> Kelly Martin on SlimVirgin

Infoboy

http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/...slimvirgin.html

QUOTE

Monday, July 30, 2007
Much Furor about SlimVirgin

By now basically everyone has heard about the allegations that SlimVirgin is a spy. I'm not going to comment a whole lot on the evidence; if you want to review it, please do so. The thing I find interesting is the way in which Jayjg confirmed the rumors in an reply to a question I asked him back in June 2006 inquiring about his oversighting of every edit ever made by SlimV (SlimVirgin's prior account). I'm not at liberty to share the email -- it was on the super-secret arbcom-l mailing list that we all swore in blood never to reveal anything from, and I'm not ready to burn that bridge quite yet -- but on rereading Jay's response to my inquiry I'm quite convinced that he was blowing smoke then and is doing so now. The exact details of the rumors that are spreading like wildfire now may not be accurate, but I'd be totally unsurprised to find out that SlimVirgin is somehow connected to the the Flight 103 bombings. Why else would she have all of her edits to such topics disappeared?

What amuses me most about all this is how amateurishly done this has been. Jayjg's hamhanded attempts to protect his friend have actually done a great deal to draw attention to it. Jimbo and the rest of the ArbCom concluded that Jay's use of oversight back then was appropriate, but really it quite obviously was not. The horse was long gone from the barn at that point; while the content of the edits may be hard or impossible to find at this point (the edits were deleted before being oversighted, which means they're not in any of the dumps) the edit summaries and the articles edited are still very much available. So instead of proof we can only speculate, but suggestive evidence combined with an obviously hamhanded coverup will tend to convince most people. Jay's problem is that he's not as smart as he thinks he is. And while Jimbo's got his back for now, that'll evaporate if public opinion goes the wrong way. Just look at what happened to Essjay.

Fascinating stuff. I hear Jimbo's gone to bat for Slim on this one; it'll be interesting to see whether he has to eat his words again or not.

posted by Kelly Martin at 12:43 AM

blissyu2

Kelly Martin gets my vote. She was a bit of a bitch back in the userbox dispute and before that in such things as the Poetlister ban, but once she found out how awful SlimVirgin was she really turned around. I can remember her reaction when she found out the sheer level of corruption by SlimVirgin in trying to justify the Poetlister ban, and Kelly Martin very nearly quit Wikipedia on the spot over that. Of course, I suspect that her outing on Wikitruth may have pushed her over the edge too.

I think that it is sad that you get someone like Kelly Martin, who we can probably see now is a really nice person, but was at one point driven mad by power while admin on Wikipedia, and while arbcom member. Now that it's gone, she is a nice person again.

Very good comments by Kelly Martin, and I hope that they don't get oversighted!

norsemoose

He's still a bit of a bitch, but occasionally Kelly Martin makes a few good points.

LamontStormstar

QUOTE(norsemoose @ Mon 30th July 2007, 11:44pm)

He's still a bit of a bitch, but occasionally Kelly Martin makes a few good points.

Don't you mean she?

norsemoose

QUOTE(LamontStormstar @ Tue 31st July 2007, 12:13am)

QUOTE(norsemoose @ Mon 30th July 2007, 11:44pm)

He's still a bit of a bitch, but occasionally Kelly Martin makes a few good points.

Don't you mean she?

No.

Nathan

Lamont: Kelly Martin is transgendered. Maybe you missed that bit

Somey

Maybe we should stop now, before this starts to deteriorate?

Personally, I could maybe see doing the whole sex-change thing, if I could end up looking like Claudia Schiffer. The doctors told me that wasn't very likely, though... apparently my hair is too dark...

GoodFaith

QUOTE(Nathan @ Tue 31st July 2007, 12:18am)

Lamont: Kelly Martin is transgendered. Maybe you missed that bit

What else is new? None of those people have any balls anyway.

blissyu2

Well, when I was on Wikipedia, I had a run-in with Kelly Martin, and I wasn't too impressed with her. But nowadays I have become more impressed with her.

As for the issue of whether to call Kelly a "she" or a "he", legally Kelly Martin is female, and hence it is respectful to call Kelly Martin "she". However, Kelly Martin was male, hence if we wish to be derogatory then we can call Kelly Martin "he". Note that the gender of Kelly Martin was exposed by Wikitruth, not by us, and nowadays Kelly Martin doesn't mind too much that people know. (Note: See the Wikitruth talk page for more specific evidence).

So call Kelly Martin "he" if you wish to be disrespectful, or "she" if you wish to be nice.

GlassBeadGame

QUOTE(blissyu2 @ Tue 31st July 2007, 9:23am)

Well, when I was on Wikipedia, I had a run-in with Kelly Martin, and I wasn't too impressed with her. But nowadays I have become more impressed with her.

As for the issue of whether to call Kelly a "she" or a "he", legally Kelly Martin is female, and hence it is respectful to call Kelly Martin "she". However, Kelly Martin was male, hence if we wish to be derogatory then we can call Kelly Martin "he". Note that the gender of Kelly Martin was exposed by Wikitruth, not by us, and nowadays Kelly Martin doesn't mind too much that people know. (Note: See the Wikitruth talk page for more specific evidence).

