Admin unmasks self as sockpuppet of other admin who was banned in 2015
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
Maybe they just honestly enjoyed the work, then they didn't feel like it anymore, and banned themselves.
It let them have the last laugh - they just kept doing what they wanted even after being banned, then ended it on their own terms when they felt like it.
It's not like they lost anything, except the opportunity to perform unpaid work and get more articles written about them from people who cannot fathom someone would voluntarily relinquish some meaningless position.
If you read about the original incident, linked in another comment:
https://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-p...
it means they lost the power to use Wikipedia to promote another scam. The original account was no troll doing it for the lulz, they were after money and possibly actually a group of people. So either this revelation is now fake for whatever reason, or there is more going on. In either case, all of the activity of said admin (Lourdes) should probably be looked at with concern. Possible other scams to be found.
The article I linked claimed, that indeed quite a few persons in rural india believed wikipedia. Also labour in india is cheap, I doubt he did it himself, but payed someone to do it.
In general, many people do trust wikipedia. And PR companies get payed much more, to get some information inside.
...in trade performing a service. I might disagree with you on what 'for hire' means.
Sounds to me like deep cover. Perhaps this wasn't one person. Perhaps this was a project run by a team over many years. All those tiny edits? The ability to spin up so many accounts without being detected? Getting privileges to those new accounts? These are the techniques of professionals. Perhaps this was a state actor. Perhaps an advertising agency. Any number of organizations might want to have a high-level wikipedia editor account as a tool for something. The fact that the persona was never clearly weaponized doesn't mean it wasn't there.
There was like 3-4 accounts that we know of. There is absolutely nothing here that that requires more than one person with a few hours of time on their hand each day.
Also their behavior doesn't mesh with being a state actor or organization - why would they throw away their admin account to get a last laugh in an internet argument? Why would their cover be an admin account of bad enough temperament and decision-making that it draws attention to itself and risks getting banned?
This is utter nonsense.
We only need to look to the comments here on HN, where there are usually several people in each post writing "the government should regulate" or "the government should ban", no matter how minute the issue is. I wouldn't be surprised if people here start requiring government regulations for scrollbar widths soon (apologies if they have already done that).
> Those who feel like they do not have power continually fight and struggle against those who they see have power, until they gain a modicum of power and almost universally abuse it.
The rulers know that, so I think anybody who successfully struggles against powers will start getting higher and higher offers until they cave and join the machine. Most will cave at the first offer, because they were really only out for themselves from the start.
I've felt the way you described at some points in life, but not the majority of the time.
The government turned a blind eye to that, and in many ways condoned that behavior. The Internet probably made it worse.
I do not believe that one person has the right, or should have the power, to force their opinions, views, or ideas on another person. Organizationally, that's another story, but as a person, I believe you should have the right to believe and think and feel whatever you want even if it's contrary to everyone else. So long as you're not directly harming anyone. Words alone are NOT violence, unless it is calling for violence, or expressing a desire to cause harm.
The problem with power, and something that's never really been applied to the random individual, is that it corrupts, and the more power one has, the worse it gets.
That you draw the line at violence (in these situations) is a side effect of the particular rails you were raised in, but most societies draw different boundaries. There may still be some situations that even those guardrails aren’t what you think.
Same position for those advocating for pedophilia? Advocating for terrorist acts? Advocating for overturning the gov’t violently?
What is different with woke I believe is that they basically want to force speed-running this social norms evolution. No time to wait for the glacial pace of change of mindsets (generations), we will call out everyone right now. This provokes strong reactions.
The other issue is that not necessarily all progressive ideas will be actually accepted with time, many were/are/will be sorted out, but there's no real chance for this sorting out in woke, where any doubts about particular idea will get you shouted out.
Sure, there is still a difference to the usual racist subject that is unappologically racist. But overall I think woke ideas only entrench it.
The opposition towards woke doesn't exist because it is racist. Most are just opposed to bad ideas.
Example are development for voice actors. Voice actors apparently were only allowed to voice characters that mirror their ethnicity. Now everyone complains about racial segregation. That is a phenomenon that can directly be traced back to "woke".
The US went through similar levels of disruption in the late 60’s and early mid 70’s.
It isn’t just ‘woke’. you see the same reaction in other circles if you bring up vaccines, or gun control, or Jan 6th, or birth control, or religion, or global warming (less so now), etc.
Attempts to bring in information that conflicts with the core beliefs causes something like an emotional allergic reaction. Changing any of these core beliefs is near impossible when someone is in this state, as it pushes them into more overload. With a similar almost allergic reaction.
Most folks in these situations can’t have a rational discussion about them because the reason they are believing them is attached to a fundamental safety thing (deep emotional), not a rational knowledge thing.
Or as I’ve heard before (and seen play out) - ‘you can’t reason someone out of a problem they didn’t reason themselves into’.
