Forgive me for posting this here instead of the media forum. Everything gets bounced down too quickly in that forum, so while I like reading it, I don't like posting there.

It's about this Miami Herald story. It's similar to the Brian Chase case -- the guy is trying to be cute from a computer at work, and doesn't have a clue, and defames people who have money to hire lawyers. Probably some jerk in the mailroom. He's toast. There is no way that he won't be dismissed from his job.

It should be easy for the firm to identify this guy, because 208.204.187.19 has 57 posts from August 1 to January 28. It's like a map of everything that interests him.

The company has an entire Class C:
Josef Sicny & Associates UU-208-204-187 (NET-208-204-187-0-1)
208.204.187.0 - 208.204.187.255

If they have any logs at all for that period, it will be easy. Even without the logs, it won't take much to find the guy, because they know what sorts of things interest him. Office gossip probably already has him nailed.

This is a good lawsuit. Too bad it doesn't involve a bunch of Wikipedia admins. Wikipedia's only crime in this case, apart from allowing articles about living people at all, is failing to police the content rapidly enough. Jimbo's statement in the article is telling: "We try to police it pretty closely, but people do misbehave on the Internet."

Now if some hothead admin at Wikipedia deletes the 208.204.187.19 history, I'll be in touch with the plaintiff. I saved it. Do you think that sounds unlikely? Well, recall that Jimbo wiped the Brian Chase trail rather quickly, and even accused me of violating Chase's privacy by pursuing him. But that was over a year ago. I think this time Brad would stop Jimbo from being totally stupid.

The attorney for the plaintiff said he "plans to subpoena Wikipedia and other parties to learn the identities of anyone else who may have participated in posting the statements." That sounds silly, since right now they can click on it and get it immediately. Maybe they don't know what they're doing. I assume that they've tried to find the history for every IP address on the whole Class C by now, but maybe not.

If Jimbo is smart, he'll do this right now, and offer it to the plaintiff's attorney as a gift. How smart is Jimbo?

If the firm fires the guy, then the case is dead unless the plaintiff pursues it on the basis that the company's rules about improper use of computers were not enforced, and the company is therefore negligent. I don't think the plaintiff would pursue this. But then, doesn't this also mean that Jimbo's admins were negligent too? Jimbo already admits that they try to police this stuff. I know what Jimbo is thinking - he's assuming that Section 230 gives him a free ride.

It all comes down to Section 230, once again.

Does anyone know if Brad Patrick is actually a decent lawyer? I.E. What is the likelyhood that Section 230 really provides them with a proper defence?

It's a crap shoot for them. A lot depends on how many administrators' fingerprints are on the content that's the object of the court's attention. I will relay an anecdote, just to add to the opinion of Ken Myers (see an adjacent thread, where Mr. Myers has just joined us).

I sent Seigenthaler the Myers article last August. He read it closely with great interest, and gave it to his lawyer, and to his friend who happens to be a federal appeals court judge. The opinion of this judge was that the Section 230 immunity flies out the window as soon as an editor who is associated with the Foundation edits the article.

Now then, what's an editor? Is Brian Chase an editor? Probably not - the Foundation tries to keep people like him from editing maliciously (whether they try hard enough is somewhat of a separate question).

Is SlimVirgin starting a stub on me, and dozens of admins making sure over the next 16 months that I cannot successfully challenge the content in the article, or get it taken down, consitute "editing"?

Probably so.

But are admins really associated with the foundation? They're just a type of priviliged user, after all (as is someone who logs in, when compared to a nonny ip).

The only way that I could see that they could be considered to be is that they are entrusted with deletion tools.

Do admins shape content by virtue of their power to protect articles, delete articles, and block or ban users who don't agree with them about the content? Who owns the servers and pays people to develop the software on those servers? The Wikimedia Foundation. Who controls the Spam Blacklist, which has six of my noncommercial domains blacklisted for eight months now without cause? The Wikimedia Foundation. Who organizes the elections of stewards, bureaucrats, arbitrators, who in turn control which users get the sysop bit? The Wikimedia Foundation. Are there policies and procedures in place that are designed to influence content? Like maybe the Biographies of Living Persons official policy? Who ultimately decides whether these are "official" or not? Jimbo, I believe, who is the founder, and who controlled the Foundation Board of Trustees until recently, and who some might argue still controls the Board.

What we have here is evidence that says that administrators are agents of the Foundation, and I probably missed a lot of points because I'm writing this off the top of my head.

