Apologies if this has been posted, but I can't see it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Del...Brandt_redirect

Looks distinctly ill-informed. They don't even know if they're debating the deletion of the redirect or the original article.

The nominator: Joshua Zelinsky, former Wikipedia administrator, and sockpuppeteer. He abused his sockpuppets (among other things) on the Deletion Review of the very same Daniel Brandt article.

Checkusers and super-sleuths, please watch this discussion very carefully. Once a puppet master, always a puppet master.

Don't expect to observe Due Process.

I have it on good authority that Wikipedia doesn't do Due Process.

Should add that a full biography was added to the talk page of the (now deleted) Daniel Brandt article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=200612889

And the editor responsible was blocked for 24hrs.

Lar says on his Talk page:


Look at all those sysop bits. One presumes that he must be a good encyclopedia editor too.

Oh wait, he defames me and violates BLP:

Lar should leave Wikipedia Review. This comment of his wouldn't be tolerated here, and it shouldn't be tolerated anywhere. We have some minimal standards here.

Alison and SirFozzie should leave also. They potty-mouthed me repeatedly several days ago.

I'm in favor of peaceable reconciliation, as remote a likelihood as that may seem at times.

Start a poll, then. If people want the Wicked Witch gone, then I'm outta here. Let's do it!

(AOL) Me too (/AOL)

Let it not be said that I'll ever be where I'm not wanted...

There's a certain irony to your trying to bully people into leaving because of their comments to the effect that you try to bully or blackmail people into doing things.

Maybe you should learn to take criticism like a man instead of screaming for mommy?

I'm not in favor of coercive tactics.

Is this parody of Wikipedia?

Criticism such as the examples I've cited is not allowed by the FCC over the airwaves. It shouldn't be allowed in any public place, including Wikipedia and Wikipedia Review. Rational criticism is quite different than four-letter words and false accusations.

Individuals are only banned here if they persistently break forum rules over a long period of time, and, to my knowledge, SirFozzie, Lar, and Alison have not broken any of the provisional rules or done anything to warrant warnings from mods or staff. Banning people for disagreeing with another member's actions would send a chilling effect through the forum.

Not to sound like NYB, but I wish we could at least agree to disagree (yes, NYB would write an elegant soliloquy, but I'm not that eloquent ). Also, I object to any polls requiring WR members to be voted off the island, so to speak.

Speaking only for myself.

The Joy

Although NewYorkBrad is not here, I would like to think that he shares the view of most enlightened people who have been trained in the law regarding the propriety of Bills of Attainder.

It's one of the first advances in the concept of Civil Rights that we eschew the use of Bills of Attainder.

Notwithstanding the popularity of that abhorrent practice on Wikipedia, and notwithstanding Alison and SirFozzie's readiness to stand for a vote on a Bill of Attainder, I hope that our ethical principles here are sufficiently advanced, evolved, and enlightened to reject the adoption of that antiquated, abhorrent, and anachronistic instrument.

Me, either, except as it involves publishing biographical details about administrators who endorse WP's aggressive bio policy.

As for WP admins or editors who want to post here and read here, by all means I wish they'd stay and be welcome. They need to "hear" this stuff, more than most people.

My message to them: Dear admins. WR is NOT populated by those nobodies who vandalized WP and were banned for it. Those people are idiots, and vicious besides. Good riddance. No, WR is basically populated by fairly articulate people who tried to make WP into a decently reliable and ethical encyclopedia, and were banned or abused for THAT. So think about that.

Other than propensity to shine sunlight down on the heads and up the posteriors of mushroom editors, Morlock administrators, and vampire WMF personnel who turn to ash when exposed to UV, I hope WR is pretty benign. We'd hate to look as petty as the people we're criticising, especially when it comes to treatment of Truth (which we actually believe in, unlike WP). The BIO thing is entirely self-defensive. It may look like the same thing, but (as I've said many times) there are some actions that cannot be judged except by who suckerpunched who else, first. If you come upon such a fight without seeing that first action, you can't tell the goodguys from the badguys without some history. We'll be glad to provide history if you don't know it.