As you’re pointing out I think, it’s too much for them to figure out, they get overwhelmed, and start lashing out.
Either ideological ‘belonging’, a need they can’t identify/face, or as a defense mechanism to a weakness or insecurity they can’t admit. All different faces of the same die I suspect.
Such as the prohibition on privately enriching uranium.
I’m pretty sure the opium farmers of Afghanistan wouldn’t give two shits about private uranium enrichment, for instance. And would be happy to keep someone’s secret about doing so if they had an incentive to do so.
And while growing and selling opium would be considered a hard social taboo in most places (and the Taliban, for example, regularly executed folks for doing it in those areas of Afghanistan!) the US was more than happy to allow it in exchange for popular support in the region when they were occupying it.
[https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/afghanistan-opium...]
That's the First Amendment for you.
> The government turned a blind eye to that [and this was bad]
> I do not believe that one person has the right, or should have the power, to force their opinions, views, or ideas on another person.
look like a contradiction.
Is the your objection the narrow only one person should not have power over the opinions of others, but two or more are fine? If even many people should not have power over the opinion of others, how could the government "turn a blind eye"? Shouldn't it be "correctly stayed out of it"?
1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58642436-the-status-game
On Reddit there are powermods who "moderate" hundreds of subreddits. This is not an exaggeration. Hundreds. At least one has/had thousands.
Why do they do this, when they are not paid? When questioned, they invariably say that they "just watch the incoming queue" or something, and the other mods "do all the work". While likely true in the literal sense (again, hundreds), such answers of course completely evade the question.
Remember, "Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People" <https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most_...>. This also applies to powermods, assuming they're not being paid on the side to push some ideology (/r/politics being an obvious example).
Basically, losers who crave ruling a petty fiefdom because it's the only thing they can exercise agency over in their lives. And/or are mentally ill.
Quoting another:
>and for each moderator there are 100 sycophants and narcissists lined up to take their place
Most mods know this, which is why so many surrendered and reopened their subreddits during the recent "protest" the moment admins told them that otherwise they would be replaced. /r/formula1's mods forthrightly said as much; those of /r/nba claimed that negotiations had progressed far enough to justify reopening, which the thousands of replies show that the userbase 100% disbelieves.
Even worse, a) /r/nba's top mod made more than 150 comments to six other NBA teams' subreddits during the blackout. b) /r/nba mods posted secret threads—including the Game 5 discussion that they denied from their own users—and made comments during the blackout. When users discovered the threads the mods of course scrubbed the comments, but there is no way for mods to actually delete (as opposed to hiding) posts, so evidence of their hypocritical behavior will live on forever.
Bonus: The classic post in which a mod thinks what he does is worth $175K a year <https://np.reddit.com/r/35orquit/comments/qw1v3e/what_do_peo...>. Be sure to read to the end, where he explains how he "saves lives".
"Manipulating Wikipedia to Promote a Bogus Business School"
https://www.newsweek.com/2015/04/03/manipulating-wikipedia-p...
That was back in 2015.
User Beeblebrox, Wifione, Lourdes... It's weird reading this — like it's some kind of secret club in grade school where everyone has code names.
I know I am not typical in that my user name is my own name. Part of me cast off anonymity on the internet though if for no other reason to keep myself honest in my postings — a deterrent to allowing some kind of alter-ego to shit post and such.
With wikipedia, it really is a sort of "He who controls the information, controls the world" type of scenario.
Imagine being a Wikipedia admin and editing something that can be viewed as very volatile, such as something religious or political with your own real name visible in the log - that's really scary!
It's not at all a tinfoil hat thing to say that there are people who have the will and the means to take down people such as Wikipedia admins for publishing information which doesn't align with everyone's worldviews.
It doesn't even have to be so political or religious. There are also people who go absolutely crazy over something like someone "disrespecting" their idols or favourite singer or something. If they knew where you lived, they would absolutely drive across 10 states to let you know what you did.
~ Cooking: food nationalists are constantly claiming that Biryani belongs to their nation and nobody else's.
~ History: nationalists again, especially over Turkey, Cyprus, or anywhere in the Balkans.
~ Politicians: most articles about politicians are so bland as to be almost worthless, because anything interesting is quickly excised citing 'BLP' rules.
If I edited under my own name, I'd probably have to stick to articles about obscure botanical species, and places that nobody goes to.
1 - this pseudonym has followed me through many places and it was time for a change
Wouldn't be so surprised if you'd get a knock on the door or need a new window sometime soon...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5503354 ("French homeland intelligence threatens a sysop into deleting a Wikipedia Article (wikimedia.fr)")
fwiw i think there is a good faith effort on their part, but you have no way of seeing anything shady if they don't want you to.