Jimbo has edited many articles. Case closed on Section 230, methinks

We've got to get that FAQ idea off the ground at some point... I'd go so far as to say that anyone who makes a constructive edit to WP could be considered an agent of the foundation for legal purposes, though the vast majority would never be sued for what they post to it, obviously.

I just checked the contribs for that IP, and it looks like they've already oversighted the edits on Fuzzy Zoeller's bio...? But as far as finding the culprit within the company is concerned, that's just a matter of going around to the cubicles and looking for whoever has some Ratt CD's. There can't be many people who are still listening to them, after all!

(30 minutes later)
Correction - The edits weren't oversighted, strictly speaking - rather, our very own User:Thebainer deleted the page and only restored the 62 revisions that had been made through mid-August of last year. So those revisions are actually still available to any admin...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...e=Fuzzy_Zoeller

(5 minutes after that)
Also, as of right now, the sue-worthy version of the article is still available on most of the scraper sites, including answers.com:

http://www.answers.com/topic/fuzzy-zoeller

I can see why he's pissed off! And the article was apparently in this state for months!

Daniel,

I think you're right that one of the most important analytical issues for purposes of the 230 immunity is "who IS the Wikimedia Foundation?" The judge (thanks for forwarding my article, can I ask what court?) also pinpointed this issue, but you don't really know the outcome until you know what he means by "associated." In my article, for the sake of argument, I suggested that admins and up would be part of the WMF "entity" (or "associated" with the WMF) because without such assumption there would've been no need to write the rest of the article. Even so, I think one would have to do a deeper dive into agency law than I did to truly answer the question (my focus was more on interpreting the case law surrounding 230).

- Ken

They probably did, but it may be that such is inadmissible under rules of evidence (hearsay). So if the data becomes a critical part of the argument, they may need someone at WP to testify at some point.

I wrote down the name of the judge that Seigenthaler mentioned, but don't hold me to my representation of what Seigenthaler told me about what the judge told him. It was like a three-sentence throwaway by Seigenthaler on the telephone, and I think I got the gist of it right, but it's complete hearsay by any standard. Now that I've qualified it to death, I can tell you that the name I wrote down is Judge Gilbert Merritt, Sixth Circuit.

In other words, it isn't complete suppression of evidence, but suppression of publicly-available evidence for the sake of suppressing negative publicity about Wikipedia. It still seems inappropriate to me. Here's the single list I saved before Thebainer did his foul deed.

Interesting... According to that, the guy also made an edit to the article about another PGA golfer, Mike Weir, around the same time he was trashing Fuzzy. That edit has also been removed - but I can't imagine what it would have been about, since Weir is usually quite reserved and seems very careful about what he says when the press is within earshot. IOW, Weir is not known for political incorrectness.

Maybe it was simple vandalism...? In which case, they should have checked that AnonIP's other edits around that same time period, given the "stricter" new BLP rules... wouldn't you think?

We're not fast enough. The memory-hole functionaries at Wikipedia are killing off everything. I should have been downloading all of it about ten hours ago. Once again, I underestimated the deviousness of Wikipedia's admins. I did manage to capture a second page about 30 seconds before they deleted it. I know this vandalized page is still on answers.com, but does anyone have a clue when this December 20 edit was finally reverted on Wikipedia? That's rather important information, because it bears directly on how well Wikipedia performs its content-policing function. It's not like this particular vandalism, which apparently is the one that interests the plaintiff most, is at all subtle!

I spoke with the Miami Herald reporter today. He called me after I emailed him my two links. He is somewhat interested in following up, but not too enthusuastic. He had tried to contact Seigenthaler, but wasn't particularly familiar with the Seigenthaler case. He didn't know about Brian Chase, for example.

To me, the spotlight is on www.jsilny.com. Since the offending IP is the only one in the entire Class C that reverse-resolves to mail.jsilny.com, it shouldn't be too hard to find the guy. I doubt that many of their 47 employees (counting from their group photo and email list) use that IP address for web surfing.

My instinct says that this corporation should make a good-faith effort to identify the perpetrator. To the extent that they fail to do this, they may be liable as a corporation. If the perpetrator is identified, and if there is an employee code of conduct that prohibits the use of company computers for non-company business, and they let go of the dude based on this, I think the company is off the hook. If they don't do this, I think they'll get in deeper and deeper.

The fun thing is that an enterprising journalist could probably find the dude just by asking someone who's been at the company water cooler recently. It would be slightly embarrassing for the company if a journalist found the guy before the head of the company found him.

