Daniel Brandt started this post http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=12701 in July 2006, some 9 months before the whole Essjay story came to light. Brandt said that Essjay was between 30 and 45, teaches theology to undergrads and grads, and is a tenured professor at a private university in the northeastern U.S.



How did Brandt know this? Unfortunately the project that wants all information to be free has deleted Essjay's user page and all historical revisions, and archives. Would that information have been on the user page in July 2006? If it was, is there any way of accessing it?

Actually it doesn't matter if I can't, I shall simply document very carefully all the occasions when this very secretive organisation keeps things secret.

[edit] Ah nvm I've found a copy of the january 2006 version of the user page. http://web.archive.org/web/20060111060701/...iki/User:Essjay Yes, Brandt got it from there.

There's a file on English wikipedia with his user page image, but why you remembered Essjay now, when at least one current member of ArbCom lied about his credentials too?

As I mentioned in another post here, I am researching a book on Wikipedia. Don't worry, I've found all the pages I need.

Which particular other lying Arbcom member did you have in mind?

A former administrator Trusilver at his user page
is quoting his 13 years old daughter. When asked, if she wanted to continue editing wikipedia, the girl responded:No, So, as you could see even 13-years old says many people on wikipedia are a power hungry fakes. I personally do not believe that most wikipedians are fakes, but sadly there's a lot, and many of them are acting on behalf of trolls against content contributors. A popular administrator RickK had this to say before he left wikipedia for goodHe said it in 2005, now in 2011 I could sign under every word.


I meant this guy. Does not look like he is an officer in Royal Navy

Remember that any number of people have copies of the Wikipedia database from that era, notably Mr. WordBomb. These can be used to resurrect certain amounts of "disappeared" information.

Didn't we discuss this before? He was in the Royal Naval Reserve (T-H-L-K-D), which is a volunteer organization.

Volunteer reserve forces are a little different from volunteer organizations. Volunteer is used in opposition to drafted. If needed, he could be shipped out. The US has similar things (Army, Air, and Naval reserves). They do have leadership, training, etc. It isn't like joining some random civic organization.


By the way, him stating that he could have been an officer isn't as big of a deal as it seems to be suggested: there are many commissioned and non-commissioned officer type positions. He was a kid proud of his basic position, and was instead exaggerated into someone trying to claim he was a captain or whatever.

This site has more info: "The Royal Naval Reserve is a part-time force of 2,300 trained men and women who are deployed with the Royal Navy in times of tension, humanitarian crisis, or conflict. They may be civilian but Reservists wear the same uniform and do much of the same training as the Regulars."

It isn't as shabby as people are making it out to be.

I mean, we have Arbs that plagiarized and did some things that actually mattered a lot. Poking at this guy merely because he was proud of his basic position seems a little weird.

Disagree. One cannot be proud of something he is not. I mean it is definitely something to be proud of, if one is in a volunteer in The Royal Naval Reserve, but this does not mean that to be proud of this one should claim he is an officer. I would not have brought this up, if he claimed he is in active service versus being in the reserve,but claiming he is an officer, is completely different story.

Queen Pride is an odd bitch that's for sure.

You don't know that he isn't an officer. They have basic officer ranks.

Well, he removed this thing of being an officer himself, did he not? And Here's an interesting exchange Chase refused to respond

The image they are talking about is this one

Something else that you have no idea about yet felt utterly compelled to opine about.

Color me shocked.

“Chase Me” was pretty minor compared to Ryan Jordan. Jordan represented himself as having academic credentials and as being a university lecturer. He lied about this to The New Yorker, and pretty much everyone else.

Back on topic. I found most of the information I need from Brandt’s site and web archives. A few puzzles remain. Wikipedia Review (mostly per Brandt) was instrumental in the outing. Brandt persistently wrote and emailed The New Yorker until they published a correction. This was late February 2007. However, the record in the Wikipedia Review does not mention the date for this. Brandt references http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&sh...indpost&p=23713 Nicholas Carr’s piece http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/02/never_trust_an.php which mentions the correction, but that is all.

Is anyone still in touch with Brandt? There is a lot about about this story that needs telling. For example, the role of Wikipedia Review (and mostly Brandt) has been whitewashed out of history. Brandt was questioning the identity of Jordan well before the new broke.

OTOH 25 years ago I worked with an 18 yo kid who was a Warrant Officer in the air cadets. He never talked about it himself, probably because I was rather scathing about the whole thing, but at least once a week I'd field phone calls from other kids asking to talk to Warrant Officer Chester. I do believe they have sea cadets too.

Officer is a really open ended term. As I said, there are many non-commissioned ranks. Perhaps he just didn't want to bother with all the fighting and technicality stuff that could only have been revealed by him giving even more information? Not everyone wants their life exposed to settle the curiosity of others. It seems that he removed it because that was the best way to end any questions.

And my dad served in the Navy in Vietnam, and I have pictures of him on his Frigate in both Navy and civilian clothes. I think you are worrying too much about unimportant details and criticizing people for them just trying to relax or have fun.



Focus on malice instead. Essjay used a fake set of degrees to push some nasty untruths and spread all sorts of POV nonsense. Sam Blacketeer used a false identity to push his political agenda. Others have done the same (like that UK reporter who was attacking other UK reporters).

Chase hasn't done that.

We have multiple Arbs who were blatantly plagiarizing while leading WikiProjects, condemning other writers, and such things.