... and do I do that??

BTW: I'd like to apologize to Daniel Brandt for my intemperate language. It's rather out of character, really.

Retaliatory vengeance is not my idea of creative problem solving, so it disturbed me to see that not only are some disgruntled figures sufficiently outraged and frustrated to use WP's own reprehensible tactics against otherwise benign Wikipedia admins, but that it seems to have worked.

This is not a good omen.

Wikipedia needs to be more sensitive to legitimate gripes without being so intransigent that those with grievances to redress are reduced to fighting Wikipedia with its own reprehensible brand of fire.

These aren't the airwaves, and they're not regulated by the FCC. You've sure gone a long way philosophically from the days of student activism, when the Free Speech Movement was the big thing. You sound like a grumpy old man now, the sort who fume at how Janet Jackson destroyed morality by baring her breast during the Super Bowl.

It's useful to note that the conflicts arising out of controversial practices on Wikipedia are frequently so disturbing and outrageous that people often respond out of character.

It is unwise for an enterprise as prominent as Wikipedia to perpetuate problematic practices that induce a substantial number of people respond out of character.

LOL Wut? I seem to recall that your panties weren't exactly whiter than white on that one!.

You're an intelligent and not entirely unreasonable person Brandt, you should take this opportunity to step back and reflect seriously upon whether your actions of late are doing your cause more harm than good, least you should end up becoming the very thing you abhor.

WPR has purpose. Beneficial to that purpose is the engagement of wikipedians willing to engage in interaction, throwing your toys from your pram and calling for their banishment because one of them called you some names you don't like is beneath you, this isn't an episode of The Waltons.

So, let's see if I have this straight.

Lar has deleted two of your three redirects for you. He endorses the deletion in a way to appeal to the die-hard Brandt-haters on WP (and they're there, yes). He's effectively saying "Look past your hatred and let's be fair to the man".

And for this ... you want him banned from here, yes? Largely because he called you a naughty word?

I find it exceedingly rich to hear you speak of standards, conduct, tolerance or anything of the like.


You forgot to quote the followup I posted after my characterization of you as a "MAJOR ASSHOLE" (emphasis retained) was redacted. I clarified my remarks to say even more not very nice things about you.

For the record, I stand behind those remarks characterizing your character and behaviour, although I apologise if they gave offense to anyone else besides you. I consider your threatening, bullying and blackmailing activities spineless and reprehensible, and they are in no way excused, justified, or ameliorated by any real or imagined wrongs you may have suffered at Wikipedia or anywhere else.

I also stand behind advocating the deletion of your redirects, despite your despicable character.

Personally, I don't think it should be referred to as "blackmail" unless the demand involves doing something that the person(s) in question shouldn't have done, or been expected to do, in the first place. But like everything else, it's a relative term.

The fact is, if Brandt didn't make these kinds of splashy public demands and the implied threats associated with them, Wikipedia would simply ignore him. The "option" of legal action is just not realistic in comparison with this kind of activity - it never has been. If it were, he probably would have tried that first, and this whole business might have been resolved a long time ago.

Now, one might argue - quite rightly! - that it isn't the fault of any specific person on WP, from Alison and Lar all the way across to Chairboy and JoshuaZ, that they've been put in this position, or even that they've put themselves in this position. After all, they're just trying to contribute free content to a publicly-editable encyclopedia-like website without anyone necessarily knowing they're the ones doing it. It's not their website, even though they help to operate it; it isn't even their content, even though they have the power to change it and (hopefully) keep it changed. Responsibility for these things isn't taken by anyone, because it's not there to be taken. If someone came along and stated, "I'm hereby taking responsibility for this article, and all decisions about it will be made by me from now on," how far do you suppose they'd get with that?

