JoshuaZ, Stalker Extraordinaire, He's trying to resurrect that redirect Options

[Daniel Brandt]

JoshuaZ is trying to restore that redirect again. I've been waiting for this for almost three weeks. On April 3 he told User:Prodego that he was planning to do this. I have already expanded the hostmask database from 26,000 lines to 33,000 lines in anticipation of this, but now I'm dusting off the IRC logs for January through April.

If the redirect goes through I will reinstall that old IRC search engine. This is not because IRC is interesting — indeed, compared to 2006 the #wikipedia IRC channel is almost tame these days. But it does give me an excuse to add about 700 HTML pages to Wikipedia-Watch. Based on past experience, this will double the overall traffic to my Wikipedia-Watch homepage.

That's because anytime you add 700 pages to a site, and these pages are filled with a wide variety of keyword-rich content that's interesting to web surfers, you get a lot more clicks once that content is indexed by search engines. Moreover, the two links in the footer of each page will go back to my homepage and to hivemind. These links help direct traffic from those who landed on an IRC chat page, and who find themselves wondering what they're looking at. That's a very common question, as you can imagine if you've ever seen about 600 consecutive lines of chat from #wikipedia on IRC. (These 700 files will average about 600 lines of chat each.)

The links in the footer also tend to give more Google juice to the two target pages, although not a whole lot because they're internal links. Do you know why every few words in Wikipedia articles are linked to another Wikipedia article? It's for the Google juice. Same thing here. (A lot of sites do this sort of thing just so that they have pages that can carry their Google ads, but I've never had any ads on any of my sites. I wonder if other sites will scrape my IRC logs? Google sure encourages a lot of pollution on the web, but then Wikipedia has never done anything to stop scrapers either.)

I'm actually looking forward to doing this if that redirect goes through. Wikipedia-Watch in general, and hivemind in particular, deserve more traffic. It's a quid pro quo because if the redirect is reinstalled, the PIR page in Wikipedia — the one with my name on it in seven places — will be getting more traffic too.

[Kato]

Oddly enough, he links to a statement by Daniel Brandt about the BLP situation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=204794773

I happily accept responsibility for reporting the following comment;

"This wording makes this entire effort almost worthless: "An individual who has placed themselves at the forefront of public controversies in order to influence the issues involved." By that measure, I anticipate that if this becomes policy, someone will resurrect my bio based on the new policy, and another 2.5-year battle will ensue. Hivemind will end up twice as big. The proper way to deal with people who are active in specific causes (and no one is active in all causes), is to mention them in an article on that specific issue. It should not be an excuse to start a general bio on that person. I'm presently mentioned on pages about Google-Watch, Scroogle, etc. I have no quarrel with that. I'm mentioned too many times on Public_Information_Research and I have some quarrel with that, as it threatened to become a substitute for my bio once the redirect was in place. Since the redirect was deleted a few weeks ago, I have much less problem with that. By the way, I'm banned from Wikipedia. Does a banned person have any right to comment on issues concerning him, or does his input get summarily deleted regardless of the reasons for the ban or the nature of the comments? --Daniel Brandt

(later deleted by Ryan Postlethwaite because Brandt is a banned user)

JoshuaZ describes this statement as part of a continued campaign by Brandt.

Therefore, as noted by Dogbiscuit, JoshuaZ is placing himself in opposition to Daniel Brandt, and this redirect is a deliberate attempt to sustain a personal battle between himself and Brandt. Recall that JoshuaZ employed sockpuppets to conduct this feud and vote against Brandt in previous debates. Adopting different personas to gain the upper hand.

Why is this kid still allowed to demand polls and start debates on Brandt related matters? Surely a topic ban is in order by now?

[dogbiscuit]

Why is this kid still allowed to demand polls and start debates on Brandt related matters? Surely a topic ban is in order by now?

What would be sensible for JoshuaZ to consider is, if the powers that be saw this as an embarrassing nuisance, the sockpuppeteer might end up as a banned user himself. If he considered this possibility, he might have an enlightening change of perspective.

There are now some sane observations on the impropriety of this approach being recorded.

In the immortal words of the Simpsons: "Oooh! Let's poke it!"

[Somey]

There are now some sane observations on the impropriety of this approach being recorded.

Well, we can all be thankful for that, at least.

But quite frankly, I'm really, really tired of JoshuaZ's crap. He either has to go, or it's off with the gloves.

