From: charles.r.matthews
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:40:43 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
"Josh Gordon" wrote
> I think it's better to err on the side of protecting members of our
> community, regardless of the fallout. Perhaps I am naive.
Yup. Especially when pressure tactics are probably being applied mostly for their ability to induce inappropriate reactions. You know, like terrorism.
Charles
----------
From: (Kirill Lokshin)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:41:37 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 8/24/07, Josh Gordon wrote:
>
>
> On 8/24/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We've always gone by "information so sensitive not even admins should
> > be able to see it", that including personal info and so forth. We've
> > generally assumed that to include revealed IPs.
>
> Indeed; one must assume that the sensitivities of checkuser are a subset of
> the sensitivities dealt with by oversight. It makes little sense to have the
> checkuser rules regarding disclosure, otherwise.
Well, checkuser concerns information culled from the server logs
rather than information publically revealed by the individual
concerned; so the two policies need not necessarily treat the same
type of information equivalently.
Kirill
----------
From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 12:56:26 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 8/24/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> jayjg wrote
>
> > Oversighting revealed IPs or other personally identifying information?
> > It's what oversight was designed to do.
>
> Quite possibly. But aren't you still ducking the point, about what the _policy_ is? If the policy were drawn up to include a concept of revealed IPs, your point would be clear. It doesn't. This could of course be a flaw in the drafting of the policy. In which case, I suppose, we'd be better off if it did mention revealed IPs.
IPs are "nonpublic personal information".
Malice's note: Unless you edit anonymously of course.----------
From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:01:06 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 8/24/07, charles.r.matthews wrote:
> jayjg wrote
>
> > What's the difference? Why is it important?
>
> Hey, Jay! There another J here, Jimmy Wales. You may remember him best for his role in founding Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.
>
> Really, who died and gave you the job of deciding what is and isn't important for Jimbo to know in relation to SlimVirgin or anything else? Jeez.
I feel that's a very hostile response, Charles. I'm asking simple
questions, just like everyone else. I still don't think I've gotten a
good response to them. I'm still having trouble understanding a) why
we give any credence or attention whatsoever to anything Judd Bagley
says, and b) even if true, why it would be relevant or important
*today*. Others have also had difficulty understanding these points,
and have said so on this list, so it's not just me.
-----------
From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:06:21 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 8/24/07, Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> On 8/24/07, Josh Gordon wrote:
> >
> >
> > On 8/24/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > We've always gone by "information so sensitive not even admins should
> > > be able to see it", that including personal info and so forth. We've
> > > generally assumed that to include revealed IPs.
> >
> > Indeed; one must assume that the sensitivities of checkuser are a subset of
> > the sensitivities dealt with by oversight. It makes little sense to have the
> > checkuser rules regarding disclosure, otherwise.
>
> Well, checkuser concerns information culled from the server logs
> rather than information publically revealed by the individual
> concerned; so the two policies need not necessarily treat the same
> type of information equivalently.
I understand your point, but it still seems obvious to me that we
acknowledge quite clearly that IPs are personally identifying
information. And when someone is logged out by Wikipedia, and
inadvertently reveals their IP, it's not as if *they* are really
"publicly revealing" that information - rather, Wikipedia is doing
that. I remember a time when Wikipedia would log me out every 5 to 10
minutes; fortunately that bug seems to have been fixed, but even now,
if someone accidentally makes an edit while not logged in, I don't
think one could say that they intended to publicly reveal personal
information.
----------
From: (David Gerard)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:15:04 +0100
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 24/08/07, jayjg wrote:
> I understand your point, but it still seems obvious to me that we
> acknowledge quite clearly that IPs are personally identifying
> information. And when someone is logged out by Wikipedia, and
> inadvertently reveals their IP, it's not as if *they* are really
> "publicly revealing" that information - rather, Wikipedia is doing
> that. I remember a time when Wikipedia would log me out every 5 to 10
> minutes; fortunately that bug seems to have been fixed, but even now,
> if someone accidentally makes an edit while not logged in, I don't
> think one could say that they intended to publicly reveal personal
> information.
FWIW: oversight-l regularly gets panicked emails from editors who've
accidentally revealed their IP. They certainly consider it highly
sensitive and personal.
- d.
