Ryulong enquired, in another post here, why it was that every thread eventually turned into a SlimVirgin thread. It appears that if this is the case, it is because she has her fingers in every dark and greasy corner of Wikipedia.

As it turns out, she initiated and maintains the (putative) CyberStalking Mailing List on which Durova circulated her spurious "evidence" against User:!!

Slimey has wisely maintained a studious silence on the subject. I was abou to add that she has not used her admin tools significantly since her return from self-imposed exile, but she proved me wrong just a few minutes ago, blocking indefinitely an apparent vandal who had just come off a block, and had made no edits since then. Picking up Durova's fallen torch?

KEWWL!

Hey, do you think they'd let me subscribe? I'm goin' over there now to give it a shot! After all, I was the guy who redacted all their names from here, or at least tried... so unlike them, at least I've actually done something about their spurious concerns, right?

And she joins the rest of the Jimbo back slappers (including our previous visitor Mr Aranda aka "This is a Secret" and Mr Squeakbox) in pulling their wagon's around Jossi's comment of basically saying "nothing to see here, move on move on"...

Newsflash : There are TWO mailing lists :



Here, JzG confirms that Jimbo is a member of these groups...

What was that they were saying about the Cabal not existing??

I think Guy is confirming that Jimbo is/was on the Cyberstalking list. I haven't seen anything authoritative about the membership of the sleuthing list, whether it contains all of the same people or not.

It would appear that they've hired real private investigators and are in the process of putting forward a campaign of information warfare. I'm not kidding, kiddies.

Slimvirgin feels stalked. Durova also feels stalked, which is a hoot, because what's happened is that her activites and abuses have been surveilled, not her life. That's par for the course. Durova's not written an article about anyone, like Slim did, who wants it down, I doubt anyone would treat her as Slim has been treated (payback). Still, Durova needs drama, so she's conflating this examination of her abusive behavior as stalking.

Durova wants stalking drama to be front and center stage. Anyone familiar with Durova's sock puppet investigations knows that once Durova wants, she haraunges management until they treat it like one. They aren't smart enough to see that she's making more trouble than she's solving. Durova isn't stalked, really (just like there is no sockpuppet army), but she will institute a counter-intelligence effort, which means she's going to start stalking people.

She's so weird.

But the gloves are off. They've hired private investigators, and possibly black hat hackers, although the latter are probably for free.

Can you give us a diff for this? Or do you have "insider info"?

I read the PI stuff on Wikipedia (or was it here). Or maybe on pipermail.

I don't have time to find it, sorry. I know that sounds like Durova, but maybe you could go find it??

I need to get some things done here.

I had thought that I had read pretty much everything about this, but maybe I'm not looking in the right place; Has anybody else seen this? (I'm not implying that you're making this up: I'd just like to see this in the context).

For the day that the Cabal oversights the Wikia-hosted private list and the "semi-official" confirmation that it exists...

http://www.webcitation.org/5TdnT9Lhy

http://www.webcitation.org/5Tdnzo7d3

WebCite is so handy!

Greg

I'm going to copy this over to the Durova thread too. It might be handy to have these in two places....

Indeed, especially with Durova recently saying, "Questions about Wikipedia's mailing lists are red herrings," as well as acting all confused, "How is Wikia involved in this at all? I have no connection whatsoever to Wikia. And so far as I know, neither does any other named party."

I tell you all, the heaviest fallout from this entire Durova vs. !! episode is going to be the private mailing list being hosted on Wikia, under the authority of Jimmy Wales. Al Capone was brought down on tax evasion charges. Jimmy will face a similar style of music.

Greg

Unfortunately for her, they can't get Gianno for copyright violations because she's released her mail under the Gnu license and he obviously credited her for her post....They really haven't thought this through at all. If I were Mike Godwin, I'd sitting at my desk holding my head in my hands right now....

The bigger issue is that the case exposes more than a one-off event.

The case exposes a corrosive systematic practice of sub-rosa machinations that fundamentally corrupts due process.

I doubt that was the intention, though clearly those intentions have gone awry.

