I'm sure he will learn a lot more about navigating Wikipedia very quickly if he remains interested. At the moment he says he's jet-lagged (14 hours of travel) and is tempted to forget about the whole thing. I encouraged him to stick it out.

He said he'd be willing to talk to the press. I responded that we need to try and identify User:Erik first, because the press doesn't respond well to user names only. I mentioned Essjay and Seigenthaler, and the Essjay thing rang a bell slightly after I described it, but the Seigenthaler story was new for him. He clearly does not know a whole lot about Wikipedia, but he says he's learned a lot in the last few days.

He will probably be deleting more of his web pages. He is amazed by all the information that we dug up on him, and is now having second thoughts about his entire web presence. He said he just deleted his Facebook page.

Someone recommended to him that he contact Mike Godwin, and he said that he did this, and is waiting to hear back. I encouraged to him to pursue this and ask for User:Erik's checkuser data specifically. If he doesn't hear back, I recommended that he pay an attorney to send a formal request to Godwin.

I still feel that Murphy should do the same thing, and stop being so in-your-face, and stop insisting that the two Eriks are the same person. He should get his lawyer to send a formal, competent request to Godwin for User:Erik's checkuser data.

I asked Kraft if he had the sense that User:Erik was using him as a target of convenience, as in some sort of shield, in order to protect his own identity. He hadn't made up his mind on this, and hasn't had the chance to consider it. He mentioned that his girlfriend had been clicking around some, and she commented at one point that it was starting to look like a setup. He did express dismay that User:Erik has now disappeared, which leaves him (Kraft) hanging, unresolved and unsatisfied.
____________

As I see things, Murphy is at a fork in the road. For the first time he has strong standing for a formal request for checkuser data on User:Erik. If this is pursued in a professional manner (no insults, no swearing), Godwin will be on the spot. It's quite possible that pursuing this will not only produce the desired information, thereby giving us more clues for further research, but could also alert the cabal that now Murphy is a problem (i.e., more trouble than he's worth for a semi-notable BLP). This could eventually result in the deletion of his bio. If I had to describe my experience of how I got my page deleted in one sentence, then it would look like this: "Cabal to Wikipediots: Attention! This bio is not worth the trouble. Let it go."

At a minimum, obtaining User:Erik's checkuser data will scare the basement-dwellers, and they won't be messing with Murphy's bio in the future. You cannot out-troll a basement-dwelling Wikipediot teenager — there aren't enough hours in the day. Murphy comes close because he has his own forum and his own collection of teenage counter-trolls, but is this really what he wants? Does Murphy want to play Grand Anti-Wikipedia Counter-troll Master for a few more years, or does he want his bio deleted?

What is this anyway, a fuckin' movie? It's time for Murphy to decide, in my opinion.

[Doc glasgow]

I am quite prepared to take this bio to AFD right now. However, I think the chances of being rid of it are fairly low, and it will attract a fair amount of trolling comments about the subject. I'm unsure whether he'd welcome that.

This post has been edited by Doc glasgow:

[ColScott]

Today I spoke with Erik Kraft for about 30 minutes. I left my telephone number on his answering machine yesterday and identified myself fully. Now he's back in Chicago. He says that he was tempted to not return my call (he's still getting harassing messages), but then considered my contributions to this thread and dialed my number. He said he did talk to the police. Now he's back in Chicago.

I'm more convinced than before that he's innocent, and I was thoroughly convinced before. Any strange behavior over the last few days (like deleting some of his web pages) was due to the fact that all hell broke loose when "Don" (no last name) called him. He said that Don's attitude was rather in-your-face (I find this believable), and Kraft had no idea who "Don" was at that time.

Initially Kraft had very little familiarity with Wikipedia and how it works, but he dove right in because he needed to find out what the hell was going on. Now he knows more about Wikipedia, but still seems unfamiliar with consulting a recent archive, or with researching edit histories. He has computer smarts, and I'm sure he will learn a lot more about navigating Wikipedia very quickly if he remains interested. At the moment he says he's jet-lagged (14 hours of travel) and is tempted to forget about the whole thing. I encouraged him to stick it out.

He said he'd be willing to talk to the press. I responded that we need to try and identify User:Erik first, because the press doesn't respond well to user names only. I mentioned Essjay and Seigenthaler, and the Essjay thing rang a bell slightly after I described it, but the Seigenthaler story was new for him. He clearly does not know a whole lot about Wikipedia, but he says he's learned a lot in the last few days.

He will probably be deleting more of his web pages. He is amazed by all the information that we dug up on him, and is now having second thoughts about his entire web presence. He said he just deleted his Facebook page.

Someone recommended to him that he contact Mike Godwin, and he said that he did this, and is waiting to hear back. I encouraged to him to pursue this and ask for User:Erik's checkuser data specifically. If he doesn't hear back, I recommended that he pay an attorney to send a formal request to Godwin.

I still feel that Murphy should do the same thing, and stop being so in-your-face, and stop insisting that the two Eriks are the same person. He should get his lawyer to send a formal, competent request to Godwin for User:Erik's checkuser data.

I asked Kraft if he had the sense that User:Erik was using him as a target of convenience, as in some sort of shield, in order to protect his own identity. He hadn't made up his mind on this, and hasn't had the chance to consider it. He mentioned that his girlfriend had been clicking around some, and she commented at one point that it was starting to look like a setup. He did express dismay that User:Erik has now disappeared, which leaves him (Kraft) hanging, unresolved and unsatisfied.
____________

As I see things, Murphy is at a fork in the road. For the first time he has strong standing for a formal request for checkuser data on User:Erik. If this is pursued in a professional manner (no insults, no swearing), Godwin will be on the spot. It's quite possible that pursuing this will not only produce the desired information, thereby giving us more clues for further research, but could also alert the cabal that now Murphy is a problem (i.e., more trouble than he's worth for a semi-notable BLP). This could eventually result in the deletion of his bio. If I had to describe my experience of how I got my page deleted in one sentence, then it would look like this: "Cabal to Wikipediots: Attention! This bio is not worth the trouble. Let it go."

At a minimum, obtaining User:Erik's checkuser data will scare the basement-dwellers, and they won't be messing with Murphy's bio in the future. You cannot out-troll a basement-dwelling Wikipediot teenager — there aren't enough hours in the day. Murphy comes close because he has his own forum and his own collection of teenage counter-trolls, but is this really what he wants? Does Murphy want to play Grand Anti-Wikipedia Counter-troll Master for a few more years, or does he want his bio deleted?

What is this anyway, a fuckin' movie? It's time for Murphy to decide, in my opinion.

Not sure what to say. Among other things, I am certain he is not getting harassing phone calls. I am certain he didn't call the police. I am certain he has something to do with it.

But if I love your work as much as I profess, I should follow your lead. I want the bio deleted permanently. Tell me what to do. Contact Godwin? Great I'll do that now. What is the preferred method?

[HRIP7]

A lawsuit against an individual wikipedian, or an admin, would also have a chilling effect. Indeed even an unsuccessful one would make a lot of Wikipedians nervous. Do I really want a hobby that could get me having to defend myself in court?

There have been at least two lawsuits against individual Wikipedians.

• Grebner sues for wiki-based defamation
• Ron Livingston: Yo Wikipedia, I'm Not Gay!

I am unable to find any recent coverage of the Grebner suit. As for the Livingston suit, it seems it was dropped after the editor responsible was identified, and the vandalism stopped:

... the very nature of Wikipedia allows libelers to repeatedly repost their libel even after it has been corrected. For example, last year actor Ron Livingston discovered that a malicious Wikipedia editor had posted that the star of the TV hit Office Space was gay. Every time the actor's representatives corrected the falsehood, the libeler reposted it—time and time again. In December 2009, a fed-up Livingston finally sued the anonymous poster as a “John Doe” for libel. With court-granted discovery powers, Livingston's strategy was to seek the identity of the anonymous person and stop him. Using a forensic computer expert, Livingston's attorney was indeed able to identify the culprit, the attorney explained in an interview with this writer. The conduct stopped and the suit was recently dropped. Although it was widely reported that Livingston sued Wikipedia itself, that information was incorrect. In fact, the actor only sued a “John Doe,” that is, the individual poster. Livingston's legal strategy brings out an important feature of Wikipedia's seeming invincibility to lawsuits [...]

Source: Wikipedia - The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge

Is anyone familiar with the author of this article?

Edwin Black is the award-winnng author of "Internal Combustion,"The Plan - How to Rescue Society the Day Before the Oil Stops," "IBM and the Holocaust," and the publisher of TheCuttingEdgeNews.com. Edwin is also a frequent contributor to The Auto Channel.

[ColScott]

I am quite prepared to take this bio to AFD right now. However, I think the chances of being rid of it are fairly low, and it will attract a fair amount of trolling comments about the subject. I'm unsure whether he'd welcome that.

I am not sure what the code words mean. I want it deleted. If you are putting it to a cult vote, they will of course vote to keep it just to annoy me.

[Doc glasgow]

I am quite prepared to take this bio to AFD right now. However, I think the chances of being rid of it are fairly low, and it will attract a fair amount of trolling comments about the subject. I'm unsure whether he'd welcome that.

I am not sure what the code words mean. I want it deleted. If you are putting it to a cult vote, they will of course vote to keep it just to annoy me.

Yes, that would be my fear.

[ColScott]

I am quite prepared to take this bio to AFD right now. However, I think the chances of being rid of it are fairly low, and it will attract a fair amount of trolling comments about the subject. I'm unsure whether he'd welcome that.

I am not sure what the code words mean. I want it deleted. If you are putting it to a cult vote, they will of course vote to keep it just to annoy me.

Yes, that would be my fear.

are you from Glasgow? my wife just returned from there yesterday!

[HRIP7]

Rush Limbaugh and Taner_Akçam would make good subjects too.

There is more background on the Taner Akçam story in this Independent article:

* Robert Fisk: "Caught in the deadly web of the internet. Any political filth or personal libel can be hurled at the innocent."

[A Horse With No Name]

He said he'd be willing to talk to the press. I responded that we need to try and identify User:Erik first, because the press doesn't respond well to user names only. I mentioned Essjay and Seigenthaler, and the Essjay thing rang a bell slightly after I described it, but the Seigenthaler story was new for him. He clearly does not know a whole lot about Wikipedia, but he says he's learned a lot in the last few days.

Being in Chicago, he should get in touch with the Tribune. As a local story, it is dynamite. Plus, the newspaper runs a news syndicate that is picked up all over the country.

Actually, if he hits the right editor, this could be a great story that will toss a lot of mud at Wikipedia.

[BelovedFox]

He said he'd be willing to talk to the press. I responded that we need to try and identify User:Erik first, because the press doesn't respond well to user names only. I mentioned Essjay and Seigenthaler, and the Essjay thing rang a bell slightly after I described it, but the Seigenthaler story was new for him. He clearly does not know a whole lot about Wikipedia, but he says he's learned a lot in the last few days.

Being in Chicago, he should get in touch with the Tribune. As a local story, it is dynamite. Plus, the newspaper runs a news syndicate that is picked up all over the country.

Actually, if he hits the right editor, this could be a great story that will toss a lot of mud at Wikipedia.

In terms of local color who would take it up, it's too bad he doesn't live in Detroit. I know a guy at the Free Press who would love that kind of story (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

Honestly though, what's with all the mud-loving? Most people don't pay attention* to Michael Moore because his "documentaries" are full of ridiculous stunts and side-shows. You can make a balanced, well-reasoned piece about Wikipedia and still provoke important questions and dialogue.

*In the context of actually trusting his movies, or actually getting more informed about an issue in his movies. I'm sure lots of people know *him* without actually knowing jack about the issues.

This post has been edited by BelovedFox:

[Somey]

......In December 2009, a fed-up Livingston finally sued the anonymous poster as a “John Doe” for libel. With court-granted discovery powers, Livingston's strategy was to seek the identity of the anonymous person and stop him. Using a forensic computer expert, Livingston's attorney was indeed able to identify the culprit, the attorney explained in an interview with this writer....

Now, that's just insulting. Livingston's lawyer is taking credit for the work we did? Probably so he can bill Livingston for hiring an "expert" whose sole activity (if he even existed) amounted to reading the relevant WR thread!

Jeez... That's the last time I bother helping out a movie actor, and I'll bet Tarantino's with me on that score, too. And he's a fellow Iowan, to boot! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/mad.gif)

[Milton Roe]

A lawsuit against an individual wikipedian, or an admin, would also have a chilling effect. Indeed even an unsuccessful one would make a lot of Wikipedians nervous. Do I really want a hobby that could get me having to defend myself in court?

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif) Particularly when they find that WP, due to the eternally selfish nature of WMF and the people who run it, will not support your legal defense with a nickel. Hence, sec 230 or not, the trial IS the punishment, since you pay the "fine" either way. In theory you can recover damages from a won suit that way, but in practice, the judge hardly ever orders a losing plaintiff to pay all costs. Usually the defendant is stuck with their own attorney fees. Good luck, suckers.

As for whether this would have a chilling effect on WP BLP editors if it happens, I should hope so. The best chilling effect will be watching Godwin distance WMF from any action of any WMF editor whatever. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/popcorn.gif)

There have been

at least two lawsuits against individual Wikipedians.

• Grebner sues for wiki-based defamation
• Ron Livingston: Yo Wikipedia, I'm Not Gay!

I am unable to find any recent coverage of the Grebner suit. As for the Livingston suit, it seems it was dropped after the editor responsible was identified, and the vandalism stopped:

That vandal was I.D.'ed right here on WR, mostly by Somey. No stinkin' "forensic computer expert" was needed. It would be hilarious if the guy ended up charging Livingston for work done for free on WR. Well, not HILARIOUS, but you know what I mean.

Source: Wikipedia - The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge

Is anyone familiar with the author of this article?

Edwin Black is the award-winnng author of "Internal Combustion,"The Plan - How to Rescue Society the Day Before the Oil Stops," "IBM and the Holocaust," and the publisher of TheCuttingEdgeNews.com. Edwin is also a frequent contributor to The Auto Channel.

We discussed Edwin Black not that long ago on WR, as there was a WP editorial spat about getting the Wiki that discusses his book IBM and the Holocaust properly named. A WebHamster sock got spotted and blocked in the course of the argument. Whoever that was. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/huh.gif)

[GlassBeadGame]

......In December 2009, a fed-up Livingston finally sued the anonymous poster as a “John Doe” for libel. With court-granted discovery powers, Livingston's strategy was to seek the identity of the anonymous person and stop him. Using a forensic computer expert, Livingston's attorney was indeed able to identify the culprit, the attorney explained in an interview with this writer....

Now, that's just insulting. Livingston's lawyer is taking credit for the work we did? Probably so he can bill Livingston for hiring an "expert" whose sole activity (if he even existed) amounted to reading the relevant WR thread!

Jeez... That's the last time I bother helping out a movie actor, and I'll bet Tarantino's with me on that score, too. And he's a fellow Iowan, to boot! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/mad.gif)

Even if he followed our threads post for post he would need an expert to testify at court. Otherwise the defendant could have responded that there was no basis in fact to believe that the IP provided by WP could be used to link it to use of a specific computer. Somey would probably be fine as an expert, except for the "Somey" part, of course.

[Daniel Brandt]

I want the bio deleted permanently. Tell me what to do. Contact Godwin? Great I'll do that now. What is the preferred method?

I'm no lawyer, but here is my gut instinct of how to proceed. Keep in mind that Godwin will deliberately fail to respond if at all possible. A couple years ago I faxed a complaint to Godwin about a user who sent a fake DMCA complaint to my wikipedia-watch.org DNS provider, and this user even added the statement at the bottom that he swore that he was legit when he wasn't. I managed to identify the guy (a teenager in Australia who had pulled this stunt before on someone else), and all I wanted from Godwin was some sort of statement that the Foundation doesn't condone this behavior. I wanted to send a copy to the headmaster at the kid's boarding school. I never heard back from anyone at the Foundation. Don't leave Godwin any wiggle room and then wait around for 30 days expecting to hear from him. I think he might be a snake.

