Depending on how much you care to know, you can bail out after making it through the short version of this story, or you may stick around for the long version, which will include all the details of how I know what I know.

The short version

• On January 21, 2008, User:Samiharris was using the IP address 151.202.103.104.
• On January 21, 2008, Gary Weiss was using the IP address 151.202.103.104.

Given this is a Verizon residential dsl account, which assigns a single IP per subscriber, we can safely conclude that Gary Weiss and Samiharris use the same computer, and are most likely the same person.

The long version
Gary Weiss is an idiot, but he’s not stupid. So he’s learned to use Proxify any time he visits a site he’s unsure of. Matching his IP to Samiharris’, therefore, would require coaxing him to a site au naturel, both as Weiss and as Samiharris, in the relatively short period of time in which his dynamic IP would likely remain unchanged.

I, editing as User:Post Doctorate y-o-y (so named because anybody doing post-doc work must certainly, and regularly, ask themselves “why, oh why am I still in school?!”) engaged Samiharris in a discussion over inclusion of some facts he (Samiharris) clearly wants to keep out of the article on Patrick Byrne. It happened in a very out-of-the-way place (Post Doctorate y-o-y’s brand new talk page), where nobody else was likely to notice it.
EDIT: They blanked that talk page in record time, so I've substituted a cached version of it here.

In the process of making my case, I invited Samiharris to read an article (which is not otherwise available freely online, btw) on a website that a friend can monitor. To put Samiharris at ease, and maximize the chance that he'd go there directly instead of anonymizing first, the link was presented as a Webcitation.org cache of the page, created that day and linked to by no other source.

Because Webcitation maintains the original html of the pages it caches, viewing it would still trigger the embedded ActiveMeter script.

Only one person visited the link that day, and the timing of the visits coincides precisely with Samiharris’ posts on the topic.

A screenshot of the resulting pings (he visited twice) is here:

At that point the challenge was to quickly capture Gary Weiss’s IP, sans anonymizer.

Like Webcite, the Wayback Machine caches a page’s html intact, also including any tracking scripts that might be present. But for some reason, most anonymized browsing of past versions of pages captured there is not allowed.

So, I arranged for Gary Weiss to receive email from somebody encouraging him to visit an archived version of a website that I used to own, promising that he'd find damning information about me there. I knew that when (not if) Weiss followed the link, it would be while not anonymized, triggering another ActiveMeter account which I am also able to monitor, though the old version of the site is long gone.

I was correct and a screenshot of the resulting ping from that visit is here:


I doubt this comes as much of a surprise to anybody, much less Jimbo. But we'll see what happens from here...whether Wikipedia manages to police itself for once, or whether I need to work this out in the media again.

Seems like an open and shut case to me. Nice detective work. At the very least any judge worth his/her salt would grant a warrant to search Wikipedia's logs with evidence like this.

Lamont pointed out the MONGO vote. Any other examples of recent abusive socking?

So how did you know that when Weiss followed that link he would not be anonymized?

Because anonymizers often don't work on archive.org pages, and we suspected that Weiss wouldn't expect me to be able to track long gone pages. Plus, one can assume that the prospect of finding dirt on me would prove too much to bear for the sad fellow not to take a look.


They both participated in last night's AN on Piperdown:
Samiharris
Mantanmoreland
And then there's the general ownership of the article autobiography on Gary Weiss that both have taken part in from the beginning.

That's the recent stuff. Go back a month or two and it will curl your hair.

I don't know where to start.

Look at Naked Short Selling beginning when I first edited there in Mid-March 2007. That man showed up with 2 accounts and started cold blanking well-sourced material I added from major publications, the SEC site, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=115876803
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=116128698
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=116568061

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gary_Weiss/Archive_2

It was a 3RR trap. That is what that person what up to with those 2 (at that time, he used 3 at a time on other people in 2006). Read the tag teaming, it is eerie.

Then the guy had conversations with himself. Read the talk pages of Short And Distort, where he decides with himself that merge with another general article, to get rid of reliably sourced material from Wired Magazine, several books, Forbes, an Attorney General's site, etc, that mention that scam. Because he doesn't want the flip side of Pump and Dump mentioned. Because he once wrote about a man is serving time for shorting and distorting. Favorably.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Short_and_distort


What a damn low life. I, and other people I read about in the history of the articles he socks, were run off of WP too.