Unfortunately, this is precisely why Brandt (and various others) have no choice but to act as they do. Wikipedia doesn't give him/them any other options, at least none that have any hope of succeeding. Even after all that's happened, I still can't believe that Daniel Brandt would prefer to operate in this fashion if other avenues were available to him. Wikipedia could always give him those avenues, very easily I might add - but Wikipedia, as an organization, chooses not to. (I've stated many times that they choose not to because it would reduce WP's usefulness as a cheap revenge platform, but that's just my opinion of course.)

Anyway... we decided during the previous ColScott incident that we weren't going to ban people for profanity. We may not always avoid double-standards, but that would be a pretty obvious one, I suspect. I could even go so far as to say that Daniel (and by extension, this website) doesn't give them many other options, under the circumstances.

How about this page which has been sitting at number 6 in Google in a search for my name?* And now this one too, which contains defamatory comments from JoshuaZ, and will soon show up in the search engines.

You brag about supporting one deletion, but two more pages with defamatory comments — some of which are from you — have now grown up in its place. I'm supposed to express my appreciation?

What Wikipedia lacks is someone with sufficient character, and sufficient power, to make a clean sweep of it and stamp it all OFFICE ACTION.

*This assumes that your search is set for 100 results, not 10. The way it works is that Google grabs 100 results if you ask for 100. If there are two or more from one domain, then it shows the top-ranked one where it properly ranks, but with the next one directly beneath it for that domain — even though the second hit might normally rank at 90 or so by itself. Assuming that the deletion of the redirect sticks, the PIR article won't rank in the top 10, which means that any secondary hits from Wikipedia in a search for my name won't either. This is why that redirect, which has 658 backlinks (according to Yahoo) behind a deleted Daniel_Brandt that are juicing up the PIR article, has to go. The PIR article won't rank all that well without the redirect.

I think I missed the part where I was bragging about anything. I merely said I stood behind my characterization of you, and my support of not overturning those deletions.

And don't worry, that DRV will no doubt get courtesy blanked.

You want to stop being described in negative, but nevertheless accurate, terms? Stop acting the way you do. Grow up, in other words. At this point, I find you quite tiresome, frankly.



I don't buy that, sorry.

It's true.

Of course, you can prove it false.

Come up with any other method that will work without JoshuaZ, SlimVirgin, or hundreds of other pseudonymous admins undoing it.

The reality is that you probably can't. Given the barely-functional anarchy that passes for editorial control at WP, if Brandt didn't raise hell, he'd have no voice at all.

I couldn't have said it better myself! (And apparently, I didn't, in fact!)

And hey folks, be sure to take special note of that word, "option"...

JoshuaZ said today:


Joshua Zelinsky complaining about his Google problem in a sooper-sekrit email:

Actually, one of his socks did vote in my December DRV which JoshuaZ started. Yet he has the nerve to open another DRV. Everyone who voted to restore the redirect should be checkusered to see if they're from New Haven, Conneticut. Where is the ArbCom when Cabal members get caught? They're nowhere to be seen.

If you don't buy it Lar, I'm all ears as to your implied alternative. Specifically I expect to read your proposals at the Pump to fix the BLP problem and the vandalism problem, and then see you get your suggestions pushed through as policy. Hey, you're an admin in good standing, untainted by hint of trollery, are you not?

But I'm not going to hold my breath. You can't do it, even if you try.

Here's a very simple idea: sprotect ALL articles. Anon IP editing never had much justification, and never will. It's basically indefensable to keep ANY of it, at all. But I'll bet you can't get even this done. Semi-protecting everything would stop some fraction of the vandalism overnight, and leave goodfaith editors with that much extra time to work on the encyclopedia. And sprotection is creeping up on more articles by the day. So obviously it's a good idea, and needs to be done. And it works. And even doing it at all, is to admit that the policy as implemented originally, was unworkable. BUT because of shear inertia and shear reactionary revulsion to any systematic change, not to mention Jimbo's problem that he didn't think of it first, and can hardly take credit for it since the opposite has been going on under his rule for many years, IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN ON HIS WATCH.

Now, the lesson you need to take away from this has nothing to DO with sprotection per se. That's a side issue. I'm merely using sprotection to illustrate the incredible stupidity of the people who run WP when it comes to change. You've far bypassed the 19th century European military already. Way to go.

