WJBscribe's involvement in the oversighted edits, Jimbo and Cary Bass too! Options

[Daniel]

All I can guess is that it seems like non-privacy related but very embaressing unsourced content editing about animal sex by FT2 were supposedly oversighted by WJScribe and Cary Bass to not interfere with the Arbcom elections in 2007.

WJBscribe does not have oversight, so this is not physically possible.

[Kelly Martin]

Oversight isn't allowed to be used like that. That's what the WMF Ombudsman is for. Have you contacted them?

Like that would make any difference. The Ombudsmen are just as political as the rest of the badge-wearers in Wikipedia.

[LaraLove]

Look at Cla68's evidence in the C68-FM-SV case. He has pretty much nailed all the places where SV had Jayjg oversight her edits, some embarrassing and some wrongdoing. Also look on wikien-l about this time last year, where Phil Sandifer basically takes SV to the woodshed for her constant paranoia and getting others to abuse their tools for her benefit.

This is why PD isn't going to get far with his complaint. Jayjg is believed to have oversighted hundreds of edits at Slim's request after she got major butt-hurt from a New York Times Magazine article that called her out on her bullshit. That's when the rules about oversight really went out the window. Jayjg has yet to loose his oversight/CU rights for this abuse of privleges. So why the hell would anyone care about two oversighted edits by FT2?

That's what I recall reading about, and your thoughts are mine exactly. That's precisely why I asked. If SV has gotten away with such behavior, no one is going to care if FT2 has done this.

[Proabivouac]

I've a simple question for Wikipedia administrators and contributors:

If an senior administrator or arbitrator presented these diffs and leveled the very same allegations against an unknown editor or an anon - say, posted to ANI with a section entitled, "Disturbing unsourced material being added to Zoophilia" - would the administrator have been blocked indefinitely and the diffs oversighted?

That's an easy one, isn't it?

But what's more important, vetting random contributors, or vetting the leadership?

[Peter Damian]

That's what I recall reading about, and your thoughts are mine exactly. That's precisely why I asked. If SV has gotten away with such behavior, no one is going to care if FT2 has done this.

Ergo, no one actually cares if FT2 has done this?

A few corrections to some things said above. WJBScribe did not have oversight privileges at the time, and nor did FT2, so it wasn't either of them. Very few people knew of the existence of the diffs at the time, so it is limited to a small number of people. Scribe mentions Jimbo and Cary Bass in his email. That is about all we know.

[Peter Damian]

This is why PD isn't going to get far with his complaint. Jayjg is believed to have oversighted hundreds of edits at Slim's request after she got major butt-hurt from a New York Times Magazine article that called her out on her bullshit. That's when the rules about oversight really went out the window. Jayjg has yet to loose his oversight/CU rights for this abuse of privleges. So why the hell would anyone care about two oversighted edits by FT2?

Prospero: you are User:Dragon695, yes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragon695

You clearly dislike Squeakbox:

'''Note'''It is highly suspected that [[User:SqueakBox|SqueakBox]] is employing meatpuppets. I have seen him colluding with Don Murphy over on Wikipedia Review, trying to encourage him to continue socking in the name of protecting Wikipedia from pedophiles. I need not remind people that Don Murphy is the same asshole who harassed NYBrad's law firm in to forcing him to quit Wikipedia. People like SqueakBox truly disgust me. --[[User:Dragon695|Dragon695]] ([[User talk:Dragon695|talk]]) 13:23, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=220561581

And it seems you supported my recent block for complained about the blocking of Phdarts:

'''Support Block''' [of Damian/Hinnibilis] - Due to the increasing disruptive nature and loutish behavior of these anti-pedophile activists, including running off very respectable editors who have never edited in a controversial area (except perhaps removing incorrect child abuse categories from classic works of literature), it is my opinion that they are a net negative to the project. They think Wikipedia is a battleground to fight sexual predators when, in fact, [[WP:BATTLE|it is not]]. We don't need their kind of help, quite frankly. They should be shown the door and allowed to come back only after a 6 month to one year block and only if they are serious. They should be topic banned from all sexuality related topics. --[[User:Dragon695|Dragon695]] ([[User talk:Dragon695|talk]]) 23:50, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

You are suggesting that anti-paedophile editors be banned from such articles or 'shown the door? (Note, as it happens, that I only started editing such articles after Thatcher asked me to, because I have academic qualifications and understand proper sourcing and so on. And in any case that didn't last long, as we know.)