Unless anyone has a better idea, I'd call this number. It's the general Foundation number, so whoever answers might not even recognize the name "Mike Godwin." Tell them you have to talk to Mike Godwin. If you get to Godwin (good luck!) then ask Godwin for a street address for legal service. They have a registered agent for DMCA stuff, but that's probably not what you want. You want contact info for a process server, and you want to be sure you get either a signature from Godwin or from his authorized agent, or know that a process server in the flesh delivered your document to Godwin. Also ask Godwin for a better telephone number so that you can call back and confirm that he received the document. Godwin should be cooperative — after all, he gets overpaid to perform this function for the Foundation.

I'd very briefly lay out the evidence that suggests that User:Erik set you up, and that User:Erik may even be implicated in attempted identity theft in the matter of one Erik Kraft of Chicago. Don't get too specific — just say that you have circumstantial evidence of this, and that the situation has caused both you and reportedly also Mr. Kraft some pain and suffering, and that you wish to seek restitution for damages by pursuing all legal means to identify the perpetrator, User:Erik. It's not really Godwin's role to evaluate your evidence. If he thinks it is, then he's protecting a Wikipedia user and Section 230 immunity becomes more complicated than it already is.

Ask specifically for all IP addresses for User:Erik that can be found in the logs maintained by any of the Wikimedia Foundation's employees. These employees would normally be the system administrators who maintain the servers and ultimately control access to this data. You want a date/time stamp for each edit as far back as the logs go (this will probably be not more than six months). Set a deadline for Godwin's response.

What you are requesting is more comprehensive than the usual checkuser data. Normally a checkuser would say that this guy is not this other guy, based on the tools they used to do the checking. You want more than this, so explain that your impression is that it would not be sufficient to simply request a checkuser on User:Erik through normal Wikipedia channels. In other words, you have not made such a request through normal channels, and you don't see why you should.

Make a copy of your document and post it here or on your own forum.

You can always change your mind later and also request a checkuser through normal channels.

[Somey]

But if I love your work as much as I profess, I should follow your lead. I want the bio deleted permanently. Tell me what to do. Contact Godwin? Great I'll do that now. What is the preferred method?

Unless it's your lawyer doing it, I'd say a phone call - and he's on the West Coast, so he might still be in his office... (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/evilgrin.gif)

That's (by far) the less important issue, though. The main thing is to start treating Erik Kraft as the victim, not the perp, since he almost certainly is - in fact, he's more of a victim than you are in this particular case, IMO.

Think of it as a kind of Pascal's Wager situation. If the second person (the innocent Erik Kraft) exists, then you've got a legitimate case for wrongdoing by User:Erik, mostly against Kraft, but it's still fairly serious wrongdoing. Whereas, if Kraft is the perp, your only case is that he edited your article and then lied about it - but only to you, not to a court, not to law enforcement. (OK, then he would have lied to Daniel too, but you have to figure everybody on Wikipedia does that.)

More importantly, if Kraft and User:Erik really are the same person, then it's case-closed - you'd have no rationale for pursuing him via the Wikimedia Foundation, since you already know who he is. Therefore, no chilling effect on further edits to the article, and no added rationale for a deletion (AfD, "Articles for Deletion") attempt.

This is extremely important, Mr. Murphy - I understand that you're angry at these people and you clearly should be, but all the hard evidence (i.e., other than vague suspicion on your part, and one or two odd coincidences) points to Erik Kraft being a different guy, whose identity the now-disappeared User:Erik is trying to hide behind. If there isn't a law against that, there should be - but at the very least, you might have some legitimate grounds for a civil case. (Though to be brutally honest, it's not a case I personally would want to take into court, given the relatively minor nature of the offense.)

[anthony]

He's not saying "Yeah, that is my address", he's saying "Yeah, I'm going to get outed".

I did consider it. It is a possibility. But why did he not immediately deny that the address and number were his? Why did he not immediately say 'they've got the wrong guy'?

Isn't that obvious? He didn't want anyone to know they've got the wrong guy. At least that was not his immediate reaction.

[A Horse With No Name]

Honestly though, what's with all the mud-loving? Most people don't pay attention* to Michael Moore because his "documentaries" are full of ridiculous stunts and side-shows. You can make a balanced, well-reasoned piece about Wikipedia and still provoke important questions and dialogue.

Mud sells, and Moore's documentaries bring in tons more money than serious stuff. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif)

I used to write for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate through their Hartford Courant newspaper. If the real Erik needs tips on who to call, just whistle for Horsey. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/evilgrin.gif)

And by the way...where is Tarantino? We could certainly use him to clarify who User:Erik really is.

[BelovedFox]

Honestly though, what's with all the mud-loving? Most people don't pay attention* to Michael Moore because his "documentaries" are full of ridiculous stunts and side-shows. You can make a balanced, well-reasoned piece about Wikipedia and still provoke important questions and dialogue.

Mud sells, and Moore's documentaries bring in tons more money than serious stuff. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif)

I used to write for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate through their Hartford Courant newspaper. If the real Erik needs tips on who to call, just whistle for Horsey. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/evilgrin.gif)

And by the way...where is Tarantino? We could certainly use him to clarify who User:Erik really is.

But I'll make the argument that money /= actual impact. After all, film critics dish out gobs on films that made nickels and dimes at the box office, and they're often the films we remember. Because they're so rooted in what is "fresh" now, Moore's documentaries are going to age very badly. "An Inconvenient Truth" had far more impact than, say, "Bowling for Columbine", in part because of its serious framing (of course, it also made gobs of money.)

Anyhow, my point is that if one were to make a documentary on Wikipedia, I would hope it wouldn't be a hatchet job one way or another. From what I've seen, there's only one or two short pieces that even take a stab at it, and they rely too much on the windbags.

[anthony]

The best hypothesis is that they are the same person.

Are you still on that, or have you finally given it up?

At this point I see absolutely nothing to suggest they are the same person. Okay, I take that back. I see one thing. The username of the one is the first name of the other. That's it. There's nothing else.

I suppose that it has not yet been established (to me, anyway) that they are not the same person. But then, it has not yet been established (to me, anyway) that User:Erik is not Meg Ryan.

The only thing keeping me from saying "no, they aren't the same person", is that I haven't yet heard the reasoning by which EK was suspected in the first place.

[Subtle Bee]

The only thing keeping me from saying "no, they aren't the same person", is that I haven't yet heard the reasoning by which EK was suspected in the first place.

Agreed, and given the length of this thread that's rather remarkable. What's more remarkable is how this guy's been put through the wringer here and on other sites, including his name and identifiables, by the same person who wants us to be outraged that it happened to him on WP.

Or am I missing something important?

[ColScott]

The only thing keeping me from saying "no, they aren't the same person", is that I haven't yet heard the reasoning by which EK was suspected in the first place.

Agreed, and given the length of this thread that's rather remarkable. What's more remarkable is how this guy's been put through the wringer here and on other sites, including his name and identifiables, by the same person who wants us to be outraged that it happened to him on WP.

Or am I missing something important?

1- f you

2- hey- Subtle Bee... Restless Bee? Wtf?

[Subtle Bee]

The only thing keeping me from saying "no, they aren't the same person", is that I haven't yet heard the reasoning by which EK was suspected in the first place.

Agreed, and given the length of this thread that's rather remarkable. What's more remarkable is how this guy's been put through the wringer here and on other sites, including his name and identifiables, by the same person who wants us to be outraged that it happened to him on WP.

Or am I missing something important?

1- f you

2- hey- Subtle Bee... Restless Bee? Wtf?

1. "f" me? Really? Are you 12?
2. yeah, you got me. You're like Durova on crack. Supergenius.

[ColScott]

The only thing keeping me from saying "no, they aren't the same person", is that I haven't yet heard the reasoning by which EK was suspected in the first place.

Agreed, and given the length of this thread that's rather remarkable. What's more remarkable is how this guy's been put through the wringer here and on other sites, including his name and identifiables, by the same person who wants us to be outraged that it happened to him on WP.

Or am I missing something important?

1- f you

2- hey- Subtle Bee... Restless Bee? Wtf?

1. "f" me? Really? Are you 12?
2. yeah, you got me. You're like Durova on crack. Supergenius.

1- I know you are but what am I?
2- Hey, I am clear with who I am. So are many others here. If you aren't, you are suspect. The only question is of what. I think you've committed several counts of mopery, at least!

[Cirocco]

Boredom and drifting in and out of states of consciousness due to combinations of drugs to keep me on this mortal coil for a while longer caused me to look through the revision history of Erik.

I like a good mystery but unfortunately I have no real internet detection ability.

Would the bottom of this page, with the remark under miscellaneous of "See Erik in his n00b phase. What's wrong with this picture?" that links to this page possibly be a clue to Eriks identity? Or have I just wasted 20 minutes?

[Subtle Bee]

1- I know you are but what am I?
2- Hey, I am clear with who I am. So are many others here. If you aren't, you are suspect. The only question is of what. I think you've committed several counts of mopery, at least!

1. Way to win, winner.
2. I don't care what you suspect.

How's about you actually speak to the point I first raised? What makes what you did to EK different from what WP did and does to you? Are you able to see how that looks hypocritical, and do you care? Or are you some obese Jesus, and there's just no more room on the cross?

(I would've numbered that last point, but I suspect I'm already asking too much of you).

[carbuncle]

Boredom and drifting in and out of states of consciousness due to combinations of drugs to keep me on this mortal coil for a while longer caused me to look through the revision history of Erik.

I like a good mystery but unfortunately I have no real internet detection ability.

Would the bottom of this page, with the remark under miscellaneous of "See Erik in his n00b phase. What's wrong with this picture?" that links to this page possibly be a clue to Eriks identity? Or have I just wasted 20 minutes?

You just wasted 20 minutes. Sorry.

[CharlotteWebb]

Ask specifically for all IP addresses for User:Erik that can be found in the logs maintained by any of the Wikimedia Foundation's employees. These employees would normally be the system administrators who maintain the servers and ultimately control access to this data. You want a date/time stamp for each edit as far back as the logs go (this will probably be not more than six months). Set a deadline for Godwin's response.

Checkuser retention is officially three months. Each passing edit has a 1% chance of triggering an SQL query to delete checkuser data older than ["now" minus "90 days"].

CODE

# How long to keep CU data?
$wgCUDMaxAge = 3 * 30 * 24 * 3600; // 3 months

(link)
Of course the possibility always exists that this is a false front with no bearing on what actually goes on inside the tubes. However if that were so, it seems odd Tim Starling would have had a fit about this:

Revert change to $wgCUDMaxAge. If you want such a policy change, have an open discussion about it, don't get together with some troll-hunting mates on a private mailing list and make your own rules.

(diff of revert).

What you are requesting is more comprehensive than the usual checkuser data.

At about the same time Tim also made the following statements on foundation-l regarding data retention:

CheckUser data used to be kept for 3 months, but Aaron recently increased it to 5 months. I'm not sure why or on whose authority.

<http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/CheckUser/CheckUser.php?r1=39734&r2=40620>

(link)

The other logs are not automatically rotated, and need to be manually purged. The retention time is thus not consistent. Typically we have kept around 6 months of data. There are error logs, and logs for various kinds of special requests. They are not used for sockpuppet investigation.

I've said in the past that I think 6 months would be a reasonable horizon for all private data -- it would give us plenty of data for operations, and would be a far shorter period than that used by the large commercial websites.

(link)
I think he means the raw http access logs which would include every page-load rather than edits. Somebody should ask what the hell he meant by "special request"—that these logs are available via "special request" i.e. subpoena (or yet more user-agent/demographic research by Greg Maxwell) or that they are merely logs of "special" HTTP requests which somehow deviate from the norm?

Also when he says "they are not used for sockpuppet investigation" I'm curious whether this means they the data is anonymized and therefore useless for that purpose, or that it is "inadmissible evidence" in wiki-legal fiction.

Shedding further light on the matter of Erik v. Erik may require a straight answer to these questions.

This post has been edited by CharlotteWebb:

[tarantino]

And by the way...where is Tarantino? We could certainly use him to clarify who User:Erik really is.

I'm watching from the sidelines :)

Nobody's mentioned that User:Erik is deaf. He probably doesn't take many cell phone calls.

[CharlotteWebb]

I'm watching from the sidelines (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

Nobody's mentioned that User:Erik is deaf. He probably doesn't take many cell phone calls.

WP also has a user who claims to have made 80,243 edits despite being blind. That's something I'd have to see to believe (no pun intended).

All I know is I tried installing a screen-reader and turning my monitor off for a few minutes... but could not find my ass with both hands, much less edit.

Obviously editing while deaf is more plausible, but I'd tend to take that sort of claim with a grain of salt also.

This post has been edited by CharlotteWebb:

[Daniel Brandt]

Nobody's mentioned that User:Erik is deaf. He probably doesn't take many cell phone calls.

Thank you tarantino!

He had a "This user is deaf" user box on his user page in his early days. I even made a note to myself when I first saw it. But it was only there a short time on his user page. I thought, for about 30 fleeting seconds a day later, "Why don't I check this out?" It would have taken three minutes to check it out. But then I thought to myself, "How does he watch all those movies if he's deaf? Maybe he was just figuring out how to stick user boxes on his page, and that's why he deleted it!" (As I recall, it was the first fime a user box showed up on his user page, looking at them in sequence.)

This web research is so weird. You short-change just one clue and it can turn out to be the one clue you should have checked just one step further, instead of wasting an hour chasing something else. This is why we need a lot of people searching and sharing simultaneously, and a lot less trolling.

If we get geolocation from an IP address, then wikipedia + deaf + city + films might be a useful search.

That settles it once and for all (for me, at least). I spent 30 minutes talking to Erik Kraft today, and he heard everything I said. Two different people. I suppose there are machines that can transcribe, but the back-and-forth was pretty fast at times.

[CharlotteWebb]

He added at least one stub about the spider-man sound-track:

The film's original score was composed by Danny Elfman. The score combines traditional orchestration, ethnic percussion and electronic elements. A CD release of the score came out on Sony's label.

I realize it doesn't prove anything as a deaf person could have copied that information from somewhere else, or through the help of a friend's ears. I haven't seen the film so I don't even know whether it's accurate, only that I wouldn't post something like that without at least listening to a sample. Too much potential to look like an idiot. Others' mileage may vary.

I notice User:Erik has edited several articles related to deafness and sign language, but only one time each and without any attention to the content, which seems a bit unusual: [1][2][3][4][5][6]

Not a smoking gun but I'd hesitate to take his word for it, particularly if he's been playing the shell-game regarding his identity.

If you have reasons to believe he's impersonating another Erik you're probably right, but if he says your mother loves you, check it out.

[Somey]

I realize it doesn't prove anything as a deaf person could have copied that information from somewhere else, or through the help of a friend's ears. I haven't seen the film so I don't even know whether it's accurate, only that I wouldn't post something like that without at least listening to a sample...

He probably got it from a fan-review site (he seems to like those a lot), but it's also possible that he's only partially deaf (i.e., hard-of-hearing). Some people with partial hearing loss can hear music, movies, TV etc. reasonably well if they put on headphones and really crank the volume, whereas if you're trying to have a conversation with them and they're not wearing some heavy amplification gear, they can't hear much at all.

I obviously have no idea one way or the other, but in theory that could conceivably explain why he likes movies so much...?

[Zoloft]

ColScott, this is an example of why beating up on individual Wikipedia editors rapidly disintegrates into a farce with you playing the stereotypical mustachioed villain. Once details of their life emerge, they become human.