Cla68 will be very interested to hear about this. He had many a consensus building conversations with what he thought were 2 people who weren't the subject of the article under review.

Double voting? Check out any AFD that person ever voted on. Every RFA. He would give a reasonable lag time before popping up with his sock.

Checkuser those 2 accounts. Now. This is bullshit and it has gone on too long to too many people.

And after pages of b.s., there still is no good reason given for why Piperdown was banned on Sept 8 2007, a ban that has never been apologized for or reversed.

This is a pattern of longterm abuse that has gone on even after (see my WR sig, last paragraph and link) WP Arbcom warned him to stop it in 2006 with LastExit and TomStoner accounts.

Oh the humanity!

Real super sleuthing, and, as such, the truth will set us all free.

Brilliant work; we are grateful for the continuous proofs showing, once and forever, that WP is in desparate need of a sea change...from top to bottom.


This will make some of the past problems seem somewhat lame, nicht vahr?

Press pass anyone?

Gary Weiss's IP vandalizes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contr...151.202.103.104

21:17, 23 November 2006 (hist) (diff) Akatsuki (Naruto)‎ (→Former members)
21:15, 23 November 2006 (hist) (diff) Akatsuki (Naruto)‎ (→Former members)

It adds some vandalism about "homos".


PS: Moderators, you should sticky this thread until the Gary Weiss socks get blocked!

Verizon uses dynamic IPs, so that's not necessarily him.

That's never stopped them from making such assumptions though, has it?

Okay, maybe it has, but still, technically the IP is correct - "homos" can go to hell, just like everyone else. Hell is an equal-opportunity place to go. (Of course, this assumes that hell actually exists.) The real question is do they, in fact, go there? And if they do, can they find good sushi that isn't ridiculously overpriced? And do they get to bring their iPods with them, or do they have to leave them at home?

Anyway... I've posted before to the effect that anyone who's actually honest who can look at the diffs and the evidence already presented, and think that Weiss isn't Mantanmoreland, must have no critical thinking ability whatsoever. It's glaringly, blindingly obvious to anyone looking at the situation objectively. To discover that he's also Samiharris is hardly surprising either - I'd just assumed it, myself - but let's face it, if Weiss owns Wikipedia to the extent that he can get away with what he's already gotten away with, they're way beyond any possibility of dealing with this situation fairly or rationally, much less actually putting a stop to it.

Does that sound overly pessimistic? Sorry... I've just been having a bad week...

I think you neglected to add the requisite "smiley" face when you wrote that.

I assume you're either outright joking or mocking Weiss's predictable response.

Just in case, I'll explain that the thing is, Verizon has hundreds of thousands of IPs, and they are indeed dynamic, but not in the same way AOL's are dynamic (changing every minute). Instead, Verizon DSL customers get the same IP for a day or two or 20 or 30.

In order for IP dynamism to be an issue here, it would mean that Samiharris had one IP in the evening and Gary Weiss had it in the late evening.

The likelihood of that happening is about the same as lighning striking me RIGHT NOW.

...and I'm still here.

Gary Weiss is clearly Samiharris.

And Mantanmoreland, as Fred Bauder has confirmed about 23 times.

But it doesn't seem to matter, as Jimbo has confirmed about 32 times.

I think he was referring to the person who used that IP in 2006 to vandalize the article on Akatsuki, a fictional ninja organization in the Naruto anime series. Is the idea that Gary Weiss committed an act of homophobic vandalism - twice - on an article on an anime-cartoon ninja organization in 2006 so far-fetched? Well, sure it is, but dammit, it has humor value!

And that's what really matters...

Yes, I used sooper sekrit sarcasm!

Anyway, yes, I know how Verizon does their IPs, and I know that it's incredibly unlikely that the IP would be reallocated to one particular other person as well. I was responding to the comment saying that his IP was vandalizing; sorry I didn't make that clearer.

Ah!! Maybe this is what Amarkov was referring to. (And maybe I should read posts in order from now on)

Indeed, there's no way this was Weiss. His IP has changed many many times since this happened.

I agree with you WB and you are absolutely correct; I hope Amarkov was joking,. You know as well as anyone there is a massive misunderstanding of what an IP address is on Wikipedia, for some unknown reason. I really can't explain that one. I think forum regulars on the "THE MOST POPULAR BRITNEY SPEARS FORUM ON THE PLANNET!!" have more of an understanding of IP addresses. One would assume they would be more informed regarding these matters but they are not. This is why checkusers are often looked at magically and as if they are infallible.

