I don't think anyone is saying here that Israel shouldn't be allowed to influence public opinion. Nor, for that matter, should the Palestinians generally or Hamas in particular. We can, however, disagree with -- or even detest -- the means they use to influence opinion. Secret lobbying of U.S. legislators by foreign governments (even allied ones) is reprehensible, and often illegal. Terrorism, as a form of public influence, is detestable and usually counter-productive.

The issue here is not support for Israel or Palestine. That conflict and attendant debate long predates Wikipedia, the Internet, and very nearly the stored-program digital computer. Intelligent and well-informed minds disagree on nearly every aspect of it.

The issue is whether Wikipedia, putatively an "encyclopedia" and therefore by implication "neutral" or unbiased, should be used as a vehicle for the propaganda of either side in this or any conflict. An important secondary issue is the use of power within the arcane wiki-society to protect and promulgate this propaganda.

The underlying Wikipedia situation here is no different than Northern Ireland, the Armenian genocide, Sri Lanka, the Thai monarchy, or (no doubt) countless domains of conflict of which I am unaware. What distinguishes it is the extreme power wielded by one partisan in the Israel/Palestine conflict area, and the skill with which he uses that power to ban opponents, amass minions, and stifle debate.

I am pleased that Jayjg may get a mild comeuppance in the current RFAR, but if he doesn't lose his admin bits altogether, I am doubtful that much will change.

Moderator's note: Please use this thread to discuss Jayjg, Wikipedia, and his adminship, not the Middle East. If you want to have a general discussion, move it to the Politics forum.

Jayjg has earned (and I do mean *earned*) himself an I/P topic ban http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...ayjg_restricted deciding vote was none other than former ally FloNight.

The loss of his privileges seems to be more of a battle. There are now two proposals - both would strip him of his functionary tools but one thanks him for his "years of service". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req..._and_privileges

Proposal A has 3 votes, proposal B has 4 votes (Kirill has voted for both) so 6 arbs in total are voting for a proposal that would strip Jayjg. So one more arb needs to comes on board for Jay to lose his supertools (assuming John Vandenberg and Rlevse, who have voted for A, give B a nod as their second choice).

In an attempt to get the community to make its views clear to arbcom, I've launched the RfC that one arb hinted at.

Since, as Gomi has noted, Jayjg's activity at WP was all about a highly disciplined and monomaniacal crusade to OWN those articles, does he have any reason to remain at the project?

Yes, his work on synagogues is not nearly as controversial.

I think this will be a telling test of jay's character. If he comes back and beavers away at synagogue articles, while maintaining his low level of administrative activity, that will say that he is more of a wiki-addict than we suspected; if he comes back and begins a flurry of blocks, bans, and checkuser results related to his (now forbidden) I/P articles, that will prove his widely-known POV, and likely continue to cause drama; and if he goes away entirely, that will demonstrate that he was using the synagogue articles as protective coloration for his more pointed activities.

He could go away entirely for any reason. He might relocate to a place without computers. Who knows?

He might go to Hollywood and try to be a movie star!

He could have been killed or abducted by the Saucer Men. Least hypothesis.

So what are the odds Jay will wriggle out of this one?

Since when do Arbitrators listen to all the rabble on the talk pages? Judges don't ask the audience for help in the sentencing.

Yeah! And then we can ask him if he's stopped beating his wife!

The threshold for a majority crept up from 7 to 8 so it looked like Jay may get away but thanks to Risker there is now again a majority of arbs in favor of giving Jay a topic ban http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...ayjg_restricted

Question now is will an editor who has now warned, cautioned, advised, reminded by ArbComm several times over misdeeds before finally being slapped with sanctions still be able to be said to be a "trusted user" in "good standing" who has the confidence of the community needed to wield tools such as CU and oversight, let alone the banhammer?

Maybe not, Casliber has regained his cojones after sitting on the fence for a few days and there are now seven arbs in favor of stripping Jay of his functionary status http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Req...nd_privileges_2 One more and he's toast.

ADDENDUM: And Roger Davies is the clincher. Goodbye Jay!

He needs to admit that he was wrong, apologize, and promise to do better. If he doesn't do this, then he'll need to still be continually watched, because it means that he doesn't think that he has done anything wrong. That doesn't mean he needs to be "Wikihounded", it just means that an eye needs to be kept on him.

Jay has been caught before and he's never admitted that he war wrong, apologized or promised to mend his ways - not even in response to various Arbcom rulings "reminding" or "admonishing" him. If he had the ability to take responsibility it wouldn't have come to this.