----------
From: (Timothy Titcomb)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:21:11 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On Aug 24, 2007, at 1:01 PM, jayjg wrote:
> I'm still having trouble understanding a) why
> we give any credence or attention whatsoever to anything Judd Bagley
> says, and b) even if true, why it would be relevant or important
> *today*
The answer to the first question is (as you allude to) because they
might be true. I think Theresa provided a reasonable answer to the
second:
On Aug 23, 2007, at 4:15 PM, Theresa Knott wrote:
> 100% agree. If she's done it once how can anyone know that she wont
> do it again? When I saw the title of this thread I couldn't believe
> she would do it. I still can't really. But if she has then then it's
> an important matter.
>
> Theresa
Paul August
----------
From: (Steve Dunlop)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 10:27:04 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
While individuals using oversight have at times taken liberties with the
policy, I have always chosen to interpret the policy narrowly. The
purpose behind the oversight mechanism was to serve the OTRS team and
provide a means of removing truly problematic material that posed a
moral imperative to act or a legal problem for the foundation. There
were three categories of material we intended to cover:
* Libel
* Copyright violations
* Personal information, such as real names and phone numbers
James and I drafted the original policy, which is on meta. The ENWP
policy is essentially a copy of that.
In addition to policy, it has become fairly common practice to oversight
IP edits made when someone was inadvertently logged out. I have
grudgingly done this on one or two occasions where there were
extenuating circumstances, as have others, but it was never part of the
original intent of the policy to permit this.
I simply can't see how all the oversights Jay has made in this matter
can possibly be construed to be in accordance with policy. I am
disappointed that Jay has given us red herring after red herring in this
matter, refusing to address the legitimate concerns we have raised about
the most problematic of his oversights. Oversight has never been and
should never become a tool for covering up regrettable edits made by an
editor who has second thoughts. That SV has been the target of a
stalker does not entitle her to have highly questionable edits she made
some time ago to be redacted.
I also note that Jay did not discuss his actions with others before
performing them. Jay has private email addresses for most if not all
the people with oversight rights and could have contacted any of them
privately to discuss this before acting.
Finally, I question Jay's wisdom in oversighting edits that have been in
the page database for well over a year. To the extent that Jay is
claiming that he has overstepped policy on the grounds that judgment and
conscience trump it, I submit that there is no wisdom in removing highly
visible edits that are so old when dumps of the page database are widely
available.
I believe that Jay has brought the integrity of the oversight mechanism
into question and has done a disservice to the committee and other
leaders of the Wikipedia community.
I would like to call for Jay to resign his oversight privileges
immediately on the meta "requests for permissions" page. Per Charles, I
believe we should assemble a list of oversights we believe are
inappropriate and ask the developers to restore those to the page
database.
Finally, I believe this should be done without delay since the damage is
building.
Steve
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:29:39 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
Theresa Knott wrote:
> On 8/23/07, Josh Gordon wrote:
>> Wow. Six edits two years ago. Take her out and shoot her.
>
> I don't think you should be so glib. It's a serious matter.
I am sympathetic to both viewpoints. It is 6 edits 2 years ago, and
honestly, not that interesting either. But it is still a serious
matter, and we have to be careful here.
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:31:37 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> On 8/23/07, Timothy Titcomb wrote:
>> On Aug 23, 2007, at 2:23 PM, Theresa Knott wrote:
>>
>>> It's a serious matter.
>> Yes it is. Both fundamentally -- as well as from a public relations
>> point of view. I doubt that this issue is going to go away. I
>> wouldn't want to be in Jimbo's shoes having to publicly answer the
>> questions this issue has and will continue to raise. It would be nice
>> to try and get out front of the public reaction to this. Instead of
>> simply appearing to be responding to it.
>
> I don't see any real way to do this without admitting the truth of the
> entire affair, and I think that we ought to do so. There *has* been
> inappropriate behavior here, and trying to cover it up further is both
> infeasible -- too much evidence is available to the public now -- and
> hardly in the best interests of the project in any case.
Well, wait. I don't see anything in the record to suggest that Jay
would have known about the sockpuppeting (if the allegation is true).
Jay oversighed some edits from an ip number... a batch of edits. The
purpose was to protect SV's identity from people who I think are rightly
termed stalkers.