No one deserves to be outed, attacked, libeled and/or harassed on Wikipedia - not Judd Bagley, not Gary Weiss, not Jeff Merkey, not Heidi Wyss, not Tim Pierce, not Greg Kohs, not Lise Broer, not Daniel Brandt, not Slim Virgin, not HighinBC, not Don Murphy, not in bios, not in talk space, not in user space, not in arbitration pages.

But how many people walk straight on that line? By now it seems only an argument between who should and shouldn't be outed, who should or shouldn't be attacked.

The people who outed PrivateMusings' RWI are stalkers themselves, by their own definitions. It's not the first time that Jzg has violated an editor's privacy against policy, against the very same common decency that they appeal to in others, and it's not the first time that the powers that be have supported it.

The thing about those privacy violations is, you can't really take them back. Still, people who violate contributors' privacy and/or attack living people from Wikipedia should be desysoped and banned, not allowed to remain in the inner circle, much less as part of a group which claims to fight outing and harassment.

if the most powerful administrators and arbitrators won't even follow their own policies (clue to Matt Brown: changing them post facto doesn't count as "following them"), how on earth can they expect people who've no pledge to uphold them to do so?

I thought it was mail fraud, was it not? (edit - whoops, my bad. I confused it with the movie "The Firm")

Maybe Jimbo has some unpaid parking tickets we don't know about.

Slimey speaks (curiously, through an email forwarded thru Dave Gerard):



Poor Slimey - - she's falsely "blamed for everything", despite having "virtually no knowledge" (is that like having actually no knowledge of the dirty deeds. Poor, poor, pitiful cabalista. Oh, and we here at WR are now a "gallery" -- would you like to see my etchings?

Hey, Alison is here. Why not <drum roll> ask her? And Moreschi could also register an account. Why not let him respond to this?

I mean, WR is about letting people respond to this kind of thing, without penalty, isn't it?

Just because we don't spank them doesn't mean they won't get spanked back at home.

This is the internet.

I'd guess that SlimVirgin is telling the truth.

you'd be guessing wrong.

The durova playbook was written by slimmy. when slimmy went low profile is when durova went charging.

not a coincidence.

Concur. SlimVirgin is a manipulative liar.

More interesting is the fact that she is running away from the list.

It doesn't follow that SV has been significantly involved in the investigations mailing list.

Nor has SV been at all front and center in defending Durova. JzG has been.

Of course she's been trying to keep out of the limelight on wp but that doesn't mean she has in these "secret" lists.

Slim is a manipulative liar. Look at the fifth post down from more than two years ago. Here Slim denies ownership of the slimvirgin.com domain. This was before we knew about Linda Mack, and were only getting around to believing that she must be Sarah McEwan (which of course, turned out to be another lie). Lies, lies, lies.

whichhuntintowhichhuntisthewitchhuntintowhich?

Jonny

To clarify, I did say that on the list . Full disclosure on my talk page. And that's all I'm going to say on it. Don't ask me to forward emails or whatnot. Ain't gonna happen, for reasons stated over there.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but when you say you were "stalked," I assume you mean "cyber-stalked"? Not physically, no phone calls at home/work, no threats of unwanted physical encounters or violence? Or is that, in fact, what it was?

The issue here is whether this "stalking support group" was really interested in discussing the problem of real stalking and/or cyberstalking, or just a cabal select group of people wanting to discuss ways to "effectively deal with" WR - and presumably other sites they dislike such as ED, ASM, and so on. I understand that people like JzG see that as essentially the same thing, but that only makes it more likely to be the latter, rather than the former, from what I can tell.

I actually tried subscribing to that list 3 days ago, but so far they haven't replied... OMG I FEEL DISSED! And yet, I'm totally serious about that. If they really want to find ways to avoid being cyber-stalked, they should be looking at ways to avoid pissing people off in the first place, and they're clearly not going to figure that out on their own - they need outside help, and in a major way.

Somey, I also had phone calls and stuff. It got worse when the guy was community banned on WP and the police had to get involved. There's hints of it in the 'depression' page linked off my talk page. It's over now, and I don't really want to talk any more about it.