And please don't bother to write in and tell me that you personally would agree with universal sprotection, but must work within the system to change it. That will only make me gag, because you're not changing it, and you won't change it. If you try, you'll get zombies mouthing wikiplatitudes. That's the point It means you looked at the small problem (IP vandalism) and failed to see beyond it, which would allow you to see what the failure to fix it actually MEANS. Gosh, we can't have THAT.

Mr. Brandt: I believe SlimVirgin will agree with you

Well, Lar is a decent sort of fellow, and we're not really treating him fairly - it's just that so many of us have been doing this for so long, and repeating the same arguments so many times, the reaction has become almost automatic.

The fact is, he's sort of right - there is another option (aside from legal action) that Brandt could have pursued that might have had a chance of success. That option, also known as "The Path of Jossi," would have been to start an account, edit WP "constructively" and revert vandalism (or whatever) until he had attained adminship, then self-promote himself up through the hierarchy until his position was unassailable, and finally campaign aggressively for the deletion of the article, overruling (or if necessary, railroading and ultimately banning) those who opposed that particular agenda.

Unfortunately, that isn't an option Wikipedia gives you - though it's the one they want you to take, because it's the one that gives the existing hierarchy the greatest opportunity for control at each stage of the process, not to mention a lot of free labor.

Ironically, though, if Brandt had done that, he'd probably have far more personal information about WP admins than he has now, gleaned from sooper-sekrit private mailing lists, IRC logs, and even conference calls. (I doubt he would have felt comfortable at a meetup though, much less "Wikimania.") So, if for some reason he had failed, WP and its community might be in pretty much the same situation, maybe even worse.

I'm just mentioning this because I have an unusually high degree of appreciation for irony. Maybe someone who's reading this thread will gain something from it, but... probably not.

I have never read a four-letter word from SlimVirgin. She and JoshuaZ use convoluted policy issues and arguments to surround the enemy and deprive them of food. Actually, I shouldn't put SlimVirgin's name and JoshuaZ's name in the same sentence. SlimVirgin is better educated than JoshuaZ and has keener political instincts, and much more life experience. She's also genuinely constructive on the BLP issue, whereas JoshuaZ just uses it because he has deep contempt for me (and has admitted as much, but without using four-letter words).

Joshua Zelinsky is strictly Bush league (oops, I used a four-letter word)!

Having said that, I'm not sure which I prefer — the potty-mouth approach or the policy-wonk approach. At least you know where you stand when admins are cussing you out on a public forum, whereas it can take a long time to get surrounded and starved to death by a policy wonk.

I don't think it's that personal. JoshuaZ campaigned bitterly to restore the Angela Beesley article and any other biographical subject who manages to escape his clutches.

He appears to be at war with the whole world. No wonder he's worried about the negative google hits that are stacking up against his name. If he keeps this up another couple of years his web resume will look worse than Pol Pot's.

Check out the title of the first google hit for Joshua Zelinsky.

Pwoor baby. Do you want to cwy now?

You can suck your thumb and cry about how bad Alison says by uttering fu-- fuc-.. I cant bwing mysewf to say it, "so bad, bad wowd", but they can leave at will. You're not notable except for driving people off Wikipedia, and now you're going here too. Okay, put his name out, he doesn't try to hide anything. I'm sure he's shaking in his boots because of Daniel. Now you're always playing the poor me card, but you're not this oppressed little victim that youmake yourself out to be. I agree with you on your biography, it should be deleted. Now that it's all deleted, it shouold be time to take hivemind down. You can still have a page about SlimVirgin, but the hivemind shit has to go. It encourages stalking.

And this is not regulated by the F.C.C. It is uncensored and not TV. So I'm not telling you to stop complaining, I'm telling you to stop complaining about things with no point.

Now, where did you get the info about Phaedriel, Daniel, I've been wanting to know.

Why have you been wanting to know? So you can... stalk her?