This story got a full 60 seconds on Pardon The Interruption today, which means it probably made "SportsCenter" too. Public knowledge of the Wikipedia BLP problem just increased exponentially!

But unfortunately, since Fuzzy Zoeller's lawyers have essentially bought into the foundation's bogus claim that they're not responsible as a mere "service provider," little has been gained from it. And now some poor schmuck who runs what looks like a completely benign company, whose purpose is mostly just to help foreign exchange students get placings in the US, is probably going to get his ass kicked, along with the company's several dozen employees.

So I don't know who's worse, Wikipedia for failing to take responsibility for their blundering hubris in thinking their so-called "new BLP policy" was actually going to help avoid this sort of thing, or Zoeller and his lawyers for going after the little guy mumbling obscenities in the corner, and not having the cojones to challenge the people who provided that person with a stage, cameras, microphones, and damn near the biggest PA system in the world.

I guess you can't blame Fuzzy too much though, since he's essentially in a can't-win situation. No matter what he does, people are going to say he's overreacting, and they'll also repeat the accusations themselves - and just because it's in the context of a libel case doesn't mean some people aren't going to believe them anyway.

Chalk up another one for the WP'ers, I guess! They've helped to destroy yet another "notable" person and his family, along with southern Florida's leading provider of translation and placement services for non-resident students.

Given the fact that there weren't enough admin fingerprints on the Zoeller defamation, I don't think it would have made a good anti-Wikipedia case for challenging Section 230. I can't blame Zoeller or his lawyers, because they cannot be expected to appreciate the nuances and implications of Section 230 strengths and weaknesses. They're mere lawyers, not Wikipedia-watchers.

I'm waiting for a member of the Florida bar to figure out that my case is probably the strongest case that will be seen for a long time, in terms of challenging Section 230. If that doesn't happen within six months or so, I'll be disappointed in the legal profession.

The way to get the company off the hook is to identify the culprit, and I expect that this will happen. That will leave Zoeller without anybody to sue that has any money. Tough luck - that's not a smartass comment; I genuinely sympathize with him. At least it's better that it happened, because it is anti-Wikipedia publicity, and we can always use more of that.

The thing that really disgusts me is that Wikipedia itself should have used this incident as evidence that their policing system is inadequate, and then started some serious efforts to address this issue. Instead, they immediately hide the evidence to deflect criticism. That's far more disgusting than any possible criticisms that might be leveled against Zoeller or his lawyers.

Actually, I think they're perfectly aware that their policing system is inadequate. In fact, there's no way it could ever be adequate.

Think of the volume - 120,000 BLP articles alone, and many thousands more for people who still have immediate family who are alive. Can any of these people even conceive of how much material that is? I mean, we've all seen shelves full of books, dozens of volumes stacked up one on top of another... it's like that, only they're having to deal with all of it, all the time. How can a group of anonymous volunteers possibly maintain intellectual control of that much information, considering that they've got almost 2 million more articles that are out there to be messed up and vandalized too, possibly with equally bad consequences?

Sure, they've got watchlists, bots, categories, and logs out the gazoo, but it's still too much material for not enough people. How may users are really handling this stuff on a daily basis? A thousand? A hundred? They can't possibly keep up.

So it's no wonder they hide the evidence - what else can they do, other than admit defeat? And we've certainly never seen them do that! Even when it's painfully obvious...

Sorcerer's apprentice. That about sums it up. But how do we fight it if they refuse to recognize it?

He's a rather young lawyer, as far as I know he's rather untested in some of these types of cases.

Don't forget in this country whoever has the bigger pocketbook wins. Even if Brad was the worst lawyer on planet earth, he's still smart enough to file the paperwork to delay delay delay until the plaintiff is broke.

How much money does Fuzzy Zoeller have lying around, actually? I would think he's reasonably well off, having won major tournaments and all. Besides, the foundation's tactics under such circumstances would be heavily scrutinized... it would be much better to settle out of court, I should think, especially if the plaintiff were to have such deep pockets. The last thing they should want is to risk allowing a legal precedent to be set that would put them at even more risk from still more angry BLP article subjects.

But I guess this is all strictly hypothetical, isn't it... Interesting problem, though!

Well, the court of public opinion, thats the real challenge. Seeing how WP has been called the dominant online resource by multiple sources (the latest this week's Time) any attempt to sue the WMF would likely be a PR disaster for the plaintiff.

Well, let's not be too presumptuous here - "PR disaster" is a relative term. There are plenty of people and organizations who don't have a care in the world about their public image, or whose standing within their specific fields might actually be enhanced by going after the foundation - publishing companies, academic journals, zucchini growers, clown-suit manufacturers, people named "Harry"... the list goes on and on.

