Private Detectives, or how to take wikistalking up another notch Options

[MaliceAforethought]

From residentanthropologist at gmail.com Sat Jun 11 21:48:07 2011
From: residentanthropologist at gmail.com (ResidentAnthropologist)
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:48:07 -0400
Subject: [arbcom-l] Advice in situation involving Ethical issues,
Private Investigators and Outings
Message-ID: <BANLkTimUGAuv5yPb01oFjW+V73FC27_iMg@mail.gmail.com>

A bit of background on this,
Ganas is commune in Staten Island New York which practices
I originally watchlisted the article "Ganas" after an ANI thread last
December and became involved fixing the article to to more NPOV state
from a Coatracked state.

The article is having excessive ownership and POV warrior problems
from a SPA User:Eroberer and several Ganas residents.
We have had repeated outings of User:Eroberer by variety of accounts
affiliated with Ganas. Outing are an ethical violation of our core
policies on privacy and I respect that. I have seen several of the
outings prior to their deletion and it adds another notch of concerns
from my perspective.

Ganas affiliated accounts accuse User:Eroberer of being Rachel Johnson
who shot a "Core Member" in 2006. Prior to my entry into the conflict
the article was nearly 50% about the shooting and the variety of
allegations against Ganas made during the trial. So far User:Eroberer
has neither confirmed nor denied the allegation of being Rachel
Johnson but has had it oversighted as is her right. The Ganas accounts
have based this allegation over logged out edit that geolocate to
where Rachel Johnson allegedly is.
The article now has improved substantially but Ganas members and
User:Eroberer are going at it again over smaller details.

User:Eroberer has repeatedly agued that those with COI cannot edit the
article which is misrepresentation of policy over and over again.
Eroberer has shown lack of good faith editing and POV pushing over the
subject. Ganas accounts have shown an increasing agitation over the
lack of neutrality in the article and frustration with Eroberer.

My concern and the reason I am emailing you is one other older
accounts posted on my wall that Ganas has hired private investigators
over the dispute to investigate User:Eroberer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=433665660
The diff is above.
I am unsure how to handle this from here as this on Wikipedia dispute
is evidently part of larger off-wikipedia dispute.
Any Advice would be helpful.

Thank you very much for your time,
Bryan Barkley
User:ResidentAnthropologist
----------
From risker.wp at gmail.com Sat Jun 11 23:10:25 2011
From: risker.wp at gmail.com (Risker)
Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2011 19:10:25 -0400
Subject: [arbcom-l] Advice in situation involving Ethical issues,
Private Investigators and Outings
In-Reply-To: <BANLkTimUGAuv5yPb01oFjW+V73FC27_iMg@mail.gmail.com>
References: <BANLkTimUGAuv5yPb01oFjW+V73FC27_iMg@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=ZvFoLxyyEM32XRsC9Q-qN4jnk5Q@mail.gmail.com>

Hi ResidentAnthropologist -

This is to confirm that the Arbitration Committee has received your email.
I'm not entirely certain what advice to give you - I am inclined to at least
let the WMF Community staff know about this, if it is okay by you to forward
this email - but I'll try to look further over the course of the weekend.
It might be to your advantage at this point to disengage from the article
while this is sorted out. I'll look at whether or not to lock the article
completely for a period some time this evening.

Best,

Risker
----------

And nary another word. Privacy only matters when your one of their own, eh?

[RMHED]

Blah.......................................................

[Encyclopedist]

Blah.......................................................

Please don't be nasty; this is *obviously* vital information and could mean the end of civilisation as we know it. OTOH, who gives a fuck? These so-called revelations have long-since ceased to be interesting and have had a sort of "Streisand Effect" on WP in that editors are now praising ArbCom for their collective approach- I'm not one of them, obviously, but I only look at these threads these days to see if there's anyone else out there to sue. I could, but it might be seen as cruelty to the mentally-challenged.

Nurp!

[MaliceAforethought]

Blah.......................................................

Don't be a git. If you're bored with it just avoid the forum, eh? Either way do yourself a favor and bugger off.

[RMHED]

Blah.......................................................

