Let me preface by saying that what I'm about to report I cannot independently verify, though it comes from a source I've grown trust, who would know, and given everything else I've seen for myself lately, the information tends to ring true.

So we know with certainty that SlimVirgin was passing my emails sent to her in confidence directly to the individual (apparently her friend) whom the evidence contained therein sought to accuse. That I know first hand.

What I didn't know until today is that she also exploits her checkuser power, coupled with her "oversight" power, to find the IPs of any user she wants and then erases any record of having done it. What's worse is that she then hands that information over to her friends to use apparently as they please.

As I understand it, the only "check" on abuse of CheckUser is the record of the inquiries that's left. Once again, SV feels such rules are for commoners and should not apply to her. This situation has got to be reigned in.

At this point, I wonder about the sanctity of our passwords. If she has that much access to the database, I don't see why she might not also access those for her friends when they ask.

Does SV have Checkuser? When she wanted to check on me, she had to ask Kelly Martin.

Honestly, I have no idea. All I know is that someone I trust told me she skirts the system to access IP data about others on behalf of her friends, and further, she can erase record of having done so.

having heard that, I might have made some assumptions that are not entirely accurate, vis-a-vis what she's doing vs asking others to do for her.

But I think the point remains: SV's friends get special treatment. Her non-friends get even special-er treatment.

Very true; I can vouch for that.

Well, based on what I've seen with some of these Slim-related disputes, I wouldn't be at all surprised if she routinely asked Jayjg and Kelly to use their Oversight thingy to remove "inconvenient" page versions... It only takes one of 'em.

I just noticed a new user-rights bit, by the way - "boardvote." So far only Danny and Essjay have it... Presumably that means they can "manage" Wikimedia Foundation board voting? And judging by what's on this page, it seems as though User:Essjay and User:Sj might easily be the same person, but judging by the amount of activity on both accounts, jeez, there would almost have to be multiple individuals behind them.

I need a drink...

The New Yorker article said that Essjay edits full time, even when he is teaching classes.

Oh, you've posted in Brandt's thread about him already, stupid me.

Actually, Ashibaka, I've always thought you were rather intelligent!

But as long as we're on the subject, I'm more than willing to accept the idea that Essjay/Sj is one person, not a committee. But think of the ramifications of that - here's a guy who's almost certainly editing Wikipedia on company time, probably not telling his institution that he's doing it (or not caring, since he has tenure), and in all probability having TA's and student research assistants do all of his work for him while he feeds this addiction.

What does that tell you about the person? Like, maybe he's so into his own power-scene on WP that he's willing to let the product he's actually paid for, namely the education of his students, be placed mostly in the hands of grad students while he just goes off and indulges himself? And maybe he doesn't see the difference between peer-reviewed academic publishing, which reflects well on the institution that pays him, and administering Wikipedia, which doesn't reflect on the institution in any way whatsoever because nobody gets to know what institution it is?

All I'm saying is that if I'm the parent of a college student that's paying tuition to a college to employ someone for at least 8 hours of work a day, and he's spending 14 hours a day editing Wikipedia, then either he's not sleeping at all, or I'm getting ripped off.

And yes, sure, I'm exaggerating. But by how much? I don't know; this is the question.

I have definitive evidence that SV does checkusers without posting them. How, I don't know. And she has certainly passed on the information to other (non-sysop) users. I can provide diffs ....

She does them by proxy: Jayjg

I had a long read of an Administrator's log on Wikipedia today and it reminded me very strongly of a description very early on in the novel 1984 where people are denounced to the authorities (the Thought Police) for expressing this or that thoughtcrime, or being suspected of a thoughtcrime.

Thus I watched one poster denounce another for not following this byzantine rule or that twisted piece of logic, and then when the person being denounced responded, calling them a troll or a sockpuppet for some other banned user and the fact that they complained was evidence of a personal vendetta and they should be banned indefinitely and cast into the cold outer darkness. There are so many rules that can possibly be used against a person that anyone at any time could be accused of something and desysopped or banned or both.

It's quite extraordinary how many extrajudicial ways a perfectly ordinary person can be denounced upon the flimsiest of evidence (or no evidence at all). It seems to me that the more expert you are, the more you are likely to fall foul of this political system.

It looks Kafkaesque.