Quite a choice: Continue to harangue the Erik Kraft who increasingly looks like he deserved none of this treatment (Once this is confirmed, perhaps a nice apology and some chocolates?), or yell at the deaf guy.

Avoid this trap. Go after the big, faceless, irresponsible WMF. Hit them in public perception. Get their URL put into Websense filters all over the place.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Honestly though, what's with all the mud-loving? Most people don't pay attention* to Michael Moore because his "documentaries" are full of ridiculous stunts and side-shows. You can make a balanced, well-reasoned piece about Wikipedia and still provoke important questions and dialogue.

Mud sells, and Moore's documentaries bring in tons more money than serious stuff. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif)

Look at the potential if you put together this forum's skills with a guerilla camera crew or two.

Pick an issue the forum cares about, the culprits are identified, the camera crew doorsteps them ... all 300lb and chicken wings, bondage freaks in PVC, or 14 year old boys and their parents ... in real time as they edit next., Middle of the night, parents' basement, porno company office ... you name it.

If you have some legal angles, you can prise more information out of the foundation, put them on the defensive etc.

This is why I think you need to network more pissed of VIPs, Hollywood people and not for profits, you need more summons going in for more information, more information out ... make Godwin work for his money.

Let's find out who these guys are who are loading up all the porn, the pedophile etc.

[EricBarbour]

Quite a choice: Continue to harangue the Erik Kraft who increasingly looks like he deserved none of this treatment (Once this is confirmed, perhaps a nice apology and some chocolates?), or yell at the deaf guy.

Big deal. I suspect the real Erik is reading this thread and laughing his ass off (or perhaps, typing "ha ha ha" on his Braille typewriter). He's making a joke out of everyone here.

If Carbuncle knows who he really is, Carbuncle should act--somehow. Outing him publicly will just increase the dramah. I'm getting sick of this anyway. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/sleep.gif)

[Zoloft]

Quite a choice: Continue to harangue the Erik Kraft who increasingly looks like he deserved none of this treatment (Once this is confirmed, perhaps a nice apology and some chocolates?), or yell at the deaf guy.

Big deal. I suspect the real Erik is reading this thread and laughing his ass off (or perhaps, typing "ha ha ha" on his Braille typewriter). He's making a joke out of everyone here.

If Carbuncle knows who he really is, Carbuncle should act--somehow. Outing him publicly will just increase the dramah. I'm getting sick of this anyway. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/sleep.gif)

Deaf people don't get a lot of mileage out of a 'Braille typewriter.'

Well, I said it was a farce.

[EricBarbour]

Deaf people don't get a lot of mileage out of a 'Braille typewriter.'

That was a joke, son.
(IMG:http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg172/Behemoth_album/foghorn.jpg)

[Thurl Ravenscroft]

ColScott, this is an example of why beating up on individual Wikipedia editors rapidly disintegrates into a farce with you playing the stereotypical mustachioed villain. Once details of their life emerge, they become human.

Quite a choice: Continue to harangue the Erik Kraft who increasingly looks like he deserved none of this treatment (Once this is confirmed, perhaps a nice apology and some chocolates?), or yell at the deaf guy.

Avoid this trap. Go after the big, faceless, irresponsible WMF. Hit them in public perception. Get their URL put into Websense filters all over the place.

Yeah, I've got to agree with Zoloft here. It's difficult to pin down the exact order of events, as they spanned multiple pages, but against my better judgment I spent enough time working out that, apart from a couple of missteps that can be explained through sheer panic, User:Erik didn't do anything to warrant this level of attention:

1. Erik, who has recently added a few pictures of filmmakers to Wikipedia articles, finds an image of Don, which has already been uploaded at Commons with an, at that point, seemingly-valid copyright tag.

2. He crops it to show just Don, adds it to the article. A few people complain, including SharkJumper (Don?) who makes a legal threat. A by-the-book guy, Erik reports Sharkjumper, who is subsequently blocked. In the meantime, discussion takes place on the Don Murphy article talk page about the suitability of the image. Erik agrees that it should be removed, and takes it out himself.

3. Based on a digression at AN/I about Murphy's notability, User:Erik makes a colossal mistake and decides to build up the article. As far as I can see, he ignored any disparaging stuff to include only neutral commentary (though I completely understand that Don doesn't even want that in there).

4. Meanwhile, Don has posted his "Find Erik" message on his forum (after User:Erik added the image, but before he expanded the article). Nothing illegal about that, but a minion finds Erik Kraft, based on the name Erik, and the university User:Erik said he went to. This last point may or may not have been a lie by User:Erik to avoid being targeted, but even if that's the case, there's nothing to suggest User:Erik targeted Erik Kraft deliberately. He could have chosen almost any university and the minion would have been able to find an Erik who went there. Try it.

5. User:Erik doesn't outright confirm or deny anything about his identity; an understandable misstep, in hindsight. Born of panic, especially if he's aware of what happened to HighInBC.

6. User:Erik does the only thing open to him: thinks "fuck it" and retires. I don't think he'll be coming back.

So I just don't get it. Step 2 should have been an end to the matter. The initial attempt to find him, any proposed legal action... it's a massive overreaction. User:Erik's contributions show he hasn't got a vendetta against Don. He voted "keep" in the original AfD, but so did a lot of people. So did I. Yet if an AfD went ahead today, I'd put a reasonably strong argument forward for deletion. The image thing was resolved almost before Don got involved. All User:Erik seems to have done "wrong" is to not tell anyone who he is. Again, the HighInBC thing tells me that was a wise choice.

I'm totally on board with legitimate complaints to be made against Wikipedia, especially when it comes to BLPs, and editors so ideologically warped that they'll even defend an admitted pedophile's right to openly contribute. User:Erik was not one of these guys; he didn't get involved in controversial issues, he stuck to improving Wikipedia's coverage of films, he refused the admin bit on several occasions. Even if there were a basis for legal action (there isn't, as the minion found Erik Kraft; User:Erik was under no legal obligation to confirm or deny his identity), surely there are bigger fish to fry?

[Peter Damian]

I'm still puzzled about how Kraft got to the relevant Wikipedia pages so quickly.

15:10 UTC Kraft receives two 5-minute phone calls, 30 mins apart, in London from Murphy. Murphy only identifies himself as 'Don'. However, Murphy did say the problem was with Wikipedia user 'Erik'. Either Kraft assumed the spelling was like his own name, or Murphy explicitly says this.

16:01 Kraft locates user:Erik's Wikipedia page and leaves a message there, using an IP (London). Immediately above this there is the bit that says this

==Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Legal_threat_regarding_image==
I've re-opened the discussion on the grounds that the removal of the image doesn't seem to meet any criteria for removal. Woogee (talk) 20:47, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

See Talk:Don Murphy#Photo. The licensing is appropriate, but editors did not feel it was necessary to include the image. Feel free to counter them. Erik (talk | contribs) 20:49, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I hope that's not your real address that they pulled up on the website. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unhappy.gif) SilverserenC 07:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, they're in the process of outing me. Hopefully they won't harass my fiancee... Erik (talk | contribs) 10:12, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=357990738

This does explain how Kraft got Murphy's full name. It also includes a link to the ANI page, which would, at that time, have taken him here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...regarding_image .

16:10. Nine minutes later, Kraft has found the thread on Murphy's forum which contained his name, number and address, and says he has received two calls in the last hour from 'Don'. I am still puzzled how he found this so quickly. There is no link to it on Erik's talk page, nor on ANI, although the discussion does refer to its existence. The link itself was not posted until 18:26. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358054017

The thread is not easy to find. Even if you get to Murphy's website, all you get is this http://donmurphy.net/, and the thread itself is buried in the 'movies' section.

I still don't understand how Kraft got there so fast.

16:10 Then Kraft posts to Arcayne's talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...ns/95.177.43.18 saying "I'm writing because you seem to be involved in a feud with a wikipedia user named Erik. Various people seem to be mad at Erik; I've received two extremely confusing phone calls from a Don in the past hour. "

I don't understand why he should have located Arcayne of all people. Yes, Erik was involved in an edit war with Arcayne, but how did Kraft know this? There is only one section on user:Erik's talk page that involves Arcayne. Did he consult edit histories? Yet he told Brandt yesterday (26 April) that he is "unfamiliar with consulting a recent archive, or with researching edit histories".

So I am still mystified. How did Kraft, 30 minutes after the last call from someone called 'Don', find all the right pages on Wikipedia, and Murphy's forum?

All the other evidence seems to point to Kraft and user:Erik being different people, I agree. But is there some relationship between them?

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Daniel Brandt]

4. Meanwhile, Don has posted his "Find Erik" message on his forum (after User:Erik added the image, but before he expanded the article). Nothing illegal about that, but a minion finds Erik Kraft, based on the name Erik, and the university User:Erik said he went to. This last point may or may not have been a lie by User:Erik to avoid being targeted, but even if that's the case, there's nothing to suggest User:Erik targeted Erik Kraft deliberately. He could have chosen almost any university and the minion would have been able to find an Erik who went there. Try it.

This point of yours strikes me as exceedingly disingenuous. User:Erik posted his university affiliation 39 minutes after the call went out to "Find Erik." User:Erik wanted someone named Erik, who is a UI graduate living in Chicago, to be found as soon as he noticed that Murphy had started a "Find Erik" thread. In more than three years of editing Wikipedia, this is the first mention of User:Erik's university affiliation on his user page.

23/Apr 18:51 Murphy makes first post "find Erik"

23/Apr 19:30 User:Erik puts on his WP user page that "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."

Right now the first question is whether it was a lie or whether it is true. IP address information for User:Erik should help in answering this question, because it will allow User:Erik to be geolocated. With further research, it may even reveal his identity. With help from a court, it is very likely that his ISP will be required to reveal account information. Getting the IP address information from the Foundation is the next logical step in this case.

Even if he was telling the truth, User:Erik still owes Erik Kraft a huge apology. He should have very clearly posted the information that Erik Kraft is not him, as soon as it became clear less than an hour later, that Murphy was going after one Erik Kraft who has a degree from UI and lives in Chicago. Even if it was the truth, User:Erik is nevertheless guilty of a sin of omission. This guilt is ongoing; he could easily pop back into his user page and issue an apology right now. However, his credibility is now so low that I think he'd have to reveal more about his own identity in order to make an apology convincing.

If it was a lie, then User:Erik's motives are extremely suspicious.

Editing BLPs that the BLP victim wants deleted, on the world's most-popular information source, while hiding behind a screen name, is bad enough. It should be illegal. But if you attempt to shield your own identity by causing distress to an innocent, unwitting party who does not hide behind a screen name, then I suspect that this is already illegal. It is certainly actionable as a civil matter.

That's what the fuss is all about. If you cannot see this then you should leave Wikipedia, or at least stay away from BLPs, because someday you might discover that you made someone very angry. They will come looking for you if they have any self-respect at all.

[Thurl Ravenscroft]

4. Meanwhile, Don has posted his "Find Erik" message on his forum (after User:Erik added the image, but before he expanded the article). Nothing illegal about that, but a minion finds Erik Kraft, based on the name Erik, and the university User:Erik said he went to. This last point may or may not have been a lie by User:Erik to avoid being targeted, but even if that's the case, there's nothing to suggest User:Erik targeted Erik Kraft deliberately. He could have chosen almost any university and the minion would have been able to find an Erik who went there. Try it.

This point of yours strikes me as exceedingly disingenuous. User:Erik posted his university affiliation 39 minutes after the call went out to "Find Erik." User:Erik wanted someone named Erik, who is a UI graduate living in Chicago, to be found as soon as he noticed that Murphy had started a "Find Erik" thread. In more than three years of editing Wikipedia, this is the first mention of User:Erik's university affiliation on his user page.... If it was a lie, then User:Erik's motives are extremely suspicious.

I don't think it's disingenuous; it only seems so if you're looking at it cynically. I can see why you would do that for a lot of editors, but everything about Erik's previous contributions leads me to believe that good faith could for once be assumed here. He's not a serial BLP editor, he largely sticks to uncontroversial areas.

Editing BLPs that the BLP victim prefers be deleted, on the world's most-popular information source, while hiding behind a screen name, is bad enough. It should be illegal. But if you attempt to shield your own identity by causing distress to an innocent, unwitting party who does not hide behind a screen name, then I suspect that this is already illegal. It is certainly actionable as a civil matter.

That's what I think you'll find hard to establish, whether it's true or not. There's no proof that User:Erik intended Erik Kraft to get in the way; it was the minion who "found" Kraft; there are probably a dozen others the minion could have focused on. User:Erik is under no obligation to correct someone else's mistake. Now, you might see that as a moral failing, but it's not a legal one (and it's not surprising he refused to confirm or deny anything, given the aforementioned HighInBC "incident" and other notable outings). So I think any court order or what-have-you would be a non-starter.

The escalation here came from Don and his minions, not Erik (either one), who just responded to events. Erik added an image, then removed it. For this, he is targeted and becomes worried enough that he leaves the site and a hobby he enjoys. Isn't that enough for you? You might want to bring down Wikipedia one editor at a time, but I stick with my "bigger fish to fry" argument. Like it or not, a lot of people read Wikipedia; we might as well make it as good as it can be until something better comes along.

This post has been edited by Thule Ravenscroft:

[Jon Awbrey]

ColScott, this is an example of why beating up on individual Wikipedia editors rapidly disintegrates into a farce with you playing the stereotypical mustachioed villain. Once details of their life emerge, they become human.

Quite a choice: Continue to harangue the Erik Kraft who increasingly looks like he deserved none of this treatment (Once this is confirmed, perhaps a nice apology and some chocolates?), or yell at the deaf guy.

Avoid this trap. Go after the big, faceless, irresponsible WMF. Hit them in public perception. Get their URL put into Websense filters all over the place.

Yeah, I've got to agree with Zoloft here. It's difficult to pin down the exact order of events, as they spanned multiple pages, but against my better judgment I spent enough time working out that, apart from a couple of missteps that can be explained through sheer panic, User:Erik didn't do anything to warrant this level of attention:

1. Erik, who has recently added a few pictures of filmmakers to Wikipedia articles, finds an image of Don, which has already been uploaded at Commons with an, at that point, seemingly-valid copyright tag.
2. He crops it to show just Don, adds it to the article. A few people complain, including SharkJumper (Don?) who makes a legal threat. A by-the-book guy, Erik reports Sharkjumper, who is subsequently blocked. In the meantime, discussion takes place on the Don Murphy article talk page about the suitability of the image. Erik agrees that it should be removed, and takes it out himself.
3. Based on a digression at AN/I about Murphy's notability, User:Erik makes a colossal mistake and decides to build up the article. As far as I can see, he ignored any disparaging stuff to include only neutral commentary (though I completely understand that Don doesn't even want that in there).
4. Meanwhile, Don has posted his "Find Erik" message on his forum (after User:Erik added the image, but before he expanded the article). Nothing illegal about that, but a minion finds Erik Kraft, based on the name Erik, and the university User:Erik said he went to. This last point may or may not have been a lie by User:Erik to avoid being targeted, but even if that's the case, there's nothing to suggest User:Erik targeted Erik Kraft deliberately. He could have chosen almost any university and the minion would have been able to find an Erik who went there. Try it.
5. User:Erik doesn't outright confirm or deny anything about his identity; an understandable misstep, in hindsight. Born of panic, especially if he's aware of what happened to HighInBC.
6. User:Erik does the only thing open to him: thinks "fuck it" and retires. I don't think he'll be coming back.

So I just don't get it. Step 2 should have been an end to the matter. The initial attempt to find him, any proposed legal action … it's a massive overreaction. User:Erik's contributions show he hasn't got a vendetta against Don. He voted "keep" in the original AfD, but so did a lot of people. So did I. Yet if an AfD went ahead today, I'd put a reasonably strong argument forward for deletion. The image thing was resolved almost before Don got involved. All User:Erik seems to have done "wrong" is to not tell anyone who he is. Again, the HighInBC thing tells me that was a wise choice.