It looks like, in retrospect, that in that batch of oversighted edits
were a couple which confirmed an SV sockpuppet.
--Jimbo
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:33:48 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
I worry more for the "internal press". That is to say, we need to
protect and extend the reputation of the ArbCom for integrity by doing
the right thing, whatever that might be.
(Of course part of "doing the right thing" for us is slow deliberation
and fact gathering.)
I blew it in the EssJay affair. I don't want to blow it again.
----------
From: (Steve Dunlop)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 10:34:13 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
Unless I'm completely misreading the logs, many of the oversights of
concern are from logged-in accounts. While it is true that some of
Jay's oversights are of anon edits, many of the problematic ones are
not.
Steve
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:36:58 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
jayjg wrote:
>> together with the unwarranted use of oversight to conceal evidence of
>> said behavior.
>
> But oversight was used to protect her from some rather horrific
> stalking, not to hide any "evidence" of any particular behavior.
Right, and I trust you completely on this. I reviewed the oversighted
edits and did not catch that they also apparently concealed some
sockpuppeting.
But now, the evidence suggests that there was sockpuppeting and that the
oversighting did in fact conceal it, and that's a problem *in hindsight*.
--Jimbo
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:41:38 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
jayjg wrote:
> On 8/23/07, Timothy Titcomb wrote:
>> On Aug 23, 2007, at 3:26 PM, Kat Walsh wrote:
>>
>>> Is this really a big press thing? Will anyone care? I suspect the
>>> answer is no, other than the usual malcontents.
>> I care. And my guess is that so will lots of other Wikipedia editors.
>
> It's important to know if SV created a sockpuppet in 2004, and used it
> to make a couple of dozen edits before she became an administrator? An
> account that hasn't edited any articles since January 2005?
Yes, I think it is important.
1/3/05 19:23 SlimVirgin Featured article candidates/Sept. 11, 2001
attacks Voting
1/3/05 6:50 Sweet Blue Water Featured article candidates/Sept. 11,
2001 attacks Voting
bothers me a lot.
I wish I could simply go out and say "When SV was a new user, she had a
couple of different accounts, Sweet Water Blue and Slimv, and edited
different things with them, and in the oversights that were done to
attempt to protect her from stalkers, some of that history was obscured.
It is all a tempest in a teapot since these were independent good
account not engaging in abusive sockpuppetry."
But it looks more like there was sockpuppetry of the bad kind.
--Jimbo
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:44:48 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on
SlimVirgin's abusive sockpuppetry]
Dmcdevit wrote:
> The question is not so much of the sockpuppetry, which is old and easily
> forgiven, I suspect, but of the oversight use. Do you really have no
> idea if this was a sockpuppet? Why then was your very first act as an
> oversight user to remove this
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Oversight&revision=9165353&diff=1>,
> an edit by an IP that appears to be User:Sweet Blue Water, from context?
> Did SlimVirgin contact you and ask for it to be removed, and what reason
> could she have given? These are not accusations or rhetorical questions;
> I think we'd like to know how it happened. I know if an administrator
> asked me to oversight an edit that compromised her IP, but that also was
> evidence of her abusive sockpuppetry, I would not look too favorably
> upon the request.
My guess, and Jay can tell us, is that that edit was just one of a whole
batch of edits by 70.64.24.120 which were removed at that time. I had
reviewed all of these and did not connect this edit with Sweet Water
Blue... I just did not notice. It took someone as obsessive as Judd to
figure that out... I can't imagine how Jay would have known.
SV, on the other hand, would have known.
Unless, of course, this is not a sockpuppet and there is some other
explanation.
--Jimbo
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:46:56 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
jayjg wrote:
> As I recall, she wrote that she had edited from that IP, that those
> edits had been inadvertently exposed, and asked that they be
> oversighted. The reasons for oversighting exposed IPs were obvious, as
> explained in earlier e-mails. I simply oversighted all the edits from
> the IP; there's no way of telling in the context of that user talk:
> page that the edits were supposed to have been from a different
> account, much less that it was an "abusive sockpuppet".
I accept this explanation. It all puts us in a bit of a bind
retrospectively, though.
And the above is consistent with my recollection of these oversights.