Don't be a git. If you're bored with it just avoid the forum, eh? Either way do yourself a favor and bugger off.

Oh Malice dear, your cruel words do hurt so. Now go and play nicely with the other children or no cake for you.

[MaliceAforethought]

Oh Malice dear, your cruel words do hurt so. Now go and play nicely with the other children or no cake for you.

Oy now, we can't be having hurt feelings, can we? Have a biscuit.

[RMHED]

Oh Malice dear, your cruel words do hurt so. Now go and play nicely with the other children or no cake for you.

Oy now, we can't be having hurt feelings, can we? Have a biscuit.

How charming of you Malice to share a family photograph. My you look just as I imagined.

[MaliceAforethought]

Oh Malice dear, your cruel words do hurt so. Now go and play nicely with the other children or no cake for you.

Oy now, we can't be having hurt feelings, can we? Have a biscuit.

How charming of you Malice to share a family photograph. My you look just as I imagined.

Bit scary to think you're fantasizing over kiddies mate.

[RMHED]

Oh Malice dear, your cruel words do hurt so. Now go and play nicely with the other children or no cake for you.

Oy now, we can't be having hurt feelings, can we? Have a biscuit.

How charming of you Malice to share a family photograph. My you look just as I imagined.

Bit scary to think you're fantasizing over kiddies mate.

Oh I'm a dedicated pediaphile, much like yourself Malice.

[Encyclopedist]

Oh Malice dear, your cruel words do hurt so. Now go and play nicely with the other children or no cake for you.

Oy now, we can't be having hurt feelings, can we? Have a biscuit.

How charming of you Malice to share a family photograph. My you look just as I imagined.

Bit scary to think you're fantasizing over kiddies mate.

Oh I'm a dedicated pediaphile, much like yourself Malice.

Muh! Seth Finkelstein's observations on Malice are interesting: they are all over WT:AC, and if anyone has clue here, he does (or at least is prepared to be public about this). I agree with him that Malice is somewhat clued WRT Wikipedia and its procedures, but is unclued about how relevant his revelations are to the wider world. Face it, none of this has yet reached the wider blogosphere, let alone mainstream press. And there is no reason why it should; to a general audience, even to a general technical audience, it's a minor issue, even that some person's list archive somewhere was insecure; well hot dog! They weren't in the 1970s and 1980s, or 1990s, and aren't now, if you know how to engineer the breach.

Duh! This isn't a major hacker or cracker- this is someone with an agenda who got lucky somehow and decided to make some noise, but should realise the Law of Diminishing Returns, which in this case, means "Give Your Audience What They Want (as long as it's interesting or they will merely regard you as nothing more than a diversion)"

In a month, this will all be forgotten.

[carbuncle]

This was a request of mine, actually. It pretty much speaks for itself, I think, but I can see why it isn't that interesting for everyone.

[Encyclopedist]

Fair enough; but why bore people who don't give a toss? I'm sure MaliceAforethought has your email addy, as he appears to have mine; the difference is that whereas you might be interested, as you correctly point out, not everyone is, and that is where he makes the mistake of publishing tedious toss. tl;dr had already been mentioned in another thread, and MA is diluting his agenda (if any) by continuing to misjudge his audience. To be clear, if there were any major revelations, you'd expect him to pursue those first in order to validate his stance and advance whatever agenda he has.

As it happens, he has now become the WR equivalent of Valium, because he's now just going through the motions- and that's just because he can, regardless of merit. Any surprises, if there were ever any, have long been dissipated by his scattergun approach, and in that regard, I agree with Seth Finkelstein in that he's an opportunist with no particular political agenda as regards WP, and would probably have done the same whatever mailing list he had managed to "hack". In short, although Malice appears to be somewhat aware of WP processes, TBH, I could easily program an AI bot that would simulate those. So I'm not impressed.

Malice, you have my email address. Tell me my home address, postcode, and National Insurance number via that route, and I'll believe you. Until then, you're just someone who got lucky.

Good evening.

[Somey]

And nary another word. Privacy only matters when your one of their own, eh?

