Since we heard that Jimbo agreed to do a courtesy blanking on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req.../Badlydrawnjeff it seems that this is being done on a number of other occasions too.

We also had Charlotte Webb's Request for adminship blanked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...p/CharlotteWebb

And now I have found that the Request for adminship for Armed Blowfish was also blanked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...p/Armedblowfish

So when will it all end? I've asked many times for my Request for Arbitration to be blanked, and wiped from the database. Indeed, when we were there making demands, that was my one and only demand. Yet they refused!

So is this policy now? Are people allowed to ask for things to be courtesy blanked to protect their own privacy? I don't think that any of those "Courtesy blankings" is remotely as invasive as the ArbCom thing against me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...n/Internodeuser

Oh please, you can't possibly be as naive as you are pretending to be. I think that anybody here can figure out that this is Yet Another Weapon Of Mass Baloney (YAWOMB), that is, Yet Another Bit Of Self-Service (YABOSS) for covering the HiveAss as it does whatever the hell it wanted to do in the first place.

Jonny

What? I don't get what you are trying to say.

All I am saying is that the last time I looked there were no such thing as courtesy blankings, yet all of a sudden they are all over the place. So when is my page going to be courtesy blanked too?

This is a direct response to our efforts at collecting IRL information for the purpose of facilitating accountability from material they made available on talk/user etc pages. Thank god for data dumps.

Yes, it covers their butts, but its not a good thing for these pages to not be crawled? Baby steps.

And tone down the rhetoric for gods sake.

Well, I for one agree with the idea of courtesy blanking. It is a great thing that Wikipedia is doing to ensure more privacy. For them to apply to the horrible Requests for Arbitration and the occasional nasty Request for Adminship is commendable.

The only issue I have is: why not me?

I mean should I get the right to also say "Hey, you're lying about me on there, I know it doesn't say my real name, but I find it very offensive. The issue is over now, you have no need to keep it. Can you please delete it?"

I mean, the whole point of the Request for Arbitration was because I was asking for the Request for Arbitration against me to be deleted. They then interpreted that as a legal threat, because I said that if they didn't delete it AND added my real name or any way to identify me, then they were doing something illegal, and I might sue them (of course I didn't know that legal threats was a rule at the time). so, on the basis of my asking for the Request for Arbitration to be deleted, they banned me for a year.

That year is well and truly up now, so they have no justification for keeping it. Indeed, I would argue that they should have deleted it before it even got finished, like, say, when I quit Wikipedia in disgust a day after they opened the Request for Arbitration? You know, 2 months before the 1 year ban was started?

I mean this is all very good and all, but why is it only applied to some people? I'd like to know how come Badlydrawnjeff gets preferential treatment when I get treated like shit. And if its just that things have changed, then why can't they NOW blank it? I mean they have oversight now, surely this is a prime example of when they SHOULD use it.

Because you helped start Wikipedia Review. All the old timers here are Public Enemy #1, and by God you'll all pay.

I'm not kidding. If you ask through their channels, and they deny the request NOW, that's why.

That's probably true. But the thing is that Badlydrawnjeff posts here too, and generally in agreement with us. So again, why is he any different to me? So he does most of his criticism on Encyclopedia Dramatica, and I do most of it on Wikipedia Review. What's the difference?

It's not like I am comparing it to a member of the cabal here.

Both Armed Blowfish and Charlotte Webb, who had their Request for Adminship blanked, were attacked by the cabal.

And Badlydrawnjeff was supposed to be stalking a member of the cabal, MONGO. So how come he gets treated any differently?

My humble epologies. I guess you can be as naive as you pretend to be.

Nah, I still don't buy it. But I really do admire your keeping in character all through the play.

Jonny

There are arbcom pages up there which do have people's real names in them, and which do contain lies about that person, and which have been asked to be blanked or deleted, yet they remain. Now that courtesy blanking is starting to become policy maybe the answer is to try again, but by asking them to blank or delete the page you risk bringing even more attention to it.

Well, that is true. At least my Arb Com name, in the end, didn't have any personal details on it, because by the time that they were finished with trying to tar and feather me, they had deleted all references to who I really was. But there would be worse cases, as you suggested.

But realistically, I mean in anywhere other than Wikipedia, such things would be deleted, or kept privately, and if they were kept publicly, they could be deleted.

I mean we have on a few occasions discussed bans here, but if they requested it, we would at minimum move the discussion privately, and unless there's a damn good reason to keep it, we would probably delete it if requested. I mean once someone's banned, they're banned. Why keep it around to discuss it further?

