What we know about SlimVirgin, A quickie summary Options

[Daniel Brandt]

Let me summarize what I think we know.

1. SlimVirgin is Linda Mack who studied philosophy at King's College, lost a close friend on PanAm 103, and worked for Pierre Salinger at ABC News, London from about 1989-1991 on the PanAm 103 investigation.

2. She pursued various PanAm 103 conspiracy theories, but once the two Libyans were indicted, she seemed to steer the investigation in the direction of the government's case against Libya, according to John K. Cooley, who along with Pierre Salinger, was responsible for hiring her at ABC.

3. Pierre Salinger interviewed the two Libyans in Tripoli, and believed, along with quite a few independent investigators, that they were either completely innocent, or only peripherally involved, perhaps unwittingly.

4. Syria's support in the Gulf War was important to the West. The leading theory until such time that the finger was pointed at Libya, was that Syria was involved, perhaps with Iran bankrolling them, in retaliation for the Iranian airliner that the U.S. shot down.

5. Scotland Yard raided ABC and made off with videotapes and documents. ABC fought in court, and after an expensive battle, lost the case.

6. Salinger came to believe that Linda Mack was working for MI5, and had been all along. He locked her out of her office.

7. Michael S. Morris, a former BOSS (South Africa) agent who investigated PanAm 103, has named Linda Mack as an "agent."

8. For at least two or three years after this, Linda Mack worked on the case as a freelancer. She started a petition drive against Allan Francovich's film, The Maltese Double-Cross: Lockerbie. This film promoted a conspiracy theory that was at odds with the government's case against Libya.

9. Linda Mack next shows up in Canada in 2002, registering the domain slimvirgin.com, using the name S. McEwan and a PO box in Swalwell, Alberta, Canada. Patrick Byrne, who knew Linda Mack at Cambridge, says she was half Canadian, and she switched on an English accent suddenly one day at Cambridge, and continued to use it from that point forward.

10. The email address on the slimvirgin.com domain registration was slimvirgin1@yahoo.com. The email address for Linda Mack on the alumni list at King's College, Cambridge was also slimvirgin1@yahoo.com. This mailing list was purged of Linda Mack's name several months ago. Similarly, the domain registration became a private registration within the last year.

11. One "Sarah McEwan, Canada" wrote comments or sent a letter to telegraph.co.uk in Britain in support of animal rights in 2004.

12. SlimVirgin signs her name as "Sarah" on the Wikipedia mailing list.

13. Daniel Brandt emailed slimvirgin AT gmail.com in late October, 2005, using a pseudonym, and asked if she would be interested in selling the slimvirgin.com domain. Twice she denied that she was the owner of that domain.

14. SlimVirgin's IP address geolocates to Shaw Communications in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, but the accuracy of this is disputed and she could be living in either Alberta or Saskatchewan.

15. SlimVirgin indicated a very early interest in the PanAm 103 article when she started editing Wikipedia sometime on or before November 5, 2004. At least one edit that was oversighted suggests inside knowledge of the Pierre Salinger investigation.

16. Jimmy Wales has admitted that articles have been oversighted to protect the identity of SlimVirgin and others.

17. Today almost no one with knowledge about the investigation, including Robert Baer, the CIA official who was close to the CIA's investigation at the time, pretends that the Libyans were guilty.

18. SlimVirgin has made a comment on a Talk page suggesting that the Libyan in prison is not guilty.

19. After Daniel Brandt emailed John K. Cooley in Athens, Greece to ask about Linda Mack, she called Cooley to ask him not to talk to Brandt. She had read on Wikipedia Review that Brandt had located Cooley, and was hoping to hear from him. But Brandt had already received Cooley's response shortly before Linda Mack made this call.

20. Various articles that are politically significant, in addition to the PanAm 103 articles, suffer from excessive ownership by SlimVirgin in that they are seriously skewed in directions that she has promoted and protected. These include articles about Lyndon LaRouche. Moreover, several months before SlimVirgin started the stub on Daniel Brandt, she declared that Brandt was an unreliable source on the topic of one Chip Berlet.