Have you taken a good look at Jayjg's first two edits in Jan 2003?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=11012037

He's clearly a sock from some previous editor, weighing on some article on attrocities (one suspects it had a few Israeli ones). He suggests speedy deletion under VfD. Not a virgin editor. His second is to "explain" that sockpuppets can be merely alternate accounts, and not returns of banned users. Which is to say, that's what his Jayjg account is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=10990734


His previous personna before Jan 2003 is the key to his identity. He doesn't make another Jayjg edit for 17 months till June 2004. Then the deluge of pro-Israel POV pushing begins with a huge edit rate. So who was he in those 17 months, and who before Jan 2003. We simply need to scan some likely middle East and Jewish edit wars in 2001 and 2002 to guess. WP was a simpler place then-- there werent' that many characters. User:RK gets my vote as Jayjg clone, though I don't think they're the same person.

Jayjg still hasn't edited since April 8, BTW. My guess is he's moved back to his pre-2003 other username.

I dunno, RK is the best candidate I've seen yet. He's as Zionistic as anyone else on WP.
And he's just as prone to fight with people, and delete things he doesn't like, as Jay ever was.

Those edits are from March 2005, and some database issue has knocked them back into 2003. Check the signature timestamps of the edits either side. I think his first Jayjg edit was this one from June 2004.

Right. This has come up before, although I don't remember the explanation.

It would also be good to consider how many edits could have been oversighted for whatever reason.

Correct. There some massive oversight of early Jayjg edits which explains why Milton is misreading the results now. I think Wordbomb had some info on it after he made a datadump of the whole site a couple of years ago.

It was discussed before and can be found in the WR archives somewhere.

This thread has some of it, from August 2007. I believe there's more of the same in other threads, at least two of which have been tarpitted because they contained a bit too much speculation as to his identity.

I, for one, am still willing to believe that Mr. Jayjg isn't being paid or employed (or whatever) by the Israeli lobby or some other pro-Israeli group, and that the evidence we have of tag-teaming and such are indicative only of the cooperation of like-minded people. But given what we know, I don't think it's "crazy" to believe otherwise - "somewhat fanciful" might be a better term for it, if one is just going to dismiss it as improbable.

Most likely, he's just some guy in his early 20's who combines the three characteristics required: staunch pro-Israel advocacy, internet addiction (and plenty of free time to feed it), and most importantly the kind of raw cleverness, intelligence, and self-discipline necessary to restrict himself to that one topic area (to avoid making enemies needlessly, or for that matter, unwanted friends). The first two things are very common, the last is extremely unusual for a long-term Wiki-addict.

I'm confused, are you concerned about edits by Jayjg that were oversighted (by himself or others) or edits by other people that were oversighted by Jayjg. My recollection is that there was some controversy over the latter, and that an earlier incarnation of Arbcom gave him a pass on it (much to the annoyance of some of the developers, if I recall correctly).

Ah. I should have been tipped off by the LOOONG pause and the fact that the first edits are so close to the beginning of a new year. Obviously a malfunctioning-server timestamp problem. Synchronicitously, of the very sort that was just being discussed in another thread.

Yep, golly, all his early edits have been oversighted. I wonder who would do THAT for him?

Somey, you never struck me as someone who believes in unicorns. What you're describing is at least as rare. Not to mention 20-somethings. I would say this particular scenario, while remotely possible, is highly unlikely.

If memory serves, Jayjg was something of a trailblazer in both categories. There was some cover-up of Jayjg's early exploits, and then I believe he put these same techniques to use in the famed SlimVirgin/Lockerbie caper.

If there are any flawed details in either of our recollections, I'm sure that some WR stalwarts will come forward to set the record straight.

Well, speaking for myself and not as a "functionary", I recall that Wordbomb got hold of some data dumps and deduced that someone had erased a lot of edits by SlimVirgin. There was a hue and cry on Wikipedia, Wikipedia Review, and IRC (where I was when it broke). I probably shouldn't say more because I don't remember what parts were told to me in which fora, and I don't want to inadvertently break a confidence. I'm sure the whole story is there waiting to be re-linked to.

Speaking as a functionary, I will say that the number of Jayjg's own edits that have been oversighted is extremely small, and there is no evidence of abuse.

What possible reason would there be for his own edits to be oversighted? What's he trying to hide?

In a couple of cases he accidentally edited while logged out, which is a routine reason for oversight. I can't say anything about other cases but they are reasonable and within policy.