I'm totally on board with legitimate complaints to be made against Wikipedia, especially when it comes to BLPs, and editors so ideologically warped that they'll even defend an admitted pedophile's right to openly contribute. User:Erik was not one of these guys; he didn't get involved in controversial issues, he stuck to improving Wikipedia's coverage of films, he refused the admin bit on several occasions. Even if there were a basis for legal action (there isn't, as the minion found Erik Kraft; User:Erik was under no legal obligation to confirm or deny his identity), surely there are bigger fish to fry?

Translation —

You're A Mean One, Colonel Scott.

You And Your Whole Seek-Writ Society.

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[Moulton]

Notwithstanding the competing theories about identities, motivations, ethical lapses, and blunders, it occurs to me that this story reminds us that collateral damage is an ever-present feature of the World of Wiki Warcraft. Unlike most MMPORGs, the one hosted by WMF can deal significant damage to people who aren't even signed up and logged in to play their silly games.

[Thurl Ravenscroft]

Translation —

You're A Mean One, Colonel Scott.

You And Your Whole Seek-Writ Society.

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

If only I'd remembered his name was Thurl, not Thule.

[Jon Awbrey]

Translation —

You're A Mean One, Colonel Scott.

You And Your Whole Seek-Writ Society.

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

If only I'd remembered his name was Thurl, not Thule.

The probability of a Nazi slip ultimately approaches Thule.

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[A Horse With No Name]

I realize it doesn't prove anything as a deaf person could have copied that information from somewhere else, or through the help of a friend's ears. I haven't seen the film so I don't even know whether it's accurate, only that I wouldn't post something like that without at least listening to a sample...

He probably got it from a fan-review site (he seems to like those a lot), but it's also possible that he's only partially deaf (i.e., hard-of-hearing). Some people with partial hearing loss can hear music, movies, TV etc. reasonably well if they put on headphones and really crank the volume, whereas if you're trying to have a conversation with them and they're not wearing some heavy amplification gear, they can't hear much at all.

I obviously have no idea one way or the other, but in theory that could conceivably explain why he likes movies so much...?

Everyone likes movies, and hearing impaired people can appreciate films through closed captioning and subtitles. But the motives behind his action are where things go awry.

Why would the "Erik" character target Don Murphy, of all people? It is difficult not to notice that Erik is a rank amateur as both a film expert and a writer/editor, and I assume that he has no off-Wiki professional alignment with the entertainment world. If we acknowledge his Wikipedia character as reality, something is not adding up.

Since Erik appears to be a movie fanboy, I can understand his interest in the "Transformers" franchise. But Don Murphy has very little name value with the general public and he appears to be a thoroughly non-controversial presence in the film world. It is a peculiar fight for Erik to pick.

[Thurl Ravenscroft]

Why would the "Erik" character target Don Murphy, of all people? It is difficult not to notice that Erik is a rank amateur as both a film expert and a writer/editor, and I assume that he has no off-Wiki professional alignment with the entertainment world. If we acknowledge his Wikipedia character as reality, something is not adding up.

Since Erik appears to be a movie fanboy, I can understand his interest in the "Transformers" franchise. But Don Murphy has very little name value with the general public and he appears to be a thoroughly non-controversial presence in the film world. It is a peculiar fight for Erik to pick.

I think this goes to the point I've been trying to make. Everyone seems to be operating under a huge misapprehension. Erik didn't "pick a fight" with Murphy. He added the image, sure, but removed it after a reasonably civil talk page discussion, which concluded it was unsuitable. Only Don's "Find Erik" escalated matters, and only after that (and the AN/I notability digression) did Erik expand the article (fairly neutrally, IMO). Before that, he largely kept his head down.

There are better fights to be had. This one needn't have happened.

[NotARepublican55]

A lawsuit against an individual wikipedian, or an admin, would also have a chilling effect. Indeed even an unsuccessful one would make a lot of Wikipedians nervous. Do I really want a hobby that could get me having to defend myself in court?

There have been at least two lawsuits against individual Wikipedians.

• Grebner sues for wiki-based defamation
• Ron Livingston: Yo Wikipedia, I'm Not Gay!

I am unable to find any recent coverage of the Grebner suit. As for the Livingston suit, it seems it was dropped after the editor responsible was identified, and the vandalism stopped:

... the very nature of Wikipedia allows libelers to repeatedly repost their libel even after it has been corrected. For example, last year actor Ron Livingston discovered that a malicious Wikipedia editor had posted that the star of the TV hit Office Space was gay. Every time the actor's representatives corrected the falsehood, the libeler reposted it—time and time again. In December 2009, a fed-up Livingston finally sued the anonymous poster as a “John Doe” for libel. With court-granted discovery powers, Livingston's strategy was to seek the identity of the anonymous person and stop him. Using a forensic computer expert, Livingston's attorney was indeed able to identify the culprit, the attorney explained in an interview with this writer. The conduct stopped and the suit was recently dropped. Although it was widely reported that Livingston sued Wikipedia itself, that information was incorrect. In fact, the actor only sued a “John Doe,” that is, the individual poster. Livingston's legal strategy brings out an important feature of Wikipedia's seeming invincibility to lawsuits [...]

Source: Wikipedia - The Dumbing Down of World Knowledge

Is anyone familiar with the author of this article?

Edwin Black is the award-winnng author of "Internal Combustion,"The Plan - How to Rescue Society the Day Before the Oil Stops," "IBM and the Holocaust," and the publisher of TheCuttingEdgeNews.com. Edwin is also a frequent contributor to The Auto Channel.

You forgot the Fuzzy Zoeller lawsuit. Someone at a Miami law firm vandalized the golfer's article claiming that he had a known history of drug abuse, alcoholism, and domestic violence. Fuzzy Dropped the suit after he was unable to identify the individual who made those edits from the law firm's computer:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/intern...cleID=197008201

[Ottava]

He probably got it from a fan-review site (he seems to like those a lot), but it's also possible that he's only partially deaf (i.e., hard-of-hearing). Some people with partial hearing loss can hear music, movies, TV etc. reasonably well if they put on headphones and really crank the volume, whereas if you're trying to have a conversation with them and they're not wearing some heavy amplification gear, they can't hear much at all.

I obviously have no idea one way or the other, but in theory that could conceivably explain why he likes movies so much...?

I was born deaf (middle ear problems and various tube defects) but had surgery at the age of 3 to correct it. I do have tonal loss (probably about 20-30%) and there are times where my hearing is completely gone. I can hear on good days, I just sometimes have a problem if there is poor annunciation (and forget foreign languages, there are many sounds I just can't hear). Legally am I deaf? Well, I could easily apply as such under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The categories are rather broad. Who knows if he has any of the same problems or whatever. I'm just throwing it out there as a possibility.

[Moulton]

This kerfuffle might have been avoided if the bio had been classified as a BFP* instead of a BLP.

* BFP == Biographies of Fighting Persons.

[anthony]

4. Meanwhile, Don has posted his "Find Erik" message on his forum (after User:Erik added the image, but before he expanded the article). Nothing illegal about that, but a minion finds Erik Kraft, based on the name Erik, and the university User:Erik said he went to. This last point may or may not have been a lie by User:Erik to avoid being targeted, but even if that's the case, there's nothing to suggest User:Erik targeted Erik Kraft deliberately. He could have chosen almost any university and the minion would have been able to find an Erik who went there. Try it.

This point of yours strikes me as exceedingly disingenuous. User:Erik posted his university affiliation 39 minutes after the call went out to "Find Erik." User:Erik wanted someone named Erik, who is a UI graduate living in Chicago, to be found as soon as he noticed that Murphy had started a "Find Erik" thread. In more than three years of editing Wikipedia, this is the first mention of User:Erik's university affiliation on his user page.

It seems plausible to me. He wanted to lead people off track, so he picked a random university. I'm not saying it's necessarily the case, but I don't see why it couldn't be.

23/Apr 18:51 Murphy makes first post "find Erik"

23/Apr 19:30 User:Erik puts on his WP user page that "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."

Right now the first question is whether it was a lie or whether it is true.

Or partially true... Maybe he's from Chicago, but never went to school there.

Even if he was telling the truth, User:Erik still owes [EK] a huge apology.

I completely disagree with that. I'd say even if he was lying and picked the place randomly he doesn't owe EK an apology. Whoever went from "school + first name = unique identity" is (one of) the one(s) who owes EK an apology. If that indeed was the logic, that was the enormous leap of faith which caused this whole fiasco.

Of course, I'm ignoring all the edits that User:Erik made to Wikipedia. For those, he should be apologetic. I take his retirement as a sign of remorse for his actions, but he should go one step further and post an apology to his user page.

[anthony]

How did [K], 30 minutes after the last call from someone called 'Don', find all the right pages on Wikipedia, and Murphy's forum?

I don't know, but then, how did User:Erik find it? I don't know that either. Haven't bothered trying to figure out either, since it's so completely irrelevant.

Within 30 minutes Murphy's forum was probably a top google hit for <<[the guy's name] wikipedia>>. I know it was a couple hours later. I'm pretty sure I found the forum link through WR (which EK seems to have not found), but I refound it quite a few times through Google.

This post has been edited by anthony:

[CharlotteWebb]

Since Erik appears to be a movie fanboy, I can understand his interest in the "Transformers" franchise. But Don Murphy has very little name value with the general public and he appears to be a thoroughly non-controversial presence in the film world. It is a peculiar fight for Erik to pick.

One could argue all bets are off while your article continues to exist. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

I was born deaf (middle ear problems and various tube defects) but had surgery at the age of 3 to correct it. I do have tonal loss (probably about 20-30%) and there are times where my hearing is completely gone. I can hear on good days, I just sometimes have a problem if there is poor annunciation (and forget foreign languages, there are many sounds I just can't hear). Legally am I deaf? Well, I could easily apply as such under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The categories are rather broad. Who knows if he has any of the same problems or whatever. I'm just throwing it out there as a possibility.

I thought usage of the word "deaf" to refer to those merely "hearing impaired" (and for whom a hearing aid does some good) was sub-standard if not politically incorrect hyperbole. How common is it? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unsure.gif)

[Milton Roe]

I was born deaf (middle ear problems and various tube defects) but had surgery at the age of 3 to correct it. I do have tonal loss (probably about 20-30%) and there are times where my hearing is completely gone. I can hear on good days, I just sometimes have a problem if there is poor annunciation ...

Lucky you're a Catholic where all the annunciations are first class. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

[Zoloft]

I note that since it became really obvious that Don Murphy verbally attacked and intimidated the wrong person (about the time Tarantino pointed out that User:Erik identifies as deaf), he's gotten real quiet.

No apology for the fellow on vacation you rousted, eh?

Classy.

[Ottava]

I thought usage of the word "deaf" to refer to those merely "hearing impaired" (and for whom a hearing aid does some good) was sub-standard if not politically incorrect hyperbole. How common is it? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unsure.gif)

No clue. There is a "deaf culture" which tends to want as many people as possible and also frowns on surgery or devices that would help you hear. Beyond that, I am sure there are people who would use the word "deaf" to their advantage to get around various restrictions or requirements. I almost used it to get around language requirements (but thankfully, most tests were written and lacked a verbal portion).

[ColScott]

I note that since it became really obvious that Don Murphy verbally attacked and intimidated the wrong person (about the time Tarantino pointed out that User:Erik identifies as deaf), he's gotten real quiet.

No apology for the fellow on vacation you rousted, eh?

Classy.

Zoloft- eat me

I called a guy who WAS a wikipedia editor (not innocent) and asked him why he was doing this shit.
He acted guilty right from the beginning.
I legally posted his legally obtained address.
He then started leaving his bizarre trail on teh nets.

Never apologize in a war. He wasn't even wounded.

I wasn't silent. I have things to do, unlike you.

[carbuncle]

I note that since it became really obvious that Don Murphy verbally attacked and intimidated the wrong person (about the time Tarantino pointed out that User:Erik identifies as deaf), he's gotten real quiet.

No apology for the fellow on vacation you rousted, eh?

Classy.

Zoloft- eat me

I called a guy who WAS a wikipedia editor (not innocent) and asked him why he was doing this shit.
He acted guilty right from the beginning.
I legally posted his legally obtained address.
He then started leaving his bizarre trail on teh nets.

Never apologize in a war. He wasn't even wounded.

I wasn't silent. I have things to do, unlike you.

Erik Kraft never had anything to do with your bio. Don't you think you owe him at least an apology for the false accusations you made and the harassment he suffered?

[ColScott]

I note that since it became really obvious that Don Murphy verbally attacked and intimidated the wrong person (about the time Tarantino pointed out that User:Erik identifies as deaf), he's gotten real quiet.

No apology for the fellow on vacation you rousted, eh?

Classy.

Zoloft- eat me

I called a guy who WAS a wikipedia editor (not innocent) and asked him why he was doing this shit.
He acted guilty right from the beginning.
I legally posted his legally obtained address.
He then started leaving his bizarre trail on teh nets.

Never apologize in a war. He wasn't even wounded.

I wasn't silent. I have things to do, unlike you.

Erik Kraft never had anything to do with your bio. Don't you think you owe him at least an apology for the false accusations you made and the harassment he suffered?

He was NEVER harassed. He was questioned. Why did he "suffer" this? because you and your cult illegally maintain a biography on me that retarded 7 year olds can edit. Where is my apology?

This post has been edited by ColScott:

[Theanima]

I note that since it became really obvious that Don Murphy verbally attacked and intimidated the wrong person (about the time Tarantino pointed out that User:Erik identifies as deaf), he's gotten real quiet.

No apology for the fellow on vacation you rousted, eh?

Classy.

Zoloft- eat me

I called a guy who WAS a wikipedia editor (not innocent) and asked him why he was doing this shit.
He acted guilty right from the beginning.
I legally posted his legally obtained address.
He then started leaving his bizarre trail on teh nets.

Never apologize in a war. He wasn't even wounded.

I wasn't silent. I have things to do, unlike you.

Erik Kraft never had anything to do with your bio. Don't you think you owe him at least an apology for the false accusations you made and the harassment he suffered?

why did he suffer this? because you and your cult illegally maintain a biography on me that retarded 7 year olds can edit. Where is my apology?

No, because you acted like a douchebag with no thought at all for the consequences of your actions. If you'd bothered to target your harassment at the right person, EK wouldn't have even known about this. It's your fault entirely, stop trying to shift the blame.

You don't even have the decency to apologize for your glaring mistake. Shows how much of a man you aren't.

[carbuncle]

Ok, are we all agreed that User:Erik and Erik Kraft are two entirely different people?

Assuming I'm telling the truth about knowing who User:Erik is, I believe that he did not intentionally try to misdirect Murphy's fanboys to someone else (i.e. Kraft). Both attended the University of Illinois. I don't know why User:Erik added that info to his page when he did.

Does User:Erik owe Kraft an apology? I believe that User:Erik should have realised that his weak responses were not helping Kraft prove that he (Kraft) was not involved in editing Murphy's BLP. At this point, however, there's not much he can do since some helpful admin fully protected his talk page so he can't make any statement there. Thanks again, WP!

Does Don Murphy owe Kraft an apology? Absolutely! At the very least, he should admit his mistake and call off his sycophants. Have you done that yet, ColScott?

[Moulton]

See, it's all about blame, scapegoating, and demonization.

[carbuncle]

I guess I hadn't noticed this before:

ColScott
Mr. Wales, there is a new situation involving Don Murphy, who goes by the pseudonym ColScott. He is banned from Wikipedia, but he has continued advocating off-wiki harassment of people who edit his article. This time he contacted someone who has nothing to do with the situation, and he is very disturbed by what happened. You can see the thread at WP:ANI. I recall that you had a phone conversation with him sometime ago. Perhaps another one is in order? It is time to do something. Erik (talk | contribs) 19:00, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the result of this was, but at least User:Erik is clearly stating that the person Murphy contacted is a different person.