[Infoboy]

Archive of that SlimVirgin diff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=15150972

Revision as of 02:13, 14 June 2005 (edit) (undo)
SlimVirgin (Talk | contribs)
(→Some useful policy and guideline refs)
Newer edit →


::::That's what's very annoying about this, and why I see it as disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. I'm trying to write an article about a long, complicated, unpleasant business, which killed 270 people directly; which was triggered by attacks on Libya or Iran, and possibly both, which killed hundreds; which indirectly led to the deaths of many hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Libyans, because of UN sanctions against Libya, which led to things like planes crashing because of the lack of spare parts; and which may have led to a miscarriage of justice which has put a man in jail for 27 years. Not to mention that it was the UK's largest and most expensive criminal inquiry ever, America's second deadliest attack against civilians, and the only UK trial that I'm aware of to have taken place on foreign soil. All big issues.

::::And yet I'm having to spend all my time on it discussing what a ton is, and whether people know what miles are. [[User:SlimVirgin|SlimVirgin]] ^{<font color="Purple">[[User_talk:SlimVirgin|(talk)]]</font>} 02:13, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Anything we draw attention to in public needs to be archived yesterday, now, since she's got to be royally pissed now. Her on-wiki activities are way down. Also, we need to keep watch for any 'new' admins getting a sysop bit without having gone through RFA.

[LamontStormstar]

Archive of that SlimVirgin diff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=15150972

Revision as of 02:13, 14 June 2005 (edit) (undo)
SlimVirgin (Talk | contribs)
(→Some useful policy and guideline refs)
Newer edit →


::::That's what's very annoying about this, and why I see it as disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. I'm trying to write an article about a long, complicated, unpleasant business, which killed 270 people directly; which was triggered by attacks on Libya or Iran, and possibly both, which killed hundreds; which indirectly led to the deaths of many hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Libyans, because of UN sanctions against Libya, which led to things like planes crashing because of the lack of spare parts; and which may have led to a miscarriage of justice which has put a man in jail for 27 years. Not to mention that it was the UK's largest and most expensive criminal inquiry ever, America's second deadliest attack against civilians, and the only UK trial that I'm aware of to have taken place on foreign soil. All big issues.

::::And yet I'm having to spend all my time on it discussing what a ton is, and whether people know what miles are. [[User:SlimVirgin|SlimVirgin]] ^{<font color="Purple">[[User_talk:SlimVirgin|(talk)]]</font>} 02:13, Jun 14, 2005 (UTC)

Ah when you can't call it trolling without bursting into laughter at how ridiculous a notion is, shut someone up by falsely claiming they are "disrupting wikipedia to make a point".


...........


I googled slimvirgin1@yahoo.com and found this nice analysis


http://millosh-wm.blogspot.com/2007/07/wik...ups-part-1.html

Saturday, July 28, 2007
Wikipedia and interest groups, part 1
This page is here only for keeping links not broken. Please, use this page to comment the issue.

Yesterday I left the article on Slashdot to read it today, because the subject is particularly interesting to me (at the some point of my involvement in WM projects, I had very similar experience).

However, as it is usual on Slashdot, user comments are much more interesting and better then commented article. Working on Wikipedia brings strict scientific method: If claims in articles outside of Wikipedia are not supported by relevant sources, their relevancy drops very low.

This is the situation with article on which Slashdot article referes. So, before I start to talk about the topic (which is important), inside of the first part of this analysis I want to say a couple of words about the Slashdot article as well as about the surrounding articles.

