This looks like a tasty morsel for all of you drama hounds....

Does anybody know what this is all about?

Nothing much evidently. Andrew Landeryou apparently is a right-leaning political blogger from Australia. He has a BLP, which some IP editor vandalized on November 21 to state that Landeryou was "Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics". The IP resolves to Australia. Another IP editor (resolving to the US) reverted the vandalism and prodded the entire article for deletion yesterday, some hours after Landeryou sent Gerard his "threat".

Another Australian IP had showed up on November 9 and removed or toned down some of the more controversial material in the article, but I cannot tell if that has anything to do with the "sockpuppet investigation" that Gerard refers to or not. Gerard being Gerard, instead of laughing off Landeryou's agitated email, he has to go blogging about it. Sheesh!

It appears to me that these two twits deserve one another.

Be that as it may, I removed some dreadful stuff from the article under BLP.

This won't end well.

It will if the article gets deleted.

Maybe Kelly or some old timer could tell us more about DG and CoS. It always seemed strange to me that an ex-CoSer (I assume that is what DG is, but not certain) would take on such an aberrant appearance/style and cult-like involvement in another project. Seem to me fleeing into the ordinary would be more expected. Please, tell more.

Where goes the WMF privacy policy? Checkusers blogging and bragging about their investigations?

I'm going to look at the history of this further.

I'm quite certain that Dave has never been a Scientologist. If I looked hard enough, I could probably find something linkable somewhere in which he explains his motivations - Dave wanted to be a rock journalist back during the Usenet days, and apparently participated in several band-related newsgroups... at some point he noticed that the CoS was basically trying to "take over" Usenet via large-scale spamming and disinformation campaigns (and you're right, KM could tell us more about this). To some extent they succeeded, and they (along with numerous other groups and spammers in general) actually made Usenet largely worthless for people who just wanted to chat about things that interested them.

Essentially, he transferred his loyalties to Wikipedia fairly early on, and began to develop an almost hypervigilant mindset towards CoS activity on WP - I think the quote I saw went something like "I'll be damned if we're going to let them do to Wikipedia what they did to Usenet," or something to that effect.

Anyway, as a result of all that he was labeled a "suppressive person" by the CoS, which is ironic, since he actually is sort of suppressive, generally speaking.

Ahhh. A dark Ziggy Stardust defending rock and roll against an evil cult. Makes some sense really. Was that one of subplots of Heavy Metal?

You're probably thinking of the far more Gerardian Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (T-H-L-K-D)...

Many aspects of Dave Gerard's WP history are actually ironic, even going beyond what he did in my own case. For example, one of the Aussie rock bands Dave was interested in back in the 90's was The Church (T-H-L-K-D), who you'll recall had a fairly big hit with a song called "Under the Milky Way." The Church were fronted by Steve Kilbey (T-H-L-K-D), and if you search the WR archives on the word "Kilbey" you'll find that the only two admitted fans of his around here are me and the now-inactive Piperdown. But Piperdown would never have joined WR if he hadn't been erroneously indef-blocked as an "overstock.com meatpuppet" by... you guessed it, Dave Gerard!

I'm sure there are other examples, but that one always gives me a chuckle for some reason.

I seem to recall more of his personal history on his user page, but it seems to be deleted now, or i just missed it. He had a big long spiel about being run out of Australia, or something like that, after giving an obnoxious speech at an awards ceremony while a rock journalist.

David Gerard was a second-wave anti-Scientologist, as i recall: he got involved when Helena Kobrin attempted to rmgroup alt.religion.scientology. At the time, he was living in Australia. My mental classification for him at the time was "gadfly critic": he rarely had much to say that was worth saying, and seem mainly to be involved for the fun of it rather than out of any real concern for Scientology's social impacts. I think his present dislike of Scientology is almost entirely founded in their "attack on the Internet" rather than any deeper concern for the need to defend against manipulative cults. He is also clearly a shock counterculturist (as his involvement in the operation of several well-known shock websites attests), and being anti-Scientology is viewed as "edgy" by some people, so that probably also added to the appeal.

One of the things I noticed when I was involved in the anti-Scientology movement was the tendency of anti-Scientologists to become cultish themselves. This isn't surprising since so many of them are ex-Scientologists, which means they've already demonstrated a susceptibility for cult behavior. Gerard, however, has no documented history of cult involvement, other than Wikipedia. I doubt he would become involved in a cult at the lower levels, but his clear predilection for being a behind-the-scenes manipulator makes him a prime candidate for high-level membership of a cult that he helped start.