You also have a banner on your user page saying:

Wikipedians Who I Consider BOLD

ContiE - For pissing off the Parents for the Online Safety of Children.
Furrykef - For pissing off the Parents for the Online Safety of Children.
STrRedWolf - For pissing off the Parents for the Online Safety of Children.
Sweetfreek - For pissing off the Parents for the Online Safety of Children.
Zetawoof - For pissing off the Parents for the Online Safety of Children.

Who are these editors? Why do you like them? What did they do to 'piss off' the PoSC?

And this from an editor who has 50 mainspace edits in 2 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?limit=...&year=&month=-1

I have written almost as many whole articles in that time.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Wed 9th July 2008, 12:51pm

[guy]

Oversight is regularly used to conceal edits made accidentally while logged out. This is against policy, but it is done.

Would that be to make sure there is no username put to an IP?

Yes of course.

[Dzonatas]

Oversight is regularly used to conceal edits made accidentally while logged out. This is against policy, but it is done.

Would that be to make sure there is no username put to an IP?

Yes of course.

Anyone can look up the IP address and use that to 'out' someone to some degree. I'm not sure if the oversight action, in such example, is fully against policy, but it is quite controversial in that regard.

This only adds weight to the measure that MediaWiki should not allow IP#s as being stated anonymous in any sense; hence, my effort to move away from what was known as anon-IP to OpenID. Allow people to either login into MediaWiki as they do now, or allow them to use a OpenID account, which can be asked for and verified for on each post. I'm not going into much tech details of it in this thread, but it can be made more persistent so one neither (continually) specifies their OpenID account nor uses traditional MediaWiki login.

That would solve that issue and not make it so controversial, or it would eliminate such oversighted IPs actions because there would no longer be a means to edit Wikipedia by IP -- feature disabled and replaced by OpenID.

(Somewhere, Moulton wondered about scientific inquiry.)

This post has been edited by Dzonatas: Wed 9th July 2008, 4:12pm

[prospero]

This is why PD isn't going to get far with his complaint. Jayjg is believed to have oversighted hundreds of edits at Slim's request after she got major butt-hurt from a New York Times Magazine article that called her out on her bullshit. That's when the rules about oversight really went out the window. Jayjg has yet to loose his oversight/CU rights for this abuse of privleges. So why the hell would anyone care about two oversighted edits by FT2?

Prospero: you are User:Dragon695, yes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragon695

Yup.

You clearly dislike Squeakbox:

'''Note'''It is highly suspected that [[User:SqueakBox|SqueakBox]] is employing meatpuppets. I have seen him colluding with Don Murphy over on Wikipedia Review, trying to encourage him to continue socking in the name of protecting Wikipedia from pedophiles. I need not remind people that Don Murphy is the same asshole who harassed NYBrad's law firm in to forcing him to quit Wikipedia. People like SqueakBox truly disgust me. --[[User:Dragon695|Dragon695]] ([[User talk:Dragon695|talk]]) 13:23, 20 June 2008 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=220561581

That was correct at the time. Quite frankly, I have a number of issues with SqueakBox. Most of them have nothing to do with his battling evil-doers. Being a chronic apologist for Guy Chapman is one reason. That said, I have talked with SB and I have decided to drop my issues with him for now.

And it seems you supported my recent block for complained about the blocking of Phdarts:

'''Support Block''' [of Damian/Hinnibilis] - Due to the increasing disruptive nature and loutish behavior of these anti-pedophile activists, including running off very respectable editors who have never edited in a controversial area (except perhaps removing incorrect child abuse categories from classic works of literature), it is my opinion that they are a net negative to the project. They think Wikipedia is a battleground to fight sexual predators when, in fact, [[WP:BATTLE|it is not]]. We don't need their kind of help, quite frankly. They should be shown the door and allowed to come back only after a 6 month to one year block and only if they are serious. They should be topic banned from all sexuality related topics. --[[User:Dragon695|Dragon695]] ([[User talk:Dragon695|talk]]) 23:50, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

You are suggesting that anti-paedophile editors be banned from such articles or 'shown the door? (Note, as it happens, that I only started editing such articles after Thatcher asked me to, because I have academic qualifications and understand proper sourcing and so on. And in any case that didn't last long, as we know.)