Some admins are clearly behaving in a dictatorial and arbitrary fashion. Some others are deliberately gaming the system to get what they want.

To me it looks like the workings of a Communist politburo and not at all like the great experiment in the democracy of information that we are told it is.

All of what you are saying is true. The model I prefer (this has come up many times here at the Review) is medieval Venice, where all the laws and procedures were just window-dressing for the mickeys, and a smokescreen to mask the actual workings of the system, which was run by a council similar to what Jimbo dubbed The Cabal.

Some of you just don't get it. Does not take a rocket scientist to discover that Slimvirgin is a sockpuppet of Danny Wool and or Jimmy Wales. Slimvirgin has indef blocked many users with no evidence whatsover that they are sockpuppets. In fact, I know at least four people SV has blocked - real people - who now want nothing to do with Wikipedia. User: bonnieisrael, user:maayanbaruch, user:potterseesall, user:idfbarak

Wikipedia is simply a piece of unaccountable shit that hurts innocent people. The sooner it disappears, the better.

Three of those posters were blocked for being you, the fourth (Idfbarak) appears not to exist (or at least, does not have a talk page)

User:bonnieisrael actually spoke with Danny Wool. I do not a have female's voice. And she writes for the Israel News Agency. Anyone who supports anything I say - Wales and Wool block. But I know one thing. What comes around goes around. Two people who were blocked work for the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Any check of their IP address would confirm that. But forget me. Think of the hundreds of people who have been harmed by Wikipedia and the thousands who have been censored - for merely disagreeing with Wales and Wool. Wikipedia as we know it today will not continue. I can also confirm that there are many now seeking to place both Wales and Wool behind bars for illegal activity that I can not discuss here. Just "follow the money" at Wikipedia ;>

Selfishness, arrogance, and deceitful chicanery are illegal in Florida now? I thought the place was more conservative than that.

The real harm is in the notion that Wikipedia is some shining example of the democratic principle, when clearly its not - its an internet database belonging to at most three people that lets you think its an open democratic project.

The other problem is that INS should not be the subject of an encyclopedia article - Israel/Palestine/Judaism/Islam are. INS is a propaganda website like thousands of others on the Internet but is it of historic significance? Not from where I'm standing. And niether is Joel Leyden, Wikipedia Review, Daniel Brandt, Google-watch or Jimbo Wales.

My point is that Wikipedia has encouraged the idea that trivia are notable for future generations and have historical significance. Thus Pokemon characters, song lyrics and albums from bands no-one has ever heard of, small sections of railroad track that existed for twenty years in early 20th Century Illinois have some sort of historic significance because Wikipedia hosts them and Wikipedia is scraped by other websites and indexed by Google.

There appears to be no trivia that is too trivial for Wikipedia which is why, when censorship happens, people get hot under the collar about it, because it seems so incongruous that one website gets included while another does not.

Encyclopedias are not encyclopedic in their subject areas (which seems like a contradiction in terms). They are selective in what they ascertain should be the subject of articles. Wikipedia's rampant inclusionism done because it wanted to grow big fast has caused informational overload not simply in failing to decide which is true and which is false, but which is historically relevant and which is cruft.

The great advantage for book based encyclopedias is that for reasons of costa and physical size, articles cannot simply ramble on from one point to another, but must be structured and edited down to fit in a finite space.

When such restrictions are not there, the result may not be an improvement.

You've clearly not clicked the "random article" link, JohnA. If this deserves a page then INS deserves a page. In fact, I think that when a worthy version of this effort is finally created, every human on earth should have a page.

Ultimately, the disconnect here is as you said...
...contrasted with the lofty language Jimbo uses to describe the project, as though it's a modern day Hanging Gardens of Babylon and above the taint of the world.

As soon as he starts talking that way, yet turning a blind eye when the work is cheapened by small-minded people like SV and Jayjg, I'm reminded that at heart, he's a port huckster (and yes, bomis.com has an article, yet INS does not).

Actually clicking "Random Article" is an excellent way to survey Wikipedia. But my point remains: INS is not a historically important website, unless Wikipedia wants to be a database of all websites on the Internet.

You missed the nuance - Wikipedia has made a rod for its own back by its rampant inclusionism of insignificance.

