Jayjg hasn't edited since April 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jayjg Now while he stopped editing around the beginning of Passover he hasn't resumed editing since its end.

Has Jayjg decided to run to ground until the West Bank Arbcomm case is over (Jay has a habit of disappearing when he's under ArbComm scrutiny)

Will the cops take a Missing Person Report on this basis?

Why didn't anyone told me? I didn't know Wikipedia was already a better place!

Jay has a habit of lobbying the Arbcom on the special-sooper-sekrit ArbCom mailing list so furiously that he has no time for mere editing.

Maybe he's in mourning for the recently-deceased author J.G. Ballard?

A guy like that probably has no idea who Ballard was.

Safe bet, he's "hiding" from Arbcom (meaning: frantically manipulating people
behind the scenes, as shitrain falls upon his parade).

Hm. Jayjg disappears and two weeks later J. G. Ballard dies. Coincidence?

No wonder he's in hiding:


Question: If Jayjg is slapped with a ban on editing Israel related topics will he use his knowledge of CheckUser to create a sock that can evade detection?

Shouldn't we assume he's using a sock now? It's kind of hard to assume that he could go cold-turkey just like that... It shouldn't be too hard to correlate his ostrich-esque wiki-breaks against the activity of other accounts on his favourite articles.

Anybody with the time and skills for such an analysis?

Cheers, Pedrito

Knowledge of checkuser is fairly meaningless really. It's no secret how it works, and any random Joe can set up a wiki and see what the output is like. There's no way he'll be able to sock without being caught though, because if he did primarily to edit Israel articles, a Jayjg-like editor would stand out too much.

I think it is a mistake to assume that Jayjg is a wiki-obsessive like SlimVirgin or others. He is vastly more disciplined that virtually any other editor on Wikipedia, covers his tracks pretty well, and does his polticking in the background, via email.

While there is no specific evidence that Jayjg is paid to edit Wikipedia, he is a different sort of beast than those we normally deal with. He is much, much more interested in maintaining his long-term ability to influence his articles of interest than he is in the other dramas of the community.



There is already a small legion of distinct editors, like IronDuke, who will do whatever Jay tells them to do. If Jay were banned, the ranks of such distinct editors would swelll. Jay doesn't need to sock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Messiani...ioning_the_lead

I'm wondering about trying to bring some neutrality to the Messianic Judaism article at this point

I wonder who will watch my back?

You go, Yeshua, me boy. Keep your Matzos dry. But if you're going in, we don't wanna hear any lama sabachthanis. You know the local Sanhedrin there on en.wiki plays for keeps.

You's a funny funny guy.

There have been plenty of Jayjg-like editors standing out for years at those articles.


(Reads further along in thread)


Like he said.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying his a voice of an Israeli organization, possibly even a government one?

Jay certainly spends a lot of time making Wiki articles look Israel-friendly.
Many people doubt he would willingly do this for mere amusement.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no evidence of any kind regarding Jayjg, his identity, or his affiliations. My comment should be read thusly: given a longitudinal study of his editing habits, his involvement in wiki-politics, his on-wiki associates, and other incidental evidence, Jayjg presents a profile very different from (e.g.) SlimVirgin, JzG, Ryulong, MONGO, or other assorted wiki-obsessives. His skill in manipulating people without crossing clear lines, his studied use of threats, his willingness and ability to act through others (both admin and regular editors), his astonishing skill at gaming the system, and -- perhaps most importantly -- his willingness to simply disappear from the conversation for long periods, would seem to indicate someone of a more professional nature than most wiki editors (who seem to have escaped from the Island of Misfit Toys or something).

But just so no one accuses me of slinging any slurs: I am not accusing Jayjg of being an "agent" of any organization. Whether or not he acts like one is a matter for well-informed individuals to conclude on their own.

I'm not commenting on this specific case, editor, or matter, but former arbitrators were removed from the ArbCom mailing list three months ago.

As I understand it, however, there remains a distinct list containing both current and former Arbcom members. True? And even if this were not the case, I'm sure the email addresses of all the current Arbcom members are well-known to Jayjg.

Yes, along with checkusers and oversighters.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AC#functionaries-en (who is on it is public knowledge)

ObDisclaimer - that includes me.