I am sorry if I got you and Phdarts mixed up. Perhaps, I was wrong. However, disrupting RFA and arguing on FT2's talk page did not make it seem good. I was under the impression that you had been allowed back conditionally. If that was a mistaken impression, then I apologize.

As to the rest, I am suggesting that:

1. Wikipedia should not be a battleground to fight morality wars. Editors who edit these articles need to be dispassionate and objective.
2. That the amount of collateral damage caused by some of the anti-PPAs is a net negative, thus like any other disruptive editor, they should be shown the door.
3. Being anti-PPA should not get you a get out of jail free card or indemnify you from the rules.
4. That some of the heat around this issue is just ginned up moral panic.

I came to this conclusion after finding that quite a few valued contributors were driven from the project as nothing more than collateral damage in these morality battles. That is to say they neither expressed an opinion on pedophiles nor did they edit any pedophile articles. One such contributor was very prolific in our literature articles. Back in mid 2007, a rather loutish anti-pedophile SPA kept edit warring additions of trivial POV categories, such as books containing child abuse, into certain literature articles and the poor guy found himself having to fight this goon to keep that silly category out. Eventually, the literature expert just got frustrated and quit. That is the kind of nonsense that has to be stopped. If they want to fight a war, go find somewhere else to do it. There are other editors who are polite but firm in making sure the pro-pedophiles don't slant our articles. With some exceptions in extreme cases, I don't generally support the El_C school of thought which says that merely suspecting or finding admission of being a pedophile is cause to have ArbCom secretly indef them with a gag-order on any further discussion of the matter. My view point, it is quite simple:

Policy should apply equally to all editors, whether they be sinners or saints.

Apply the same behavioral standards to PPAs and anti-PPAs as we do to any other editor. Block them for disruption and give them opportunities to reform. If we can do this for I/P editors, no reason why we can't here. Again, it is the ZOMG moral panic that seems to cause some irrational thinking when it comes to this, in my opinion.

You also have a banner on your user page saying:

Wikipedians Who I Consider BOLD

ContiE - For pissing off the Parents for the Online Safety of Children.
Furrykef - For pissing off the Parents for the Online Safety of Children.
STrRedWolf - For pissing off the Parents for the Online Safety of Children.
Sweetfreek - For pissing off the Parents for the Online Safety of Children.
Zetawoof - For pissing off the Parents for the Online Safety of Children.

Who are these editors? Why do you like them? What did they do to 'piss off' the PoSC?

PftOSC is an extreme right-wing Christian group who disapproves of certain types of editors on Wikipedia. Editors and administrators who are openly gay, openly into BSDM, and/or are part of the furry fandom. This was in response to some kerfuffle that happened back in 2006 when they tried to gin up a campaign against these editors in the media.

And this from an editor who has 50 mainspace edits in 2 years

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?limit=...&year=&month=-1

I have written almost as many whole articles in that time.

I'm not going into detail as I've already done so before. I crossed Tony Sidaway very early on before I had a chance to contribute in 2006. My subsequent interactions led me to conclude that contributing wasn't worth it, and I left. I returned this year because, despite how some feel about the project failures, I find that much of Wikipedia is a good reference. However, recently I began to notice problems with article quality were due to bad policy/bad editors, so I set about pushing for change. For example, the ban of fair use in biographies is absurd and detrimental. A good biography should always have a picture, even if it is non-free. I do have "other accounts" on other Wikimedia projects, where I found my contributions to be more fruitful. I still consider English Wikipedia to be my home wiki, since it is where I first got involved in this technology, and thus this account has become my SUL.

This post has been edited by prospero: Wed 9th July 2008, 5:17pm

[Peter Damian]

I am sorry if I got you and Phdarts mixed up. Perhaps, I was wrong.

