Jayjg makes his ninth ever edit to Wikiquote, using it to castigate Dan Tobias (making his first and only edit) for carrying the "cabal" war into that hitherto serene realm.

For the uninformed, SlimVirgin and Jayjg's meatpuppet Crum375 got all upset because someone had poached his username there (it's incredibly clever, after all). Crum complained to someone, who complained to someone, and -- lo and behond! -- Quaddel blocks the guy (totally out of process) for choosing this username (WP:BADTASTE, perhaps?)

It gets better, though -- our once-but-not-anymore very own Poetlister arrives to unblock the not-really-Crum375, and wonders out loud what roused Quadell from his seven-month snooze to take this action.

The whole thing is documented on Wikiquote's Admin page (a diff-link for when it goes away), as is really a good source of hilarity, especialy as it involves several Review regulars as well. In general, the Wikimedia-project-wide single-signon stuff has raised lots of interesting hackles.

My favorite part of this scrum:
Behold as a hapless Crum is roundly chastised on his WP talk page for attempting to throw his, er, weight around on a project where he has very little weight.

It has been a rough couple months for this fellow.

I'm aware that the idea that Crum375 is a sock of a certain other prominent en.Wikipedia admin has been discredited, but, that arrogant sense of entitlement, repeated claim of harassment, and polite but pointedly condescending and patronizing manner of expression Crum displays on his talk page looks amazingly familiar.

For me this identify theft amounts to harassment, bordering on stalking. Do I now need to watch everything this lunatic says or does...

People know my interest lies with the well being of the volunteers of our projects and our projects in general. It's because of that interest that when I am sent issues about a dispute involving members of the community I have to look to the well-being of the projects themselves and see how this is being impacted. Sometimes the issue involves the interests of one project over another. Often, the issues are only resolved by bringing the light of day to the matter and allow the broader community at large to discuss the issues.

Scenario 1:
An active user with an unusual username on the English Wikipedia has, for whatever reason, never taken advantage of SUL. An account opens up on a much project which is, given the name, implausibly anything other than an impostor of the English Wikipedia account. It does, however, have apparently useful contributions (no difficult matter on this wiki if one is familiar with it); and the local community, while believing that the account is an impostor account seems to be unwilling to resolve the situation without demanding that the user come to the smaller project and ask for usurpation. Obviously, we wouldn't want to force the issue with an autonomous project.

How should this be addressed?

Does the user have any other option than editing the smaller wiki and adding the Username Change request, which basically subjects the user to his/her IP information being revealed to additional individuals, not of his/her own wiki?

Getting noticed at the highest level - someone has been whining to the bosses while Crum375 still is not editing (but has activated accounts on several other wikis in the meantime). Posted by Cary Bass on Foundation-l

. . . and the ever-amusing Scottish-dialect-wikipedia.

According to Crum375:

For me this identify theft amounts to harassment, bordering on stalking. Do I now need to watch everything this lunatic says or does...

Of course, Cary should really be thinking "do the complaints of one person on one wiki trump that wiki's otherwise working standards." the answer is of course not, and the fact that Crum is a bit of a douche doesn't matter.

Yes. Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Branden they are.

What if Crum375 were some well-known poster at some other site, for example, Wikipedia Review? If I ran a website, I'd be inclined to disallow obvious impersonation of pen names regardless of whether I felt obliged to the other site. For example, I'd hope we wouldn't allow anyone here to register as "Mantanmoreland" unless he really were Gary Weiss - and best, it's just confusing. Here it's more like power trolling. I hear the point being made that Wikiquote is independent of en.WP, and doesn't have to bow to the dictates of the cabal. Great point, wrong case.

No opinion on the right/wrong of the accusation in general, but since SUL the new MediaWiki software automatically sets up an account in your name on any other wiki you visit if you visit it whilst logged on to en-wiki – it's not a case of deliberately setting up accounts.

For sure, but it is a little strange that although not editing, Crum is wandering around these other Wikis. Withdrawal?

According to Crum375:

Does the user have any other option than editing the smaller wiki and adding the Username Change request, which basically subjects the user to his/her IP information being revealed to additional individuals, not of his/her own wiki?

Is Cary saying that he doesn't trust the WQ Checkusers? That's a very, very serious accusation.

Is Cary saying that he doesn't trust the WQ Checkusers? That's a very, very serious accusation.

Presumably Jayjg does trust them, since he's posted there (though of course he may be using an open proxy, since we've got very few of them blocked yet).

I think he forgot about creating a throwaway account "Crum375_temp" which is what everyone else does.

So the admin who's had the name for over two years is expected to jump through various hoops now, including creating a temp account there to request his name back, even though he doesn't want to post there and give away his IP address -- the reason is that at least one of the bureaucrats is an administrator with Wikipedia Review, and has been actively involved in outing people.

So the admin who's had the name for over two years is expected to jump through various hoops now, including creating a temp account there to request his name back, even though he doesn't want to post there and give away his IP address -- the reason is that at least one of the bureaucrats is an administrator with Wikipedia Review, and has been actively
involved in outing people.

Clearly this is not an option, as the SlimVirgin so eloquently points out:


You see, it's a matter of principle! And stop outing people here, Lar, it gives us a bad name

(Oh, she's talking about Poetlister. Sorry.)

Maybe PL would come back from her forced-exile to somehow slip Crum's IP address to the powers that run WR, just as soon as Crum reveals it to the admins on WQ.

More importantly, how would Slimmy even know? I'm tellin' ya, every time I start to think she's changing for the better, she comes up with a statement like that.

Yes, it's all part of our diabolically massive communist/fascist/Larouche-ist/anti-naked-short-selling conspiracy master-plan, blah blah blah.

Poetlister was almost never involved in "outing people," here or anywhere else.

Besides, what would Crum375 have to be afraid of, unless s/he were a registered WR member already? And even if s/he were, Poetlister isn't the sort of person who would misuse privileged information like that,...........

So the admin who's had the name for over two years is expected to jump through various hoops now, including creating a temp account there to request his name back, even though he doesn't want to post there and give away his IP address -- the reason is that at least one of the bureaucrats is an administrator with Wikipedia Review, and has been actively involved in outing people.

And even if s/he were, Poetlister isn't the sort of person who would misuse privileged information like that, even if there were actually something to gain by doing so. She has too much @$#%&!! integrity for that, dammit!

Clearly this is not an option, as the SlimVirgin so eloquently points out:


You see, it's a matter of principle! And stop outing people here, Lar, it gives us a bad name

(Oh, she's talking about Poetlister. Sorry.)

the reason is that at least one of the bureaucrats is an administrator with Wikipedia Review, and has been actively involved in outing people.

She has the kind of integrity that might allow her to arrange for "Crum375" to be replaced with "SlimVirginAccount#2," though. And then to decline to own up to the harassment.