Remember the sooper sekrit cyberstalking list? Well, it might come as no surprise to learn that it's sprung a few leaks and some email exchanges have made their way to me.

I have a detailed recounting of one particular exchange on DeepCapture.com, but here's the summary.

As you read this, keep in mind that both Gary Weiss socks Mantanmoreland and Samiharris were active members of the list, pretending to be separate people.

(This all took place between October 20 and 22, 2007)

• Jimbo says he thinks Gary Weiss is Mantanmoreland.
• Mantanmoreland freaks out.
• Jimbo says "The queen doth protest too much, Gary.”
• Mantanmoreland responds by calling Jimbo a "stalker."
• Samiharris shows up to support Mantanmoreland, and then compares Jimbo to our very own Somey!
• Jimbo says he worries that before long they will discover Weiss had been manipulating them "in a pretty sad way."

Having read through several threads, I must say my impression of Gary Weiss has plummeted yet more (incredible, but true), while my opinion of Jimbo and SlimVirgin as actually improved...quite a bit. That whole bunch was simply and endlessly manipulated by Weiss. I can now understand how reasonable people might doubt that it was even possible for one individual to expend so much energy pretending to be two.

My point being, Weiss was the fount of 90% of the darkness in those days (that being the BADSITES era, etc), and I have to assume that the only people who dislike him even more than me are the ones he so mercilessly duped.

I think you're basically on the money with SlimVirgin, but I continue to be disappointed with Jimbo in this affair. This incident happened before the "shoot on sight" nonsense. Don't forget Jimbo's "evidence" in the Mantanmoreland RFAR. He knew better for a long time, but continued to pretend otherwise.

As for "Mantanmoreland's" tendency to violently deny obvious inferences, that's one of the three "Never-A"s that Somey humorously wrote about several years ago. Game playing sockmasters never admit anything; they just register more accounts.

I understand and agree (though I do try not to think much about what that dichotomy did to me personally), but I guess I'm saying that in the end, I suspect Jimbo's intention was to avoid damaging Wikipedia by not being dragged into another Essjay scenario, not to protect Weiss per se.

Hmmm...now that I actually write that out, I suppose publicly throwing me under the bus to protect his project might be no better than the other, more sinister motives we had ascribed to his actions.

OK, let me "refactor": SlimVirgin gains, Weiss loses, Wales remains unchanged.

If I had suspected Jimbo was sympathetic to NSS and giving Mantanmoreland a pass for that reason, I agree that these emails tend to make that hypothesis seem less likely and therefore make Jimbo come off better.

However, I never really believed that Jimbo was Mantanmoreland's ideological sympathizer. Therefore, these emails only confirm the disappointment I first expressed on WikBack when the existence of these emails was first hinted at.

Well, I'm really offended now - I would never use that "doth protest too much" line from Shakespeare, under any circumstances. I think it's one of Shakespeare's worst (and most misused) lines, except maybe for that "men of few words are the best men" line in Henry V.

Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges...

I think you misunderstand...Samiharris compared Jimbo to you based on Jimbo's actually calling Mantanmoreland "Gary".

The full quote was:

It only makes fools of some, sooner than others

Remember also that Jimbozo was accused of being behind the WikiTruth, even though he very publicly called them a hoax.

You should be flattered.

Right, but it looks like Jimbo said, "I think you doth protest too much, Gary," so if Weiss's response was to say that I might have said that, then he's misrepresenting me completely. Obviously I would have said something more like, "I don't want to seem rude, but you might consider trying to be slightly less obvious with your next set of accounts, Mr. Weiss."

I mean, putting aside the Shakespeare quote, even Gary Weiss should know that for almost anyone other than Jimbo himself, I almost never use a person's first name when his/her last name is known.

Am I way off base here? I don't think so!

Aye, you have been unfairly maligned. And shouldn't he know better? Didn't he once have an account here?

He was at least Dudley and LaserJet.

The list messages don't surprise me a bit. Remember BADSITES?

I can't help it, I'm still curious about why Weiss has been carrying on this maniac war.
Is he simply a paranoid schizophrenic, with "voices" telling him to do this? Is he mad
enough to think he can become a billionaire by making naked-shorting "respectable"?
Or is someone paying him to make a damn fool of himself?

Be fair, One.

We've speculated about that before, and it took me a while to find it, but back in November 2006 I made the point that the short seller's risk (naked or otherwise) is theoretically infinite:

And to build on that, the perpetual fear of ruination can be a huge stress factor in a person's life, particularly when the person is well into his/her 50's, and any day can bring with it some hugely expensive medical problem, a death in the family, an invitation to a private party from Tiger Woods, or any number of such things. Fear of that magnitude can result in all sorts of psychological problems, including anxiety/panic attacks, paranoia, even histrionic personality disorder. Erratic or combative behavior is fairly mild compared to some of the things that can happen.

I mean, it seems much more likely that he's just misguided, greedy and manipulative, but who knows? Maybe he really believes in the idea of the "mom 'n' pop investor," that corrupt CEO's are the root of Wall Street's problems, and that the only way to deal with them is to bypass SEC regulations and short-sell their companies, even if you can't cover - it's actually a fairly populist viewpoint, to some extent, if you grant the basic premiss that Wall Street investors need protection of that nature. (Which I don't, of course, but I'm just one guy.)


I think he's talking about a different game!

Around that time, apparently, I and Samiharris had been engaged in at least one rather intense debate on the Gary Weiss talk page. It appears that, feeling beleaguered, Samiharris (Weiss) went to the ol' secret mailing list to try to recruit some help from the influential admin members of said list. Weiss must have been rather surprised when, in response, Wales called him out.

If only Jimbo had followed through on it at that time and kicked Weiss off of Wikipedia, it would have saved a lot of people a lot of grief, trouble, and time. Has Jimbo, SlimVirgin, JzG, David Gerard, or any of the others who facilitated Weiss' manipulation of Wikipedia ever admitted publicly that they were had? Durova is the only former member of that list that I've seen who has admitted such publicly.

It seems to be a failing that collectively they just don't want to concede.

Perhaps it has gone on too long, but people rather like people who show character in admitting past errors, and there is little loss of face in admitting you were had by a skilled manipulator.

By admitting to the mistake, it would clear the air and make current actions by this person a lot easier to deal with. By muddying the waters, there must be some Wikipedians who are reluctant to say what they think as they cannot divine the one true path that they should be following.

Perhaps they are concerned that the response would be immature. I can understand that when Gerard comes out with his Dancing on Skulls comments. Generally, I think they underrate the maturity of their critics. I don't see WordBomb dancing on skulls, for example.

Being an Ayn Rand asshole means never sincerely saying you're sorry, nor admitting to any significant error.

Now if that truism applied ONLY to "Ayn Rand asshole"s.

Regrettably, there's a lot of that around.

Well, Randroids are supposed to act in their "self-interest" all the time, and issuing an apology - especially an insincere, half-hearted public one to try to quell dissent - could be in one's "self-interest." (Getting a sincere apology out of an Objectivist, on the other hand, would be nigh impossible.)

Excellent point. I fixed it.