I agree with this assessment from this high level of gamesmanship subject to two significant lapses. First, his completely amateurish commitment to the "Allegations of Apartheid"series of articles and second, his miscalculation of the reaction his attack on CharlotteWeb would bring followed by his SlimVirgin like defense on wikien-l .

I'm not accusing you of anything. You simply changed my perception of Jayjg.

However I cannot promise I will not watch his future input for any signs of this. I'm not anti-Israeli but I prefer when governments are lobbied by private persons, not the other way.

well, whoever volunteers is sure to become a bureaucrat and checkuser too just like the last guy

Kirill has proceeded to the voting stage with his proposals intact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...oposed_decision

Wow, thats going to be interesting. Lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the workshop, but this arbcom seems to be far harder on repeat offenders than the previous incarnation (see also jpgordon's particular brand of wailing and gnashing of teeth)

Amazing. That is one hard-assed Russian.
I must assume that Jay is frantically emailing all and sundry, begging for help. Perhaps he will finally pester Jimbo for special treatment one time too many, and (hey presto) the vote will be unanimous.

Jayjg is toast. The question now is, how does Wikipedia keep another Jayjg from happening again? SV\HFO, do you have an opinion on the issue?

Why would you want SV to comment? She's definitely part of the problem and not the solution.

I fully agree. Especially if the account was simply an emanation of some Israeli sponsored group, as I suspected (on a hunch only, with no evidence).

Why would they need an account which is so obviously biased? They can always create several new ones.

If Jayjg is an Israeli-sponsored account, then that nation is truly a lost cause.

Hence the Humour …

Ja Ja

It is not yet sure all the arbitrators will follow suit. I can see these fail with one vote.

I'm guessing it's not so much Missing In Action as Knitting In Progress.

Ja Ja

What fun!

Kiril's resolutions may indeed yet fall short, but I think there is a sea-change going on here.

Jayjg is almost certainly employed by an organization dedicated to promoting and defending Israel, but I think it is likely that he has successfully completed his assignment with regard to Wikipedia: Israel's legitimate fear, early on in the history of Wikipedia, was that it would become a broadly accepted and anti-Israeli information source. This could be countered in either of two ways: first, by making it pro-Israeli rather than anti-Israeli; or second, by keeping Wikipedia from becoming a broadly accepted information source. And I think clause two has been accomplished.

There will no doubt be ongoing pro-Israeli propaganda efforts at Wikipedia, but I think that the bigger guns have decided that there are more pressing issues at this point. Within a few weeks Jayjg will be working on setting a rationale by which Americans might think that an Israeli attack on Iran is a good thing or arguing that Israel's foreign minister isn't really a violent racist in spite of him being a violent racist. Or any number of other initiatives.

It's too bad Wikipedia's credibility was essentially allowed to collapse before the Jayjg problem, which has been obvious for several years, was addressed. In all likelihood, Jimbo made some sort of an exchange to promote and protect Jayjg. And he's gotten what he deserves for it!

Thing is, they did a terrible job of this. It took years, and has resulted in considerable embarrassment for Zionist groups such as CAMERA, simply by being suspected of supporting Jay and Co. whether such support was real or not.

If I had to do this, I would have just paid some starving Indian or Pakistani students to run proxy servers with scripts to auto-vandalize Wikipedia articles. Probably would have been cheaper and quicker. In all likelihood, Jay and his little butt-buddies decided to whitewash Israel all by themselves, then found out later that someone would support them.....they still act like amateurs!

This has been suspected for a looong time.

Depends on the Arbcom. If the kosher boys figure out how to get a couple people onto Arbcom, they might have a chance. But their reputation is in tatters, and the Gaza attacks in January have done immeasurable harm to Israel's reputation. The usual "you're an antisemite, you're a Holocaust denier" crap is not very effective anymore*. So it would be a superhuman job.

Wanna make sure it doesn't happen again?
Encourage Arabs to edit en-wiki.

*(Except when used against cowardly Washington politicians...)

I'm sorry, I do have to object to the use of phrases like "kosher boy". I'm not sure what you mean but if you're saying anyone who is Jewish (or even anyone who is a religious Jew who keeps kosher) shouldn't be on ArbComm then you're completely off base, particularly when you consider that the guy writing Jayjg's sentence is a "kosher boy" named Kirill Lokshin.

