Inspried by that excellent work The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined two questions struck me. Firstly, where are the concealed messages in Wikipedia? Secondly, how to discuss them without spoil-sport admins removing them?

Acrostic Concealment: Really It's Simple, Try It Chaps

yeT wE quailL beforE endingS, learnT maorI critiC

Are there any editors who only contributions were to the four articles "Jimbo Wales", "Is", "A", "..."?

Later: I forgot to mention usernames. Any interesting anagrams, palindromes, acrostics, .... ?

ACRISTIC?

Ah, this is an example of the substitutiin methid -- yiu substitute O fir I. Ir alternatively yiu write

Acrostic Concealment: Really Obviously Simple, Try It Chaps

There was at least one instance of an editor making innocuous edits to apparently random articles so that his contribution history would express some meaningful (and offensive, at least to some) thought.

Of course, some buttmunch admin ruined it by disappearing some of the edits, so you can't find it on the wiki anymore.

Special:Contributions/Wit-o-pedia. I assume either Greg or Awbrey. (adding) It was Greg, he owned up to it

Excellent, thanks!

Cached at http://www.webcitation.org/5iZ3dshHD in case someone sees this and decides to open the rabbit hole.

And now, back to our previous discussion of ACRISTICS.

Hm he edited Jimbo which says "Jimmy Wales, American Internet entrepreneur known for his role in the creation of Wikipedia". Not sole founder or even co-founder! Lets see how long before thats fixed.




OK.

That's what the wording of the "Jimmy Wales" article always used to be; it was deliberately ambiguous but undeniably accurate (even the most diehard anti-Jimbo reader couldn't claim that he didn't have a significant role in the founding of Wikipedia; even the most dedicated Jimbo loyalist couldn't dispute that it was a accurate summary of the situation). About six months ago QuackGuru (T-C-L-K-R-D) "improved it", with predictable consequences.

You're welcome!

It truly was outstanding work, wasn't it?

All that needs to be done is to edit the Jimbo Wales bio and....

If I recall correctly, it originally started* with edits to Jimbo and Wales. Those edits must have been deleted.

Hmm, there's no deletion log for Jimbo. Oversight, maybe?

*Or ended, chronologically speaking

Wow, Mike. You're right. They also deleted/oversighted the edit to the Rachel Marsden article, because I had that in there, too.

This has destroyed the full effect of the performance art aspect of that editor, and not one of the actual edits was anything but an encyclopedic improvement to Wikipedia.

To me, this represents some really nasty meta-censorship, and I hope that some good administrator with access to the raw data can illuminate which person was responsible for this act of sabotage.

Seriously, I'm offended. I thought Wikipedians had thicker skin than that.

Greg

P.S. I wonder if this might inspire someone to retaliate with an even more outlandish piece of edit history prose?

Apparently Oversight is restricted to remove defamatory material, to protect privacy, and sometimes to remove serious copyright violations. I wonder which of the three reasons applied here?

Any edit which tends to embarrass, annoy, or ridicule the God-King is, by definition, defamatory. Duh.

Actual Oversight was used, so you'll need an actual OS to read the log for you (does one post here?), assuming they're willing to. Excellent work, though, even with the removed edits. I may just have to steal the idea.

Luke/One and NYB are the only two oversighters I'm aware of who post here. I'm sure they won't re-post the log, but I'd love to see them trying to justify just why this was so egregious it needed oversighting (especially given that Greg has admitted to this on his WP userpage for weeks, so apparently "mentioned on WR" is now grounds for oversighting).

Then you could ask Krimpet why s/he has no sense of humor....

I don't think that's Krimpet being malicious; when accounts are tagged as suspected socks, they automatically get put in Category:Temporary Wikipedian userpages which are then periodically deleted (to avoid either innocent users having the tag in their history, or the edits of "bad" users being tainted by the zOMG-edit-by-a-banned-user smear for ever more). I assume Krimpet was just doing one of the periodic clear-outs. There are many things one could say about Krimpet, but "unwilling to discuss things with Greg if he wanted to" isn't one of them.