"Verizon uses dynamic IPs, so it's not necessarily him" will be the answer of the uninformed (ignorant) and partisan, if this is brought up on WP. Then, we can all have a good laugh, but in the end nothing will be done.

Bearing accurate witness in a wry and understated manner is a remarkably potent act.

This should answer the question





or click here if the picture doesn't load

Hell is an untamed recursion.

I don't think that this would ever be brought up on WP, anyway. The first person who tries will be immediately accused of "importing WordBomb's harassment schemes" and blocked.

And so even though:

a checkuser will show that Samiharris and Mantanmoreland have edited from the same IP at the same time

he has talked to himself on WP talk pages to falsely give an illusion of collaborateive editing and consensus

he has used this to give himself 6RR vs 3RR editing advantage to bully others

has edited his own BLP with more than one acccount at the same time, nevermind just one

has waged an on and off WP campaign against Patrick Byrne long before Judd Bagley showed up on WP

Was already given a private rebuke from Arbcom after being caught doing the same thing he's doing now, but back in 2006 under the same main account but with at least two other sock accounts, none of which were blocked either



This man is the only person on Wikipedia who is being allowed to do these things and no one WP Admin has the guts to stand up about it.

Not one.

and let's talk about Mark Devlin (Sparkzilla).

This man was outed on WP, banned from editing at all, even after acknowledging that his publication and his WP editing crossed paths on the same heatedissue, and so his editing of that article should stop (reasonable). Then he wants to only be allowed to edit on the talk page of that article to give a counter-voice to what he felt was an equally and opposite COI dominating that article - but during this he angers Queen Slimmy. So she bans him.

No violins for that, but Mantanmoreland gets a free sockmaster pass? Sparkzilla didn't put on a sockshow to drive off other editors in a consensus scam. The heatissuepuppet puppets Slim's side of the argument get the run of the place, with their COI's and socks in place. Just like Mantamoreland.

And here's the man himself on The Review

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=13505&hl=

as well as his own essay on the epsiode :

http://www.markdevlin.com/Wikipedia/default.htm

excellent followup Kato. And Devlin has nothing to do with stocks, overstock, Byrne, or Bagley.

and yet I bring up the wrongs on WP that have occurred in his case.

I'm just a meat puppet for ethics and decency I guess.

Looks like its going to be the media again, word. There's a marathon <crickets> match going on in WP that doesn't seem to be ending its game anytime soon.

WP admins reading this, how's it feel to let this go on when you know you can stop it? Do you feel good letting some people get away with worse than what others get banned for? How do you wikisleep? Essjay, Seigenthaler, Doran, how many more of these does WP have to be embarrassed by from outside first?

I think this is too harsh.

It's hard because Weiss is not just backed by SV and her fellow travelers, but by Jimbo himself. Admins really stuck their necks out when they sided with you. I bet Alison feels a little burned, and it deters mop-loving admins from taking your cause in the future.

Burned by what? thats bullshit. Admins stuck their neck out by telling the truth? That as a lot to say about something that 'admins' should correct. What sort of ethics does the WP Communuty support? Lies over submissive privilege?

Jimbo backed Ryan Jordan and Carolyn Doran too. That went well in the media.

And the database shows this - Jimmy Wales lied on October 2006 when he blanked a talk page discussion and declared that Mantanmoreland ( and his Bauder-Thatcher verified socks of LastExit/TomStoner) was not Gary Weiss. Lied.

He lied when he wrote on WP that he would investigate the Jayjg oversight abuse and "transparently" communicate what WP was going to do about that abuse. He did nothing, he didn't intend to do anything, and Jayjg is a bizarre POV SPA bot running batch edits every day, lol.

Wikipedia, you don't answer to Jimmy Wales. He answers to you. Most of the time he waits to correct himself after this crap hits the media first. When he has too.

Without the thousands of volunteers comprising Wikipedia, Wikipedia is nothing. Gone. Without Jimmy, it would still be wikipedia. He doesn't even give a hoot about WP any more, if you haven't noticed. His concern is Wikimedia.

Heal thyself, WP.

C'mon man. And most admins supporting you seemed to think you actually wanted to return. They were willing to push on this issue, but you announce instead that you just want an account so you can symbolically sever your ties. They earned the wrath of SV & co. for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

I'm disappointed in you, but only because you could have and should have won.