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:47:52 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
Timothy Titcomb wrote:
> On Aug 23, 2007, at 5:03 PM, jayjg wrote:
>
>> Fortunately, no "attempts" to "cover up abuse" were made; instead,
>> attempts were made to protect Wikipedia editors from serious stalking.
>
> One reason does not preclude the other. Do you think it is possible
> that by asking you to oversight the edits of that IP, that SlimVirgin
> was trying to cover-up her sockpuppetry?
This is my question as well.
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:50:41 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
Timothy Titcomb wrote:
> On Aug 23, 2007, at 5:20 PM, jayjg wrote:
>
>> It is quite clear to me that there was a genuine and well-founded fear
>> of stalking, including many attempts to discover her name and
>> location. Subsequent events have borne that out, to an unprecedented
>> degree. It is also clear that that was the primary issue and reason
>> for asking for oversight. I can't really comment on the other, as I
>> don't know anything about it.
>
> Jay, do you think all of your oversights of SlimVirgin's edits were
> entirely appropriate and within policy?
I will weigh in on this with my own opinion, having reviewed all of them.
I think that the oversights were barely appropriate and barely within
policy. They are in what is a gray area for me.
----------
From: (Kirill Lokshin)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:51:17 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 8/24/07, Steve Dunlop wrote:
> Unless I'm completely misreading the logs, many of the oversights of
> concern are from logged-in accounts. While it is true that some of
> Jay's oversights are of anon edits, many of the problematic ones are
> not.
As best as I can tell, the course of events here was pretty close to this:
Around the time she arrived on Wikipedia (c. late 2004), SV made a
number of edits. Some of these were made directly through an IP,
while others were done through one of several accounts.
At some point in early 2006, due to increasing efforts to discover her
identity, SV requested that the bulk of these edits be removed,
presumably because:
- Some of the edits revealed her IP directly
- The content of some of the edits -- including some from the first
category -- would reveal her real-life identity to someone familiar
with the circumstances of Salinger's Pan-Am investigation (notably,
Daniel Brandt)
Jayjg then proceeded to oversight these edits. It is unclear whether
he performed any detailed examination of the edits before removing
them, or whether SV provided any detailed explanation of how the
content of the edits could identify her.
Unfortunately, the edits, aside from leading to SV's identity,
contained evidence of several other problems:
- Some of the edits were inappropriate per se, even in the absence of
an explicit COI policy
- Some of the edits were evidence of unrevealed sockpuppetry
The net effect, therefore, has been to hide away evidence of SV's
identity at the cost of also hiding away evidence of her misbehavior;
and outside parties have now learned of this process and are making
the argument that the edits were oversighted *because* they contained
evidence of misbehavior.
Kirill
----------
From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:54:12 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 8/24/07, Steve Dunlop wrote:
> While individuals using oversight have at times taken liberties with the
> policy, I have always chosen to interpret the policy narrowly. The
> purpose behind the oversight mechanism was to serve the OTRS team and
> provide a means of removing truly problematic material that posed a
> moral imperative to act or a legal problem for the foundation. There
> were three categories of material we intended to cover:
>
> * Libel
> * Copyright violations
> * Personal information, such as real names and phone numbers
>
> James and I drafted the original policy, which is on meta. The ENWP
> policy is essentially a copy of that.
>
> In addition to policy, it has become fairly common practice to oversight
> IP edits made when someone was inadvertently logged out. I have
> grudgingly done this on one or two occasions where there were
> extenuating circumstances, as have others, but it was never part of the
> original intent of the policy to permit this.
>
> I simply can't see how all the oversights Jay has made in this matter
> can possibly be construed to be in accordance with policy. I am
> disappointed that Jay has given us red herring after red herring in this
> matter, refusing to address the legitimate concerns we have raised about
> the most problematic of his oversights. Oversight has never been and
> should never become a tool for covering up regrettable edits made by an
> editor who has second thoughts. That SV has been the target of a
> stalker does not entitle her to have highly questionable edits she made
> some time ago to be redacted.
>
> I also note that Jay did not discuss his actions with others before
> performing them. Jay has private email addresses for most if not all
> the people with oversight rights and could have contacted any of them
> privately to discuss this before acting.