It takes all kinds to make a world! (Just look at me, for example!)

Well, you can call it "suppression" but I prefer to call it damage control. The revisions can be retrieved at any time, and they probably will be if they are requested by anyone representing Zoeller. In the meantime they are hidden from public display, so as to limit further exposure - since the Herald announced the revisions were still available, more people would have come looking for them. That's actually the positive approach in terms of any potential liability that the Foundation may or may not have.

While I obviously don't speak for the Foundation, the Foundation will surely comply with any subpoena or other compulsory request from law enforcement agencies. People who have a right to see the information will see the information. In the meantime there is nothing obliging us to entertain uninvolved spectators.

The intention may be damage control, but the consequence is additional damage. Fortunately, the two most important pages are preserved on Wikipedia-Watch, and linked from the top of the home page.

Jimbo and Brad should have swooped down and collected everything they had that might help identify the vandal, and given one copy to the CEO of the company that was sued, and another copy to the attorney for the plaintiff. The message would be, "Wikipedia does not condone libel, and we want to help the plaintiff and the company identify the vandal. The company is not responsible - they could not have stopped it because they had no idea it was happening. Wikipedia is more responsible than the company, because Wikipedia's efforts to police content are inadequate. Wikipedia is an attractive nuisance for vandals, and we regret this incident. We will try to do better in the future."

That's the message that civil society should have heard from Wikipedia. By hiding the evidence, Wikipedia did the wrong thing.

A subpoena - do you have any idea how long it takes to get a subpoena? The trail would be cold by then. Do you even think Jimbo and Brad would preserve the evidence that long? I doubt it. I think it would disappear as part of a "normal log rotation" or some such convenient excuse.

I would agree with you except for the fact that by the time this came to anyone's attention (and it is, naturally, regrettable that it took so long to come to anyone's attention), it had already progressed to the point of legal action. There are many requests every day for assistance with similar problems in articles, that come through OTRS or that come directly to people like Jimbo, and these are always cooperated with. The case of Mr Seigenthaler is the most prominent example.

The point is that I'm sure you can appreciate that the approach must be different when there is no private contact made, but rather legal action launched. Also remember that Wikimedia is not a subject of the suit.

I should point out that the only extra piece of information that Zoeller's representatives might possibly seek (you can see the suit as filed here) that they do not already have is any IP addresses used by the registered account which iniitally posted the material; and since that was 6 months ago that may not be possible. They already have all of the information that they could possibly have garnered from the page history.

First of all, the fact that the plaintiff had not communicated to you prior to action is a strong vote of no-confidence in the system you have set up. We can expect this to be more frequent as people realize the futility of arguing within the tangled layers of kangaroo courts that oversee the operations of WP.

But yes, the "approach must be different": if legal action is ongoing, then WP should be bending over backwards, a no holds barred hyper-aggressive search-and-destroy mission launched to identify the miscreant. Above and beyond the call of duty. Please recall that Wales is on record as saying individual contributors are responsible for the effect of their words. Patrick agrees, even citing (non-existent) verbiage in the content of "all" edit-pages. Or were these comments qualified only to apply to when the Grand Poobah says they apply? Is it formal WMF policy to resist all external efforts to extract an identity from side-channel systems within WP itself?



Maybe this was true ... prior to WP's deletion/oversighting of the material. Now that it's all gone, except for the Chosen Few with their magic decoder rings, things are probably more secure: someone from WMF may well have to answer some questions (a deposition I'd like to listen in on!). I can think of two:

1. chain of evidence: "Sir, we observed X on day 1, but later observed Y on day 2. How can we trust any of your output?"

2. spoliation of evidence: "You say your server logs are deleted after 180 days. To what purpose? We have seven experts who will testify the volume of data required to store this is utterly negligible. Why are you shielding those who libel and defame in this manner?" (Phrased in this way it is a complex question, but it can be re-written.)

You should be hoping the the plaintiff can figure out a way of converting what they currently know into admissible evidence without your help. "Thanks but no thanks!" are the words you are waiting for. But make no mistake: this case is a massive failure of WP:BLP and Wikipedia in general at all levels. You are probably going to dodge this one, but eventually the hit will land. And hard.

I dunno, guys... The Foundation essentially paints itself into a corner by promoting the idea that it's a "service provider" only, and is therefore not responsible for anything that appears on Wikipedia. They really can't aggressively pursue libel-inserting vandals without risking their ability to cling to that designation in future scenarios. It would be nice if they did, but they can't maintain the illusion of being disassociated from the site's content and play nice with plaintiffs at the same time.