Try to avoid Brandt-baiting - if you've been paying any attention at all, you should know by now that it doesn't work, and usually just has the opposite of the intended effect, whatever that is.

Of course I don't want to stalk her. I want to know where because when I found it, I never saw the information before, and looked elsewhere on the internet and nowhere did I find that name. I was also wondering whether he got the wrong information. So I want to know the source, let me know if you find anything. It's basically out of curiosity, but I know I did hear somewhere that Amorrow got her information form Daniel and stalked her.

True, but that was not the point

I know what I prefer. And it isn´t the policy wonk.

I find it a bit absurd that you want Lar, Alison and SirFozzie to leave WR (for "potty-mouthing" you). They have been up-front, no hidden agenda, with them you don´t have to think "What is their unspoken agenda?" Ok, so they have used ehh ... some undiplomatic language which you find offensive. Well, tough. Real tough.

My point was that Slimey has been trying to demonise everybody on WR, and tried to make it appear as if no Wikipedian "in good standing" will/should/can post here. (Do you recall how she misrepresented/used KimvanderLindes few posts against her?) So people like Lar, Alison and SirFozzie "de-demonise" WR. And we can´t have that, can we? If WR kick those three off the board, then I´m sure Slimey and her gang will be very satisfied. The world can become more black and white again.

First of all, Andrew Morrow never "stalked" anybody from WP, unless you consider posting creepy misogynistic stuff on message boards and Wikipedia itself to be "stalking." (Admittedly, some people use a rather broad definition.) I have it on good authority that this constant repetition of the "Morrow the Stalker meme" just pisses him off, and directly causes further incidents of creepy misogyny.

More to the point, all that information about User:Phaedriel stemmed from her having written on either her own WP user page, or else a talk page somewhere, that she worked for the Oklahoma City police. I believe she mentioned her real first (and possibly last) name at one point, too, though I might be wrong about that... Finding the diffs would be a bit of a chore, of course, but I'm about 97 percent certain it all came from WP originally. Daniel can confirm that, hopefully.

One thing I will say is that Phaedriel, or someone close to her, has done a good job of erasing herself from the internet - as of right now, the only pages that come up in Google for any variant of her full name are Hivemind and ED. She should give seminars for the other WP'ers - that sort of thing takes cleverness as well as persistence.

I do consider finding the hone number of someone who doesn't state it on Wikipedia and calling them is stalking, and contacting the police department that Phaedriel worked for. She openly states her name is "Sharon K." on her userpage, and has since removed the statement about her working for the Oklahoma City PD, but it can be found through the IA Wayback Machine. That revision of her userpage, and the other one in the Wayback Machine, do not state her real name, but just that "Sharon K.", which led me to believe Daniel went into meatspace.


Of course, people call her Sharon and she says it on her userpage. I didn't feel like searching her contribs (I said I wasn't a stalker) so I'd appreciate if I was given a link.

Thus is born [[WR:BADUSERS]]. If you're not with us, you're against us.

So do I, which is why I'm glad that never happened.


Well, there you go!

One thing you have to remember is that User:Phaedriel was, at one time, Wikipedia's most aggressive "love bomber." Some of the "gushy" wording she used on people's talk pages, including those of users believed to be minors, would have been utterly frightening if it had come from someone who self-identified as a man. To some of us, it looked like a classic cult indoctrination technique - and some of it is still used to this day as evidence that Wikipedia is a cult. And as things stood back then, there was no way to verify that she wasn't a man, other than (as you would put it) "stalking." Or, as a reporter might put it, "verifying her story."

So to look at the situation in hindsight and accuse people of "stalking" her, without also mentioning what she was doing at the time and the context in which she was doing it, is highly disingenuous. Mind you, I understand why she was, and is, popular with other WP'ers... but not everyone here is a WP'er.

Somey, I heard somewhere (and I believe on here) that Phaedriel's department received threatening calls from Andrew Morrow.
I don't think Wikipedia is a cult, because they don't really worship, but if it were, attacking her for the way she writes I don't think is right. I am a critic of Wikipedia, and am not what Joseph100 would refer to as a "Wikicultist", if he really knew about me. In the context you used the word Wikipedian, I think you meant the same thing that Joseph100 meant when he said Wikicultist.