Then they didn't read my initial and subsequent requests to investigate my ban, lift it, and apply WP rules to what caused the incident.

I'm disappointed in your reading skills, but when you don't allow the banned (unjustly) to defend themselves and it has to be done on W-Review instead, well that's just sad for WP. Innocent misintrepreations and intentional twisting of truths will occur. Expected that.

...which implies you wanted to be unblocked. You said nothing about being unblocked so you could retire. I'm pretty sure no one would have gone through that ordeal if they knew that this was the potential payoff.

I was blocked because I was banned. Wrongly. I wanted that ban corrected. Which means a block would be lifted by definition.

It was win-win and you still fucked it up, WP. What are you scared of?

You saw I wrongly banned (thanks Ali), I said I would retire and scramble my account and never come back here or WP again, and the same people who are abusing WP initimidate the ones who even think about acknowledging it. They just can't help themselves.

Un-ban me, I retire (which someone already did for me), I give up my account by scrambling the password because I want nothing to do with Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia (its obvious its volunteers don't realise its they who are WP, not Jimmy), and everyone gets what they want. I have been consistent and clear on wanting the ban investigated, and my account cleared of wrongdoing. Turning around and saying me getting angry about it after the ban-fact on WR is not a reason to say the ban was just prior to that. How Kafka-esque can a kangaroo court get, lol.

If I'm a WP admin, and I read that AN thread, my intelligence is insulted not by what started it, but what passed off as a resolution.

Let so me try to summarise your position, One (One, the higher law? I love that song). It would have been perfectly OK to allow an unjust ban stand, just because the banned would not be contributing in the future.

So in effect it's OK to ban someone for something they didn't do wrong, but decided because of that incident, that they don't want to be a contributor to the site that banned them unjustly in the first place.

News just in, Death Row prisoner, let off by DNA evidence, decides not to take job offer cleaning death row toilets. Film at ten!

Sorry...but...he is clearly not the only one that is doing such things on WP, and that is, in fact, one of the real life reasons why there is virtually no credibility at that site. I could go on there as an anon. editor, from where I am now, in Colorado, and no one knows anything about anything. I could operate from all over the world and act as dozens of different people. That is also what perpetuates the paranoid tendencies of so many editors at WP. Clinically, most paranoid people are a reflection of their own failed ability to be straight forward and honest. The puppets and fake profiles are, indeed, paranoid that everyone is doing the same wrong things as they are.

I'm sorry Piperdown. I know the block was bunk, but I think that if you played differently you could have been unblocked without so much as a topic ban. I guess I'm saying that you could have been a contender, and the grassroots support you got proved it.

But instead, they took the first exit available, slapped "retired" on you, and no longer risk contemplating Mantanmoreland's blatant socking. I don't think that's cowardice so much as the natural administrative urge to stamp "RESOLVED" and move on.

I'm with One. I think you've let your principles get in the way of a more pragmatic view. You were winning friends and influencing people there. But they were arguing for bringing back someone who could contribute. Why would they put that effort in to a process where the only result was to rub some noses in the dirt and rescue the good nameanonymity of someone who would be entirely un-notable outside the deranged world of WP?

What did you really, really want to achieve? Was it revenge? Was it simply clearing your good name? Was it Wikipedia reform? I think I know why I am here (on a good day). I'm not so sure why you are here now. That is to say, I think you have been treated atrociously, and this little episode just underlines it, but you've probably taken a step back, not forwards.

But sorry, this is probably far too harsh. I shouldn't expect people to be perfect game players when the game is so rigged. I guess you actually thought this was the end game, and it wasn't - it just got flung back in your face.

I wasn't trying to be a contender. I don't give a damn about collecting points on WP in a MUD game. I don't compromise ethics to advance. I don't care about virtual power. I feel sorry for those who do, and WP appears to be filled with them. In some sort of twisted Darwinism (that to give WP some slack, isn't unusual in real organizations, not just scam ones), the ones who advance in Wikipedia are the ones who do so for the wrong reasons. So you have people like Cla68 and Giano who are either relegated to having to quit or going to the media to right wrongs, even though they've contributed more to wikipedia in one month than people like Gerard and Wales have in their whole poser careers.



again, I wasn't playing a game. Whats to be pragmatic about? Do you think everyone edits wikipedia so they can get adminship and win arguments via the hammer?