In particular, I'm thinking it may be time for someone to start releasing #wp-en-admins IRC logs to the public... Whoever does it will probably want to start pulling out the juiciest bits first though, rather than publish them all at once. They'll probably scream "copyright infringement," but as everyone knows, any real action in that regard will only bring vast amounts of additional attention to what's in those logs.

And of course, every page should carry the words "Courtesy of Joshua Zelinsky!" right at the top. At some point, people over there are going to have to wake up to the fact that we're serious about this shit.

[BobbyBombastic]

In particular, I'm thinking it may be time for someone to start releasing #wp-en-admins IRC logs to the public... Whoever does it will probably want to start pulling out the juiciest bits first though, rather than publish them all at once. They'll probably scream "copyright infringement," but as everyone knows, any real action in that regard will only bring vast amounts of additional attention to what's in those logs.

And of course, every page should carry the words "Courtesy of Joshua Zelinsky!" right at the top. At some point, people over there are going to have to wake up to the fact that we're serious about this shit.

It surprises me that this has not happened. The pseudo copyright lawyers will probably crucify me for saying this, but it's funny to me that anyone would claim copyright over an IRC log. Besides, one could easily avoid any possibility of being discovered by uploading to a free site and using proxies. In the event that the free web hosting finds that posting IRC logs is a copyright violation, the worst they can do is delete the site...then one just moves on to the next free host.

Let's face it though, there probably wouldn't be much damning information there, but it would piss off certain clique members, and I am all for that!

[Random832]

Besides, one could easily avoid any possibility of being discovered

Considering that the chronological ordering of IRC messages is a partial order rather than a total order, it is in theory possible to use discrepancies in the ordering of messages in different logs significantly narrow down who is recording the logs, provided that whoever it is is an active user. I'm surprised this hasn't been done (or attempted) already, though it would take a fairly large sample, another complete set of logs, and of course the requirement that the user recording the logs is actually participating in discussion.

[Somey]

Considering that the chronological ordering of IRC messages is a partial order rather than a total order, it is in theory possible to use discrepancies in the ordering of messages in different logs significantly narrow down who is recording the logs, provided that whoever it is is an active user.

We've thought of that (for what that's worth)... That's one of the reasons for releasing the material in bits and pieces, and with lines about who's coming in and leaving either removed or repositioned. I'm all for removing them entirely, myself - that should prevent the various log sources from being identified.

There's a lot of material involved, and I did get started at one point on a program to do that automatically, as well as things like translating text-only URL's to HREF tags, randomly changing the time/datestamp formats on each line, maybe adding links from IRC handles to WP userpages, etc., etc.. I'll have to pick that project up again, along with the dozens of other things I've been promising to do around here!

I don't know JoshuaZ well enough to form even a tentative theory of mind encompassing his issues, beliefs, desires, or intentions. But if he has the courage and integrity to come here, I'll do my best to learn those aspects of his mindset as best I can elicit them through a congenial and collegial conversation with him.

And would you rather do this in a thread that's write-access-limited to the two of you exclusively? It's technically feasible, but I don't think we've ever done that before. Also, I'm not even sure what the point would be - is there some solution to this situation that doesn't involve him just backing off, preferably for good?

[Moulton]

I don't know JoshuaZ well enough to form even a tentative theory of mind encompassing his issues, beliefs, desires, or intentions. But if he has the courage and integrity to come here, I'll do my best to learn those aspects of his mindset as best I can elicit them through a congenial and collegial conversation with him.

And would you rather do this in a thread that's write-access-limited to the two of you exclusively? It's technically feasible, but I don't think we've ever done that before. Also, I'm not even sure what the point would be - is there some solution to this situation that doesn't involve him just backing off, preferably for good?

I suppose if 1) Joshua requested it and/or 2) our tete-a-tete became impossible due to disruptive levels of rotten tomatoes jamming the conversation, then your suggestion might be needed.

The point would be for Joshua and I to explore the issues that drive this long-running conflict and see if we can discover any useful insights leading to either a detente or (Kato's horror at the prospect notwithstanding) a resolution acceptable to the adversarial parties.

[Kato]

The point would be for Joshua and I to explore the issues that drive this long-running conflict and see if we can discover any useful insights leading to either a detente or (Kato's horror at the prospect notwithstanding) a resolution acceptable to the adversarial parties.