[ColScott]

I guess I hadn't noticed this before:

ColScott
Mr. Wales, there is a new situation involving Don Murphy, who goes by the pseudonym ColScott. He is banned from Wikipedia, but he has continued advocating off-wiki harassment of people who edit his article. This time he contacted someone who has nothing to do with the situation, and he is very disturbed by what happened. You can see the thread at WP:ANI. I recall that you had a phone conversation with him sometime ago. Perhaps another one is in order? It is time to do something. Erik (talk | contribs) 19:00, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the result of this was, but at least User:Erik is clearly stating that the person Murphy contacted is a different person.

before he retired like a little pussy

[carbuncle]

He was NEVER harassed. He was questioned. Why did he "suffer" this? because you and your cult illegally maintain a biography on me that retarded 7 year olds can edit. Where is my apology?

Here's your apology: Don Murphy, while I think you generally behave like an overgrown toddler with regard to this, I believe you should be able to opt out of having a biography on Wikipedia. I'm sorry.

[ColScott]

He was NEVER harassed. He was questioned. Why did he "suffer" this? because you and your cult illegally maintain a biography on me that retarded 7 year olds can edit. Where is my apology?

Here's your apology: Don Murphy, while I think you generally behave like an overgrown toddler with regard to this, I believe you should be able to opt out of having a biography on Wikipedia. I'm sorry.

But see here is the punchline
If your cult never behaved illegally
NEVER kept a bio accusing me of child rape
Then you never heard of me
No one had to be outed
I go on and live my life
I am not behaving like a toddler- I am behaving like a grown man who has had you people shit on my lawn one too many times- I am shitting on yours.


In fact, I would submit that you and yours have behaved like kids. Throwing rocks and then more rocks and now that the bazooka is coming you cry "Meanie". Except the meanie wasn't bothering you or even playing with you before you started your shit

This post has been edited by ColScott:

[A Horse With No Name]

Nonetheless, I suspect Erik will return. Even he believes that he will.

[Zoloft]

He was NEVER harassed. He was questioned. Why did he "suffer" this? because you and your cult illegally maintain a biography on me that retarded 7 year olds can edit. Where is my apology?

Here's your apology: Don Murphy, while I think you generally behave like an overgrown toddler with regard to this, I believe you should be able to opt out of having a biography on Wikipedia. I'm sorry.

But see here is the punchline
If your cult never behaved illegally
NEVER kept a bio accusing me of child rape
Then you never heard of me
No one had to be outed
I go on and live my life
I am not behaving like a toddler- I am behaving like a grown man who has had you people shit on my lawn one too many times- I am shitting on yours.


In fact, I would submit that you and yours have behaved like kids. Throwing rocks and then more rocks and now that the bazooka is coming you cry "Meanie". Except the meanie wasn't bothering you or even playing with you before you started your shit

Why the hell did you get involved in films at all if you can't learn to delegate this stuff to your PR staff?
Jeebus.
I bumped into you once at Comic-Con and you didn't seem to be this clueless.

I have zero influence at Wikipedia, but as someone who fixes the odd misplaced comma or BLP violation, I am profoundly sorry that you have a bio there.

And there's my apology as well.

[ColScott]

He was NEVER harassed. He was questioned. Why did he "suffer" this? because you and your cult illegally maintain a biography on me that retarded 7 year olds can edit. Where is my apology?

Here's your apology: Don Murphy, while I think you generally behave like an overgrown toddler with regard to this, I believe you should be able to opt out of having a biography on Wikipedia. I'm sorry.

But see here is the punchline
If your cult never behaved illegally
NEVER kept a bio accusing me of child rape
Then you never heard of me
No one had to be outed
I go on and live my life
I am not behaving like a toddler- I am behaving like a grown man who has had you people shit on my lawn one too many times- I am shitting on yours.


In fact, I would submit that you and yours have behaved like kids. Throwing rocks and then more rocks and now that the bazooka is coming you cry "Meanie". Except the meanie wasn't bothering you or even playing with you before you started your shit

Why the hell did you get involved in films at all if you can't learn to delegate this stuff to your PR staff?
Jeebus.
I bumped into you once at Comic-Con and you didn't seem to be this clueless.

I have zero influence at Wikipedia, but as someone who fixes the odd misplaced comma or BLP violation, I am profoundly sorry that you have a bio there.

And there's my apology as well.

deeds not words
take it down right now
screw he ramifications
REMOVE IT
then I'll believe your sorrow

[Moulton]

I am behaving like a grown man who has had you people shit on my lawn one too many times- I am shitting on yours.

See, that's where you went wrong. You'd have gotten more mileage out of staging a rock concert on their lawn, featuring truly atrocious song parodies.

[carbuncle]

But see here is the punchline
If your cult never behaved illegally
NEVER kept a bio accusing me of child rape
Then you never heard of me
No one had to be outed
I go on and live my life
I am not behaving like a toddler- I am behaving like a grown man who has had you people shit on my lawn one too many times- I am shitting on yours.


In fact, I would submit that you and yours have behaved like kids. Throwing rocks and then more rocks and now that the bazooka is coming you cry "Meanie". Except the meanie wasn't bothering you or even playing with you before you started your shit

My cult?? I think you're confused. My cult rides horses while naked - it has nothing to do with your biography.

Here's a gift suggestion for your wife's next birthday: "Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us" by Robert Hare. I think she may find it interesting reading. You may enjoy it, too. I know you're both very interested in the Manson Family.

[ColScott]

I am behaving like a grown man who has had you people shit on my lawn one too many times- I am shitting on yours.

See, that's where you went wrong. You'd have gotten more mileage out of staging a rock concert on their lawn, featuring truly atrocious song parodies.

nice

[Peter Damian]

I'm still puzzled about how Kraft got to the relevant Wikipedia pages so quickly.

15:10 UTC Kraft receives two 5-minute phone calls, 30 mins apart, in London from Murphy. Murphy only identifies himself as 'Don'. However, Murphy did say the problem was with Wikipedia user 'Erik'. Either Kraft assumed the spelling was like his own name, or Murphy explicitly says this.

16:01 Kraft locates user:Erik's Wikipedia page and leaves a message there, using an IP (London). Immediately above this there is the bit that says this

==Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Legal_threat_regarding_image==
I've re-opened the discussion on the grounds that the removal of the image doesn't seem to meet any criteria for removal. Woogee (talk) 20:47, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

See Talk:Don Murphy#Photo. The licensing is appropriate, but editors did not feel it was necessary to include the image. Feel free to counter them. Erik (talk | contribs) 20:49, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
I hope that's not your real address that they pulled up on the website. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unhappy.gif) SilverserenC 07:11, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, they're in the process of outing me. Hopefully they won't harass my fiancee... Erik (talk | contribs) 10:12, 24 April 2010 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=357990738

This does explain how Kraft got Murphy's full name. It also includes a link to the ANI page, which would, at that time, have taken him here http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...regarding_image .

16:10. Nine minutes later, Kraft has found the thread on Murphy's forum which contained his name, number and address, and says he has received two calls in the last hour from 'Don'. I am still puzzled how he found this so quickly. There is no link to it on Erik's talk page, nor on ANI, although the discussion does refer to its existence. The link itself was not posted until 18:26. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358054017

The thread is not easy to find. Even if you get to Murphy's website, all you get is this http://donmurphy.net/, and the thread itself is buried in the 'movies' section.

I still don't understand how Kraft got there so fast.

16:10 Then Kraft posts to Arcayne's talk page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...ns/95.177.43.18 saying "I'm writing because you seem to be involved in a feud with a wikipedia user named Erik. Various people seem to be mad at Erik; I've received two extremely confusing phone calls from a Don in the past hour. "

I don't understand why he should have located Arcayne of all people. Yes, Erik was involved in an edit war with Arcayne, but how did Kraft know this? There is only one section on user:Erik's talk page that involves Arcayne. Did he consult edit histories? Yet he told Brandt yesterday (26 April) that he is "unfamiliar with consulting a recent archive, or with researching edit histories".

So I am still mystified. How did Kraft, 30 minutes after the last call from someone called 'Don', find all the right pages on Wikipedia, and Murphy's forum?

All the other evidence seems to point to Kraft and user:Erik being different people, I agree. But is there some relationship between them?

I repeat the whole thing. None of the posts above address this. How did Kraft, 30 minutes after the last call from someone called 'Don', find all the right pages on Wikipedia, and Murphy's forum?

I guess I hadn't noticed this before:

ColScott
Mr. Wales, there is a new situation involving Don Murphy, who goes by the pseudonym ColScott. He is banned from Wikipedia, but he has continued advocating off-wiki harassment of people who edit his article. This time he contacted someone who has nothing to do with the situation, and he is very disturbed by what happened. You can see the thread at WP:ANI. I recall that you had a phone conversation with him sometime ago. Perhaps another one is in order? It is time to do something. Erik (talk | contribs) 19:00, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the result of this was, but at least User:Erik is clearly stating that the person Murphy contacted is a different person.

Clearly he was stating that. Was he telling the truth? Obviously, on the hypothesis that he had already contacted
himself on his own talk page at 18:00 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=358050974 he would now be maintaining this.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[A Horse With No Name]

My cult rides horses while naked - it has nothing to do with your biography.

I don't mind good-looking naked ladies riding on my back -- that's a cult I can get used to! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/boing.gif)

[Eva Destruction]

I repeat the whole thing. None of the posts above address this. How did Kraft, 30 minutes after the last call from someone called 'Don', find all the right pages on Wikipedia, and Murphy's forum?

1. "Are you User Erik on Wikipedia?"
2. "I have nothing to do with Wikipedia"
3. "Yes you do"
4. Googles "User Erik Wikipedia"
5. User:Erik on Wikipedia, complete with links to ANI etc is the first hit; Don's forum is the fourth hit.
   Not rocket science.

[Peter Damian]

I called a guy who WAS a wikipedia editor (not innocent) and asked him why he was doing this shit.

Correct. Kraft is an editor, but appears to have lied about this

He acted guilty right from the beginning.

Not privy to the call. How did he act guilty?

I legally posted his legally obtained address.

Not nice.

He then started leaving his bizarre trail on teh nets.

Correct. Very bizarre. I support no one but the truth.

Never apologize in a war. He wasn't even wounded.

He was wounded if you are wrong. If you are wrong, apologise.

I wasn't silent. I have things to do, unlike you.

Well produce a film then.

[Milton Roe]

My cult rides horses while naked - it has nothing to do with your biography.

I don't mind good-looking naked ladies riding on my back -- that's a cult I can get used to! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/boing.gif)

What would you call it, the Godivists? It seems rather mortificational if that's all you get to do.

[Peter Damian]

I repeat the whole thing. None of the posts above address this. How did Kraft, 30 minutes after the last call from someone called 'Don', find all the right pages on Wikipedia, and Murphy's forum?

1. "Are you User Erik on Wikipedia?"
2. "I have nothing to do with Wikipedia"
3. "Yes you do"
4. Googles "User Erik Wikipedia"
5. User:Erik on Wikipedia, complete with links to ANI etc is the first hit; Don's forum is the fourth hit.
   Not rocket science.

The forum is, but I have already explained how hard it is to find that thread without a link.

[edit] Here is Murphy's website, as I pointed out above.

http://donmurphy.net/

How do you find the relevant thread from the crap you get there? You are phoned up by some madman. You have a hangover. He says he is called 'Don'. How do you find the right thread on the right website.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Apathetic]

I repeat the whole thing. None of the posts above address this. How did Kraft, 30 minutes after the last call from someone called 'Don', find all the right pages on Wikipedia, and Murphy's forum?

1. "Are you User Erik on Wikipedia?"
2. "I have nothing to do with Wikipedia"
3. "Yes you do"
4. Googles "User Erik Wikipedia"
5. User:Erik on Wikipedia, complete with links to ANI etc is the first hit; Don's forum is the fourth hit.
   Not rocket science.

The forum is, but I have already explained how hard it is to find that thread without a link.

How do you find the relevant thread from the crap you get there? You are phoned up by some madman. You have a hangover. He says he is called 'Don'. How do you find the right thread on the right website.

What are you on about? Google "User erik wikipedia" links directly to http://www.donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?p=1424901 in the fourth result.

[ColScott]

I repeat the whole thing. None of the posts above address this. How did Kraft, 30 minutes after the last call from someone called 'Don', find all the right pages on Wikipedia, and Murphy's forum?

1. "Are you User Erik on Wikipedia?"
2. "I have nothing to do with Wikipedia"
3. "Yes you do"
4. Googles "User Erik Wikipedia"
5. User:Erik on Wikipedia, complete with links to ANI etc is the first hit; Don's forum is the fourth hit.
   Not rocket science.

The forum is, but I have already explained how hard it is to find that thread without a link.

How do you find the relevant thread from the crap you get there? You are phoned up by some madman. You have a hangover. He says he is called 'Don'. How do you find the right thread on the right website.

What are you on about? Google "User erik wikipedia" links directly to http://www.donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?p=1424901 in the fourth result.

not when it first happened, foolio

[Peter Damian]

What are you on about? Google "User erik wikipedia" links directly to http://www.donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?p=1424901 in the fourth result.

Thank you for helping me with that. I didn't succeed. Was that the same result on Saturday 24th?

[Apathetic]

What are you on about? Google "User erik wikipedia" links directly to http://www.donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?p=1424901 in the fourth result.

Thank you for helping me with that. I didn't succeed. Was that the same result on Saturday 24th?

Good question. Guess it depends how much Google Juiceâ„¢ donmurphy.net has. Based on how fast Google caches, It would've certainly been in the results though. And if you added the word "don", I'm sure it would've been even more likely to pop up on the 24th.

Erik Kraft is apparently an experienced netizen, and you aren't giving him much credit here.

[Moulton]

On teh intarwebs, research is our most important persiflage.

[A Horse With No Name]

So here is the next dumb question: why was Erik concerned about his fiancee? (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/blink.gif)

[thekohser]

• Googles "User Erik Wikipedia"

I see what you did there. Was that a deliberate deception, or a joke of some sort?

What are you on about? Google "User erik wikipedia" links directly to http://www.donmurphy.net/board/showthread.php?p=1424901 in the fourth result.

It most decidedly does not. The fourth result for "User erik wikipedia" is

Erik Möller, No. 2 at Wikipedia, a defender of pedophilia - Erik ...

Maybe you should look at the deceptive/comic/mistaken ACTUAL search term from Eva's link.

[Eva Destruction]

Oops, that's my mistake; I amended it to work on the information he would have known at the time. It works just as well on "User Erik Wikipedia"; User:Erik is the first result, and Don's forum thread is fourth. That "Erik Moller" thread is third (at least, on what it's showing me).


This post has been edited by Eva Destruction:

[thekohser]

I would like to know how it is somehow the "same thing" to search Google for "erik kraft wikipedia" as it is for "user erik wikipedia".

For example, here is a search for "Jimmy Wales founder wikipedia". Amazing that it only returns ONE RESULT! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/evilgrin.gif)

"Oops", indeed, Eva. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

This post has been edited by thekohser:

[Apathetic]

Maybe you should look at the deceptive/comic/mistaken ACTUAL search term from Eva's link.

I typed it myself. "User erik wikipedia" ( http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off...l=&oq=&gs_rfai= )

The 4th link (if you don't count the "sublinks") is most definitely:

Wikipedia Wars 2010- ERIK - Don Murphy Message Board

Now, Erik Kraft (being crafty) might have even added the word "don" -- and if he was a real smart cookie, maybe even "photo"!

[thekohser]

Maybe you should look at the deceptive/comic/mistaken ACTUAL search term from Eva's link.

