29 ms·
Admin unmasks self as sockpuppet of other admin who was banned in 2015
- akolbe 3y agoThe admin in question had previously been the subject of a Newsweek article: "Manipulating Wikipedia to Promote a Bogus Business School" https://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogus-business-school-316133.html https://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-p... That was back in 2015.
- victorbjorklund 3y ago"was extremely banned in 2015" Just made me laugh. How are someone "extremly" banned? Either you are banned or not.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> How are someone "extremly" banned? Either you are banned or not. You might be found to have committed 170 different bannable offenses. Banning is idempotent, so there wouldn't be any difference in the penalty, but such a person would be describable as "more banned" than other users. Similarly, you might be found to have committed offenses which put you well over the threshold for banning. This too would make you "more banned" than other users who were more borderline.
- hnbad 3y agoFWIW the clear difference here is that if someone is banned over one thing, their ban might later be reversed if that thing is no longer considered bannable or if opinions on the incident change. If they did 170 different things, each one warranting a ban, the only way for the ban to be lifted would be for each of those 170 things being dismissed individually. The same goes for doing one bannable thing but "a lot" or to a very extreme degree. Say, defacing a Wikipedia article with a bogus message versus defacing the entire Wikipedia website with borderline illegal graphic content. There's arguably no "mildly" banned but this distinction makes sense in a lot of contexts to give a rough idea of context: a corpse is dead but the scattered remains of someone caught up in a high yield explosions are extremely dead as even in a sci-fi story it would be hard to imagine them being "revived", a dainty woman might be pregnant but if she's visibly close to delivery with a pronounced waddle and struggling to get up after sitting down, it would be fair to call her extremely pregnant as there's no denying her state whereas the pregnancy might have been hard to even notice a few months earlier. English lacks a grammatical signifier for evidence or degrees of confidence (no, the English subjunctive is a poor approximation at best and mostly limited to expressing explicit doubt) so superlatives are a good way to express high levels of confidence. "I am banned" means you're banned but leaves room for the possibility that this might change or be reversed. "I am extremely banned" suggests it's that way now and there's nothing to change that and nobody will likely ever be interested in changing that in the future.
- mschuster91 3y ago> How are someone "extremly" banned? Either you are banned or not. This Wikipedia page [1] explains the different categories of bans in use on the English Wikipedia. Additionally, there are also a couple of handfuls of "global bans" wherein an individual is banned from every Wikimedia project [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Site_ban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Site_... [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_bans https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global_bans
- pndy 3y agoProbably just like in the most scenarios nowadays: user gets ban and cannot appeal the decision in any way Perhaps in the basic form of dealing with users who break the rules Wikipedia allows an appeal or bans are temporary - I'm just guessing, I stopped being an active Wiki user some 10 years ago. I didn't want to lose nerves on trivial issues like edit wars with self-appointed experts who couldn't accept they might be wrong. Also, I've found some 2 days ago that my IP range was banned from anonymous edits because someone somewhere did once something
- nmeofthestate 3y agoPeople sometimes use language in a playful manner, for humorous effect.
- moffkalast 3y agoPeople sometimes hit other people with a bone of the upper arm, for humerus effect.
- HlessClaudesman 3y agoOne rung on the ban ladder beneath infinity banned.
- kurtreed2 3y agoSometimes "sockpuppet abusers" aren't just banned. They get doxxed on LTA (Long Term Abuse) pages and so on with their IP addresses, locations, habits, names, and even off-wiki activities. Talk about a GDPR violation.
- TheSmoke 3y agothis reminded me of the /KLINEs on the IRC servers. you'd first /KILL someone then you'd KLINE their username if they didn't behave, then you'd KLINE their IP. then there's /GLINE which would effectively do the same thing but for the entire network.
- stonewhite 3y agoMakes me think of the "Impaled with Extreme Prejudice" anime trope. I guess sometimes it is necessary https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImpaledWithExtre...
- teddyh 3y ago> In short: what? Excellent summary.
- contingencies 3y agoI retired from admin status earlier this year. Can't stand the environment on Wikipedia these days. You can't even stay out of politics and contribute, ignorant people delete good faith contributions constantly.
- denton-scratch 3y agoI've been editing Wikipedia for 15 years, but I've never wanted to be an admin. Yeah, I get reverted a fair bit. I very rarely bite back; disputes are incredibly draining of time and energy, and usually pivot on obscure interpretations of Wikipedia policy. If you look on having your edit reverted as "Someone on the internet is wrong", and don't take it personally, you can just walk away from that article without your blood-pressure getting out of control. There are always other articles that need fixing.
- contingencies 3y agoNever sought it either, it was offered to me in the early days (~15 years ago) and I simply agreed. Never much used the powers. I do however think a diverse set of interested people is a stronger community than a small set of policy zealots, and that the Wikiverse has largely lost its way, abusing the significant contributions of a few by rewarding what amounts to negative behavior.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoCan't a supermajority of admins vote to kick out someone disruptive?