So call Kelly Martin "he" if you wish to be disrespectful, or "she" if you wish to be nice.

I'll give Kelly a "she" today. I think her importance, and the source of her new found greater decency, all stem from her blog. By having a outlet that is not subject to the limits set by WP's dysfunctional social networking environment Kelly gained access to wider view points. Here role is in that way similar to WR, but for an audience that does not possess as sharp of a critique of WP.

Gaining the ability to express yourself free of the hypocrisy and repression opens up more authentic possibilities. I'm sure Kelly is a better person for the experience.

blissyu2

Its not just her blog. Kelly Martin has been far more honest, and far less of a wikirobot since she got de-sysopped, and all of that. She even asked for a CheckUser on SlimVirgin at one point (I can't find the link offhand), and while she still overall loves Wikipedia, she is willing to be honest about it.

It's kind of like when you have a relationship and it all seems nice, but then when you break up you see just how wrong it all was, and you can be more honest about what has happened. I think that's what Kelly Martin has done.

Kelly Martin used to post on WR, but she was always vicious in every way. I wonder if she'd still be vicious today.

MrM

Honest, really?

Her coverage of the board elections looked as biased and as much of a stretch of the facts as anything she'd pump out in the old days. Her other stuff is pretty good, though - blogs about Wikipedia in general are usually on the money, but you have to read anything that mentions a name with the context that she's had a lot of really silly personality conflicts with the people she criticizes.

And she didn't ask for a Checkuser of Slimvirgin - she just did one herself. That's more or less why she's still desysopped.

Daniel Brandt

I can give you a checkuser on Slim right now: http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/cgi-bin/gir...i?Na=slimvirgin

And before those two, for about nine months starting October 2005, it was 70.64.45.10

Her user-agent at that time was: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6

She's probably updated her Firefox by now, but most likely she's still on a Mac.

Nathan

QUOTE(blissyu2 @ Tue 31st July 2007, 11:23am)

Well, when I was on Wikipedia, I had a run-in with Kelly Martin, and I wasn't too impressed with her. But nowadays I have become more impressed with her.

As for the issue of whether to call Kelly a "she" or a "he", legally Kelly Martin is female, and hence it is respectful to call Kelly Martin "she". However, Kelly Martin was male, hence if we wish to be derogatory then we can call Kelly Martin "he". Note that the gender of Kelly Martin was exposed by Wikitruth, not by us, and nowadays Kelly Martin doesn't mind too much that people know. (Note: See the Wikitruth talk page for more specific evidence).

So call Kelly Martin "he" if you wish to be disrespectful, or "she" if you wish to be nice.

Yes, that's a good suggestion. I have a long-time friend who's transgendered. I'd never dream of calling her anything other than 'she' because that'd be insulting.

badlydrawnjeff

Kelly's rarely right about anything - if she told me the sun rose, I'd likely go to a window anyway - but she brings up an interesting point. Jimbo is going to bat for Slim - one assumes that he's done a little bit of background checking, and one also assumes that he's at least aware of the same e-mail Kelly hints at. So either:

a) the super sekrit e-mail doesn't confirm what Kelly's saying.

b) the super sekrit e-mail is more "evidence" while being technically incorrect, thus prompting Jimbo's support

c) Jimbo is again standing behind someone he probably shouldn't be.

It's one thing to stand up for a guy who falsified his records in an encyclopedia - this is potentially an entirely different can of worms altogether, and I hope for Jimbo's sake that he's done the necessary background work on this before jumping in here.

BobbyBombastic

QUOTE(blissyu2 @ Tue 31st July 2007, 4:38pm)

It's kind of like when you have a relationship and it all seems nice, but then when you break up you see just how wrong it all was, and you can be more honest about what has happened. I think that's what Kelly Martin has done.

This is a really good way to put it. Kelly's "transformation" (from Evil Wiki Admin to Wikipedia critic

) makes me wonder how getting caught up in the MMORPG of Wikipedia may change one's personality uncharacteristically. This thread got me thinking about that initially. Who knows, maybe we'd all get along with MONGO outside of the internet and enjoy having a beer or two with him?

QUOTE(badlydrawnjeff @ Tue 31st July 2007, 6:11pm)

Jimbo is going to bat for Slim - one assumes that he's done a little bit of background checking, and one also assumes that he's at least aware of the same e-mail Kelly hints at.

(bolding mine)

Someone is bound to say this, so I might as well: I really doubt he's looked much into it. Probably limited internet access in the jungles of Zimbabwe, etc.

norsemoose

Sorry, I didn't intend to start such a derailing of the topic as I obviously did.

Kelly Martin does make some good points in this essay, and indeed, on the many occasions where (s)he posts detailed analysis of the editing patterns of Slim and Jay. (S)he does, however, still have a penchant for stirring up unnecessary drama and acting in such a way that it is clear (s)he thinks (s)he is better than anyone else. This attitude is not helpful in an environment that claims to be one of mass collaboration.

blissyu2

Kelly Martin isn't perfect. But I think its safe to say that we all hate her a lot less than we did back when she was banning Poetlister because SlimVirgin told her to, massively deleting userboxes, deciding that she didn't need any checks and balances on her CheckUser or ArbCom duties, and thinking that she was above the law. Things have changed quite significantly.