LOL

Make sure you plan your script well in advance, and verify that none of your ten "final words" are semi-protected, otherwise you won't be able to edit those pages to "complete" your prose.

(All assuming, of course, that you want to work your artistry with a brand-new account, so that the sum total of its editing is the prose/poetry, and nothing extraneous.)

Make sure you make it even more offensive and hateful than mine was, so as to "punish" those who would dare oversight such masterful artistry.

We really need to find out who it was. How funny if it was Jimbo himself!

That is my new, most favorite editor of all time. The funny part is that the actual contributions were more productive than the contributions of pretty much 90% of active Wikipedians.

Unfortunately, mine is likely to be much less anti-WP in nature, though I'm working on exactly what I'm going to "say". Most likely a haiku or short poem, possibly a small bit of prose. I'll post a link to the contribs when I'm done. I'll let you know if I change my mind on not being offensive and hateful.

At this point, I'm not exactly proud of my days spent playing hard-ass Internet cop.

Any chance you could log back in and undelete it? Or would someone else kill it again?

Ohh, wait, now I remember why I deleted that user page - I deleted it in November, long after the account was blocked. I was en-masse deleting all the scarlet-letter {{sockpuppet|Wikipedia Review}} pages per a request of Greg's - it was to extend an olive branch. I don't know who messed with his contribs to mess up the acrostic, but they likely did so back in the previous June, when the account was blocked.

It's not. I'm sure you'll live.

Krimpet, the prose was intact as recently as 6 weeks ago. The oversighting of "Jimbo", "Wales", and "Rachel Marsden" edits took place quite recently.

Cool Hand "One" "Frank" Luke replied to me by e-mail, saying that the oversighter found the edits to be "libel" (truth is libel?), and that it was all apparently "discussed" before action was taken.

We apparently have recourse. There is some mythical "auditing subcommittee" if we think there's a problem, and they can advise as necessary. It might indeed be out of policy given the amount of time that had passed between the edits and the sudden need for oversight. Can anyone point me to this "auditing subcommittee"? I have to make breakfast now for my family that hasn't divorced me thanks to my public dalliances.

It's a subpage of ArbCom. Thatcher is on it. Procedure is here.

• Year: 2009
• Inquiries received: 9
• Resolved without investigation: 9

Gotta love Arbcom. How's the openness and transparency coming along?

You could ask privatemusings what he thought. Looks pretty good to me, actually; easy questions have easy answers and don't require an investigation. Should simply be more publicity about the subcommittee, so that more people ask.

That's probably misleading since it includes some of the statistical reporting we are doing, which is not really a "request" but is an "issue" we are following.

Why is Jimbo Wales listed as "Staff"?

Ummm... Because he is the "male member" of the crew?

Asked and answered. I'd be open to alternative suggestions.

Doesn't matter if any of the first ten words you want to use are semi-protected as there's an easy way to get them into your final script if you want.

How?

The same way Grawp and co seemingly carry out page move vandalism with their first edits when it takes ten edits and four days to become autoconfirmed (and thus move pages and edit semi-protected pages). Make ten edits to your sandbox, then db-u1 it. Wait four days, and you're autoconfirmed, you have no visible contributions, and Robert is your father's brother.

How'd you know I have an Uncle Bob?

Lucky guess, I guess...

The original "Bobs your uncle" refers to the Marquis of Salisbury getting his nephew Arthur Balfour made Prime Minister. Im not sure of the exact relationship but he wasnt his fathers brother.

Well, that's the WP explanation of Bob's your uncle, citing a popular book and two pieces of journalism. OTOH, Eric Partridge, an actual expert, said origin unknown. I know which one I believe.

Salisbury was Balfour's mother's brother.

Its the explanation in Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (revised by expert Adrian Room) and the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.

You'd be amazed by how little I care...