>
> Finally, I question Jay's wisdom in oversighting edits that have been in
> the page database for well over a year. To the extent that Jay is
> claiming that he has overstepped policy on the grounds that judgment and
> conscience trump it, I submit that there is no wisdom in removing highly
> visible edits that are so old when dumps of the page database are widely
> available.
>
> I believe that Jay has brought the integrity of the oversight mechanism
> into question and has done a disservice to the committee and other
> leaders of the Wikipedia community.
>
> I would like to call for Jay to resign his oversight privileges
> immediately on the meta "requests for permissions" page. Per Charles, I
> believe we should assemble a list of oversights we believe are
> inappropriate and ask the developers to restore those to the page
> database.
>
> Finally, I believe this should be done without delay since the damage is
> building.
>
> Steve
Steve,
a) I don't think I've been giving you "red herring after red herring".
b) There was no prior indication that dumps of the old database had
been kept, or that someone would obsessively try to mine them. It
seems to me that by that logic we might as well do away with Oversight
altogether.
c) I don't think everyone here agrees that my oversights contravened policy.
d) I don't think making public concessions to Judd Bagley, Daniel
Brandt, and the rest of Wikipedia Review is either good precedent or
good strategy. In fact, I think that doing so would do far more to
"bring the integrity of the oversight mechanism into question and do a
disservice to the committee and other leaders of the Wikipedia
community" than anything I have done.
e) As I told you in an e-mail many days ago, I'm not editing Wikipedia
right now - indeed, I don't really even have the time for these e-mail
discussions, though I have done my best to keep up with them. In any
event, as I told you, I won't be using oversight for the forseeable
future, so there's no emergency here.
f) If the eventual decision of the "powers that be" is that I should
not have oversight privileges, then I would hope it would be done in a
dignified and respectful way; there are certainly ways of arranging
that.
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:54:46 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> You have, in any case, missed the rather more obvious third option --
> that Jayjg is telling the truth but that his decision to oversight the
> edits was wrong in spite of this.
I think reasonable people can differ as to whether these oversights were
the right thing to do. I think it worthy of an ongoing discussion to
clarify when we think oversight should be done, and when not, and what
to do in borderline cases.
But I am not happy to simply circle the wagons and bunker down and try
to ignore this when there are questions of sockpuppetry.
I think becaues the crazies here are so crazy, there is a temptation to
give SV a free pass. After all, the claim that she is or was an MI-5
agent is ludicrous... I have an email from Brandt's source on this,
flatly denying there is any reason to believe it.
Great.
We are still left with an uncomfortable sockpuppeting situation, I think.
--Jimbo
-----------
From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 13:57:24 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
As I've said in earlier e-mails, the current "crisis" is allegedly
about oversighting some IP edits in order to hide sockpuppeting -
that's what Bagley's e-mail was about.
On 8/24/07, Steve Dunlop wrote:
> Unless I'm completely misreading the logs, many of the oversights of
> concern are from logged-in accounts. While it is true that some of
> Jay's oversights are of anon edits, many of the problematic ones are
> not.
>
> Steve
----------
From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:03:18 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Dmcdevit wrote:
> > The question is not so much of the sockpuppetry, which is old and easily
> > forgiven, I suspect, but of the oversight use. Do you really have no
> > idea if this was a sockpuppet? Why then was your very first act as an
> > oversight user to remove this
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Oversight&revision=9165353&diff=1>,
> > an edit by an IP that appears to be User:Sweet Blue Water, from context?
> > Did SlimVirgin contact you and ask for it to be removed, and what reason
> > could she have given? These are not accusations or rhetorical questions;
> > I think we'd like to know how it happened. I know if an administrator
> > asked me to oversight an edit that compromised her IP, but that also was
> > evidence of her abusive sockpuppetry, I would not look too favorably
> > upon the request.
>
> My guess, and Jay can tell us, is that that edit was just one of a whole
> batch of edits by 70.64.24.120 which were removed at that time.
Yes, that's exactly what I did, I removed *all* the edits from that
IP, at the same time.
> I had
> reviewed all of these and did not connect this edit with Sweet Water
> Blue... I just did not notice. It took someone as obsessive as Judd to
> figure that out... I can't imagine how Jay would have known.
Exactly.