- kurtreed2 3y agoGood for you. They're going to get proverbially burned down eventually because of two dozen sexual harassment scandals.
- chmod775 3y ago> What was the point of spending years as a productive administrator, making tens of thousands of edits and logging thousands of actions, to implode the whole thing over a pointless argument on an RfA talk page? Maybe they just honestly enjoyed the work, then they didn't feel like it anymore, and banned themselves. It let them have the last laugh - they just kept doing what they wanted even after being banned, then ended it on their own terms when they felt like it. It's not like they lost anything, except the opportunity to perform unpaid work and get more articles written about them from people who cannot fathom someone would voluntarily relinquish some meaningless position.
- hutzlibu 3y ago"It's not like they lost anything" If you read about the original incident, linked in another comment: https://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-promote-bogus-business-school-316133.html https://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-p... it means they lost the power to use Wikipedia to promote another scam. The original account was no troll doing it for the lulz, they were after money and possibly actually a group of people. So either this revelation is now fake for whatever reason, or there is more going on. In either case, all of the activity of said admin (Lourdes) should probably be looked at with concern. Possible other scams to be found.
- joenathanone 3y agoIt seems like you are reading into it too much, the account only ever shilled for one company, not that it makes it okay, but that makes it more likely a personal affiliation rather than an admin for hire.
- hutzlibu 3y agoIt seems you missunderstood me, I did not say they were for hire. But they were after money. And they got money by convincing students they can get internationaly accepted and sought for MBAs, while they were worthless in reality. And wikipedia was promoting that fraudulent school for 4 years, repeatedly deleting sources exposing the scam. That was organized. And maybe they found new projects to work on after the old got exposed too much, or indeed freelance, sell out their wiki skills to other malicious actors. At the moment it is all not really clear to me.
- throw932490 3y agoThe whole concept of "ban" (like removal) is stupid. Wikipedia should be a tree of various interpretations. With single topic, I want to see texts from all sides.
- cthor 3y agoThis is already possible if you look through the revision history and talk page. Outside of very rare circumstances, contributions don't get redacted.
- throw932490 3y agoNot really. Imagine some "branch" that got banned 10 years ago. By now it would have many edits and several sub-branches.
- msla 3y ago> Wikipedia should be a tree of various interpretations. With single topic, I want to see texts from all sides. I can tell you right now that that's a utopian vision. Most "sides" would be spam. Wikipedia has elaborate filters to keep spammers out, from IP range blocking to URLs you can't use in edits if you want the edit to actually go through. Since spam can be automated, and since there's a person on the other end of that automation hoping for a payout, it seeps into pretty much everything that isn't actively maintained.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 3y agoI thought about that as well, many articles are controlled by a little clique of opinionated and partisan moderators. It'd be good if there could be forks of certain pages in which certain viewpoints are being suppressed.
- PurpleRamen 3y agoInterpretations should still stay with the facts and be legal. And there are also many attempts to bury facts and interpretations for whatever reason. Removing anyone who is in harsh conflict with the mission of Wikipedia is justified.
- 3y ago
- Aardwolf 3y agoI don't know why, but this all reminds me of when I was in secondary school, and many of us were in IRC channels of local ISP's and sites, and things like being channel operator or admin, or getting kicked, banned or k-lined could all give incredible feelings of power or despair. The political structure in the IRC channels and servers could change dramatically any evening, and some would boast about their mIRC war script skills, or things like knowing the cousin of a server admin, the next day in school
- underseacables 3y agoI think a lot of what people do in life is for power. Everyone wants to feel like they have power, especially power over other people. It's driven many of the recent social and political movements. Those who feel like they do not have power continually fight and struggle against those who they see have power, until they gain a modicum of power and almost universally abuse it.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoI wonder if that perspective is skewed by your current life circumstances. I've felt the way you described at some points in life, but not the majority of the time.
- pammf 3y agoNot much, at least according to this book[1]. 1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58642436-the-status-game https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58642436-the-status-game
- underseacables 3y agoThe idea first really occurred to me when the woke movement gained steam. I saw people wielding ideological positions as a club. Suddenly people who may have felt like they were oppressed and had no power, had a new weapon to oppress and force people they saw as their oppressors to do something they did not want to do. It was almost like a mantra of righteous indignation. "How dare you not agree with my political, social, or whatever position. That makes you a bigot, and I'm going to get you." The government turned a blind eye to that, and in many ways condoned that behavior. The Internet probably made it worse. I do not believe that one person has the right, or should have the power, to force their opinions, views, or ideas on another person. Organizationally, that's another story, but as a person, I believe you should have the right to believe and think and feel whatever you want even if it's contrary to everyone else. So long as you're not directly harming anyone. Words alone are NOT violence, unless it is calling for violence, or expressing a desire to cause harm. The problem with power, and something that's never really been applied to the random individual, is that it corrupts, and the more power one has, the worse it gets.