I can see how that would create a crisis for someone as doggedly incognito as Jayjg. Do the plebians have that option as well?

Yes.

Okay, so how is it exercised? Do you have to go crying to the oversight sysop every time you do it? By email, presumably? Or maybe let your IP edits build up for a month each time, so as not to bug them too much?

Wait, when exactly did this break? Can someone pinpoint a date?

In udder weirds —

Trust Us, We're Always Transparent (WP:TUWAT)

Ja Ja

On-wiki here. The off-wiki evidence is hosted here. Oddly, the link back to Wordbomb's blog is a dead link, I wonder if he removed a post and if so, why. Part of the dispute on-wiki was over SlimVirgin's sockpuppet Sweet Blue Water (drastically overblown, IMO) and part of the dispute was on the use of oversight. Check the arbcom-L archives for discussion around that time.

I did quite a double-take when I read that sentence here, until I remembered whom you were talking to.

The initial WR discussion of Mr. Wordbomb's database dumps and the oversighted Slimv edits is in the One SlimVirgin Question Answered thread, which was about three weeks before the AN/I thread. I may be mistaken, but AFAIK he removed some of the SlimVirgin (but not Gary Weiss, natch) material from AntiSocial.net, perhaps as part of some sort of truce deal - that would have been about 8 months ago, IIRC.

Ask nicely.



If true, that was very decent of him.

This 2-year-old post asserts that the Lockerbie oversights were one of the very first uses of the oversight capability. There are some links to deleted WP edits -- maybe an admin can reveal what is there, unless those, too, have been oversighted.

I am not saying that I would if I could, but I would like to note that it is difficult to correlate the url a diff had while it was visible to the one it has while deleted, since the latter is accessed by timestamp rather than revision id.

Perhaps, in the interests of transparency, someone can explain why Jayjg had previously lost his oversight bit twice before finally losing it permanently a few weeks ago? Was he ever sanctioned or warned over his use of oversight?

I believe One/Cool Hand Luke has been asked this a couple of times and his answer has been "ask me on wiki" which, under the circumstance, I agree with. So far no one seems to have taken him up on it.

I'm also not sure there is any benefit to answering the question at all. It would likely not satisfy anyone (whatever the explanation, he did get it back), it can not impact on current wiki "governance" issues (since he no longer has it anyway), and might only serve to give his critics one more reason to dance on his grave, figuratively speaking. Yes, some people's curiosity might be satisfied, but it that enough reason to answer?

In any event, the people who likely have access to the information are the current arbitrators only.

Maybe, but if so, he oversighted it.

What's the deal with your extensive editing of the Pierre Salinger bio shortly after Slim joined WP? Is that when you guys first started bumping heads?

I'm more interested in who thought it was a good idea to give it back again. One incident of abuse that leads to a high level tool like that being removed is breaking trust. To have it removed repeatedly is beyond ridiculous.

That's Wikipedia-- beyond ridiculous. Sometimes that's why we can only describe: it's beyond ridicule.

In Jayjg's case, though, see the "I'm in with Jimbo" made-man syndrome. Went on for many years. Moreover, if our little blue-Jay is really female and Jimbo was doing er, HER, then this would be even more neatly explained.

Did I see once that Jayjg was Canadian? Cant find it now. If so we know what Jimbo thinks of Canadians.

He seems to speak French and there was a suggestion of Canadian editing which I can't remember (probably something subject related). The presumption is that (s)he might be French-Canadian.

However, from the general editing pattern, I really doubt he's a woman. Though he could well have no family life and/or be gay. There's something vaguely testosterone-ish about maniacal creation of stubs about synogogues, which are organization/things; whereas there's something vaguely "feminine/gay" about maniacal creation of stubs about living people. Something to do with shared outlook on life.

Besides, I don't think we've seen much radical Israeli POV pushing from women. It's possibly too militaristic and the Palastinians are not entirely undeserving of empathy. The Israeli women who hate Palestinians have more conservative family things to do than edit Wikipedia-- the Israeli POV thing is mostly American, and done by people who don't have much better to do than talk politics or anarchy. Testosterone.

"Stereotyper" Milt
Writing with characteristically muscular style since 2008.

From what you know, having a more "insider" view of Wikipedia's administration than most of us, do you personally feel that the issues surrounding Jayjg's abuse, or allegations of abuse, of admin privileges and his POV-pushing have been adequately, appropriately, and timely addressed by Wikipedia's governing authorities? If not, what do you think should have been done differently?