I was in the middle of all that when I joined up, and I wanted support and advice, y'know. I got neither.

Thank you for posting this. It is a small but bright spot of light in a murky situation. And I was sorry to read that you felt stalked recently. We here at WR do not support the harassment or stalking of anyone, though we do promote accountability for abusive admins. The degree of "bitterness, anger and wikipolitics" would seem to indicate that the latter is more of an issue on Wikipedia than the former.

1) Don't post anything to the internet under a female name.

2) Don't post under your own name, even a first name.

3) Don't post where you live.

4) Don't post what you do for a living.

5) Don't post anything that is unique to you only.

6) Don't edit Wikipedia with an IP that is tied to an ISP that you pay for. Any anonymous loose cannon with CU access can spread your IP and browser information to anyone that damn well please.
Eventually you will piss someone off, and this will occur.

and on a theme orginially on my WP user page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=134010377

== Generic Tips For Those Who Supposedly Want to Remain Anonymous But Continue to Edit Wikipedia ==
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1. Don't post on Wikipedia for years with your real name, then complain later when you change your account alias to a pseudonym that your privacy is being compromised. Don't post your real name in the first place or start a new account if you had.
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2. Don't edit articles of former employers, former co-workers, and former disasters that took the lives of your loved ones, much of which is done with incredible detail but no sources cited, in a pattern that any google search could easily give up your anonymous-ness. When this happens, stop editing under the account and start another one, and stop whining about it. Supposedly you are doing this for free, so get over it and don't make the same mistakes next time if privacy is really your concern and not a passive-agressive method to entrap your wikienemies. If I felt my life was in danger in any way over activities that I performed under a pseudonym and for no compensation, I would change that pseudonym and stop anyone's ability to supposedly endanger my privacy while still being able to volunteer for the anonymous hobby I spend so much time doing.
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3. Don't create your own BLP article under a pseudonym.
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4. Don't edit articles on the same obscure vacation spots, obscure psyschiatric disorders, and archrivals as the subject of #3 has in real life, on usenet postings, and on blogs, all in living google search color, and then claim that 2 of the other pseudonyms that helped you on you wikipedia articles are just posting from the same IP address you do because they're visiting relatives. If this happens, routinely have these visting relative psuedonyms randomly edit other articles on wikipedia so that there simulatenous disppearance isn't so obvious.
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5. Always remember to login before editing obscure articles that only your pseudonym has edited. Otherwise that one edit showing a non-logged in IP really sticks out like sore thumb in giving people information about who's computers you are posting from. Espcially when those computers are located at organizations that are being sued by the subjects of some of the articles that your logged in account edits.
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Just some tips to help ensure that wikipedians might protect their own privacy, their freedom of speech, any hidden conflicts of interest, and their right to edit anonymously can be upheld. Long live wikipedia! [[User:Piperdown|Piperdown]] 04:52, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Revision as of 04:52, 28 May 2007

I know you don't want to talk about it, but you assert a claim that normally would supported by documentation (e.g. a police report.) I doubt if you will provide this to WR. But let me ask you, and you should be able to answer although we still would have to take it for what it is worth without documentation, did anyone at Wikipedia and Cyberstalking ask you for documentation? Maybe it is enough if you just ask yourself. I hope you see what I'm get at here.

Also is there a difference between "I was subscribed to the 'Wikipedia and Cyberstalking'..." and "I subscribed to the 'Wikipedia and Cyberstalking'..." or was this merely reverting to the passive voice?

GBG, most of the evidence is pointed to from the page link Alison gave.

To change the subject (back) a bit, I was amused by this post in the ANI discussion to ban Alison's alleged stalker:

It doesn't get much more hypocritical than that!

In my humble opinion, any Wikipedia editor or admin has no right to complain about cyberstalking, unless and until they go on record in active support of the right of a subject of a biographical article, to get the article deleted and salted with no questions asked.

And I think it's probably fair to say that we've allowed a bit more latitude in the cases of people who have articles about them on WP that they don't want there, and rightly so... But sure, if I were to see credible evidence of someone who is identifiably a WR member doing that sort of thing, particularly if they're refusing to stop, then that would be grounds for a ban. (Certainly it was in Andrew Morrow's case.)