- praash 3y agoIs there any chance of the account being hijacked? It would make this act of self-destruction even more bizarre due to the massive opportunity for abuse, though.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoThere's always a chance, of course, but "I was hacked" is the oldest excuse in the book when called out for something.
- Fnoord 3y ago..which doesn't work in Germany. You're accountable, period. Hence why hotels snoop and register activity. I don't think it is the oldest either. Coercion is older. "Forgive me father, they forced my hand."
- JKCalhoun 3y agoIt seems strange that administrators hide behind anonymous accounts on Wikipedia. I know providing who you are in real life has privacy issues for many, and regardless it is not clear there is even a reliable way to make sure someone truly is who they say they are. But it seems that at the administrator level Wikipedia could make an attempt at this. User Beeblebrox, Wifione, Lourdes... It's weird reading this — like it's some kind of secret club in grade school where everyone has code names. I know I am not typical in that my user name is my own name. Part of me cast off anonymity on the internet though if for no other reason to keep myself honest in my postings — a deterrent to allowing some kind of alter-ego to shit post and such.
- underseacables 3y agoWikipedia has always been a secret club. I've always felt the admin's are required to follow a specific social and political mindset. It's not much different than Reddit. Like HN, moderation is only as good as the person doing it, and transparency is next to non-existent.
- mschuster91 3y agodang here acts reasonably transparent in my experience.
- travoc 3y agoHow would you even know if he wasn't being transparent?
- Fnoord 3y agoBy observing a lack of transparency within his comments; which I don't observe, as I observe the opposite: transparency. It allows him to earn trust, as it makes him accountable.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
- Havoc 3y agoWiki seems to have the exact dynamics at play as Reddit power mods. Not healthy
- kurtreed2 3y agoWikipedia's structures must be viewed in the same light as Theranos at this point. Moral injuries are so strong in both.
- hunters_laptop 3y ago[dead]
- batch12 3y agoDoes it seem strange to anyone else that the confession is written much better than the user message?
- Temporary_31337 3y agoI have a bit of silver lining - I saw an article on Wikipedia about Unicode that was factually incorrect and I edited that anonymously, fully expecting that some overzealous bot will overturn my edit. It’s a few months later now and my edit is still live for the whole world to enjoy!
- themoonisachees 3y agoSame for me for the F.E.A.R. 3 page. I'm sure nobody reads it but it was my first successful edit.
- bawolff 3y agoMeh, its the internet. If you create a new account, dont do anything evil, nobody will know its you.
- symlinkk 3y agoHow effective is a “ban”? Can’t he just make a new account? If they ban his IP it’s easy to get a new IP too.
- kurtreed2 3y agoThey back it up by doxxing alleged repeat offenders on "Long term Abuse" pages.
- spandextwins 3y agoWikipedia will probably be replaced by AI soon. That should end all that.
- kurtreed2 3y agoBotipedia is already a thing although in beta.
- spandextwins 3y agoAll of wikipedia fits on a thumb drive. You can mirror it and host it yourself. Not sure why there's so much buzz around it. And wow! They do know how to spend money there!
- capableweb 3y agoAll the text of Wikipedia fits on a thumb drive, yeah. But add in the images and suddenly it becomes hard to find a stick that could fit it.
- Fnoord 3y agoNot really. I mean 1 TB microSD cards exist. Look at Kiwix. I've downloaded the English without the images, and the Dutch version with. Easily got them on my smartphone. Useful when I wouldn't have internet but would still like to look something up. Or if I want to have 'absolute' privacy about what I look up on Wikipedia (assuming my smartphone isn't pwned).
- capableweb 3y ago1TB doesn't come close to fitting Wikipedia + images, you'd need closer to 500TB to be able to fit it. Fitting just the text part is easy.
- miohtama 3y agoThe thumb drive does not write and update those articles by itself.
- moomin 3y agoGuarantee you there’s a third admin account. And maybe a fourth.
- bradley13 3y agoBack in its early days, I used to maintain a few articles on Wikipedia. Then the admins got full of themselves. Wikipedia is a valuable resource, and it does need editors. However, some people get drunk on a little power, and that us exactly the type of person attracted to this kind of unpaid role. It wasn't worth dealing with them 15 years ago, and it sounds like it has only gotten worse...
- kurtreed2 3y agoThere are two dozen sexual harassment scandals committed by admins and editors which was uncovered by a journalist starting from a year ago. She has finished written the feature story which might get published on the Daily Beast next year.