----------
From: (Josh Gordon)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:03:17 -0700
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> We are still left with an uncomfortable sockpuppeting situation, I think.
Then we should treat it like we do any other sockpuppeting situation from
the distant past. Let's see, how do we usually penalize actions taken by
relatively new users 2-3 years ago, in the absence of any evidence (or even
suggestion, other than from nutcases) that similar actions have taken place
more recently?
--
--jpgordon ????
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:03:23 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
jayjg wrote:
> Judd even claimed to have discovered that Jimbo himself was sockpuppeting.
But let's be clear about this. In that case, he emailed me with the
name of an editor he thought was me, based on patterns in the timing of
edits. The editor was someone I never heard of and certainly was not
me. It was laughable.
In the current case, he has evidence, evidence which looks to me
reasonably compelling. Certainly, let me put it this way: people are
indef blocked daily at Wikipedia on evidence slimmer than this.
--Jimbo
----------
From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:04:26 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
> > Judd even claimed to have discovered that Jimbo himself was sockpuppeting.
>
> But let's be clear about this. In that case, he emailed me with the
> name of an editor he thought was me, based on patterns in the timing of
> edits. The editor was someone I never heard of and certainly was not
> me. It was laughable.
>
> In the current case, he has evidence, evidence which looks to me
> reasonably compelling. Certainly, let me put it this way: people are
> indef blocked daily at Wikipedia on evidence slimmer than this.
Not for stuff they did 3 years ago, as a new editor.
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:06:53 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
jayjg wrote:
> What's the difference? Why is it important? It was an account that
> made a couple of dozen edits almost 3 years ago, when SlimVirgin first
> started editing. Do you think anyone, outside of Judd's buddies, will
> think this really is newsworthy? If it's confirmed, what would the New
> York Times headline be:
> "Revealed: One of Wikipedia's 1000 administrators used a second
> account for making a few edits 3 years ago!!!"
I am not worried about the New York Times.
I am worried about Wikipedia.
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:08:36 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
I am happy to support the decision of this committee in what to do about
this.
But I am going to push hard on all of us to be really really careful to
do the right thing.
-----------
From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:11:58 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive
sockpuppetry]
On 8/24/07, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> > You have, in any case, missed the rather more obvious third option --
> > that Jayjg is telling the truth but that his decision to oversight the
> > edits was wrong in spite of this.
>
> I think reasonable people can differ as to whether these oversights were
> the right thing to do. I think it worthy of an ongoing discussion to
> clarify when we think oversight should be done, and when not, and what
> to do in borderline cases.
>
> But I am not happy to simply circle the wagons and bunker down and try
> to ignore this when there are questions of sockpuppetry.
Well, I think the right thing to do when people are trying to
blackmail us with ancient information about stuff that nobody outside
Wikipedia (and Wikipedia Review) really cares about is to do just
that. Honestly, no-one outside Wikipedia would even understand what it
meant that one of our 1000 admins, when they first joined Wikipedia,
and before they were actually an admin, had a "sockpuppet" account,
much less care that they both once voted on some sort of internal
matter.
I think an appropriate response to Bagley's e-mail would have been
"Judd, do you think the shareholders of your failing company
appreciate it that you are spending their money obsessively pursuing
personal grudges you have with the administrators on some website you
were banned from?" Or, a more succinct response might have been "F off
you troll". But, of course, that's just my personal opinion.
----------
From: (Jimmy Wales)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:14:07 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's
abusive sockpuppetry]
jayjg wrote:
> I'm still having trouble understanding a) why
> we give any credence or attention whatsoever to anything Judd Bagley
> says, and b) even if true, why it would be relevant or important
> *today*.
In the hope of reducing some of the tension in the room let me just give
my simple answers to these two...
1. He has evidence, evidence which is quite compelling. This evidence
has been confirmed by reviewing the oversighted edits. His tendency to
make wild claims in the past doesn't change the fact that he seems to
have the story right now.
2. SV is a respected editor. She is controversial in certain ways and
would probably not be elected to this committee for those reasons, but
she is widely and properly regarded as a very powerful top community
member. The ArbCom, and I, are tasked broadly by the community with the
job of enforcing certain standards of integrity related to behavior at
Wikipedia -- we have a responsibility to do a good job of this.