Presumably so, but isn't the issue here whether or not they should expunge ("oversight") the relevant entries on User:ResidentAnthropologist's talk page, to help ensure that nobody else draws the same conclusion (about User:Eroberer)? I'm not seeing what else they could do under the circumstances, other than not provide a means by which they could have identified the person in the first place, which would obviously be a non-starter from their perspective.

Meanwhile, if we assume that Eroberer really is that person, then another question might be, is she even mentally capable of the kind of self-restraint necessary to protect her own anonymity? Or is this a case of her being super-foolish or deluded enough to think that Wikipedia would protect it for her? Someone with a history of borderline or histrionic behavior might well have serious problems in that area, as we've seen in other cases (IMO)... but despite the seriousness of this problem, Wikipedia admins should hardly be expected to account for users' psychological problems and episodes if said users have been deliberately deceiving them all along about their identities and motivations. It would be better if the admins all gave up in disgust and left, but of course that's what I've been saying all along.

[Encyclopedist]

And nary another word. Privacy only matters when your one of their own, eh?

Presumably so, but isn't the issue here whether or not they should expunge ("oversight") the relevant entries on User:ResidentAnthropologist's talk page, to help ensure that nobody else draws the same conclusion (about User:Eroberer)? I'm not seeing what else they could do under the circumstances, other than not provide a means by which they could have identified the person in the first place, which would obviously be a non-starter from their perspective.

Meanwhile, if we assume that Eroberer really is that person, then another question might be, is she even mentally capable of the kind of self-restraint necessary to protect her own anonymity? Or is this a case of her being super-foolish or deluded enough to think that Wikipedia would protect it for her? Someone with a history of borderline or histrionic behavior might well have serious problems in that area, as we've seen in other cases (IMO)... but despite the seriousness of this problem, Wikipedia admins should hardly be expected to account for users' psychological problems and episodes if said users have been deliberately deceiving them all along about their identities and motivations. It would be better if the admins all gave up in disgust and left, but of course that's what I've been saying all along.

Admins are not just there on WP to protect WP; there's ample policy support for that. There is also the dimension of child protection, and dealing with editors of limited capacity in whatever direction, and I have been involved with that also. But, that's not an issue limited to admins; it is more a community issue which WP is arguably poor at coping with. It happens, perhaps, that Admins are experienced and trusted enough to be able to apply policies and guildlines to challenged editors and offer such help as they can, and more importantly, guide them towards appropriate support. I've done that, as far as I can remember, for at least two challenging editors.

In short, not an Admin issue, but a community challenge, and one which it seems the community seems to manage. I'll be interested to hear otherwise. Mu email is always open.

Phil/User:Rodhullandemu

[SpiderAndWeb]

Fair enough; but why bore people who don't give a toss? I'm sure MaliceAforethought has your email addy, as he appears to have mine; the difference is that whereas you might be interested, as you correctly point out, not everyone is, and that is where he makes the mistake of publishing tedious toss. tl;dr had already been mentioned in another thread, and MA is diluting his agenda (if any) by continuing to misjudge his audience. To be clear, if there were any major revelations, you'd expect him to pursue those first in order to validate his stance and advance whatever agenda he has.

As it happens, he has now become the WR equivalent of Valium, because he's now just going through the motions- and that's just because he can, regardless of merit. Any surprises, if there were ever any, have long been dissipated by his scattergun approach, and in that regard, I agree with Seth Finkelstein in that he's an opportunist with no particular political agenda as regards WP, and would probably have done the same whatever mailing list he had managed to "hack". In short, although Malice appears to be somewhat aware of WP processes, TBH, I could easily program an AI bot that would simulate those. So I'm not impressed.

Malice, you have my email address. Tell me my home address, postcode, and National Insurance number via that route, and I'll believe you. Until then, you're just someone who got lucky.

Good evening.

To my eye he's been doing exactly what he says he's been doing: posting whatever is most easily searched for of what has been requested. Presumably the "surprising" bits require either more effort to search out than he's willing to expend, or don't exist in the first place.

[Sololol]

Fair enough; but why bore people who don't give a toss?

I've never understood this. If you aren't interested in a thread then don't read it. If he were giving them misleading titles like "Free Candy and Unicorns Inside!" then you could get upset.