- kurtreed2 3y agoThere are even juicier, serious, and damning scoops waiting to be put into the limelight by mainstream media. There are two dozen sexual harassment scandals against women on Wikipedia, involving editors, admins and even high-up stewards and sysops. https://wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=26833#p26832 https://wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=26833#p... https://rdrama.net/post/215764/there-are-two-dozen-sexual-harassment https://rdrama.net/post/215764/there-are-two-dozen-sexual-ha... A user who claims to be a reporter had said that Daily Beast killed the story about Wikipedia's harassment scandals against women on a Wikipedia criticism forum. Excerpt with further redaction to profane words: > For the folks at home, the story I was working on was going to be published by the Daily Beast in Spring 2024. Everything was in place then we had to go to both Wikipedia and the National Archives for comment, as required by law. Archvies wouldn't speak to us and Wikipedia threatened to sue, I suspect because of what we had found out about their administrators. The piece had mainly been about administrator abuse, using cowtools on Wikipedia to trace ip addresses, dox people's identities then harass them in real life. The (Male Victim) clusterf** was a big part of the story, but not the entire story. The real beef of the article was about female editors on their site being stalked and even assaulted after having their identities revealed online by administrators. I found several cases of that including a woman who was stabbed outside her home in Mexico City by a stalker who had researched who she was off of her Wikipeida profile. > Daily Beast backed out because of the lawsuit threat, but I still have the whole story and might one day sell the rights. For now, its back to Eastern Europe covering real news. She also disclosed further details about these scandals. > I gave Daily Beast my story, I'm not sure if they will run it or not. You have to remember the (Male Victim) case is something of old news, as it happened five years ago in 2018. (Perp) and his internet activities were more recent, but he's been quiet now for about two years since I think he actually got a bit scared after his name started popping up on law enforcement radars. I've confirmed he was talked to at least once by law enforcement, mainly about his obsession with the U.S. government worker (Perp) who he had convinced himself was (Male Victim). > (Male Victim) probably did operate that account about fifteen years ago from what I can tell, but was one of several people who did. (Perp) and his buddies don't like it when their narrative gets spoiled, and refused to ever admit, even with the evidence staring them in the face, that the (Male Victim) account was clearly being operated by more than one person. It was actually (Witness) who confirmed that for me in one of our interviews and had himself spoken to two of the people who operated the account. > For those wondering, the end game of (Perp) appeared to be blackmail, or some kind of weird plan where he was going to fly to the United States and confront (Male Victim) in person literally at the front door of the National Archives and be some kind of Wikipedia hero - that's how crazy that guy is. He never went through with his plan since, like I said, law enforcement started taking an interest in him especially after it appeared he really did have a plot to travel internationally to a US federal building in Washington DC. What's really ironic is that when all the (redacted) was going down, (Male Victim) didn't even work at the National Archives anymore. > Also, gotta remember, (Male Victim) was only a small part of my story. In three years of research, I found over two dozen cases where Wikipedia administrators had misused their authority, traced ip addresses, and stalked people in real life. Two of the worst cases ever were (Female Victim A), who some on Wikipedia actually tried to bankrupt as well as a user named (Female Victim B) who apparently there was some type of plan to kidnap and rpe. Not to mention (Female Victim C), who never told me her user name, but was attacked outside her apartment in Mexico City after a Wikipedia administrator traced her ip address and gave the information to her attacker. > It's actually a wonder no one has been killed yet by some of the people on that web site. More breadcrumbs about the scandals. > The (Female Victim D) case was a major part of my recent article, and I spent about a year investigating what happened and interviewed her twice (virtually). What the Wikipedia case didn't report was that those two men did a "trial run" to her village a week or two beforehand and were seen on the street leading up to her home taking pictures and apparently watching her come and go, timing when she would be alone. They were seen by neighbors which is actually how she got tipped off about what was going on, but then the d*kheads started calling her house with both prank and hang up calls. When they came back for "the real thing" she was on her guard and saw them coming. That was also no innocent prank, and it certainly wasn't a misunderstanding where they "got lost on the train" and just happened to wind up on her remote street. I actually think they were trying to kidnap her. > After getting in touch a friend who in turn interacted with the reporter for more details, I learn that there are also a p-dophile scandal within where one of the corrupt Wikipedia administrator tried to traffick a teenager from Thailand into his home. > Sorry I have been out of the loop for a while. That question was posted by a man in Thailand named (redacted) and was connected to a rather despicable incident involving (redacted - perp). I'd previously sent the details to this site's administrators. Imagine if Daily Beast gets its gut together and pull a John Carreyou against Wikipedia next year? The results and impacts could be greater than the downfalls of Theranos, Johnny Kitagawa and Weinsteins combined together. Although the publication schedule was set at next year, there are realistic possibilities that because of WMF legal threats and so on, it could be delayed into the future. Which brings an interesting possibility, what if the Daily Beast feature story is released concurrently with Marvel Secret Wars?
- donaldjoan36 3y ago[dead]