-----
For me there is an additional necessity for us to do this right. I blew
it when I appointed EssJay to the ArbCom, and the ArbCom blew it (but I
take the full blame on myself) for not helping me by raising alarm bells
about it before I did it. We have been burned by a friend before. We
risk getting a reputation for being a cabal who protects our friends
rather than pursuing the truth.
We can't let that happen, or we will end up eventually losing our power,
and I do not think that's good for Wikipedia.
--Jimbo
----------
From: (jayjg)
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:22:08 -0400
Subject: [Arbcom-l] [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive sockpuppetry]
An e-mail I'm forwarding from SlimVirgin.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Slim Virgin
Date: Aug 24, 2007 1:56 PM
Subject: Re: [Fwd: The Skinny on SlimVirgin's abusive sockpuppetry]
To: Jay
Jay, I've sent this to the ArbCom but it has bounced back, and I can
never tell whether any of my e-mails arrive there.
Would you mind forwarding this for me?
I'd also appreciate if it members of the ArbCom list could cc me on
anything about me. It doesn't seem right that allegations made against
me by a lunatic are being discussed, but I can't see the discussion,
or even tell whether my replies are getting through.
Sarah
On 8/24/07, Slim Virgin wrote:
> Jimbo, this is just a holding e-mail until I get my bearings with
> this, because I'm not up to speed. I'm going to write again later.
>
> I'm not going to read any more of WordBomb's nonsense, or Wikipedia
> Review's, so I asked some friends last night to tell me roughly what
> was being said.
>
> I understand there are two issues. The first (as you explained in one
> of your recent e-mails to me) is that I asked Jayjg to oversight some
> of my early edits in or around June 2006, because Wikpedia Review was
> hounding me, and I was worried my early edits would identify me. Some
> of this hounding included threats of violence from a banned editor
> (Scott Grayban, who I didn't even have any contact with on Wikipedia)
> who lived in the same country as me, and who claimed to have been a
> former soldier in Iraq. He was clearly insane, and he wrote that he
> was coming for me and I had better find a place to hide, so I was
> frightened. The edits in question were newbie edits, and OR-ish --
> some of it was OR; most of it just looked like OR because I didn't
> include the published sources. There was nothing sinister about them.
> It was newbie stuff, bad editing, not understanding Wikipedia's
> policies. I'm confused that it's being brought up again (as I
> understand from your e-mail, it's being raised by Paul August). It was
> discussed in June 2006. I recall writing to you about it, and you
> seemed fine with it.
>
> The second issue is whether I was Sweet Blue Water. Yes, I was. Again,
> this was when I first started editing (end of 2004). I couldn't decide
> whether I wanted to keep the SlimVirgin user name, and I thought of
> switching to Sweet Blue. I tried the name out for a few days to see
> how I felt with it, and I don't recall particularly trying to hide it
> was me, because I wasn't even thinking along sockpuppetry lines. If
> you look at the edits, there were no content disputes. I'm going to
> write to you later with diffs and so on. The only mistake I made was I
> inadvertently voted with SlimVirgin and SweetBlue for 9/11 to be a
> featured article. I didn't even notice I'd done this until a couple of
> days later, and it made no difference to the FA outcome. That's when I
> decided to stay as SlimVirgin and I retired SweetBlue, in case I
> inadvertently did anything similar again.
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...weet_Blue_Water>
> If the worst things WordBomb can find about me, out of 60,000 edits
> and nearly three years participation, is some newbie stuff in the
> first few weeks I was here, then my editing record can't be that bad.
>
> I don't understand why you're taking WordBomb (Judd Bagley) at all
> seriously. He's a creep, an internet stalker, and has been named as
> such by several reliable sources, including as I recall the New York
> Times and New York Post. He's left IP traps for people on Wikipedia
> and other websites. He does nothing but accuse people of bizarre
> conspiracy theories. He has zero credibility with the media. Even if
> he were the most credible source on earth, what would be the story be?
> Wikipedia administrator, who once worked for MI5, inadvertently voted
> twice for 9/11 to become a featured article?
>
> Sarah
SlimVirgin socking Part 2, what the forum ate
MaliceAforethought SlimVirgin socking Part 2 