Hypothetically if in the past Jayjg stated on his user page that he was at the very least sympathetically defensive about Chabad-Lubavitch perhaps with a few daughters (middle name Elinore?), that he was possibly associated with (warning the following link may IP-harvest -- the editors) http://www.jewishcuisine.net as in
<external images removed>
and perhaps possibly inclined to publicly state:

"The Christian worship of Jesus is called "shituf" in Jewish law, and a majority of Jewish legal decisors (most famously Maimonides) consider this to be idolatry for both Jews and non-Jews. Moreover, all Jewish legal decisors are agreed that shituf (and therefore Christianity) is idolatry for Jews." and further "Thus, in answer to your question, under Jewish law Christianity is considered a form of idol worship, and killing oneself rather than engaging in it is a mandatory Kiddush HaShem, not a human sacrifice. "

...would these few (of many or not) possibly POV incriminating hypotheticals typically warrant a courtesy blanking?

This part should probably go to our closed discussion of Jayjg, which is available for members only, and cannot be picked up by search engines. We like to keep private things off the main page, and have agreed that it is a good idea to do this, at least until such time as, in the case of SlimVirgin recently, it was released to the general public.

And no, this is not because Wikipedia wants us to do it. We couldn't care less about that. It is because it is the right thing to do.

Do you mind therefore if we move your post to the page which is trying to dissect who is Jayjg?

Whatever...

Curious...

"The jewishcuisine.net website is an archive of recipes and resources collected over the years from an active forum on Jewish cuisine at Delphi."

Didn't someone track Jayjg back to Delphi Forums previously?

Also, if that's his domain, he's hotlinking IPs off of there. All IPs are exposed now to CheckUser that viewed this if that is Jay's site.

Jimbo "courtesy blanked" my User:Wikipedia Review page, after I complained for a few months about what HE had written all over it. So, in that case, it was kind of nice for me not to have to look at libelous utterings about me any more, but it was also kind of nice for Jimbo too, to erase the evidence that he had libeled my business no less than 2 months after he had publicly supported it as "mutually beneficial" to Wikipedia.

Crazy things I've seen.

Greg

Given that the Clique likes to treat some ArbCom rulings as binding law (e.g., the one that introduced the silly ban on linking to "attack sites"), it wouldn't make sense to start blanking them, as this would cause there to be "secret" policies that you're expected to follow but can't actually see.

As usual, you WR:WACKOS are completely bonkers.

Courtesy Blanking of the sort that you nutshellcases are describing simply does not occur in Wikipedia, and you can look it up:

Item 1. Wikipedia Keeps An Akashic Record. This asserts, along with many other unquestionable truths, the following:


Item 2. WP:OFFICE mentions "courtesy" only 3 times, always as an extraordinary, rare, and purely temporary measure. That courtesy is an extraordinary, rare, and purely temporary occurrence in Wikipedia goes without saying.

Ergo, the fantasy scenario that you guys are spinning is either bare-phaced lies, pure hallucination, or wishful figments of your own disturbed imaginations.

Jonny

I thought Rootology and Hardvice were stalking MONGO.

Quite frankly I don't think that anyone was stalking MONGO. I think that MONGO was just being a prick, and people were talking to him about it. But Badlydrawnjeff was supposed to be guilty of laughing about the "stalking" or something like that. Whatever.

The sad part is that they deal heavily with stuff like that, whilst ignoring the more serious cases.

Blanking is not deletion and the information is still available in the history. It cannot however be crawled by search engine spiders when it is blanked, hence why it is done.

There're several old stories about the early days of machine translation, when the language engineers of that day would test their programs by translating phrases from Language X to Language Y and then back again, to compare the result with the original.

As one story goes, they tried out one program on the phrase "out of sight, out of mind", translating it from English to Russian and then back again, and what they supposedly got in the end was "blind idiot".

Moral Of The Story ?

Exercise For The Reader ...

Jonny

Well, ideally I'd want mine wiped entirely, but taking it out of search engines would be great. I mean they won't allow me to keep my old user page, so why can't they get rid of the thing that hurts me?

A link to your arbitration case? And can you send me an email on wiki requesting the blanking as well, to give this a little more legitimacy/stronger ground for any attacks on my actions.

Huh? Um okay, I would like to have my Arbitration page blanked, wiped off the face of existence, purged from everywhere. The basis of this is that I was a brand spanking new user at the time, and had no idea how anything worked, and hence couldn't defend myself, so they have lots of diffs that don't mean what they say they mean, but I wasn't able to put anything opposing them. They've also used it many times over to try to justify various things that were really grossly inappropriate. I was at the time very much worried that it could lead to real life identification, although that is less of a worry now that Wikipedia Review was created and I have been able to document my own side of the story through this forum.

The case pages have been blanked. They are still available in the history but are no longer indexable by search engines.

This 'Viridae' restored the deleted [[Liz Cohen]] article that JzG notoriously nuked, and now this.

I'm inclined to be liking this 'Viridae', but that's probably the kiss of death for him now on Wikipedia.

Sorry, Viridae!

Greg

Yes, I always worry when Wiki admins actually do the right thing, or something nice. They always seem to get de-sysopped/banned/or at least attacked soon afterwards. Just the same, thanks.

I do what I believe is right. I am not going to ever use my admin powers to reveal anything that shouldn't be revealed (ie I know who Untill (1==2) is but am not going to say). In the case of [[Liz Cohen]], it was a perfectly good article that was deleted for perfectly stupid reasons. In this case I have simply made the pages non-indexable. They are still viewable should someone want to go to the effort, but they cant be seen by search engines. If person about who the arbitration case is about wants it blanked, I see no reason why not. I won't however overstep my bounds and delete it for two reasons. 1. I don't usually support that sort of thing on WP, it smacks of censorship and 2. there is no way it would stay deleted and it would cause a big mess and attract attention to the pages not diminish it.

Most people know who that is.

They may believe they have worked it out, but I know for sure - having the ability to view the deleted edit. It was however just an example anyway.

Well, if Lamontstormstar knows who it is, he's not in any trouble for saying it, so you can say it if you like.

There was a thread on here earlier where others determined it was HighInBC.

Which really means nothing to any of us here, other than "Oh yay we found out who it was". Sometimes people should be allowed to keep their privacy.

That's why I didn't automatically so who it is.

But the cat is out of the bag. It's been posted everywhere even www.encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php?title=HighInBC&diff=1997210109&oldid=1997179191

MediaWiki apparently sucks for this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...281+%3D%3D+2%29

* 19:46, 25 July 2007 Until(1 == 2) (Talk | contribs) restored "User talk:Until(1 == 2)" (268 revision(s) restored)
* 19:45, 25 July 2007 Until(1 == 2) (Talk | contribs) deleted "User talk:Until(1 == 2)" (content was: '{{wikibreak}}User:H')
* 15:30, 25 July 2007 Until(1 == 2) (Talk | contribs) restored "User talk:Until(1 == 2)" (245 revision(s) restored: partial restore)
* 15:29, 25 July 2007 Until(1 == 2) (Talk | contribs) deleted "User talk:Until(1 == 2)" (removing personal info)
* 00:25, 22 July 2007 Until(1 == 2) (Talk | contribs) restored "User talk:Until(1 == 2)" (209 revision(s) restored: partial restore)
* 00:24, 22 July 2007 Until(1 == 2) (Talk | contribs) deleted "User talk:Until(1 == 2)" (shhh)

Has anyone noticed the avatar that youendonreelone is using? Who are the people in that group?

edit: the image is hosted on imageshack, file name: http://img374.imageshack.us/img374/7449/solipsysgrpwx5.jpg

Solipsys group?

Exactly.

I love "shhh" for an deletion summary.


Of course, he gives it away with "content was: '{{wikibreak}}User:H')"

I mean his mistake just spilled his identity.

I'd agree with you if he started a new account and edited as a new user, but he didn't. He got a new account and got it sysopped. Evidently it is so vile to edit as a normal editor that sysopping was a requirement. It took less than an hour for non-admin editors to to figure out that was HighInBC.

Evidently, it's an open secret among admins anyway, so he's not trying that hard to hide it.

Do we care about HighInBC? Why is he of interest?

He bullied timecop who only made good contributions to wikipedia just because outside wikipedia he ran a pranking group.

He's also proof of how highly people value admin powers on wikipedia.

Didn't we suggest once that they should have a backup pool of admin accounts for situations like that? The spooked admin could then abandon his/her original account, move over to one of the backup-pool admin accounts, change the password, and nobody would be the wiser because they couldn't check the user rights logs to see who got opped around the appropriate time.

That, or just make it so that some user rights log entries can be hidden... Of course, we don't want to give them too many ideas, otherwise they might actually use one of them someday.

Then we'd see a backup account suddenly doing stuff and HighInBC doesn't lay low, he gets in there.

The developers can add or remove permissions via sql without it showing up in the logs at all: It wouldn't do so by default.

Alternatively, they can update rights from meta (which has public logs on meta), test (which has logs on test) or internal (which has logs but you can't see them) that most people on Wikipedia wouldn't even know to look for.

That makes me think it is just a matter of time until someone releases a search engine that is capable of searching via keywords all revisions of Wikipedia and its talk pages simultaneously. Then these types of courtesy blankings will be very meaningly.

Meaningless?

Yes, ideally they'd be perma-deleted. There really isn't a lot of point in keeping them, at least with cases that they have no intention ever to consider. The recent unblock nonsense, where Yamla acted like a spoiled child, and didn't even raise a single question amongst the Wikipedia heirarchy proves that in cases like mine, truth is irrelevant, and they will never consider any possibility of it. Hence if I want to go back, I can't do it through playing by their rules. They've demonstrated that clearly now. As for whether I want to, I don't know. Fiddling is nice and all, but the whole environment of it is very false and hostile. I'd rather go somewhere else and write accurate articles about topics that I know about, and then point to them to highlight the horrible inaccuracy of Wikipedia, than to try to fight to get Wikipedia to print something truthful and honest, or to try to sneakily get truth changed in my favour through dishonest means.

Well it wouldnt be a very good member of the inernet community, because ti would be ignoring the robots.txt.

so, maybe WP already has people that have access to watchlists.

If you want to know what's on your neighbor's mind why not do the proper American thing? Waterboard them.