Those are things that matter most. Hell, look at Rlevse. I was pointing out is plagiarism for over a year before people were willing to take any action on it. Why? Because he was entrenched and people weren't willing to care about what mattered. The more you focus on silly stuff like the above, the more the Rlevses in the world get away with some really bad stuff.

Yes, you are absolutely right. It was silly of me to bring up the thing that happened 3 years ago. I am sorry about this. Chase is actually a very nice guy, and being in the Reserve is definitely something to be very proud of.

For the purposes getting back on topic, I can tell you that ChaseMe was not an officer in either the naval reserve or the regular navy. As far as I know, he still isn't.

"Left for good" as in came back the next day with a new account.....

Yup. And ran that account up to admin, too. Both are now blocked for security reasons, because the common password he used on both accounts was compromised.

I did not know this. What is the user name of the other account?
All I know is that a few months ago there was an account made. The user said he was Rick, but the real Rick emailed to somebody, and said it was not him.

However, it is still probably the case that stone frigates aren't much fun.

Stone frigates
Stone frigates
Stone frigates
Aren't much fun

In the Navy they don't please;
They don't ply northern seas
Stone frigates... aren't much fun

My own stone frigate's
In Birmingham
I thought I'd sail it
A better man
But stone frigates... aren't much fun.

[sing along!]

Stone..... frigates!
Stone.... frigates!!!
Stone frigates... aren't much fun!!!

Wasn't it Zoe (T-C-L-K-R-D) ?

Right, but the problem with that thread is that sometimes what they are discussing has been deleted - like the Wikia page referred to. I'm assuming that the page was first time Essjay had been identified as 'Ryan Jordan', but with no further information. This caused Brandt to look for a professor of that name.

My mistake, the page is here http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/gifs/wmessjay.png

Wikipedia now switches off Archive.org access...
it is too obsessed with protecting liars and cheats.
What will we do? :( The Wikipedos are coming :{
They want to use WP as Bomis II.
Robots.txt does not allow archive any more

It appears that Essjay (or Slimy Jakass) is destroying evidence. Jimmy was hired to fake the story (proof at My Wiki Biz).

It wasn't just Essjay in Feb-March 2007 that caused the damage.

2007 was the year the Wikipedia idiot patrol reached its full flower.

Carolyn Doran happened at about the same time. They hired her in January, she was busted for DUI in May, and managed to cover it up...going to a board meeting in Amsterdam in June. Presumably her being arrested on re-entering the US for parole violation tipped the geniuses of the WMF that something was up. But it still took them till July to do something. They don't announce it until September, after her FOURTH ARREST for DUI. Timeline here.


And Brad Patrick left just before Doran's blowup. It is widely assumed she may have forced Brad out, though this will never be proven adequately. He hired her, after all. Maybe he knew before anyone else and didn't want to be around for the hellstorm.

Everyone helped to cover Doran's mess up--even the WMF's legal counsel. IMO Mr. Godwin might be guilty of misconduct for this.

The Mantanmoreland/Overstock.com situation came to a head in October, with David Gerard attempting to block a large chunk of Utah, just to silence Judd Bagley.

The secret mailing list squawk came out in December.

Then in early 2008 came the Jossi flap, followed quickly by Rachel Marsden. By then it was impossible to ignore that Jimbo was a pathological liar and had surrounded himself with liars--unless you were a true-blue Wiki-fool.

So, it all added up, and people started giving up and leaving Wikipedia.

I'm not too sure about this, as the May, 2007 arrest is ALSO for "4th or more" DUI/DWIs. So she had 4 even in May. God knows how many she had in September-- all we know is that if she had a new one in Sept, it was one more.

Incidently, the charge in September relating to "hit and run" is an outstanding warrent for being a "fugitive from Virginia," as you see. Apparently related to a DUI THERE. Evidently Doran had moved from Virginia to Florida to take the WMF job without clearing up her parole in Virginia. And of course couldn't get a driver license in Florida, so had been driving without one. Both her Florida arrests include DWL (driving without license).

In the past I've questioned whether or not the Sept arrest was an additional DWI or else just Doran finally turning herself in, as she made bail in the May arrest. I don't know if they'd include the old charges from May again in that kind of arrest.

Since Doran made bail over a weekend in May, we can assume that was where she used the WMF credit card to get the money to do it. One assumes the WMF card was all she had, since her credit score was doubtless so poor then that she couldn't get one in her own name. With sweaty palms she repaid WMF the next Tuesday as soon as she got out of the slammer, and WMF indeed didn't find out she'd ever been to jail. What triggered the audit was when Doran went back to jail for good in September. They checked her card and found the May charge, and off they went.

I even vandalized Wikipedia and was good friends with girlvinyl in vandalizing Wikipedia,
Even the liars at Firedox see that Wiki is not real word.

I'm looking carefully at Lih's account of the scandal. He doesn't actually say anything untruthful, although he omits things in order to imply an alternative causality. For example, he omits to say that Wikipedia Review + Brandt had been commenting on and campaigning about Jordan for nearly a year, and his order of presentation misleadingly implies that the 'community' unmasked Essjay.

He also places the blame on the New Yorker, saying that the journal tried to 'defend' its actions, and that the unmasking of Essjay was 'a big strike against the vaunted fact-checking operation of the ''New Yorker''.

Danny Wool supposedly disagreed with the NY statement, and emphasised that the WMF "had never endorsed the authenticity of Essjay, ever".

Thoughts?

[edit] Ah I see there is some more about it in Lih's blog http://www.andrewlih.com/blog/2007/03/05/e...the-new-yorker/