The Jeff Merkey Thread, JVM tries his hand at the "Brandt problem," other stuff Options Rating

$500K is a lot of dosh. You don't suppose he's trying to get people to think that he was the guy ("An anonymous friend") who ponied up the $286K contribution on Dec. 27...? No way could that be possible, IMO - he would have been as public as he could possibly be with something like that.

Curiouser and curiouser...

This guy DOES have money. And if you have that much money, contributions are a tax break that you get to have fun deciding where to put. Wikipedia is a normal point of reference for a person such as him, who is interested in the internet, and IT.

But I'm flabbergasted at the fact that such a large donor could become banned. Or that he has to be subjected to such childish discussions about his worthiness. THAT is bizarre to me.

You would think that WP:OFFICE would have reinstated him quickly and without comment.

This post has been edited by wikilove: Sun 6th May 2007, 11:17pm

I think we need better disclosure regarding this from Jimbo and the Foundation.

But I'm flabbergasted at the fact that such a large donor could become banned. Or that he has to be subjected to such childish discussions about his worthiness. THAT is bizarre to me.

Wikilove, you're going to have to quit misinterpreting things or I'm going to have to suspend you or something. (Puh-leeeeaze? )

The chances that the $286K guy was Merkey are so impossibly tiny as to be instantly dismissible. It may be what he wants people to believe, but that would just make him a worse person, does it not? Just think of how the real donor would feel, to have somebody else take credit for all that mucho muneros muchachas.

If he really has donated Big Buck$ to the foundation, let's hear more about it. Not that THAT would make him a better person either, but you don't just say you've donated $500K to some cause or other without at having a receipt to back it up.

The plot sickens. I had an idea this would be a can of worms-- good thing I opened it.

Deconstructing Jeff Merkey

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/found...May/029925.html

Jeffrey V. Merkey jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com

Sun May 6 05:03:17 UTC 2007

I had a discussion over the phone with Mr. Brandt this evening, and he has taken down his "outing" listing of Wikipedia editors and given me his assurances it will remain down permanently out of respect to the privacy rights of Wikipedia editors. He has also removed all of the chat room materials as well, and given me his word it will not be posted again. I have also has discussions with SqueakBox on the English Wikipedia and I am going to attempt to write a neutral article on Daniel, and the other editors seem to be in agreement.

Daniel has also conceded the fact that he will have to get used to an article about him being on Wikipedia. He is a very nice and polite and very intelligent man and is very different in person than his on-line persona seems to reflect. He has also given permission for Wikipedia to use any of the images on his site in support of a neutral article about him.

It appears this long running conflict is coming to an end. Daniel also understands that until he formaly withdraws his legal threats from the Foundation, he will remain banned. If and when he withdraws them, I would recommend a 1 year ban and allowing him to come back to the site provided he stays away from his bio (same terms I am under).

With that, the conflict appears to be coming to a conclusion. I ask everyone to help defuse the situation with Daniel and assist in getting a throughly sourced and neutral article completed. He will continue to run the Wikipedia Watch website and post general criticisms of Wikipedia, which is his right, but he stated he would honor his promises to us to observe and respect privacy laws and policies on Wikipedia if we respect his. He has several other requests about his article which I need to discuss with the other editors. I also think he needs to apologize to Mr. Wales for his disruptive conduct at some point, but for now, I think cooling off the situation is prudent. Daniel has some great ideas and suggestions about improving Wikipedia, and if folks can get past the personal issues, and really listen to what he has to say, I think he could be a very positive force for improving the project.

Jeff

This does not sound like the telephone conversation we had. The spin here is all in the direction of Brandt repenting for his sins. The notion that I "need to apologize to Mr. Wales" is outrageous, and the bit about how I understand that I'll remain banned until I withdraw my legal threats is something we didn't discuss. (Jimbo's version is that I requested my reblock, and that was only two weeks ago! If Merkey intends to rewrite history, he should wait longer than two weeks for memories to fade.)

One hivemind page and the IRC logs were already down, and I didn't give my word or give any assurances. Rather, I expressed my opinion that there was no need for the IRC logs anymore. It was only at the end of the conversation that I said I'd take down hive2, and I didn't "give my word" about that either.

I did not concede that I have to live with my bio, and I emphasized that I want it deleted. But if it stays, I said it has to be locked down, and I don't want to be number one in Google. I also argued for a stronger BLP policy that gives much more weight to the subject's wishes.

I made it clear that I've never had any desire to be a Wikipedia editor. A couple of minutes later, he was telling me that I should run for the Board of Trustees!

I'll leave hive2 down unless something outrageous happens. The next time Merkey calls I'll decline to talk with him. There's no percentage in talking to someone who doesn't listen, particularly after it turns out that there's probably an agenda behind the call.

I had a feeling that that was the case, Daniel. I refer you back to the section back on page one from the judge..

125. Major acknowledges that Merkey does not see boundaries; that if he feels strongly or wants to do something, he does it

He thinks he can write an article that makes everyone happy, pro and con. So he's doing it, and he expects everyone to go along with it and to fall in a place.

In short, get out the popcorn, because I have a feeling this is going to be a double feature. :/



This post has been edited by SirFozzie: Mon 7th May 2007, 4:32am

Ol' Jeff's been at it all night, and here's the multi-diff, as of now at least. The very first thing Merkey did was to restore the extremely contentious reference to Brandt as a "privacy advocate," all three (internet-based) sources for which used the original Wikipedia article as their own source, as anyone involved at the time would have known.

He's also added two largely-useless and tangential bits about some laws passed in Utah, Merkey's home state (Merkey is also a lawyer), dealing with Google's and Yahoo's advertising practices... neither of which belong in the article at all.