People are probably going to say "what about Wordbomb," but AFAIK he hasn't resorted to phone calls and physical-encounter threats, has he? Joseph100 has come pretty close to the line a couple of times, but what he usually says is "if they come to my house I'll [insert threat here]," not "I'm going to go out and find 'em and [do whatever]."

And of course, this is just two people out of well over 500... the problem is that to hear them tell it, practically all of us are doing it, in some form or another. They won't get far with their efforts to deal with the situation if they're always resorting to exaggeration and hyperbole, even if it's to show sincere support for one (or more) of their own.

More to the point, I suspect (but can't prove) the reason Alison here felt like she wasn't getting support for a very real case of stalking is because they were too busy sincerely supporting the squeaky-wheels who wanted that support simply for having been excessively criticized, "just for being an admin." Possibly even to the point of "sorry, but if this stalking thing didn't involve Wikipedia Review in some demonstrable way, we just don't care."

As we've established here, "abusiveness" extends to protection and retention of biographical articles and information about living persons, such information being present against their will.

most of the crying about stalking on WP is no more than what a WP checkuser does to anyone they please.

the other stuff, if it is really is stalking of any real kind, should be dealt with by real world authorities and not an email list or a message forum, or a wikipedia clowncom.

but it's a great way to play victim for many. it's been working wonderfully for those who play that card.

I am not at all justifying or minimize what happened to Alison. My point was much more narrow. Alison asserts that the conduct continued off wiki and police became involved. This is an assertion readily verifiable by a police report. My point is not that Alison was not telling the truth. My point was that this secret group, which was well positioned to protect privacy, made no effort to verify the off wiki police involvement.

About 90 percent of the problem, as I see it, is that Wikipedians have a distorted view of what constitutes "stalking." This is due to their insulated view of the world, which is mostly derived from the use of anonymous screen names. This doesn't fly in the real world!

For example, let's assume, for the sake of argument, that Jimbo says publicly that "Brandt is cyberstalking SlimVirgin, one of our finest administrators." (I don't know that Jimbo has ever said this, but I'm convinced that he believes it.)

Then I turn around and point out that I'm developing research for an unauthorized biography of Linda Mack. It's going to be a bestseller — the first nonfiction cyberthriller. All of a sudden I'm not a cyberstalker, but I'm an investigative journalist. There have been many fine unauthorized biographies written by investigative journalists.

My problem is that right now, I don't have enough research to write an ending to my book. I have to make every effort to locate Ms. Mack and request an interview in person — even if her poodle bites me and she slams the door in my face. If I don't manage to do this, then any book proposal won't have a chance of being considered, and I won't get an advance from a publisher, and I'm just another wannabe author who starves to death.

Now then, I'm not saying that Jimbo said anything, and I'm not saying that I plan to find an agent and submit a book proposal to prospective publishers. What I'm saying is that all this is quite possibly something that could happen, because situations like this are Real World Scenarios.

All of a sudden, I'm a fearless investigative journalist instead of a cyberstalker. How and why did the labels used to describe me change so suddenly?

It's because I took the same set of facts and put them in a different context. I removed them from the perverted Wikipedia context and presented them in a real-world context that's been operative for hundreds of years.

You cannot accept Wikipedia's definitions without realizing that others in the real world have no idea what you're talking about, because the Wikipedia context is new and bizarre and perverted, and has not earned the right to exist comfortably in the real world.

Well, yes and no.

Durova is kind of a newbie, in terms of being a well-known Wikipedian, and she's only been an admin for about 9 months or so. Generally, Durova needs (or needed) to stick her nose in anything high profile, because it makes her feel - I don't know - whatever she needs to feel (important? useful? got me there).

When the SV story hit the waves, remember that Durova came forth in the discussions with her proposals for group support of Slim,a la "I've saved people from a burning building, juggled Harley's and rolled in rattlesnake lairs" speech. This was presumably the birthtime of the "wiki-conspiracy lists".