I typed it myself. "User erik wikipedia" ( http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off...l=&oq=&gs_rfai= )

The 4th link (if you don't count the "sublinks") is most definitely:

Wikipedia Wars 2010- ERIK - Don Murphy Message Board

Now, Erik Kraft (being crafty) might have even added the word "don" -- and if he was a real smart cookie, maybe even "photo"!

Hmph... my fourth result is still:

Erik Möller, No. 2 at Wikipedia, a defender of pedophilia - Erik ...

Don's wonderful message board is the fifth result, on my browser anyway. I like my fourth result better than your fourth result.

Peter Damian... please, for the sake of this thread moving toward a letter to Mike Godwin, please cease this fanciful notion that it's improbable for someone to conduct relatively simple Google searches in less than 30 minutes.

Especially a guy who looks like this and works in library science. I guarantee you, he could find shit about lots of stuff in 30 minutes.

[Apathetic]

Don's wonderful message board is the fifth result, on my browser anyway. I like my fourth result better than your fourth result.

Maybe because of .ca vs .com differences. Still, right near the top.

Peter Damian... please, for the sake of this thread moving toward a letter to Mike Godwin, please cease this fanciful notion that it's improbable for someone to conduct relatively simple Google searches in less than 30 minutes.

Indeed.

[Peter Damian]

Erik Kraft is apparently an experienced netizen ...

Yes he is, and an experienced Wikipedia editor

==Urban Legend== +
Unverified urban legend holds that the lyrics of "Sussudio" came about after Phil Collins experienced an extended period of night terrors in which he was visited by a "many-tentacled...entity" who psychically whispered "Sussudio" in his ear over and over again. + +
Another urban legend maintains that it was a Sussudio brand candy bar that Phil Collins was using to pleasure Marianne Faithfull when the police broke in to his mansion in the episode that resulted in his notorious 1984 drug bust, but in 1992 a magistrate declared these rumors to be unfounded after an extended court battle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=327219580

And an experienced liar.

:I'm grateful to you for doing this--and I've gone ahead and created a wikipedia account (erik.kraft) so that it doesn't seem like I'm trying to hide behind anonymity. Which is clearly not possible anyway. Feel free to refer to me as erik.kraft going forward. I'll be following the ANI page and will post further details as I have them. And I even just learned to sign my posts: --> [[User:Erik.kraft|Erik.kraft]] ([[User talk:Erik.kraft|talk]]) 19:06, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

He told Don he hadn't edited Wikipedia in 3 years.

Peter Damian... please, for the sake of this thread moving toward a letter to Mike Godwin, please cease this fanciful notion that it's improbable for someone to conduct relatively simple Google searches in less than 30 minutes.

For the sake of some theory.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Apathetic]

I understand Daniel Brandt spoke with Erik Kraft on the phone. Did he confirm that he is [[User:Erik.kraft]]?

[Peter Damian]

Well, that was something!
For the past 48 hours, I’ve had my first experience with cyberstalking, online sociopathy, scary 4chan-ish stuff that was likely perpetrated by a 12 year old in a basement somewhere. To make it worse, it was a case of mistaken identity. To make it worse worse, I was in England when it all started happening and had to deal with everything from there. Fun stuff! I’m back home safe now, and have such a story to tell, someday when I am less jetlagged. The story is nightmarish and hilarious like some primo 21st Kafka shit.

I’d been trying to be semi-careful about keeping this blog separate from my real life, and not mentioning my full name, but it turns out Internet weirdos with inexplicable vendettas are really willing to spend a lot of time with Google. Mein gott. Part of me wants to delete this site entirely and never do anything on the Internet again. But then the bad guys win, and fuck that.

In the meantime, though, I am doing an online privacy reassessment. Phase One: delete my Facebook account. If you want to get a hold of me and would normally do so via facebook: referencedesk at fallingandlaughing dot com

In the meantime, to the saddos who are reading this blog in minute detail trying to figure out if I’m some random kid from wikipedia, Hi!!!!! Welcome to my intanet blogspot I hope you like it!!!! When is Transformers 3 coming out?!?!? I love comic books!!!!
http://fallingandlaughing.com/post/5515188...t-was-something

Then please explain the inconsistencies. Why did you tell Don you hadn't edited Wikipedia in 3 years. How did you find Erik's page, Don's message board, ANI and Arcayne's talk page in 30 minutes.

I understand Daniel Brandt spoke with Erik Kraft on the phone. Did he confirm that he is [[User:Erik.kraft]]?

It would be useful to know that. However the [[User:Erik.kraft]] was created after the call from Don.

I’d been trying to be semi-careful about keeping this blog separate from my real life

Keeping things in compartments, yes.


[edit]

==Urban Legend== +
Unverified urban legend holds that the lyrics of "Sussudio" came about after Phil Collins experienced an extended period of night terrors in which he was visited by a "many-tentacled...entity" who psychically whispered "Sussudio" in his ear over and over again. + +
Another urban legend maintains that it was a Sussudio brand candy bar that Phil Collins was using to pleasure Marianne Faithfull when the police broke in to his mansion in the episode that resulted in his notorious 1984 drug bust, but in 1992 a magistrate declared these rumors to be unfounded after an extended court battle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=327219580

What is a 'Sussudio brand candy bar'? Was Phil Collins busted for drugs in 1984? Did Phil Collins ever have anything to do with Marianne Faithfull? Why put this in Wikipedia, Mr. Kraft?

[edit] Oh apparently not

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=329192222 "Removing "urban Legend" section. Well hidden and funny vandalism, with no source. Too bad"

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Somey]

Mr. Kraft has just registered an account here on WR, validating the normal way with an e-mail address from his own domain (sorry about the delay there), so hopefully we can clear up some of these lingering coinkydink issues. At least I hope that's what they are... (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

And btw, Mr. Ravenscroft, we could change your member-name if you like - I was wondering about that myself! It's not such a significant change that anyone would mistake you for someone else in quoted text, so I don't see any reason not to just take care of that now.

[erik.kraft]

Oh, hey everybody. It's Erik Kraft. Since a very helpful person alerted me to the existence of this thread yesterday morning, I've been watching it with alternating horror and amusement. Do you have any idea what it's like to have a bunch of complete strangers intensely scrutinizing every last detail they can dig up about you on the web? It's quite something, and I hope none of you ever have to go through it.

It's been tempting to weigh in, but I've been confident that the smart people here would eventually make their case against the handful of creeps running the witch trial. I'm glad everyone (even Don) seems to have pieced things together, with the exception of good ol' Peter Damian. Peter! I'm glad you found my blog and are enjoying it so much! I'm astonished at how hard it has been for you to understand that other people besides you might have some rudimentary knowledge of how to find things on the internet. As many others have pointed out, Murphy didn't give me much to go on, but it wasn't hard to piece things together once I knew he was after User:Erik.

And to everyone who, early on, was in disbelief that someone who claimed not to be a wikipedia editor could get up to speed so quickly: you'd be amazed at how quickly your brain can work when you are worried sick about the safety of your loved ones and neighbors when someone is making anonymous threats against you, and when someone has posted your address in a forum where a thug has ordered his followers to find you, and when you are across the ocean from that address.

As far as the Exhibit A that Murphy was so proud of--my conflicting statements over whether or not I was a wikipedia editor--it's pretty simple. Prior to Saturday, I never had a wikipedia account; I'd made maybe 3 anonymous edits in my entire life. If you were reading my blog posts carefully, you'd see that the Phil Collins edit was a completely absurd joke. I'm confessing it here: I'm guilty of making an anonymous joke-edit to the wikipedia article on the Philip Collins masterwork "In the Air Tonight." Nice detective work, Peter Damian!

Thanks to everyone who's defended me and argued the case for reason against a deluded bully. Thanks especially to Daniel Brandt for taking the time to hear me out. Also, to the guy who noticed that I love The Fall, and that there couldn't be more aesthetic distance between Mark E. Smith and a hack like Don Murphy and his work: THANK YOU.

To Don, I wanted to let you know that you're welcome to call me and apologize. As you proved on Saturday, you already have my phone number. Interestingly, I don't have yours, since you called from blocked numbers both times. I also asked you for your number, and you wouldn't give it to me. You also wouldn't tell me your last name. As you've pointed out again and again, this is all legal. You're probably right. Lucky for you, it's not illegal to be a raging asshole and an impenetrable imbecile.

Lastly, Don, when you call to apologize, perhaps you'd like to hear a great idea I have for your next Hollywood blockbuster! It's a 21st century retelling of Kafka's The Trial, in which the protagonist, Erik K, has to answer to utterly mystifying and illogical charges issued by an implacable and sinister force. I think we could really have a hit on our hands!

Sincerely,

Erik Kraft
Chicago, Illinois

[Moulton]

Online Sociopathy and Kafkaesque Nightmares

Mr. Kraft will be comforted to know that several of us have used those very terms to characterize our own experiences at the hands of those pesky and villainous Wikipedians.

[erik.kraft]

Right, and one more thing. I composed most of the above a couple hours ago; as Somey mentioned, there's been some delay in activating my account. Peter Damian, you're clearly unhealthily obsessed with this, and clearly operating from behind a pseudonym. I, on the other hand, have had all of my personal contact information made very public these past few days. Here's my offer to you. If you're willing to call me from a verifiable phone number that I can call you back at, or if you're willing to write me from an email address that is attached to a real human being, feel free. I'll do my best to explain the same things that about 10 people here have already explained to you. Otherwise, please fuck off.

Sincerely yours,

Erik Kraft
Chicago, Illinois

[Apathetic]

Welcome to the review!

[victim of censorship]

Right, and one more thing. I composed most of the above a couple hours ago; as Somey mentioned, there's been some delay in activating my account. Peter Damian, you're clearly unhealthily obsessed with this, and clearly operating from behind a pseudonym. I, on the other hand, have had all of my personal contact information made very public these past few days. Here's my offer to you. If you're willing to call me from a verifiable phone number that I can call you back at, or if you're willing to write me from an email address that is attached to a real human being, feel free. I'll do my best to explain the same things that about 10 people here have already explained to you. Otherwise, please fuck off.

Sincerely yours,

Erik Kraft
Chicago, Illinois

Most on Wikipedia are near criminal in the way they behave with out the rule of law or respect of others out side the cult of jimbo wales.

I would suggest you leave Wikipedia and not return due to risks it's places on you now. Wikipedia is ripe for a massive law suit and there will be collateral damage as a result.

Wikipedia has nothing positive to offer, considering the fact it has no regulation, and it's a thugocrisy.


You should leave Wikipedia and never look back.

[Zoloft]

Right, and one more thing. I composed most of the above a couple hours ago; as Somey mentioned, there's been some delay in activating my account. Peter Damian, you're clearly unhealthily obsessed with this, and clearly operating from behind a pseudonym. I, on the other hand, have had all of my personal contact information made very public these past few days. Here's my offer to you. If you're willing to call me from a verifiable phone number that I can call you back at, or if you're willing to write me from an email address that is attached to a real human being, feel free. I'll do my best to explain the same things that about 10 people here have already explained to you. Otherwise, please fuck off.

Sincerely yours,

Erik Kraft
Chicago, Illinois

Most on Wikipedia are near criminal in the way they behave with out the rule of law or respect of others out side the cult of jimbo wales.

I would suggest you leave Wikipedia and not return due to risks it's places on you now. Wikipedia is ripe for a massive law suit and there will be collateral damage as a result.

Wikipedia has nothing positive to offer, considering the fact it has no regulation, and it's a thugocrisy.


You should leave Wikipedia and never look back.

*ahem*

I don't believe Mr. Kraft (btw love your processed cheese product) is on Wikipedia to pursue the creation of an online encyclopedia, he just registered to extricate himself from a sticky mass called Don.

He's not a True Believer, or one of the Stonebenders.

[Daniel Brandt]

I understand Daniel Brandt spoke with Erik Kraft on the phone. Did he confirm that he is [[User:Erik.kraft]]?

Absolutely. He called me after I left my telephone number on his machine on Sunday. In this message I explained who I am, that I'm in San Antonio, and why I'm calling. He saw my "Daniel Brandt" caller ID if he has caller ID. On Monday, shortly after returning from England, he returned my call. We spoke for 30 minutes.

He said that he's edited Wikipedia in the past, before last week, but only very occasionally and always as an IP edit. He hasn't had a user name until a few days ago. If he told a cold-caller named "Don" that he hadn't edited Wikipedia in three years, this apparently was something of an exaggeration, based on what we know now. But I can see how he'd blurt this out if Don was being aggressive on the phone.

We talked a lot about the nature of Wikipedia. He clearly did not have much background in two areas: the art of Wikipedia navigation when it came to edit histories, diffs, archives, etc., and the history of Wikipedia in terms of scandals and issues. He complained about his recent edits disappearing. I responded that I doubt this, and you simply have to know how to navigate stuff. I added that there is such a thing as "oversighting" but it is rare, and I don't think that there has been any oversighting happening with respect to the current issue. (Did he know that you can recover the User_talk:Erik pages by clicking history, and then clicking on a version prior to that "Retired" template? I very much doubt it, and this is probably what he meant by "disappeared.")

I should have asked him if he knows what "BLP" means. At one point I was going to explain that when I started criticizing Wikipedia, there was no Biography of Living Persons policy at all. But the thought escaped me before I had a chance to express it. I did point out that I support Murphy's right to have his bio deleted, and that's why I was involved in this issue. I added that there are anonymous teenagers on Wikipedia who call themselves "inclusionists" and feel that they have the right to say anything about anyone, and if you go in and try to correct a defamation on your own bio, they'll come back and say, "You've been banned and you cannot edit!" and delete it. (This was an exaggeration on my part, but it is a fair description of what life was like for me in late 2005 and 2006.) I said that it took three years of activism to get my bio deleted.

He didn't know about the history of Wikipedia. Essjay was a faint trace in his memory because he read something about it once. Seigenthaler was news to him. Section 230 was news to him. I asked him if he knows about wikipedia-watch.org. He said yes, but he clearly has not read much on my site. He probably googled me a bit within the last few days, and that was the extent of it.

Mr. Kraft is tired of this whole experience that began with Murphy's call, and as of yesterday, still felt overwhelmed by it all. He said he was jet-lagged. I told him from the very beginning of the call that I'm on his side on this, and I tried to fill him in on things. He told me that after he heard my message on his machine, he almost didn't return my call. But then he had been reading this thread, and felt that I was someone who would be okay to contact. I was very happy that he called back, and told him this more than once.

Right now my hope is that enough progress has been made on this thread so that Mr. Kraft has no need to feel defensive about anything. His state of mind is probably similar to what mine was in October 2005, after I discovered that bio stub that SlimVirgin started on me. My reaction then was, "What the hell...?" I immediately gave myself a crash course in Wikipedia. I was clumsy at first, but then I started to get the hang of editing on Wikipedia, and started a user account to pursue the issue of a bio that I didn't want.

Give it up, Peter, you are chasing something in your imagination. Mr. Kraft's credibility and consistency and integrity are not an issue at all, based on what I've seen and heard so far.

_______________________


Well, I just now noticed that Mr. Kraft has joined us, so I'll close it off by saying, "Welcome, glad you made it." I ask you, erik.kraft, to try and be civil with your accusers, because this thread already has enough name-calling in it.

[GlassBeadGame]

Just by way of background for Mr. Kraft: Mr. Murphy has had some involvement in the production of Hollywood films relating to topics of interest to pre-adolescents, most notably "Transformers." These films seem to have been disappointments to certain viewers, both chronologically and developmentally stuck in this stage of development. Because the films disappointed their high sense of fanboy devotion and obsession with the topic his article on Wikipedia has been a target for their own version of Revenge of the Nerds. He has plainly been maligned and defamed in his article. Mr. Murphy has complained and demanded relief in own unique style. This has resulted in the Wikipedians joining in the fray to further attack Mr. Murphy in Revenge of the Nerds II.

I do not know if you are truly a stranger to this dispute or not. If you are I thought you might want to know.

[Subtle Bee]

But see here is the punchline [...] I am not behaving like a toddler- I am behaving like a grown man who has had you people shit on my lawn one too many times- I am shitting on yours.

That's absolutely the best punchline I've seen on this thread! In fact, it's so funny, I don't quite know what to do with it.

To Don, I wanted to let you know that you're welcome to call me and apologize. As you proved on Saturday, you already have my phone number. Interestingly, I don't have yours, since you called from blocked numbers both times. I also asked you for your number, and you wouldn't give it to me. You also wouldn't tell me your last name. As you've pointed out again and again, this is all legal. You're probably right. Lucky for you, it's not illegal to be a raging asshole and an impenetrable imbecile.

And that's simply outstanding!

Dear Mr. Kraft: welcome, sorry, thank you! In that order. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wave.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

[Peter Damian]

Welcome to the review.

Peter Damian, you're clearly unhealthily obsessed with this, and clearly operating from behind a pseudonym.

Here's my offer to you. If you're willing to call me from a verifiable phone number that I can call you back at, or if you're willing to write me from an email address that is attached to a real human being, feel free. I'll do my best to explain the same things that about 10 people here have already explained to you. Otherwise, please fuck off.

Peter Damian was an 11th century monk. You can PM me directly from this message board.

You have admitted making the 'joke edit' to Wikipedia about two real people (Collins and Faithfull) in November which stayed up for a whole week.

==Urban Legend== +
Another urban legend maintains that it was a Sussudio brand candy bar that Phil Collins was using to pleasure Marianne Faithfull when the police broke in to his mansion in the episode that resulted in his notorious 1984 drug bust, but in 1992 a magistrate declared these rumors to be unfounded after an extended court battle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=327219580

I know it seems funny to you but the irony is that a lot of people here find this disturbing and wrong.

I should have asked him if he knows what "BLP" means.

Well it's a living person like Phil Collins and Marianne Faithfull.

Give it up, Peter, you are chasing something in your imagination. Mr. Kraft's credibility and consistency and integrity are not an issue at all, based on what I've seen and heard so far.

I think Mr. Kraft has a lot of support on this forum, for various reasons but mostly connected with the need to shaft user:Erik, who will may be the same person as Mr. Kraft here for all I know so I shall bow out of this. I can sense when the crowd has made its decision.

Erik, by all means PM me. Actually I liked your blog and particular the 1930's Penguin covers of which I have a large collection myself. Intrigued also that you like Ramsgate & Broadstairs which I know well. However I am also a sceptic and I apologise for this.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian:

[Somey]

Also, to the guy who noticed that I love The Fall, and that there couldn't be more aesthetic distance between Mark E. Smith and a hack like Don Murphy and his work: THANK YOU.

That was me...

However, I should point out (just for the record) that I didn't mention any of Murphy's movies among the three in that post - I only mentioned movies that User:Erik seemed most interested in, The Fountain being perhaps the most significant.

Don Murphy actually has relatively good taste in music (at least for a blockbuster producer - bear in mind that most movie-music choices are made by directors and music coordinators), and his wife's taste in music is even better - she's from Scotland you know, and there's even a scene in While She Was Out, which she directed, in which Joy Division's "Day of the Lords" is played almost in its entirety. (Though admittedly, the people playing it are the villains.) Anyway, he's one of the few people here on WR who'd be likely to know who The Fall even are, which is why I mentioned it (though apparently it still didn't quite convince him). Most of our members, as much as I love 'em, probably wouldn't know the Manchester post-punk scene from a hole in the ground.

Just sayin'! (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Oh, hey everybody. It's Erik Kraft. Since a very helpful person alerted me to the existence of this thread yesterday morning, I've been watching it with alternating horror and amusement. Do you have any idea what it's like to have a bunch of complete strangers intensely scrutinizing every last detail they can dig up about you on the web? It's quite something, and I hope none of you ever have to go through it.

Its comes with the Wikipedia territory ... victims of abuse syndrome. If you think this is bad, try the real thing for a while and you will come to understand.

It is a warzone. You are in the position of acceptable collateral damage.

Just by way of background for Mr. Kraft: Mr. Murphy has had some involvement in the production of Hollywood films relating to topics of interest to pre-adolescents ...

If he won't consider producing an entire, semi-serious documentary on Jimbo's Cult of Wiki, could Don not at least spoof Jimbo and his inept army of Whacko-pedians in his next movie as some kind of in joke?

You know, like have a sort of semi-hot librarian Dutch chief executive crawling from under Jimbo's desk wiping her face off, a load of mini-me nerds running around like headless chickens speaking in acronyms, global megalomania, the odd nude 300 lb-er who keeps being caught in the office looking at porno.

Surely there is even enough comedy material for a low budget TV show?

Calling someone up ... who publishes their contact details on the internet ... does not constitute harrassment. And, Don is fairly right, it is "the cult versus the rest of the free world", so wake them all up ... but, sure, polite inquiry at first usually does work best.

So, Erik, was Don that tough on you?

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how ... for something that could have been so cool ... the Wikipedia is so full of snarky little p*ssf*cks who go "telling mommy" and ratting on each other at the soonest opportunity.

And I have to say ditto to all the cult apologists ... even here ... who want to irrationally defend it, portray any critics as bad, harassing "anti-cultists" and turn the attack on them.

"He's banned ... He's banned ... he is a bad person ... help me help me!!!"

Never in my adult life have I encounters so many humorless, petty and chicken namecallers so willing to destroy other people's day.

This post has been edited by Cock-up-over-conspiracy:

[ColScott]

Oh, hey everybody. It's Erik Kraft. Since a very helpful person alerted me to the existence of this thread yesterday morning, I've been watching it with alternating horror and amusement. Do you have any idea what it's like to have a bunch of complete strangers intensely scrutinizing every last detail they can dig up about you on the web? It's quite something, and I hope none of you ever have to go through it.

It's been tempting to weigh in, but I've been confident that the smart people here would eventually make their case against the handful of creeps running the witch trial. I'm glad everyone (even Don) seems to have pieced things together, with the exception of good ol' Peter Damian. Peter! I'm glad you found my blog and are enjoying it so much! I'm astonished at how hard it has been for you to understand that other people besides you might have some rudimentary knowledge of how to find things on the internet. As many others have pointed out, Murphy didn't give me much to go on, but it wasn't hard to piece things together once I knew he was after User:Erik.

And to everyone who, early on, was in disbelief that someone who claimed not to be a wikipedia editor could get up to speed so quickly: you'd be amazed at how quickly your brain can work when you are worried sick about the safety of your loved ones and neighbors when someone is making anonymous threats against you, and when someone has posted your address in a forum where a thug has ordered his followers to find you, and when you are across the ocean from that address.

As far as the Exhibit A that Murphy was so proud of--my conflicting statements over whether or not I was a wikipedia editor--it's pretty simple. Prior to Saturday, I never had a wikipedia account; I'd made maybe 3 anonymous edits in my entire life. If you were reading my blog posts carefully, you'd see that the Phil Collins edit was a completely absurd joke. I'm confessing it here: I'm guilty of making an anonymous joke-edit to the wikipedia article on the Philip Collins masterwork "In the Air Tonight." Nice detective work, Peter Damian!

Thanks to everyone who's defended me and argued the case for reason against a deluded bully. Thanks especially to Daniel Brandt for taking the time to hear me out. Also, to the guy who noticed that I love The Fall, and that there couldn't be more aesthetic distance between Mark E. Smith and a hack like Don Murphy and his work: THANK YOU.

To Don, I wanted to let you know that you're welcome to call me and apologize. As you proved on Saturday, you already have my phone number. Interestingly, I don't have yours, since you called from blocked numbers both times. I also asked you for your number, and you wouldn't give it to me. You also wouldn't tell me your last name. As you've pointed out again and again, this is all legal. You're probably right. Lucky for you, it's not illegal to be a raging asshole and an impenetrable imbecile.

Lastly, Don, when you call to apologize, perhaps you'd like to hear a great idea I have for your next Hollywood blockbuster! It's a 21st century retelling of Kafka's The Trial, in which the protagonist, Erik K, has to answer to utterly mystifying and illogical charges issued by an implacable and sinister force. I think we could really have a hit on our hands!

Sincerely,

Erik Kraft
Chicago, Illinois

Erik
You were never threatened in any way shape or form by me. Shame on you for implying otherwise. In fact, you acted so defensively and reactively that I am uncertain what truth you are telling any longer. Your family was never in any danger and I am certain the policeman you supposedly called is still guffawing.
How did I end the second call with you sir? I quote "If you are not the guy I am looking for, thank you and have a nice weekend."
Your need to feel victimized is something you should take up with a shrink. You can attack me and my work all that you want. Just know that this doesn't end here and if you are associated with the other account it will be very problematic.

Right, and one more thing. I composed most of the above a couple hours ago; as Somey mentioned, there's been some delay in activating my account. Peter Damian, you're clearly unhealthily obsessed with this, and clearly operating from behind a pseudonym. I, on the other hand, have had all of my personal contact information made very public these past few days. Here's my offer to you. If you're willing to call me from a verifiable phone number that I can call you back at, or if you're willing to write me from an email address that is attached to a real human being, feel free. I'll do my best to explain the same things that about 10 people here have already explained to you. Otherwise, please fuck off.

Sincerely yours,

Erik Kraft
Chicago, Illinois

You see, it doesn't add it kids. Damian is obsessed with the truth. For you to flip him off is NOT cool.

Your contact information has been made public BECAUSE YOU HAD IT POSTED ON MULTIPLE WEBSITE you faux victim.

[Jon Awbrey]

Do you have any idea what it's like to have a bunch of complete strangers intensely scrutinizing every last detail they can dig up about you on the web? It's quite something, and I hope none of you ever have to go through it.

Well, Duh …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

[GlassBeadGame]

Do you have any idea what it's like to have a bunch of complete strangers intensely scrutinizing every last detail they can dig up about you on the web? It's quite something, and I hope none of you ever have to go through it.

Well, Duh …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

As bad as it might be it is probably worse when someone makes up a detailed sexual encounter out of whole cloth and places on a website on google steroids.

[anthony]

Damian is obsessed with the truth.

Heh, I think more accurately, "Damian" is obsessed with falsity.

[Milton Roe]

Do you have any idea what it's like to have a bunch of complete strangers intensely scrutinizing every last detail they can dig up about you on the web? It's quite something, and I hope none of you ever have to go through it.

Well, Duh …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

Mr. Kraft catches on. How quickly they learn when it's personal.

It's sort of like my cats. If it doesn't involve something with feathers, or a source of warmth, or food, they don't give a damn, and are dumb as stuffed animals, which often they resemble. However, with the right stimulation, some of them become Albert Einsteins. I have one that has figured out how to slam a screen-door to get my attention to come in from the cold, even though there's no dog to bark.

Mr. Kraft, how long are your claws? Can you climb?

[Kelly Martin]

Yesterday User:Erik added this line to his user page: "I'm from Chicago, IL and am a graduate of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign." That's not quite the same thing, but it's close enough to raise eyebrows. It might even be true, although that would be quite a coincidence.

What's the coincidence, that there were two people named Erik who went to the University of Illinois in 2005?

Or that two UIUC grads might both end up living in Chicago? I mean, it's only the largest city in a 1000 mile radius of Urbana. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)

[HRIP7]

Anyway, he's one of the few people here on WR who'd be likely to know who The Fall even are, which is why I mentioned it (though apparently it still didn't quite convince him). Most of our members, as much as I love 'em, probably wouldn't know the Manchester post-punk scene from a hole in the ground.

If we're doing musical interludes, here is an electric blanket for you. It's from Camden though.

(Ceterum censeo Peter Damian still has a 50:50 chance of being right here.)

[Jon Awbrey]

Do you have any idea what it's like to have a bunch of complete strangers intensely scrutinizing every last detail they can dig up about you on the web? It's quite something, and I hope none of you ever have to go through it.

Well, Duh …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

Mr. Kraft catches on. How quickly they learn when it's personal.

It's sort of like my cats. If it doesn't involve something with feathers, or food, they don't give a damn, and are dumb as fur-covered stuffed animals. However, with the right stimulation, some of them become Albert Einsteins. I have one that has figured out how to slam a screendoor to get my attension, even though there's no dog to bark.

Mr. Kraft, how long are your claws? Can you climb?

Personally, I wouldn't be so quick to assume any On-Katzing yet — a demidecade of acquaintance with Wikipediots has taught me how dearly few of them have elevatored so far as that Piagetian stage of formal operations that would enable them to compute the reciprocities of morphing Their Own Soles into the Shoes Of The Other.

So I won't be jumping to any conclusions until I read that devoutly to be wished “O.I.C.” or it's moral equivalent.

Then again, that's no real guarantee, now is it?

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/dry.gif)

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Do you have any idea what it's like to have a bunch of complete strangers intensely scrutinizing every last detail they can dig up about you on the web? It's quite something, and I hope none of you ever have to go through it.

Erik, I say it again ... it is every day fare on the Porno-pedia even for day to day contributors, never mind individuals considered notable enough for a topic page.

You have had it very, very, very light. An incredible amount of effort goes into digging up, conniving and throwing dirty at other individuals.

â—„ Don ... Focus - People ... Re-group â–º

Come on ... I am serious ... we can make a very important point ... have fun .. even make some money. Don, you have the connections and ability. We have the knowledge and experience.

Do you want to make a difference on not?

"Wikipedia: The Inconvenient Encyclopedia - the movie"

[Somey]

Come on ... I am serious ... we can make a very important point ... have fun .. even make some money. Don, you have the connections and ability. We have the knowledge and experience.

Mr. Cock-up, there's no need to keep hectoring over this - Mr. Murphy has on several occasions told us of his plans for a creepy horror movie (or some such project) about Wikipedia, though IIRC for legal-related reasons he's making it allegorical (i.e., the online encyclopedia in the film isn't going to be called "Wikipedia").

Whether or not this project ever gets a green light from studio executives is probably not entirely up to him. Alternatively, it could be independently financed - but that's a whole 'nuther problem in itself, obviously. And I doubt there's enough spare cash among us WR regulars to finance an Earnest P. Worrell commercial, much less a feature film. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/unhappy.gif)

If you like, I can dredge up links to the related threads - I thought you were a member here when at least one or two of them were active, but I could be wrong about that.

[Moulton]

Maybe he could make a dark musical about Wikipedia and call it The Cocky Horror Picture Show. The starring actor, of course, would be Jim Bo Wie.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Mr. Cock-up, there's no need to keep hectoring over this - Mr. Murphy has on several occasions told us of his plans for a creepy horror movie (or some such project) about Wikipedia, though IIRC for legal-related reasons he's making it allegorical

Sorry, no, its news to me.

A Morgan Spurlock type documentary, or rather mockumentary, would not be limited by such legal limitations.

Whether "Unblock Me!" would reach the popularity of "Supersize me!" is another question but it could be done cheaply.

I'd love to see a reality TV show where all the real people in a Wikidrama were picked up and taken to the same room together in real life to talk through what they just did, to make a comparison to real life and Jimbo'n'Sue's Reality Warp.

Even running the ads to find the victims might dredge up some weird and wonderful stuff.

"Have you been banned by Wikipedia? Would you like to star in a documentary about life on the Wikipedia? Do you have any dirt to dish about the Wikipedia? Do know know anyone that is addicted to or damaged by their involvement with Wikipedia. If so contact us here ..."

I can imagine there are more than a few "wiki-widows" frustrated enough to embarrass their partners on air.

[A Horse With No Name]

Just by way of background for Mr. Kraft: Mr. Murphy has had some involvement in the production of Hollywood films relating to topics of interest to pre-adolescents, most notably "Transformers."