Obviously there's still no information about Brandt's early (pre-internet) career as an educator, etc., and indeed, no additional background info of any kind that might have indicated that some actual research had been done. Indeed, much of the new material is unsourced (at least as of now), including the entire first paragraph of the "History" section. It isn't even very well written:

Brandt launched Google Watch in 2002, a website stating his concerns regarding privacy, accountability, and fairness related to the Google search engine, and Wikipedia Watch in 2005, a similar site detailing his opinion that the current business model employed by the Wikipedia encyclopedia lacks reasonable accountability and potential accuracy problems.

That's a missing verb resulting in a sentence fragment - it makes it look like Wikipedia lacks potential accuracy problems, which is obviously wrong. They're supposed to correct those kinds of grammatical issues in the 8th Grade, or so I thought...

This is an improvement?

I'm just waiting for the Daniel Brandt article owners to takeover. Someone seems to have lit a fire under Jeff's ass to get cracking on this, that's for sure

I didn't mention the fact that it was suggested to Merkey by both User:WAS_4.250 and User:H2g2bob that Merkey do the considerate and politically-smart thing by assembling his rewrite in a separate page, "Daniel Brandt/sandbox" - but noooooooo.

Merkey is not a lawyer, he just plays one on the Internet.

Entrepreneur? I'm an entrepreneur? Egads! Help me, Slim, help!

Merkey is not a lawyer, he just plays one on the Internet.

Shee-it, where do you find this stuff?

This individual is an internet stalker who resides in Florida. He is an editor of Wikipedia, and is known to stalk various individuals over the internet in the United States. He edits Wikipedia under the user account "Dtobias". He posts death threats on Wikipedia, libel, and acts as a public relations cleanup author of Wikiepdia articles which are involved in or potentially involved in litigation. He is known to post messages on Wikipedia which solicit violence and murder of US Citizens.

I practically made water in my pantaloons! Sure, we'll probably get sued for reposting that, but hey, you can't make this stuff up!

This individual is an internet stalker who resides in Florida. He is an editor of Wikipedia, a Linux Community Member and former armchair developer, and is known to stalk various individuals over the internet in the United States. He edits Wikipedia under the user account "GMaxwell". He posts death threats on Wikipedia and LKML, libel, and harassment. He is known to post messages on Wikipedia and LKML which solicit violence and murder of US Citizens, and which are libel. He has been engaged in internet stalking for many years. He hosted his primary emails accounts and domains on Christmas Island (.cx) to evade detection and capture by law enforcement for many years with regard to some of his self-admitted hacking and criminal activities on the internet, but has recently been identified as residing in the State of Florida.

Gosh, I guess Daniel got off lucky, huh? I don't think he's been accused of soliciting the murder of any US citizens yet, but hey, the night is still young!

Uhh, wait a minute, I think I actually did make... oh, never mind.

Wikilove, you're going to have to quit misinterpreting things or I'm going to have to suspend you or something. (Puh-leeeeaze? )

You would ban someone for misunderstanding you? Wow.

This post has been edited by wikilove: Mon 7th May 2007, 12:24pm

You would ban someone for misunderstanding you? Wow.

We have to be different from Wikipedia, where you may be banned for understanding things.

Oooooooooooooooooooh.

Thanks for the clarification.

You would ban someone for misunderstanding you?

Not really - that was just so you'd think I was serious. It's just that you did it three times in fairly quick succession, so it seemed as if you might be doing it deliberately.

(Even if I had, it would have only been until the thread became less active, which would have been about 12 hours or so.)

Buds?

Buds?

Sure sure sure.

Okay, here's the updated multi-diff...

So, 18 months of fighting, arguing, feuding, haranguing, and outright persecution against Brandt, and we're practically back where we started. Shite, what a mess! The article is now far more poorly-written; cites questionable sources, many of which are either 404's or lead only to blogger home pages (like this and this); it includes a ton of BS trivia that doesn't belong there with tangential non-secondary sources like this; and includes an entire section of Merkey's "Original Research" about how Brandt has "improved the overall quality of discussions and dialogue" on WP as a result of the 18-month-long war...! Unbe-frickin'-lievable!

Admittedly, a few of the crap sources were probably there before, and I just hadn't bothered to check them until today. Still... Tell me this isn't the best they can come up with...?

I suppose there's one good thing that can come of this, maybe - if Merkey has as much money as they say he has, maybe Brandt can get a really good lawyer to take on his lawsuit against Wikimedia Foundation by naming Merkey as a co-defendant.


________________________

And to top it all off: "Gee, sorry about the copyvio images I grabbed and uploaded, but how did I do otherwise?"

If one of the regulars starts reverting out Merkey, I wonder if Jimmy will step in on Merkey's behalf...

Frankly, I think that it is less personally invasive (if that can ever be said about a page you don't want in the first place), and that's an improvement. Who cares about the syntax and style.

They just need to get the "entrepreneur" off the page. What's up with that?

Mr. Merkey doesn't seem to be walking the litigious path with WP, so I doubt he's a good lawsuit partner.

Frankly, I think that it is less personally invasive...

How so?

Who cares about the syntax and style.

Articles that are perfect or near-perfect in grammar and spelling are significantly less likely to be edited (or "vandalized," if you prefer) by hostile and unknowledgeable interlopers. Surely everyone knows that...?

Mr. Merkey doesn't seem to be walking the litigious path with WP, so I doubt he's a good lawsuit partner.

Partner for whom? I wasn't suggesting that Brandt try to bring him in as a co-plaintiff, I was suggesting that he could be named as a co-defendant. With multiple plaintiffs, you're talking about a class-action suit, and then you almost have to establish a general pattern of persecution (against the entire class) to win. And, of course, the lawyers get all the money...