So if you want to write/edit/admin Wikipedia articles about those "touchy" things, you might want to do so under anonymous identity, as otherwise it can really make things difficult for you.
In some other countries it is forbidden to make music that glorifies crime, while at the same time those countries have excellent liberty of speech as well as musical lyrics that are extremely offensive by other standards.
Thank goodness we'd never do anything like that here on HN
I'm shocked Wikipedia doesn't do this.
You goal seems noble and born of good faith. I'd go past that to suggest you meant 'positively' instead of honest, because honesty could be inferred.
As a counterpoint (for a very diff use case), I ran a minecraft server and had to strongly encourage young players to anonymize themselves (starting with playernames) and to not share identifying info.
I also explained I would only chat publicly because I was an adult and my chat logs were available to any parent who asked. Not quite the same thing but I was trying to example helpful boundaries. I never got any takers on the logs but doubt that bit ever got passed on.
Anonymity provides the reverse as well. Namely the ability to speak your mind without worrying about real world ramifications.
One man’s shit posting is another’s firmly held beliefs!
Just made me laugh. How are someone "extremly" banned? Either you are banned or not.
Perhaps in the basic form of dealing with users who break the rules Wikipedia allows an appeal or bans are temporary - I'm just guessing, I stopped being an active Wiki user some 10 years ago. I didn't want to lose nerves on trivial issues like edit wars with self-appointed experts who couldn't accept they might be wrong.
Also, I've found some 2 days ago that my IP range was banned from anonymous edits because someone somewhere did once something
This Wikipedia page [1] explains the different categories of bans in use on the English Wikipedia. Additionally, there are also a couple of handfuls of "global bans" wherein an individual is banned from every Wikimedia project [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Site_...
You might be found to have committed 170 different bannable offenses. Banning is idempotent, so there wouldn't be any difference in the penalty, but such a person would be describable as "more banned" than other users.
Similarly, you might be found to have committed offenses which put you well over the threshold for banning. This too would make you "more banned" than other users who were more borderline.
If they did 170 different things, each one warranting a ban, the only way for the ban to be lifted would be for each of those 170 things being dismissed individually.
The same goes for doing one bannable thing but "a lot" or to a very extreme degree. Say, defacing a Wikipedia article with a bogus message versus defacing the entire Wikipedia website with borderline illegal graphic content.
There's arguably no "mildly" banned but this distinction makes sense in a lot of contexts to give a rough idea of context: a corpse is dead but the scattered remains of someone caught up in a high yield explosions are extremely dead as even in a sci-fi story it would be hard to imagine them being "revived", a dainty woman might be pregnant but if she's visibly close to delivery with a pronounced waddle and struggling to get up after sitting down, it would be fair to call her extremely pregnant as there's no denying her state whereas the pregnancy might have been hard to even notice a few months earlier.
English lacks a grammatical signifier for evidence or degrees of confidence (no, the English subjunctive is a poor approximation at best and mostly limited to expressing explicit doubt) so superlatives are a good way to express high levels of confidence. "I am banned" means you're banned but leaves room for the possibility that this might change or be reversed. "I am extremely banned" suggests it's that way now and there's nothing to change that and nobody will likely ever be interested in changing that in the future.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImpaledWithExtre...
Not healthy
Yeah, I get reverted a fair bit. I very rarely bite back; disputes are incredibly draining of time and energy, and usually pivot on obscure interpretations of Wikipedia policy.
If you look on having your edit reverted as "Someone on the internet is wrong", and don't take it personally, you can just walk away from that article without your blood-pressure getting out of control. There are always other articles that need fixing.
Excellent summary.
Wikipedia is a valuable resource, and it does need editors. However, some people get drunk on a little power, and that us exactly the type of person attracted to this kind of unpaid role.
It wasn't worth dealing with them 15 years ago, and it sounds like it has only gotten worse...
I don't think it is the oldest either. Coercion is older. "Forgive me father, they forced my hand."
There are two dozen sexual harassment scandals against women on Wikipedia, involving editors, admins and even high-up stewards and sysops.
https://wikipediasucks.co/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=26833#p...
https://rdrama.net/post/215764/there-are-two-dozen-sexual-ha...
A user who claims to be a reporter had said that Daily Beast killed the story about Wikipedia's harassment scandals against women on a Wikipedia criticism forum.
Excerpt with further redaction to profane words:
> For the folks at home, the story I was working on was going to be published by the Daily Beast in Spring 2024. Everything was in place then we had to go to both Wikipedia and the National Archives for comment, as required by law. Archvies wouldn't speak to us and Wikipedia threatened to sue, I suspect because of what we had found out about their administrators. The piece had mainly been about administrator abuse, using cowtools on Wikipedia to trace ip addresses, dox people's identities then harass them in real life. The (Male Victim) clusterf** was a big part of the story, but not the entire story. The real beef of the article was about female editors on their site being stalked and even assaulted after having their identities revealed online by administrators. I found several cases of that including a woman who was stabbed outside her home in Mexico City by a stalker who had researched who she was off of her Wikipeida profile.