You're misunderstanding me. Jews ought to be welcome on Arbcom, along with everyone else -- as long as they're not the Jayjg variety of sociopathic liars.

There are Arab Wikipedians who would run a similar POV scam, if they had adequate support. Ever been to Saudi Arabia? I have. If you try to bring a map or book showing or talking about Israel into that country, the airport censors (of which they have many) will black out all mention of Israel with large black permanent markers. Along with unclad women and other things that conservative Muslims find horrifying. Imagine what a group of Saudis, supported by their government, would do to en-wiki, given half a chance.....

I suspect the only way to keep Jayjg scandals from happening again would be to have a balance of Arabs and Jews on Arbcom.

(Sometimes I wonder what's going on in the Arabic Wikipedia. Thanks to the magic of Google Translate, you can read their article about Israel. You be the judge.)

That actually doesn't look too bad to me, I have to say (albeit through the Google Translate filter). I suspect that the odd-looking "War of 1948 (the war of occupation)" title isn't POV-pushing, but just a recognition of the fact that this is the name a lot of Arabic-speakers will know it by.

Occam's razor. Never assume shadowy conspiracy when things can be explained by garden variety friends helping friends. Jayjg was a prominent Wikipedian in Wikipedia's early days, and from what I can tell didn't rock the boat much. Jimbo generally seems strongly inclined to be friendly with such people, and he also seems strongly inclined to do favours to people he's friendly with. It's much more interesting to imagine that Jimbo's made some behind the scenes deal with a global political lobby, but it's also a completely unnecessary assumption.

(Incidentally, the failure to follow Occam's razor is probably the thing that frustrates me most about Wikipedia criticism around here. Mostly, it manifests itself in the tendency to ascribe everything that is wrong with Wikipedia to the workings of some shadowy cabal, when the truth is usually both duller and extremely obvious. But I've whined about this before.)

(Also - and this is going to sound weaselly, but it's the truth - I've never followed Jayjg's editing at all, so I have no idea whether or not he's the problem he's being made out to be. Certainly people around here seem pretty unanimous on that point, but I didn't want this post to be interpreted as my joining in that unanimity, when in fact I'm quite cheerfully ignorant on the question.)

Don´t know anything about Jimbo doing some deal, but appointing Jayjg for arb.com, in front of other candidates who had received more votes (like Mirv) surely don´t count as Jimbo´s finest moment. And it was challenged. If has also been discussed in this tread.

Jayjg was an effective administrator when he wasn't busy trying to save Israel.

Since Israel has many many thermonuclear weapons, WTF do they need Jayjg for? That's the problem with all these really bad, bad WP admins: they're essentially narcissists. Really.

Yep, if anyone ever needs a quote that shows Jimbo's high-handedness and love of buttsnorkeling, that discussion would be ideal.
Nice work, Jimmy-poo. Instead of a "mobocracy", you have an idiocracy.

Maybe Jayjg is at this conference?

"Wikipedia editors say 'problematic' coverage of Israel reflects discourse"

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1082777.html

Hamas has many many Qassam rockets. WTF do they need Nishidani/PalestineRemembered/whoever for? That's the problem with all these really, really bad WR regulars: they're essentially making false and irrelevant points. Really.

I assume that Eli Hacohen is the IP involved in this discussion. Actually, I've found myself that information in Wikipedia that puts Iran in a bad light usually disappears immediately.

Anyway, I wonder if any of the Wikiproject Israel editors are attending that conference.

You compare a Qassam to a nuclear weapon? Israel has so many extra levels of offense and defense that its only real problem is paying for it all. So far, the US has never seriously considered not helping to foot the bill. All this set in stone long before Wikipedia.

Occam's Razor leads me to conclude that you are an ill-mannered idiot based on these comments. Although, admittedly, it would be much more interesting to speculate that you would comment on something you claim to know very little about -- discounting the opinions of others with whom, based apparently on hardly any evidence, you disagree -- because you're part of some shadowy cabal or a global political lobby.

Naaaah! Much more likely that you're just an ill-mannered idiot. But thanks anyway for playing!