"Every human should have a page on Wikipedia"? Heaven forbid that everyone should have their privacy violated like that.

Actually, from the sound of this, I think you would get along well with some of the more authoritative Wikipedians. We have a fair number editors who go around chopping important content to pieces based on some cracked deletionist ideas, and by and large they get the backing of the system--I think you'd fit right in.

In the interests of full disclosure, EK (as if it isn't clear enough from the foregoing!), it should be stated that you yourself are very much an "inclusionist," almost to the point of being an "extreme inclusionist"...!

I think I've mentioned before that I'd be a deletionist if I were on Wikipedia (and probably an extreme one), but ultimately I think the issue is rather academic - there's no way Wikipedia is going to delete significant amounts of "cruft" for any reason, even if it wanted to. In most cases a deletion is as good as a ban for pissing people off, if not better, and the number of admins who genuinely enjoy pissing people off is still fairly small - less than 100, in my estimation.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia has to keep growing to satisfy the community's need to feel wanted. So if Wikipedia stops growing, the community descends into an endless series of conflicts over existing content (as if it hasn't already), most of which already is already subject to territorialism among various established editors. That leads to defections, bans, general ill-will, and so forth...

New articles give newer editors a way to establish control territories of their own, and IMO a lot of the conflict we're seeing now is the result of it being increasingly difficult to find any subjects that haven't already been covered, and people being frustrated in their efforts to "horn in" on someone else's territory in response.

Finally, at the risk of putting him off, it might also be worthwhile to state that based on his (rather limited) Wikipedia contribs, JohnA appears to be one of those folks who wants to bring what might be termed "unbiased sanity" to scientific aspects of the global warming debate. It's quite clear that there are lots of well-established and highly energetic Wikipedians who won't accept anything less than unbridled corporation-bashing (and by extension, America-bashing) in articles related to that issue. But to his credit, he hasn't tried to turn WR into a soapbox about climate change, and his experiences probably were more of an impetus for him to join this forum, rather than some sort of near-complete rationale. So even though I enjoy corporation-bashing as much as the next guy, I'm going to "AGF" when it comes to JohnA, though of course that's partially because his views are so similar to my own in almost every other respect...

I do go on, don't I? I really should try to be more pithy.

That's quite correct, Jimmy Wales' soft porn site bomis.com (now cleaned up to appear as a directory) appears on Wikipedia with an article, but the INA (Israel News Agency) which has published many exclusive news articles since 1995 (including Al-Qaeda : The 39 Principles of Holy War http://www.israelnewsagency.com/Al-Qaeda.html) , ranked in the top 180,000 sites by Alexa.com, indexed by Google News since 2004, gets deleted out of process three times by Danny Wool / Jimbo Wales / Gili Bar-Hillel. If an adm here would care to place the INA back up on Wiki, this Government Press Office news site out of Israel would have a bit more exposure in the news and media war for democracy in the Middle-East. The INA is a bit more notable than http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heenamaagalaa

That's just ridiculous. In your scheme of things everything gets put on Wikipedia becomes some sort of Holy Writ and deletions cannot be made lest the History of Mankind is diminished.

Bullshit.

What I'm pointing out that if Wikipedia pretends to be infinite and yet has finite resources, someone somewhere is going to have their pet project/article/religion/whacked-out belief unneeded and unobserved.

The point of selectivity is to produce a cornucopia of information that can be made use of, and not an immense dump-bin of facts, lies, half-truths, quarter truths, meaningless assertions and Pokemon characters. There comes a point at which more subjects and more topics on ever more trivial things, brings down important facts down to the level of debatable trivia as well.

The point of encyclopedias is not to have a one-for-one correspondance with information in the real world but to distil it in some way that the important points are captured and communicated.

Don't get me started about authoritarian because you already have rampant authoritarianism on Wikipedia as you know fine well. It has nothing to do with distillation and everything to do with the petty exercise of political power in a State that has yet to work out what its there for.

And have you realised something that has happened relatively recently? The contents of Wikipedia are no longer the story. Wikipedia ITSELF is the story. People have moved on from questions of historical accuracy to questions of political power, favoritism, disfavoritism and mass control.

This IS your history lesson, everyking. Are you going to learn or are you just desperate to join the Collective and link into the Hivemind?