Slashdot article


It operates with words like "believe" instead of "is". This is a good habit of the Slashdot article writers.
However, claims like "Shortly after her Wikipedia identity was uncovered, many of her edits to articles related to the bombing were permanently removed from the database in an attempt to conceal her identity." This claim needs at least an investigation. As well as it is doubtful what is the main purpose of such claim: To say that "Wikipedia" wanted to hide something?
And, of course, at the end the article consists a reference on Essjay incident, which barely may be interpreted as "informing readers", but much more as a sensationalist connection between one questionable opinion, one personal incident and Wikipedia as a whole.
Ludwig De Braeckeleer's article

"Slim Virgin had been voted the most abusive administrator of Wikipedia. She upset so many editors that some of them decided to team up to research her real life identity."
I didn't hear for such polls on Wikipedia, as well as I would like to know the relevancy of the people who voted her as "the most abusive administrator on Wikipedia". Of course, no reference in the article.

(During the investigation on other claims, I found now User:SlimVirgin is voted as "the most abusive administrator". According to this article, it happens at Wikipedia Review.)

"Daniel Brandt of the Wikipedia Review and founder of Wikipedia-Watch.org patiently assembled tiny clues about Slim Virgin and posted them on these Web sites. Eventually, two readers identified her. Slim Virgin was no other than Linda Mack, the young graduate Salinger hired."
Daniel Brandt's claims and Wikipedia Watch

I needed a lot of time to find where Daniel Brandt analyzed this because there were no reference inside of the article. Finally, I found one forum article on Wikipedia Review site which is written after the article on OhmyNews. (As I don't want to investigate purely sourced article, I will assume that the article on which Ludwig is referencing shows the same data.)

Again, I had to investigate all of the claims because references are narrative and without possibility to confirm a lot of the claims. So, article stays for:

Some time ago slimvirgin.com was registered on the person named S.McEwan from Swalwell, Alberta, Canada. Domain was registered in 2002. Today, domain is anonymously registered.
Domain was registered on the address slimvirgin1@yahoo.com.
"S." means "Sarah".
"[Sarah McEwan] wrote a couple of letters to a newspaper in Britain defending animal rights on the foxhunting issue".
"Slim signs the name "Sarah" on Wikipedia."
According to her IP addresses, she is somewhere in central Canada.
During 2006. on her page she said that she was alumnus of Cambridge.
There was a page there which had "mouseover on the name of alumnus Linda Mack showed an email address of slimvirgin1@yahoo.com", but ""The Kings College website listing of Linda Mack was deleted within the last six months, ..."
"Then by looking at SlimVirgin's early edits on Wikipedia, it was obvious that she was obsessed with PanAm 103, "
"... just as Linda Mack was known to be obsesseed with PanAm 103."
"Just as Slim's edits on Wikipedia have slowly but surely been oversighted to obscure the Linda Mack connection, so too has some of the above information."
In short, there are two points here: (1) User:SlimVirgin is Sarah McEwan who owns domain slimvirgin.com and (2) Sarah McEwan is Linda Mack, who is a member of MI5.

User:SlimVirgin = Sarah McEwan => owns domain slimvirgin.com

Some time ago slimvirgin.com was registered on the person named S.McEwan from Swalwell, Alberta, Canada. Domain was registered in 2002. Today, domain is anonymously registered.
It is not possible to check this claim.

Domain was registered on the address slimvirgin1@yahoo.com.
It is not possible to check this claim.
"S." means "Sarah".
"S" may be at the beginning of a lot of female names.

"[Sarah McEwan] wrote a couple of letters to a newspaper in Britain defending animal rights on the foxhunting issue".
User:SlimVirgin wrote on articles related to animal rights: Animal Rights Militia, Animal testing, Factory farming etc. Also, there is at least one reference which connects Sarah McEwan with animal rights (a comment on the Telegraph.co.uk site).

"Slim signs the name "Sarah" on Wikipedia."
Not found.

Only one of five claims is confirmed. Two is not possible to check, one is explicitly negative and one is arbitrary.

Sarah McEwan (= User:SlimVirgin) = Linda Mack, MI5 spy

According to her IP addresses, she is somewhere in central Canada.
I don't want to check, so I'll say that this is true.