One thing WP might want to do to help alleviate this sort of thing would be to put sidebar links for the RSS and Atom feeds for each page on the article page itself, rather than just the article's edit History page. Then maybe some clear instructions for how to get set up for RSS/Atom feeds...?

Better yet, a "subscribe to this page" feature to spit out daily e-mail digests containing change notifications, at least for articles in BLP categories. That might overwhelm a mailserver fairly quickly, of course, so it might be necessary to have people fill out a CGI form stating why they want the notifications, and deny them to anyone who isn't either the subject, or the subject's agent. (That's a lot of extra work, though!)

As always, none of this should be taken as a substitute for an opt-out policy, of course, which is the only acceptable way to do things on a publicly-editable website. The above suggestions would be more for people who actually want their WP bios left in, but just want better ways to monitor them.

It' to bad, but this is the the beginning of the end for Wikipedia as I would suspect that this action by Mr. Zoeller will embolden other angry subjects of Wikipedia's neutral point of view biographies to take action as well .

It would be my guess is that somebody or some organization which has been wronged by Wikipedia will file a action against them in the next six to 12 months.

When that should happen, the question is not if but when... I sure would not want to be a administrator whose identities are known because Jimbo and the foundation will toss them off the sled and into the angry dogs in a New York second.

There would be one administrator in particular that I sure would not want to be in his shoes these days which is Mr. Rob F.

Oh well, it's going to be an interesting drama for the next six to 12 months to see the Wikipedia train wreck take place.

That's actually a really good point, I'll nudge some people about getting that in motion.

As for overloading a mailserver, I don't see how it can be much worse than the 50 trillion messages the list servers send out every day....

Considering Wikipedia's penchant to revise, change, remove, or otherwise alter history... especially when it feels a hot breath of [[US:LAW]] which overrides supersedes and takes precedent thereof over [[WP:POLICY]] or [[WP:JIMBO'sLAW]]. I have cut and pasted a little nugget for general reference and thought-provoking consideration....

"Under the latest changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), companies are only afforded limited protection when electronic evidence is destroyed through automated deletion programs or other process-driven spoliation. Although the new FRCP creates a “safe harbor” for such inadvertent spoliation, judges can still sanction parties using their inherent authority. As such, there is a burden on counsel to see to it that steps to avoid process-driven spoliation are observed and followed.

Process-driven spoliation” or “PDS” is data destruction that takes place as a result of business or system processes that occur without a specific, willful decision on the part of a person. For example, a company may program its e-mail system to automatically delete all e-mails older than 90 days. This is different from deliberate spoliation, where an individual initiates actions they know will result in the destruction of data that is subject to a “litigation hold.” For example, a CEO orders all e-mails relating to a lawsuit be deleted. Clearly, there is no “safe harbor” provided in the FRCP for deliberate spoliation...."

http://www.krollontrack.com/newsletters/cy...rime/feb07.html
http://www.krollontrack.com/newsletters/cy...me/jul03.html#1


In other words, eliminating evidence if there seems to be bad-faith will get Wikipedia in a great deal of trouble irrespective of their responsibilities or lack thereof under section 230. This is an area of law, which seems to be developing very rapidly, it appears that the courts are taking a very dim view of tampering and/or destruction of evidence irrespective of the fact that it is done either manually or through automation.

This may be the start of the end for Wikipedia although the end Wikipedia is still not in sight.

It sounds like some very good, very creative minds are onto something here.
But if you are seriously discussing the demise or "the end of Wikipedia" why is this discussion open for thousands to see?
In addition to Brad, I am sure that a team of attorneys who represent Wiki investors and VC's in addition to some obcessed adms are thrilled to read your strategy and take proper evasive action. Or is this a rattling to direct Wiki management onto a different track? What am I missing here? Why don't you take this behind a secure site or email and implement your actions? And then have us applaud and reinforce actions taken.

Lastly, why are you talking to a Miami Herald reporter when you should be speaking to the AP, Reuters or Bloomberg in Miami ;>

I don't mean to break your heart, but it would be a fair assumption that Brad understands these self evident problems, as well as us. If and when any lawsuit is dropped on the doorstep of Jimbo Jones and Brad, don't you think they can figure out this self evident strategy.

I don't think I have revealed anything that they don't already know or have probably figured out on their own. This all can be easily researched and the loopholes in the weaknesses of section 230 as well as other stratagem is not rocket science.