> Daily Beast backed out because of the lawsuit threat, but I still have the whole story and might one day sell the rights. For now, its back to Eastern Europe covering real news.
She also disclosed further details about these scandals.
> I gave Daily Beast my story, I'm not sure if they will run it or not. You have to remember the (Male Victim) case is something of old news, as it happened five years ago in 2018. (Perp) and his internet activities were more recent, but he's been quiet now for about two years since I think he actually got a bit scared after his name started popping up on law enforcement radars. I've confirmed he was talked to at least once by law enforcement, mainly about his obsession with the U.S. government worker (Perp) who he had convinced himself was (Male Victim).
> (Male Victim) probably did operate that account about fifteen years ago from what I can tell, but was one of several people who did. (Perp) and his buddies don't like it when their narrative gets spoiled, and refused to ever admit, even with the evidence staring them in the face, that the (Male Victim) account was clearly being operated by more than one person. It was actually (Witness) who confirmed that for me in one of our interviews and had himself spoken to two of the people who operated the account.
> For those wondering, the end game of (Perp) appeared to be blackmail, or some kind of weird plan where he was going to fly to the United States and confront (Male Victim) in person literally at the front door of the National Archives and be some kind of Wikipedia hero - that's how crazy that guy is. He never went through with his plan since, like I said, law enforcement started taking an interest in him especially after it appeared he really did have a plot to travel internationally to a US federal building in Washington DC. What's really ironic is that when all the (redacted) was going down, (Male Victim) didn't even work at the National Archives anymore.
> Also, gotta remember, (Male Victim) was only a small part of my story. In three years of research, I found over two dozen cases where Wikipedia administrators had misused their authority, traced ip addresses, and stalked people in real life. Two of the worst cases ever were (Female Victim A), who some on Wikipedia actually tried to bankrupt as well as a user named (Female Victim B) who apparently there was some type of plan to kidnap and rpe. Not to mention (Female Victim C), who never told me her user name, but was attacked outside her apartment in Mexico City after a Wikipedia administrator traced her ip address and gave the information to her attacker.
> It's actually a wonder no one has been killed yet by some of the people on that web site.
More breadcrumbs about the scandals.
> The (Female Victim D) case was a major part of my recent article, and I spent about a year investigating what happened and interviewed her twice (virtually). What the Wikipedia case didn't report was that those two men did a "trial run" to her village a week or two beforehand and were seen on the street leading up to her home taking pictures and apparently watching her come and go, timing when she would be alone. They were seen by neighbors which is actually how she got tipped off about what was going on, but then the d*kheads started calling her house with both prank and hang up calls. When they came back for "the real thing" she was on her guard and saw them coming. That was also no innocent prank, and it certainly wasn't a misunderstanding where they "got lost on the train" and just happened to wind up on her remote street. I actually think they were trying to kidnap her.
> After getting in touch a friend who in turn interacted with the reporter for more details, I learn that there are also a p-dophile scandal within where one of the corrupt Wikipedia administrator tried to traffick a teenager from Thailand into his home.
> Sorry I have been out of the loop for a while. That question was posted by a man in Thailand named (redacted) and was connected to a rather despicable incident involving (redacted - perp). I'd previously sent the details to this site's administrators.
Imagine if Daily Beast gets its gut together and pull a John Carreyou against Wikipedia next year? The results and impacts could be greater than the downfalls of Theranos, Johnny Kitagawa and Weinsteins combined together. Although the publication schedule was set at next year, there are realistic possibilities that because of WMF legal threats and so on, it could be delayed into the future. Which brings an interesting possibility, what if the Daily Beast feature story is released concurrently with Marvel Secret Wars?
I can tell you right now that that's a utopian vision.
Most "sides" would be spam. Wikipedia has elaborate filters to keep spammers out, from IP range blocking to URLs you can't use in edits if you want the edit to actually go through. Since spam can be automated, and since there's a person on the other end of that automation hoping for a payout, it seeps into pretty much everything that isn't actively maintained.
I don't disagree, but this doesn't seem to be remotely compatible with Wikipedia's ostensible mission. Anything hinting of a "point of view" (or that an editor can justify as being a POV) gets swiftly shut down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
> What is written is more important than who writes it. The content must conform with Wikipedia's policies, including being verifiable by published sources. Editors' opinions, beliefs, personal experiences, unreviewed research, libelous material, and copyright violations will not remain. Wikipedia's software allows easy reversal of errors, and experienced editors watch and patrol bad edits.
(note: I'm not trying to claim "articles on wikipedia are neutral, see!" - the linked page simply provides a lot of information and a lot of links about that challenge)