I find the above language very creepy and think that Bluevictim should be cautioned to cease and desist using it in the presence of people who might conceivably be vegetarians, if not indeed respectable vegetables.

Jonny

As I recall, the info on Phaedriel came from this page, but she cleaned up the page within a week or two after I put the new info on hivemind. There were one or two other message boards, where she was a member, that were associated with the practice of Wicca.

Teenage boys should stay away from her.

After mid-2007, or before? Remember, mid-2007 is when JzG started in with the "Morrow was jailed for harassing Wikipedians" talk. That doesn't excuse it, of course, if such calls are actually threatening, but honestly, would Morrow actually make threatening calls to a police department? I know he's nuts, but come on. Also, you said someone called her at home, which I've been told by various concerned parties (except Phaedriel herself, natch) did not happen. They could always be lying, I suppose.


Not all cults are religious, or more accurately, most definitions of "cult" don't require a religious component. (Even so, some might disagree with you!)

As for the rest, well... as she herself would say, I have no words.


Mmm... vegetables...


She's cleaned up tons of stuff - good for her! But what she hasn't been able to clean up are hundreds of "my sweet dear very special so-and-so" talk page revisions on WP, some of which indicate where she lives, what sorts of things she does when not editing, and so on. Wikipedia is now easily, by far, the most exhaustive source of personal information on her in existence. Someone should give her that Oversight bit, pronto!...

In this diff for example, she reveals her secret Comanche name. (Which IMO is much cooler than her not-so-secret, non-Comanche name.)

Phaedriel's love-bombing makes me puke. The only thing worse was when she posted this open letter on the Talk page of my biography. Not my User_talk page, but the Talk page of my biography. I told her to move it somewhere else, and was prepared to complain to the internal affairs dude at the Oklahoma City Police Department if she didn't comply.

Putting that on my bio's Talk page was an invitation for every wikilove-struck boy-child admin to give me more grief on my bio. Fortunately, it was taken down and I never sent any letter to the OCPD.

That open letter was about Katefan0. I saved Katefan0's career by scaring her away from Wikipedia in the nick of time. I never had to contact anyone at Congressional Quarterly because Katefan0 was quick to recognize her real-world situation, and permanently left Wikipedia within hours.

I surely thought the open letter was about your biography. Phaedriel, if she was at least semi-experienced on Wikipedia at the time, should have known to post a letter to you not concerning your biography or a statement you had made on that page, libelous or not, on your user talk page.There is no other reason for it to sicken you.
I believe your action regarding Katefan0 was a heartless attempt to fire her or drive her off Wikipedia, and it turned out to be the latter. You shouldn't have bragged about it by claiming you are some hero for doing it.
You can't prove faith, bad or good, and I don't think it was a deliberate attempt to "harass and annoy" you. As far as I'm concerned, Brandt is heartless, robotic, and overly legalistic, and doesn't think of people, he thinks of "entities under the letter of the law" and values legal puffstuff over people's feelings. Just my opinion.

Katefan0's wiki-fate was sealed by her own wiki-actions. In hindsight now, she and her employer (if aware) are both thankful it was Brandt who discovered her COI quickly and asked her to disclose on-wiki, and not a competitor who wouldn't have been so polite.



Spare us, oh mighty weeping crocodile! WP:BLP victims are regularly lectured about how they are simply entities "under the letter of the law" (consider the bullshit Don Murphy is withstanding now re: "public person"), and thus free wiki-targets, and not just temporarily either, but for the remainder of their lives.

Is this shoe a tight fit, or what? Do you have the intellectual honesty to admit you and your cult is deeply in the wrong?

If you really want to make Brandt look like a slime-ball, you go back to your little hive and have "opt out" and "no original biography" installed as policy. Lead us, oh great ethical master, lead us all by stellar example! (For a change.)