I would like to propose a remake of "National Velvet" starring myself and Charlotte. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/evilgrin.gif)

Lastly, Don, when you call to apologize, perhaps you'd like to hear a great idea I have for your next Hollywood blockbuster! It's a 21st century retelling of Kafka's The Trial, in which the protagonist, Erik K, has to answer to utterly mystifying and illogical charges issued by an implacable and sinister force. I think we could really have a hit on our hands!

Nice, but Orson got there first and he seemed to know Jimbo & Co. were coming down the road:

[EricBarbour]

Yo, Mr. Cock-up:

Do you realize how much it costs to make a feature film today? Even a documentary?

Sicko: $9 million
Bowling for Columbine: $3 million
Super Size Me: $65k for production, $1 million for printing copies and advertising

PS: Super Size Me was a fluke, one of the most profitable movies ever made.....and don't look at Tarnation. The production cost was bullshit, because Caouette used his own personal stash of film and video equipment, plus his own personal home movies/videos.

Realistically, you can expect to spend at least $40k-50k to actually make such a film, even if you use an HD video camera like a Red instead of film. Plus hundreds of thousands for distribution and advertising. There's all kinds of hidden costs: production insurance, crew salaries, rights clearances, film-production permits in major cities, travel, etc. Even with an all-volunteer crew and self-owned or donated gear, you've still gotta travel to perform interviews, because the principals are spread all over the world.

This post has been edited by EricBarbour:

[carbuncle]

Yo, Mr. Cock-up:

Do you realize how much it costs to make a feature film today? Even a documentary?

Sicko: $9 million
Bowling for Columbine: $3 million
Super Size Me: $65k for production, $1 million for printing copies and advertising

PS: Super Size Me was a fluke, one of the most profitable movies ever made.....and don't look at Tarnation. The production cost was bullshit, because Caouette used his own personal stash of film and video equipment, plus his own personal home movies/videos.

Realistically, you can expect to spend at least $40k-50k to actually make such a film, even if you use an HD video camera like a Red instead of film. Plus hundreds of thousands for distribution and advertising. There's all kinds of hidden costs: production insurance, crew salaries, rights clearances, film-production permits in major cities, travel, etc. Even with an all-volunteer crew and self-owned or donated gear, you've still gotta travel to perform interviews, because the principals are spread all over the world.

Although it would be interesting to "crowd source" a documentary. Do the whole thing on consumer-grade equipment and put it up on YouTube or similar. Do the interviews via phone or Sykpe. Farm out the editing, titling, etc to enthusiastic amateurs. Get Awbrey to do the subτiτlεs.

[Cedric]

Yo, Mr. Cock-up:

Do you realize how much it costs to make a feature film today? Even a documentary?

Sicko: $9 million
Bowling for Columbine: $3 million
Super Size Me: $65k for production, $1 million for printing copies and advertising

PS: Super Size Me was a fluke, one of the most profitable movies ever made.....and don't look at Tarnation. The production cost was bullshit, because Caouette used his own personal stash of film and video equipment, plus his own personal home movies/videos.

Realistically, you can expect to spend at least $40k-50k to actually make such a film, even if you use an HD video camera like a Red instead of film. Plus hundreds of thousands for distribution and advertising. There's all kinds of hidden costs: production insurance, crew salaries, rights clearances, film-production permits in major cities, travel, etc. Even with an all-volunteer crew and self-owned or donated gear, you've still gotta travel to perform interviews, because the principals are spread all over the world.

Although it would be interesting to "crowd source" a documentary. Do the whole thing on consumer-grade equipment and put it up on YouTube or similar. Do the interviews via phone or Sykpe. Farm out the editing, titling, etc to enthusiastic amateurs. Get Awbrey to do the subτiτlεs.

It has already been attempted. Result: EPIC FAIL.

[Theanima]

Yo, Mr. Cock-up:

Do you realize how much it costs to make a feature film today? Even a documentary?

Sicko: $9 million
Bowling for Columbine: $3 million
Super Size Me: $65k for production, $1 million for printing copies and advertising

PS: Super Size Me was a fluke, one of the most profitable movies ever made.....and don't look at Tarnation. The production cost was bullshit, because Caouette used his own personal stash of film and video equipment, plus his own personal home movies/videos.

Realistically, you can expect to spend at least $40k-50k to actually make such a film, even if you use an HD video camera like a Red instead of film. Plus hundreds of thousands for distribution and advertising. There's all kinds of hidden costs: production insurance, crew salaries, rights clearances, film-production permits in major cities, travel, etc. Even with an all-volunteer crew and self-owned or donated gear, you've still gotta travel to perform interviews, because the principals are spread all over the world.

Although it would be interesting to "crowd source" a documentary. Do the whole thing on consumer-grade equipment and put it up on YouTube or similar. Do the interviews via phone or Sykpe. Farm out the editing, titling, etc to enthusiastic amateurs. Get Awbrey to do the subτiτlεs.

It has already been attempted. Result: EPIC FAIL.

This would actually be truthful.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

Do you realize how much it costs to make a feature film today? Even a documentary?

I was thinking more like a TV documentary production. I cannot see anyone but the faithful adherents wanting to go to a multiplex to actually watch themselves ... but I think one could make and sell a poignant enough TV documentary. 100,000? It could be done cheaper.

No print costs, no advertising, no stars ... bear in mind, A lot of 'Inconvenient Truth' was made on Apple Mac's Keynote application.

Actually, it looks like some of that other documentary could be rescued and kicked into shape.

What is the best piece of TV that has been done on the Pee-dia to date?

[GlassBeadGame]

It has already been attempted. Result: EPIC FAIL.

Epic Fail has a good ring to it as a movie title.

[Milton Roe]

It has already been attempted. Result: EPIC FAIL.

Epic Fail has a good ring to it as a movie title.

You know, it does!

And is such a marshmellow softball serve to any film-reviewer, no matter whether it does poorly or well at the box office. You could have a 6th grade class write THOSE bylines. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/sleep.gif)

[Cedric]

It has already been attempted. Result: EPIC FAIL.

Epic Fail has a good ring to it as a movie title.

Perhaps even a better ring as a book title: "EPIC FAIL: The Wikipedia Story. How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the Biggest Laughingstock on the Internet."

[EricBarbour]

It has already been attempted. Result: EPIC FAIL.

Epic Fail has a good ring to it as a movie title.

Perhaps even a better ring as a book title: "EPIC FAIL: The Wikipedia Story. How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the Biggest Laughingstock on the Internet."

Sounds like a plan.

Y'know, it seems to me that if one of you guys spent even half the time you spend on WR (or WP for that matter) making a documentary video instead.......you'd have something to brag about forever, finished in perhaps a few months.

Plus, you'd have something you could submit to film festivals.
Maybe even win some awards. Who knows. End up on Colbert.

And most of all, you'd have something that Wikipedians would hate and envy you for, because they clearly don't have the ability or self-discipline to make a pro-Wikipedia documentary. Then, Jimbo would really notice you. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[BelovedFox]

It has already been attempted. Result: EPIC FAIL.

Epic Fail has a good ring to it as a movie title.

Perhaps even a better ring as a book title: "EPIC FAIL: The Wikipedia Story. How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the Biggest Laughingstock on the Internet."

Sounds like a plan.

Y'know, it seems to me that if one of you guys spent even half the time you spend on WR (or WP for that matter) making a documentary video instead.......you'd have something to brag about forever, finished in perhaps a few months.

Plus, you'd have something you could submit to film festivals.
Maybe even win some awards. Who knows. End up on Colbert.

And most of all, you'd have something that Wikipedians would hate and envy you for, because they clearly don't have the ability or self-discipline to make a pro-Wikipedia documentary. Then, Jimbo would really notice you. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

Honestly, this little episode has piqued my interest in making one (as soon as I found out no had gotten around to a decent one yet.)

Unfortunately, I've already got one documentary project on my plate, and I doubt I'm going to get another grant that would be large enough to cover crossing the country for interviews (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[Milton Roe]

[Y'know, it seems to me that if one of you guys spent even half the time you spend on WR (or WP for that matter) making a documentary video instead.......you'd have something to brag about forever, finished in perhaps a few months.

Plus, you'd have something you could submit to film festivals.
Maybe even win some awards. Who knows. End up on Colbert.

And most of all, you'd have something that Wikipedians would hate and envy you for, because they clearly don't have the ability or self-discipline to make a pro-Wikipedia documentary. Then, Jimbo would really notice you. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

Particularly since Jimbo has probably blown his own chance to be on Colbert, forever. Having had his pissy people call Colbert's people after the WP joke, and make all those hooting and chest-thumping sounds. I can imagine that Colbert's people told Jimbo's people to do something very impolite to themselves, and that was the end of that. WMF really has less sense of humor than just about anyone. Dunno how that happened. But you can't fake it.

[MZMcBride]

Perhaps even a better ring as a book title: "EPIC FAIL: The Wikipedia Story. How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the Biggest Laughingstock on the Internet."

Biggest laughingstock? This is based on it being one of the most visited sites in the world?

[Kevin]

Perhaps even a better ring as a book title: "EPIC FAIL: The Wikipedia Story. How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the Biggest Laughingstock on the Internet."

Biggest laughingstock? This is based on it being one of the most visited sites in the world?

I don't see these as being mutually exclusive. It is highly visited because of it's Google ranking, there is an awful lot of information, and the general populace do not care especially about how good or bad it is. Laziness being a common human trait.

I honestly don't remember the last time I heard someone in RL talk about how good Wikipedia is, but have been ridiculed on occasion for my participation.

This post has been edited by Kevin:

[Peter Damian]

Perhaps even a better ring as a book title: "EPIC FAIL: The Wikipedia Story. How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the Biggest Laughingstock on the Internet."

Biggest laughingstock? This is based on it being one of the most visited sites in the world?

Most visited laughingstock in the world.

[Somey]

Biggest laughingstock? This is based on it being one of the most visited sites in the world?

It's precisely because it's so heavily-visited that it's the biggest laughingstock. I mean, if it were small and nobody had heard of it, who would care, right?

Besides, there's the demographics problem to think about. Facebook and MySpace are in some ways even more laughable, and some might even say more badly-managed too - but because their content consists of people indulging and promoting themselves, to laugh at that would be like laughing at your own friends and neighbors, to their faces. The MSM can make fun of Wikipedia until the cows come home, and only manage to insult a few thousand people in the process, at the most - none of whom are of much concern to them.

And not coincidentally, that in turn leads to a certain amount of "us vs. them" mentality among WP'ers, and all that implies.

[GlassBeadGame]

Perhaps even a better ring as a book title: "EPIC FAIL: The Wikipedia Story. How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the Biggest Laughingstock on the Internet."

Biggest laughingstock? This is based on it being one of the most visited sites in the world?

Thus the use of the word "Big."

[Zoloft]

Epic Fail for this thread: Don Murphy crowdsourcing detective work to his web forum members, and then acting on that wisdom.

This post has been edited by Zoloft:

[Milton Roe]

Epic Fail for this thread: Don Murphy crowdsourcing detective work to his web forum members, and then acting on that wisdom.

He's supposed to check the references first. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/ermm.gif)

[Jon Awbrey]

It has already been attempted. Result: EPIC FAIL.

Epic Fail has a good ring to it as a movie title.

Try 2 Keep ☝ —

This week's Blechbuster is ErikPhile

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[GlassBeadGame]

It has already been attempted. Result: EPIC FAIL.

Epic Fail has a good ring to it as a movie title.

Try 2 Keep ☝ —

This week's Blechbuster is ErikPhile

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

...and boy wonder.


Not that he's a pedophile himself but boy I have to wonder what on earth Sue Gardner was was thinking when she choose him as her number two. Maybe she didn't do even google diligence or maybe she knew about his outrageous and unrecanted statements. If she knew did she really think he would be a good face of Wikipedia in her own absence? And why hasn't Moeller just recanted them and said it was eight years ago and he is more mature now? He clearly doesn't think he said anything wrong.

[Jon Awbrey]

And why hasn't MoellerMöller just recanted them and said it was eight years ago and he is more mature now?

Umm, Laut …

Because being a Wikipediot means never having to say how sorry you are.

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[Milton Roe]

And why hasn't MoellerMöller just recanted them and said it was eight years ago and he is more mature now?

It's perfectly standard German to use the following e instead of the umlaut marks in any case where a German umlaut is needed, in cases when you don't have a German keyboard and are lazy. Even Germans do it.

[GlassBeadGame]

And why hasn't MoellerMöller just recanted them and said it was eight years ago and he is more mature now?

It's perfectly standard German to use the following e instead of the umlaut marks in any case where a German umlaut is needed, in cases when you don't have a German keyboard and are lazy. Even Germans do it.

Just a lucky guess on my part. I have the international keyboard installed for Spanish writing and the does include a "ö" although I almost never use it. If it wasn't for Jon I wouldn't know the difference between and ellipse (…) and three dots (...)

[Jon Awbrey]

Just a lucky guess on my part. I have the international keyboard installed for Spanish writing and the does include a "ö" although I almost never use it. If it wasn't for Jon I wouldn't know the difference between and ellipse (…) and three dots (...)

Cf. &ouml;

It was supposed to be φunny in context, y'know, but let's not get into the diff between umlaut and diæresis — that's a whole nuther vein of humour …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[GlassBeadGame]

Just a lucky guess on my part. I have the international keyboard installed for Spanish writing and the does include a "ö" although I almost never use it. If it wasn't for Jon I wouldn't know the difference between and ellipse (…) and three dots (...)

Cf. &ouml;

It was supposed to be φunny in context, y'know, but let's not get into the diff between umlaut and diæresis — that's a whole nuther vein of humour …

Jon (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

Well you can't make an umlaut without …

[Moulton]

Well you can't make an umlaut without …

... one egg.

Why just one egg?

Because un oeuf is enough.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

It is highly visited because of it's Google ranking, there is an awful lot of information, and the general populace do not care especially about how good or bad it is. Laziness being a common human trait.

I honestly don't remember the last time I heard someone in RL talk about how good Wikipedia is, but have been ridiculed on occasion for my participation.

And you can make that a global appraisal. I have heard it from all over the world.

I have to admit that since the covers were peeled from my eye ... it irks the hell out of me to keep find it bobbing at the top of every Google search I make, like a floating turd that just wont flush.

May be we should be lobbying Google more to offer an 'opt out' of Wikipedia option. Hopefully, one day, their management will have a change of heart and pages will be given a more realistic ranking.

I thought that Fox News story was a real win. Very timely, hopefully seeding more.

Are any flies on the walls of "Wiki Towers" talking yet? There have had to have been internal pillow talk about this incidents and yet they are taking the path of "least said, soonest mended" ... "Never explain, never apologise" ... until some kid IS picked up off Wikipedia and abused.

At present, Wikipedia is being used more as a 'general grooming of public consensus' zone than for targeting individuals.

Erik, can you tell us more about the actual conversation?

[Zoloft]

Diacritical humour. The thread is officially at an end now. Don has slaked his Wikilust by e-humping User:Erik into retirement (the legal stuff an empty threat as before), and the inmates have salted the dried remains.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

* What I hear is not so much ridicule but a constant kneejerk that "Wikipedia is unreliable" or "you cannot rely on anything in Wikipedia". In discussion, quoting or referring to Wikipedia is usually met with an instant dismissal.

[Milton Roe]

Well you can't make an umlaut without …

... one egg.

Why just one egg?

Because un oeuf is enough.

(IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/pinch.gif)

[Gruntled]

... one egg.

Why just one egg?

Because un oeuf is enough.

During World War I, Scottish soldiers would go into French cafes and order "twa oof", knowing they would get three and have to give one back. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

[Moulton]

During World War I, Scottish soldiers would go into French cafes and order "twa oof", knowing they would get three and have to give one back. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/tongue.gif)

oof doh