1. I am not he. I was specifically asked to look at some of these articles by Thatcher, given my knowledge of classical and medieval civilisation. I have never gone near that sort of article before (ordinary edit warriors are bad enough).

2. I checked out the edits of Phdarts carefully and found them to be good. Literally, every one of his 400 edits.

3. One of the PPA's left a message on a talk page saying he was going to ask for something to be done.

4. Phdarts was banned, and I hit the roof. Note, however, I did not accuse FT2 of anything - merely that his actions 'had the effect' of supporting PPA's, which is true.

5. Then an ungodly rabble descended on ANI saying all sorts of stupid and absurd things, without me being given any chance of reply.

On this sort of article generally, it attracts two of the worst sorts, namely the PPA's and the antis, who generally lack any kind of subtlety. On whether or not an encyclopedia should be a battleground for morality wars, it should not, but then that rules out the less than subtle propaganda that the PPA's keep inserting into articles of this sort, e.g. from the pederasty article:

While male love in antiquity was generally subject to various limitations, its late Roman era criminalization, together with the later persecution of homosexuals during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, [1] stemmed from the growing Christian influence in Europe.

This is a badly written, crude and untestable generalisation. What are the 'various limitations' - it is probably referring to earlier forms of the Lex Julia (Roman morality laws)? But we do not have the text of these laws and any inference we make about them is just that, an inference. We can't really say for sure what the Romans thought about pederasty. We have the writing of various upper class Romans and Greeks, we also have evidence that lower class Romans and Greeks regarded the upper class ones as effete homosexuals, much as people in England regard Etonians and so forth. The causal connection implied between 'late Roman era criminalization' and 'growing Christian influence in Europe' is absurd in the extreme. And so on. The whole article is a mess. No person with any sense will deal with it, net result is a train wreck. Best to delete the whole lot, in my view. And there you go.

This post has been edited by Peter Damian: Wed 9th July 2008, 7:08pm

[prospero]

I am sorry if I got you and Phdarts mixed up. Perhaps, I was wrong.

1. I am not he. I was specifically asked to look at some of these articles by Thatcher, given my knowledge of classical and medieval civilisation. I have never gone near that sort of article before (ordinary edit warriors are bad enough).

2. I checked out the edits of Phdarts carefully and found them to be good. Literally, every one of his 400 edits.

3. One of the PPA's left a message on a talk page saying he was going to ask for something to be done.

4. Phdarts was banned, and I hit the roof. Note, however, I did not accuse FT2 of anything - merely that his actions 'had the effect' of supporting PPA's, which is true.

5. Then an ungodly rabble descended on ANI saying all sorts of stupid and absurd things, without me being given any chance of reply.

Maybe I was too ambiguous. I was wrong in your case.

On this sort of article generally, it attracts two of the worst sorts, namely the PPA's and the antis, who generally lack any kind of subtlety. On whether or not an encyclopedia should be a battleground for morality wars, it should not, but then that rules out the less than subtle propaganda that the PPA's keep inserting into articles of this sort, e.g. from the pederasty article:

While male love in antiquity was generally subject to various limitations, its late Roman era criminalization, together with the later persecution of homosexuals during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, [1] stemmed from the growing Christian influence in Europe.

This is a badly written, crude and untestable generalisation. What are the 'various limitations' - it is probably referring to earlier forms of the Lex Julia (Roman morality laws)? But we do not have the text of these laws and any inference we make about them is just that, an inference. We can't really say for sure what the Romans thought about pederasty. We have the writing of various upper class Romans and Greeks, we also have evidence that lower class Romans and Greeks regarded the upper class ones as effete homosexuals, much as people in England people from Eton and so forth. The causal connection implied between 'late Roman era criminalization' and 'growing Christian influence in Europe' is absurd in the extreme. And so on. The whole article is a mess. No person with any sense will deal with it, net result is a train wreck. Best to delete the whole lot, in my view. And there you go.

I agree, that smacks of original research in the absence of any reliable sources. It probably should be rewritten. It's also a list masquerading as an article, which is something that I can't stand.