I guess this is the way the asskissers think who feel it's more important to them to become admins than it is to stand up for what's right.

When people like Cla68 (and others who have stood up - he did it under his real name which went farther than I even thought he would) do advance to become admins on merit, try not to look them directly in the wikieye when you kiss their asses to try to advance too. Aldebaer, I'm talking to you. And perhaps I should have claimed I was drinking Portugese Wine every time I quoted Gerard and JzG's F-bombs on WR these past few postban months.

Yeah anyone really intent and crazy on socking will talk to themselves. If someone is extremely intent on it they will have both socks on IRC at the same time. One sock through the normal IP on IRC and the other sock through a VPN and a different IRC chat program.

I just misunderstood your goal then. I thought that contesting the block months later meant that you were returning. All of your administrative support seems to have assumed that was your aim. Having been burned, they'll be more reluctant to back unjustly blocked users in the future.

I don't mean that you would have "won" points as in a game, but that you would have been reinstated, and that the momentum would have shifted in favor of reform. Folks are sick of abuses like Gerard's block. They'll just have to wait for a more ambitious cause célèbre.

Hmm, WP seems to be a game for many, my point (for we are in a forum that allows points to be made without acquiring a ban for suggesting such an unholy thing) was that it would be pragmatic to play along with the game to achieve your goal.

What I am still not clear on is what that goal is. Do you value Wikipedia's opinion of you so much that it is important to be absolved of all sin by them? I doubt it. Were you hoping to return to fix the wrongs that were done to various articles? It appears not. Did you want to put those who wronged you in their place? Well, clearly so, but given the weight of power that could be ranged against you, it was going to need deft footwork to achieve that... and you nearly did it too. That was quite an outpouring of unjustified bile you stirred up over there. Good to see that Slim and Crum can't resist the old double act, even in full view of other administrators.

You've been cross at Wikipedia too long for this just to be about getting your block overturned. I'm concerned because you are troubled and I don't see how you are going to get a resolution on your terms now - yesterday it seemed one more push could do it.

You've got to understand that from the Wikipedian point of view, even when you strip away the clique idiocy, the primary thing is how something helps or hurts the project; they explicitly say that something being "fair" or "unfair" to individuals is irrelevant except as it impacts the encyclopedia positively or negatively. In fact, much of the opposition to clique idiocy is on the grounds that it adversely impacts the encyclopedia by putting the agenda of the cliqueistas over it. So, when you come in and try to get un-banned, the main thing most Wikipedians will be looking at is not whether your ban was fair or unfair, but whether letting you back in will help or hurt the project. If the ban was unfair, then most likely reversing it would be good for the project, so the two standards are in sync... except when you then start saying that all you'll do upon being un-banned would be to immediately quit, in which case people will decide that there's no point to jumping into all of this contentious politics just to help you prove a point that will ultimately have no positive benefit for the project. So they stop being interested in your case.

This neglects the very strong probability that the appearance of unfairness in itself has a negative impact on the project.

About 3 more weeks left for WP to run a checkuser on Samiharris - Mantanmoreland for edits made in Dec-Jan but prior to this past week when sockboy realised he would have to start separating his orgination.

So he's counting on that now. Let some time go by, have someone run a CU on those 2 accounts for edits in the past week only, where I'm sure he's made a point to edit on account at one IP and another at another IP spot. Looks like he did make a cameo edit today just for that sort of convenient RFCU review.

Well CU that guy for before last week. Or just ask Fred Bauder what Manny Moresocks has been up to. Fred's an honest guy when pressed to answer something.

Checkuser lasts for 3 months. Maybe policy is 1 month, but when a checkuser goes fishing and does an unrequested search they'll block and tag socks 3 months old. I've seen it a couple of times now.

You must remember the «Precept Of WAS» (POW) —

There is no difference between Hitler and Tom Sawyer because they both got fences painted.

Jonny

Here's the full quotation, which is chock full o' jims, er, gems:


WUZZY's pitiful spewage of one irrationality on top of another are typical of what you observe in True Believers who are desperately trying to rationalize a fundamentally broken belief system.

Jonny

What happened to the WAS 4.250 who told off Jimbo on Jimbo's Talk page, and survived?!

Invasion of the Body Snatching Apologists? :barf:

Greg