Ironically it's David that put me on to Jo Freeman's essay about structurelessness, which is so clearly applicable to Wikipedia, yet David has on several occasions moved to block changes that would remediate these problems. David knows that Wikipedia has governance problems and clearly has some sense of how to cure them; but he also knows that the cure would deprive him of the emotional fix he gets from the current state of affairs. And there is no way he's going to put his personal predilection for drama ahead of Wikipedia's long-term interests, about which he has very little, if any, concern.

Oh good, the Big Bad Internet Highway Cop hiding behind the Internet Billboard pulls his nose out of his Internet Dough-Net long enough to go chase 1 out of a thousand speeders, and Justice Prevails in Wikiland.

Jon

Not that it will get you anywhere, in truth. DG is old school, which means there is enough kudos in the WMF to allow DG to get away with what would have you and me banned from Wikipedia. Mind you, it would be ironic if thee and me got into some sort trouble with ArbCom for dissing DG on an off-Wiki site. I would invite it, in truth.

I can't imagine that Sue Gardner is pleased that the likes of DG are rattling around out there acting as "spokespersons."

DG not into cults? Well, I would certainly suggest with those "goff" piccies that people are careless enough to keep posting, that he was most likely into Southern Death Cult, The Cult, and even perhaps Cult Hero. Although, of course, being a wannabe music critic he may not even have been aware of these groups...

lemonparty.org is his, right? What are the others?

"So your spokesman is an internet troll? Is that right?"

"Well, yes."

"But is he at least a nice troll?"

"Well, no..."

"How about this Mr. Kohs then...he looks nice."

"Well you see he doesn't always agree with us. Mr. Gerard is really very loyal to WMF, once you get past the first few impressions...and those nasty websites of his...and all that Skull-Dancing."

It was discussed in this thread, but the three mentioned at that time were thewillpower.org, yourmom.org and k-k-k.com. All are NSFW, of course... I vaguely recall that the latter is an attempt to embarrass the Ku Klux Klan by hosting interracial gay porn as if it were their idea of a good time, which I suppose makes it an admirable endeavor in a way. The others, ehhh, maybe not so much.

ArbCom have revoked his checkuser and oversight privs.

Owned.

Something tells me they've been waiting to do this for a long time.

Too much skulldancing, I reckon.

Do I remember incorrectly or didn't the privacy policy made this the domain of "the ombudsperson," who seemed to have no other responsibilities other than enforce this policy for the board? The current policy seems to make no reference to this actor. I think letting Arbcom handle this instead of a person directly answerable to the board of trustees is a step in the wrong direction.

Yes, but something clearly needed to be done. The fact that something has been done is a clear message to those who have access to private data: if you abuse it, you're going to suffer the consequences.

I say that the Arbcom did the right thing here.

Tee hee, and I was the only one here who saw that he might be in trouble over this. /smug

It's cloudy. The Ombudsman Commission does not consider itself empowered to deal with situations that are unseemly but that do not actually disclose private information (such as when Jayjg disclosed that CharlotteWebb used tor).

The Foundation Ombudsman Commission was indeed created to respond to complaints of privacy policy violations, but there is some doubt about what it's role should be on wikis that have strong Arbitration Committees that dispense (and theoretically review) checkuser and oversight permissions. It's also not clear in this case that the statement "You were socking on Wikipedia 3 years ago" actually violates the privacy policy, since it does not discuss IPs or other protected information and the policy itself is fairly vague.

Yes the right thing as far as it goes even if done by the wrong people. This whole task (Checkuser) ought to conducted by agents answerable to the B/T. Loss of employment should be the least of consequences with some prospect for further liability.

There seemed to the beginning of recognizing this with: 1) a board level policy, and; 2) a special person(s) selected by the board to carry it out. Even then the actual task was handed out willy-nilly to "community members." But giving the job to ArbCom seems to me to be a retreat from even this passing nod to responsibility.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understood that the privacy violations happened offwiki (on Twitter), although I haven't read DG's Twitter page. Did anybody else get this impression?

If this is the case, this also leads to some interesting precedent for WP editors being responsible for their offwiki activities, as they relate to WP itself (at least)...

Ah. Now I see. He jammed 'is thumb up their collet'ive butt'ole.

Clearly, you are right about the privacy policy being enforced by an independent entity who answers to the Board/foundation directly. However, since they can ever seem to get around to organizing this (and it will probably take legal action to motivate them to do so....), at least ARBCOM is willing to fill the power vacuum.

If this becomes established precedent, it is indeed a step in the wrong direction...especially since the Arbcom members might have some sort of liability in the case of lawsuits brought by people whose privacy was violated. I don't think that this is quite fair for unpaid volunteers, especially since WMF hasn't actually made any clear statements about what happens when said volunteers are sued...

...but I suppose if people are willing to accept this responsibility, then that becomes their business. I certainly wouldn't.