I wouldn't blame SV for Durova. You may not like SV, but Durova's foibles are Durova's foibles. And Durova has a mean streak that I've never felt from SV (I know this will get loud shouts of dismay, esp. those who she had a hand in banning). Just the vibe. The feel you get from Durova when she's "on the hunt" is of virtual visceral violence. My point is that Durova would have been doing what she's doing without SV. In fact, as I see it, SV was more high-standing in WP than Durova, and part of Durova's involvement in the cyberstalking thing was her efforts to raise her own profile and become part of the highest cabal level.

Both may well be paranoid, but the paranoia even has a different feel to it. And Durova is far more aggressive directly. SV is more behind the scenes. SV may send a team of Harley Riders to run you over, but Durova will juggle the burning Harley in front of you, then mash you with it and stomp on the body afterwards. Different techniques entirely. Both need to spend less time online.

SlimVirgin is a professional. Durova is an amateur. Slim is polite, brief, and efficient. Durova wants to get her name in the paper.

That is a good, clear, and accurate summary.

I'd add to that that SV has no desire for public face with Wikipedia, whereas Durova wants this so badly that it hurts to watch. Just a comment: I'm a bit confused about your calling SV professional, frankly, because you diss her so easily as a hack (but anyways). It seems contradictory. Though it is clear that you don't like her, and want to say anything negative, this way or that.

For Durova, I feel that her helping SV via this list episode (ostensible the purpose) was just another case of Durova-ambulance-chasing. SV was news, and Durova is on the phone, email or whatever with any WP news. This case had the added benefit of ingratiating herself with the cabal.

Cyberstalking again? That brings up too many bad memories. :|

Exactamundo. In one of Durova's more ludicrous Brag-Blurbs somewhere she compares Wikipediot NoNames NoBrains to a list of famous noms de plume from literary history.

But some phantasies can persist only in a well-protected bubble, what every wag who thinks of it naturally calls a Hermeneutically Sealed Alembic, Bubble, Flask, Globe, Sphere, Test Tube, or words to that effect.

And keeping the bubble afloat, away from any WP:DBAPORT (Don't Be A Prick Of Reality Testing) that might pop it ¤ is the sworn duty of the Cabal and its Craven Cadre of Fami-Liars.

Jon Awbrey

Another comment, Daniel. You can't liken your posting things online to regular journalism. You were counterattacking after they refused to take down your BLP. I "get", or "understand" that you felt this was the only way to get a response, and at long last, it worked, mostly. But for the people who had no inkling of the SV case, or of your BLP, whos pics went up there (or to 3rd parties) it probably did seem gratuitous, and like a first-move on your part - and the intial provocation may not have been obvious.

If you are at war, name calling is to be expected, is all I'm saying.

That's all pretty sound advice (and thank you! ) Re. point 1, I was actually warned about that in the early days on WP (2004) and I originally had a guy nick, believe it or not I found it unworkable, gave it up after a while and settled on a neutral one, only switching to my current one at RfA for reasons of transparency more than anything else. All silly in retrospect and a cat that definitely can't be put back into the bag. Points 3 and 4 have also largely been addressed now, too.

To GBG: yes, I have some documentation but it's seriously 'outty'. Nobody gets to see that. I wouldn't have expected the list folks to have requested it either and if they had, I'd have refused. Re. the list signup, I was offered an invite and I actively signed up myself, in good faith.

Ok - gotta go.

sometimes, but sometimes not so much....


http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=137718392

== Your editing ==
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I don't know who you think you are, but I would like you to stop the personal attacks, the stupid accusations, and the sly innuendo against me, and don't ever remove one of my posts, or anyone else's, again. Apart from anything else, you're making a fool of yourself, if that matters to you. [[User:SlimVirgin|SlimVirgin]] ^{<font color="Purple">[[User_talk:SlimVirgin|(talk)]]</font>} 17:47, 12 June 2007 (UTC)


Also, her whitewashed edits to old boss Pierre Salinger and her school-grudge protection of the Patrick Byrne Bashing Squad is not the behaviour of a professional, it's of a petty, bitter, little person who thought anonymity + power = Sweet Blue Revenge.