During 2006. on her page she said that she was alumnus of Cambridge.
Only admins on English Wikipedia may check that. The first available version of ther user page is from 22 October 2006.

There was a page there which had "mouseover on the name of alumnus Linda Mack showed an email address of slimvirgin1@yahoo.com", but ""The Kings College website listing of Linda Mack was deleted within the last six months, ..."
It is not possible to check this claim.
"Then by looking at SlimVirgin's early edits on Wikipedia, it was obvious that she was obsessed with PanAm 103,"
"Obsessed" is hard word. But, User:SlimVirgin was working on that article up to July 2005 (last page edit, last talk edit).

"... just as Linda Mack was known to be obsesseed with PanAm 103."
It is not possible to check this claim.
"Just as Slim's edits on Wikipedia have slowly but surely been oversighted to obscure the Linda Mack connection, so too has some of the above information."
According to my investigation, this is not true.
Here is a little bit better situation: From six claims, two are positive, one is maybe positive, it is not possible to check two claims and one claim is negative.

Wikipedia Watch

Wikipedian and Wikimedian communities have a lot of problems. And no one is hiding that. Also, it is a natural human reaction not to talk a lot about her/his own problems. I am against that because only with open talk about our problems -- we may solve them. However, Wiki(m|p)edian community is far of censoring critics. Look at the article Wikipedia on Wikipedia.

There are some serious problems, too. Wikimedian community became inert, which is usual for big communities. Faction wars on Wikipedias are usual. Bureaucracy is a big problem, too. Not so small language communities are often under hard pressure of nationalists. Political model of Wikipedia reached it's own limits and project needs some deep changes to survive to the next decade.

However, up to this moment I've seen a small amount of constructive outsider's critics of Wikipedia. The vast majority of critics are written in more or less bad faith.

Wikipedia Watch is particularly bizarre. It seems that Daniel Brandt knows to use "history" option on every article, but he shows extremely poor knowledge of Wikipedia functioning. For one long-term fighter against social monsters, it is very unusual. So, here are some examples:

I was laughing when I saw the page "Wikipedia's Hive Mind". It seems that I'll be there, sooner or later; and in that moment I'll be completely sure that the site is a real bullshit. (BTW, as this will be seen by a lot of the people from the list, I would like to hear them about their involvement in conspiracy (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif) )
"Plagiarism by Wikipedia editors" shows that:
He doesn't know anything about article-making process and constant fights against copyright infringements on Wikipedia.
He was able to remove sections, too and he didn't do that. Also, I am sure that if he gave this list directly on Wikipedia -- community would remove that. And it is done when it was noticed (cf. articles about Mercy Otis Warren through Wikipedia Watch and at the 28 July 2007). A little bit more good faith would help...
A number of other things may be found which is in the range from simple bad faith up to the conspiracy theories. Please, look at the site.

End note

It seems that this issue is very complex. I didn't finish with some points and I'll give them in the next few days.

Posted by Milos Rancic at 11:50 AM

Labels: conspiracy theories, wikipedia criticism


2 comments:
SV said...
"Slim signs the name "Sarah" on Wikipedia."

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...uly/076658.html

"During 2006. on her page she said that she was alumnus of Cambridge."

http://web.archive.org/web/20060326120616/...User:SlimVirgin

"Just as Slim's edits on Wikipedia have slowly but surely been oversighted to obscure the Linda Mack connection, so too has some of the above information."

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikie...uly/078336.html

"... just as Linda Mack was known to be obsesseed with PanAm 103."

I Solemnly Swear: Conmen, DEA, the Media and Pan Am 103 By Micheal T. Hurley

http://books.google.com/books?id=Zj8D144UX...nda+Mack+pan+am

July 31, 2007 4:11 PM
Milos Rancic said...
Please, leave your comments about this issue at my page on WordPress. I'll analyze links as well as I'll incorporate them int the article.

July 31, 2007 5:22 PM