Though I don't have the hatred of Gerard some of you do, I'm glad to see an ArbCom that's willing to take action against somebody so entrenched as he is for actions that, in earlier regimes, would be unequally treated depending on whether they were done by people well-connected with the power clique, or "trolls" disliked by the clique.

Given DG's rather colourful...um...behavior in the past, one would think that this annoucement would have lead to quite a bit of discussion....but nobody seems to have anything at all to say....

That's rather interesting...

Wow. Good for them. They got rid of the biggest jackass around.

First Jayjg, and now Gerard.

Also, has anyone noticed he doesn't pop up quite as often as an official spokesman? He seems to have been demoted somewhat after he and Forrester ran Wikimedia UK into the ground

At least three years late, but I suppose late is better than never.

It's fairly obvious that Gerard has become bored with Wikipedia, and has been trolling with increasing vigor in an effort to extract some final amusement value out of it. It's ironic in the extreme that he complains about a "lack of adult supervision" in what amounts to his parting shot.

It is a rare day when something that happens on WP is so roundly applauded on WR. I'm surprised that David Gerard felt that it was acceptable to do this, but even more surprised that something was actually done about it. I wonder what would have happened if this was a first "strike"? Is this enough to set a precedent, given the history? It would be nice if ARBCOM would send a clear message that actions such as this are unacceptable and will result in revocation of rights.

Well, he's still an administrator, let's not forget that. This revocation of privileges only means that his sockpuppetry-suspicion blocks will be based entirely on guesswork, rather than 90-95 percent guesswork.

This describes one of the phases you went through yourself; you seem to have gotten over that by now and are in the "cynical commentator" state at present.

We also shouldn't forget that Dave is a father now, and if I'm not terribly mistaken his dropoff in WP-related activity came fairly close on the heels of that particular event. Fatherhood tends to shift one's priorities, in some cases drastically. If he's spending less time on WP because he's spending more time on (hopefully responsible) parenting activities, then more power to him.

I just hope he lets the kid wear "normal" clothes in school...

Hell, if he lets the kid go to school at all we can probably consider that a victory.

Gerard referred to me as "sociopath" by name at least three different times over the last three years, on Wikipedia mailing lists and such. You don't see very many press contacts of corporations doing this on the job. But he's still listed by the Foundation as a press contact.

It makes Wikipedia Review's job easier, I guess.

By his wife or his concubine?

Actually, merely failed to kiss their collective ass tenderly enough.

Reminds me of the scene in Matrix Reloaded (itself a pretentious film full of pretentious characters and pretentious dialogue) where the Merovingian's jealous wife Persephone demands one sincere kiss from Neo, as her price.

"If you kiss our ass like you were kissing a true love, Gerard, we'll overlook your posturing to the effect that you're so powerful on WP that we can't do anything to you."

But Gerard refused, so they took away some of this magic. Hubris, Gerard.

I suppose if Gerard had actually given them a totally sincere ass-kiss ("Do it like you were kissing Jimbo's ass") they would have accepted it and let it go.

Maybe sent Jimbo an IRC: "We envy you."

However, as has been pointed out, Gerard retains adminship, and thus still the ability to do one of the things he's infamous for, which is overwide range blocks. And of course, he still retains his big mouth.

One suppose he's going to sulk a while now. He was told he was "in the wrong cabal" Presumably that means: "not the one that controls ArbCom."

Between Jayjg, Raul654 and David Gerard, I think a clear message has been sent.

Concubine, I believe.

Aye, tis an ugly win (with Davy, Davy Gothic ex-god king of the Wiki-frontier, can there be any other kind?), but let's take it anyway.

Despite Ms. Martin's exposition piece earlier, I still don't understand how someone who has fought so long against Scientology, can throw himself whole-heartedly into a pedantic, geek cybercult that is only a few dozen pairs of Nikes and much needed castrations away from Heaven's Gate
.

Oh, and hello at long last WP Review! I guess this constitutes my debut.

Well call me Ishmeal.

I'm with Miss Manners on this one: "All children are a gift from God." Simply put, it is impolite to inquire into or speculate about the origins of someone else's children.

It may be that he wasn't initially expecting WP to turn out that way, and when it did, he became somewhat disenchanted with it. He might have realized that by identifying organized external enemies and exaggerating the threat(s) they represented, he/they would be contributing to the creation of a cult-like environment... but as long as he felt that his side was in the right, that wouldn't have mattered to him. Of course, he would never admit any of this, because that might be tantamount to admitting that he was wrong about something.


And a fine debut it is, too! Welcome to WR, Mr. RDH.

That is very true...you'll never see him hit himself with his own cluestick. He'll make a blithering fool, or rather tool, out of himself first.

And thank you, sir! Tis great to be aboard!