My email to SlimVirgin, my guess is that nothing will happen Options

[Daniel Brandt]

slimvirgin AT gmail.com
cc: info AT wikimedia.org
December 24, 2006

Dear Sarah:

I am looking for a Florida-based attorney to negotiate with the Wikimedia Foundation to take down my biography. If this fails, I plan to file an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the Foundation. Considering the fact that all the Talk pages are also made available to the search engines, I may include a defamation-of-character complaint in the suit. My main interest in litigation is to establish in a Florida court that Section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act does not provide immunity to the Foundation, due to the fact that the Foundation's entire structure is designed to moderate the content on Wikipedia. I will argue that because of this, the Foundation functions as a publisher rather than a service provider. Only service providers are immune under Section 230.

I appreciate the fact that you supported my request to delete the article in October 2005, after we worked on it for a week and were unable to reach agreement. You warned me that you lacked the power to make the deletion stick, if some other administrators disagreed. This is exactly what happened.

I also appreciate your support of Linuxbeak's effort in December 2005 to move the content into other relevant articles on Wikipedia, so that most of the content would still exist, but not be featured in one Wikipedia article under my name. This effort was one that Linuxbeak and I agreed to at the time, but which failed due to a lack of support. I deleted hivemind.html as Linuxbeak made his effort, but then restored it when his effort failed. As you can see, the hivemind.html page is much larger now and also has small photos of most of the perpetrators.

The last meaningful AfD on my bio was concluded on April 9, 2006. Now I am asking you to initiate another AfD. This is something only a major administrator can do, because minor administrators will intervene on the grounds of "Speedy Keep."

I believe that one last meaningful AfD for my biography is warranted before this issue escalates further, and I hope you agree with me. If the article gets deleted, I will take down the hivemind.html page on www.wikipedia-watch.org (but not the hive2.html page), and will also take down the findchat.html page, the 1,545 chat log files that are linked from there, and the chat search engine.


Thank you,
Daniel Brandt

[Somey]

You're not trying to imply that Berlet put her up to it somehow, are you? I think we have to assume that at the time, there was no guarantee that Brandt would object so strenuously to the article... If anything, Berlet would have wanted to avoid getting Brandt involved in Wikipedia affairs, if only to avoid future embarassment potential. I wasn't around when it happened, of course, so maybe I'm wrong. But why would Berlet want to risk making that kind of trouble for himself? He may be ill-tempered, but he seems a bit smarter than that.

I mean, AFAIK we have no reason to assume that Slimmy didn't create the stub simply because Brandt was mentioned in a few places on Wikipedia, and she just wanted to "improve coverage," so to speak. (Her actions after that were one botched damage-control move after another, of course!)

[nobs]

Part II -- Chris Arabia uses "fellow left-wingers"

You're not trying to imply that Berlet put her up to it somehow, are you? I think we have to assume that at the time, there was no guarantee that Brandt would object so strenuously to the article... If anything, Berlet would have wanted to avoid getting Brandt involved in Wikipedia affairs, if only to avoid future embarassment potential.

Rangerdude makes the case clearly in both ArbCom cases, and SlimVirgins' actions here and Requests for comment/SlimVirgin2

WP:RfArb/Rangerdude/Workshop Rangerdude (RD) said,

3) ...Cberlet's ... called the material I added "a giant wad of Horowitz screed on my Wiki entry" and asks that they be reduced to a link. [108] I responded to this request with a defense of my edits on NPOV grounds that was straightforward and certainly not abusive as SlimVirgin has alleged [109]. SlimVirgin responded the next day by carrying out Cberlet's request and chopped off the majority of the Horowitz material I had added. Cberlet's repeated references to Chip Berlet as "my" article and his requests aimed at controlling and removing critical content seem to violate WP:OWN's prohibition of this, as do SlimVirgin's edits aimed at carrying out his requests.

What sourced, NPOV material did SlimVirgin chop off? this portion, for example:

Arabia writes that "Berlet’s favored technique is to describe fascist and/or hate movements in detail and then brazenly link them to anyone who does not tow his party line." ... According to Front Page Magazine, Berlet has employed similar tactics against "fellow left-wingers" who disagree with him politically. According to Arabia, his approach has had the effect of squashing "vigorous debate and discourse" both within the political left and in general. [21]

On 28 September 2005 the sourced NPOV material was still in the Chip Berlet mainspace. This is when the attacks on Mr. Brandt's credibility started. Compare the Berlet bio today with the NPOV version RD (Rangerdude) wrote, tells much of the whole story.

This post has been edited by nobs: