Back @ Kid Nation, The Kabal Kultcher Kultivators Are At It Again …

Here's the latest fascism, er, fashion in their Reign Of Oppression, lessons in Netiquette from the folks who brought you Durova-Board Ding-Dong Skoolâ„¢ and Durova-Da-Top Diaper Dumpersâ„¢.

Wikipedia:Private Correspondence

E-joy, E-joy, E-joy !!!

Jonny

Sigh. Larry Cohen is trying so hard. He still believes. I wonder how long til he realizes the extent of the corruption and quits the project.

Could people please not post those WideScreen ScreenShots when a simple diff or quote will do. Some of us are still watching the movie on our 16×9 screens.

Gratia in futuro,

Jonny

Agreed. But Jon, if anyone outside the WR group (or WP) reads this, they won't know what the hell a diff is, or be able to interpret it. I think you need to weigh the options between posting to your convenience, versus posting things that non-WP specialists can read easily. Right now, almost everything on here requires a masters in WP history to interpret, and if your objective is to widen knowlege of what's going on, keeping the information cryptic (and it is VERY cryptic) is not helping achieve that goal

That said, I would urge people to go to this history and read it here.


Note that the first reversions of Larry Cohen were by IP address 64.237.4.136. They were
here, here, here, here and here.

Later, Jehochman, WAS, JzG, Rocksanddirt, Tonysidaway came and validated the IP address assertion (in the comments that "Reverting to accurate version of how things are done"" and "Sorry, but that's not how things are done at Wikipedia"). Does anyone NOT recognize that this is Durova-in-drag (or an FOD, "Friend of Durova" ), posting to the Privacy Correspondence board? Look at the edits: Especially where the IP edits to add emphasis on "copyright concerns", lol. So revealing.

These were made by IP 64.237.4.136 Which according to IP-lookup.net is an "smtp address" for Macys.

More specifically, this is an IP owned by Novani LLC in SF, the actual registrant is "Macy's and Co", and then the actual domain servers are hosted by Federated Systems Group/IBM Global Services out of Raleigh North Carolina, at Research Triangle Park, which is a huge DOD-contractor technical park, just outside DC. Both ARIN and RIPE tell nothing about anything than the domain registrar. Surprise surprise. You can wipe the info from ARIN and RIPE, quickly, but the mirror services take much longer to wipe.



Abuse comments are to go to Macy's, but I have strong doubts that Macys has anything to do with this person. My money is on that Durova (or a FOD) works for a government contract company (like IBM Global Services, or Federated Systems), post-Navy career, and she's (or he is) logging onto someone else's system for her quasi-TOR edits, like the hypocrite she is (they are).

Of course the same will not apply to BLP victims and other correspondence not "between Wikipedian users." Eventual this will erode to not include correspondence of "trolls," banned users, trouble makers, critics and finally all those lacking social network influence.

Why doesn't WP:Private simply say "Guarding private and confidential discussions is the responsibility of parties to the discussion. Please take appropriate measures?" Instead they censor whistleblowers who may not owe anyone any duty of confidence regarding the correspondence. This conflicts with WP:NOT.censored. But who expects them to do anything other than what they damn well please.? So the Cabalistas are now free to plot and their clumsy and amateur mechanizations will be beyond the bounds of discourse.

Larry Cohen made a few more attempts to bring this to a reasonable state:

1. reverting, discuss this on talk please. The User:!! evidence shows there is acceptable use of private correspondence
2. Public posting on Wikipedia - clarify from what happened in Durova/Giano arbcom
3. may + could (nobody can know that ahead of time, right?), and we don't know if it's legal to forward mail x to person y
4. when appropriate? I think this needs a qualifier, as User:!!'s evidence in the arbcom demonstrates. better adjective perhaps?

But he was dogpiled by JzG, Jehochman, WAS, TS, and a few random "new users" (cough, socks, cough)

Message to Lawrence Cohen; This is bigger than the Durova case, and she'll be back doing the same thing with policy to back her up, in no time.

Yeah, and all you did is paste a screen shot of a diff display, which makes me have to shift the horizontal scroll bar for the rest of the thread, which means I'll probably just create a new thread and skip the carpal tunnel.

Jonny

Dont you find it strange that this IP was making Durova like edits, and then when it was going to get 'done' for 3RR, JzG, Jehochman, TS etc. showed up and rolled over Lawrence Cohen with a steamroller?

And that the IP is linked to the Raleigh Virginia-based DOD-financed technology part where most DC consulting firms have presence?

Where are the conspiracy theorists here?

I think that most people past the age of 5 or so — or whenever you learn to read a calendar and can put November and 29 together and compute Duh! Rova! — understand what's really going on with this late-blooming interest in WP:PC (Private Correspondence), just like the same demographic understands the tribe-driving demagoguery afoot when Wikipediots raise such a big, gawdawful, and never-ending stink about WP:EH (External Harassment). Both of these big, gawdawful, and never-ending stinks are prime examples of what psychologists call Projective Paranoia, where people live in constant fear that ∑one ∑where ∑day might just do unto them what they do all day, every day to others.

I do seem to recall that I had another issue in mind when I called this meeting, but it may take me a while to remember what that was.

Jonny

In re: Durova / Giano

Does anyone there (at WP) truly believe that the press and news services are going to observe this and let it go as a positive "happening" that will make for more transparency into the way WP functions? The Giano affair will only lead to far more inner-circle secret dealings and far more fake profiles, lest anyone that tries to solve corruption issues gets their proverbial body parts removed.

The messenger gets the axe and the project falls into more of a black hole than ever before.

Arbcom. knew what was going on with Durova and so did Jimmy Wales. They thought this was just as cool as Essjay. This will make some great news. None of the players at Arbcom. can claim they are innocent after this.

Back to what I mentioned.

The IP which made those "Durova like" edits, that Lawrence Cohen warned with a 3RR if the continued to revert him, who was immediately "backed up" by JzG, Jehochman and a gang of 5 others, was 64.237.4.136.

(edited out erroneous tracenet)

Uhhm, the IP in the diffs you point to is actually 64.237.4.140, though both .140 and .136 have an rdns of smtp.macys.com. It geolocates to San Francisco. If it's a corporate proxy, offices all over the US may use it for web access. I've seen that many times.

Federated Systems is Macys, and is a huge department store chain. They have a contract for web services with IBM and use their nameservers. Research Triangle Park isn't a DOD-contractor technical park, though some of the 150 companies and organizations located there may be DOD contractors.

I think 64.237.4.140 is FeloniousMonk/Odd Nature. They both have edited Jonathan Wells (intelligent design advocate), Intelligent design, Wikipedia:Private correspondence, Guillermo Gonzalez (astronomer), and D. James Kennedy.

Our friend Moulton also knows him as Skip and argues with him on a couple of blogs.

FeloniousMonk has mentioned he's a coder on another forum. It's possible he's a contractor or employee of Federated.

Research Triangle Park is heavy on biotech and had links to the universities nearby. But it is so large due to the propinquity to DC, and is heavily populated with DOD contractors, of which IBM Global Services is one. That's why I'd heard of it. IBM Global Services is a huge government contrator, actually. But also a huge non-government contractor.

70.183.59.1 is where the traceroute started from. whatismyipaddress.com = 70.183.59.6, another cox IP.

ok, well that's why I asked for feedback.

I still find the fact that when the IP was challenged, that Tonysidway, Jehochman, JzG, WAS and others jumped on within the next hour to make sure the IP's changes stuck.

That is very Durova-like.

Why would an smtp, which is a mailing indicator, be the source of this person's IP? Can someone explain that to me?

They most likely agreed with the IP, who is most likely FeloniousMonk. Re-read my earlier post about their shared interests.

64.237.4.140, the WP-editing IP, could be the web gateway for the entire company. Most large companies do this so they can filter out BADSITES. Employees or contractors could even use it through a VPN tunnel from any location in the world. They can give it any reverse DNS they want, even a duplicate name. The forward DNS for smtp.macys.com=64.237.4.136, is the real SMTP server.

Thanks. Tarantino. I am clear on gateway IPs and I use a VPN concepts. I've set up websites, set up emails, set up MX links, so I know more than the average fool (call me an above average fool). I currently use a VPN "from anywhere in the world" to logon to the work server, and also, I can remotely logon to my home "from anywhere in the world", so I get the tunnel concept. Very much so.

But the smtp label I was not clear on - oh, i know it, from email addressing. But I though that this was a standard message protocol, which was MX related, whereas normal web communcations are not.

I've simply never seen an smtp linked to a user IP - though I confess to not having "seen it all" as you may well have.

Have you seen this before?

I still suspect that this was the woman in the flesh, not a meat puppet. That he/she/it was so hotly defended didnt seem like a normal editor situation. It seems like the kind of 'help help help' cry that Durova or SV would invoked - hence the 5-man rescue team arrival. Poor Lawrence Cohen is still trying to reason with them, at this moment, and he's so stonwalled that he can't see the stones for the wall.

Thanks, DL


We'd sent you out for Starbucks, and you never came back.

Where is it? I'm craving an egg nog latte right now.

All that I know on this subject I learned from tinkering, and is incomplete and sometimes wrong. It appears 64.237.4.140 whose rdns is smtp.macys.com, isn't an SMTP server that accepts connections on port 25. Several other ports I tried were also unresponsive, though it does return pings. I don't know why they would want to call it that, maybe they just forgot to rename it after they switched its use. 64.237.4.136, whose rdns is also smtp.macys.com, does accept connections on port 25. When I tried I got the result:

220 viruswall.macys.com SMTP NAVGW 2.5.2.11; Fri, 30 Nov 2007 xx:xx:xx -xxxx http://www.symantec.com

(x's are substituted for the time and TZ)


BTW, SlimVirgin and Crum375 have recently shown up to edit Wikipedia:Private correspondence.

Indeed, Skip first showed up in my blog here...

Another member of the anti-ID clique, the obnoxious OrangeMarlin, took exception to Mercury providing the least little assistance in your appeal.

Yes, I saw that. To Mercury's credit, he stood up to OrangeMarlin's lame efforts to subvert due process. The value of that failed intervention is that it reveals just how oblivious the entrenched editors on the ID project are to their obligations to respect and uphold due process.

You see, my case isn't really about me. It's about diagnosing the systemic corruption of an increasingly dysfunctional regulatory process.

The regulatory process can be called "dysfunctional" only in relation to the advertized objectives of Wikipedia.

The regulatory process is becoming more and more functional every day in relation to the actual objectives of its actual controllers.

Jon Awbrey

Assuming your analysis is correct, it should be possible to devise a scientific experiment to demonstrate your thesis.

The first order of business would naturally be System ID, if you'll excuse the expression.

But, as you know, there is very often a zeroth order of business that must be addressed first.

So how do we determine what the actual objective is?

For that we must change our Controller Hard Hat for our Observer Felt Hat.

Jon Awbrey

We have basically two hypotheses...

Hâ‚€: The objective of Wikipedia (and those who manage and administer it) is to craft a high quality public encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

H₁ The (hidden) objective of those who exercise effective control of Wikipedia is to wrest control away from those committed to H₀.

Do we have to spell out the presumptive hidden agenda of H₁ to proceed? Or can we find a way to proceed under uncertainty regarding the characterization of any hypothesized hidden agenda?

To be properly testable H₀ and H₁ should be mutually exclusive. This does not seem to be the case. This is not meant as a statement of any position on the matter but merely an observation on methodology.

Can you lay out an imaginable case in which the intersection of H₀ and H₁ is something other than the Empty Set?

I'd say it's more like the stated objective of WP is to craft a high-quality encyclopedia in spite of the fact that anyone can edit it.

As for the other thing, I don't believe it's that simple... There are a lot of agendas operating on WP, some petty, some not-so-petty. The people whom some see as having "effective control" mostly just do what they do to further entrench themselves in the power structure, in order to ensure that their agendas remain dominant in whatever topic area they're concerned with. Control and entrenchment aren't necessarily the same thing, even if having one does assist in achieving the other - and to go beyond that is to ascribe far more organization and discipline to them than they seem to actually have.

That's just my opinion, anyway... in fact, I've always been (or at least tried to be) a member of the "WP is a gang of petty cyberthugs" camp, rather than the "WP is a vast and well-organized anti-civilization enterprise" camp.

The question that arises in that context is whether such an objective is feasible or reachable. The cumulative evidence to-date is not especially favorable.

Sure, in fact H₁ is in a sense recursive (maybe not the right term but something that feels a lot like it), dependent on H ₀ to be true to even be applicable. If there isn't subset overlap H₁ can't be true. I think you meant something more like:

• H₀ WP 's objective is encyclopedic, as publicly stated.
• H₁ WP's objective is something other than encyclopedic despite what is publicly stated.

Of course H₁ can be further elaborated into H₂, H₃, ... by specific non-encyclopedic objectives such as MMORPG, social networking influence, search engine etc.
<br><br>

Next: Let's operationalize terms.

Maybe we need something more along the lines of:

H₁: Wikipedia is being hijacked by one or more groups who are pursuing objectives other than the advertised one.

Oh, I see. A part of what you are saying is that it originally truly had it's stated encyclopedic objectives but these have been usurped by some group for some other purpose.

I'm willing to give the original founders credit for having a sincerely envisioned concept that, over time, has gone awry for any number of reasons that may be understood in hindsight.

Whether it went off course despite the best intentions of those at the helm, or because of complex dynamics arising as a result of competing and conflicting interests, politics, power struggles, or the machinations of nefarious agents remains to be apprehended.

That is not how I learned to do statistical hypothesis testing.

It doesn't really matter, though, since the conditions for that kind of study are not in play.

Jon Awbrey

Of course: H₀ is a simple hypothesis whereas H₁ is a compound one. You rarely try to make a hypothesis test on two simple hypotheses (the mean is either 5 or 7 and cannot be anything else); it's much more likely to be a simple and a compound one (the mean is either 5 or some number greater than 5). You could have two compound hypotheses, but not very often in my experience.

Can I play too? I want a Durova Super Sleuth Badge too!

While looking over the Jim62sch arbcomm case, i started putting pieces together, and think i might have more info. Publicly stated on the mailing list, Jim62sch is James Schuler. This is the same James Edward Schuler as noted by profession and location stated in and around the arbcomm case. Oh, and this one too. Its this second one that's interesting:

Note who his reference is from, Paul Mitchell, who writes, "I had the pleasure of working with Jim directly, and during that time Jim showed that he... " Okay, so a nice little reference. Well, if you click on Pual's profile, you'll see that he identifies as working at... You guessed it Macy's (Appears he modified his profile recently to state that he works simply at a "leading online retailer"... but the cached page shows Macys.com). He also notes that his specialties include "Authored and maintained large collaborative editing systems (wiki, SharePoint) in both the private and public spheres." (emphasis mine).

So... if FeloniousMonk or OddNature or Skip or whoever is from Macy's (and they operate on-wiki in collusion with Jim62sch)... wouldn't it be pretty safe to assume it is perhaps Paul Mitchell? (Oh, he might need to change this profile too)

The charming E-Mail that Jim62Sch sent me also included a link to that same personal blog in his signature line.